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Review my startup | thomasmallen: To me, it's on the boring side...doesn't have much on a webforum. |
Review my startup | Brushfire: Looks like a cool project.What's your business model? Ads? |
Review my startup | adamdoupe: The featured five on the homepage moves way too fast. It switched when I was still reading.Beyond that, interesting site. Good luck! |
Web Frameworks for Perl | dandv: Sites using Catalyst:
http://www.catalystsites.org/sites/all
and
http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/wiki/SitesRunningCatalyst |
Review my startup | Dilpil: Looks like a fun social site, seems more like a possible facebook application than its own site though. |
Review my startup | tptacek: What problem does this thing solve that I would pay money to have solved? |
Review my startup | ohxten: Bill O'Reilly is the 3rd most evil American?Heh heh heh... |
Review my startup | pclark: - that pink flicking slideshow makes me feel rather sick |
Who's Hiring? | isumbras: I have been looking for good jobs in the Houston area. I'd appreciate suggestions. |
Who's Hiring? | khangtoh: Looking for a contract developer to work on a firefox extension. Interested? Email me at khang.toh _at_ gmail _dot_ com |
Review my startup | eli_s: Isn't every other submission to reddit or digg a top 5/10/20 list already?From what I can see people visit the list and discuss on reddit/digg. |
Review my startup | apsurd: If you haven't researched this company already ....
http://www.rateitall.com/Had a friend interning there this summer. The business model is essentially exactly what you guys are going after. I think it's a pretty smart model actually, but you'll have to work out how your product stands out from theirs.On a side note, I think the "if you have a brain that is" comment is too condescending for me. I think HN users will understand that humor but you are going after commonfolk! Or maybe I'm just reading into it too much ..eh! |
Review my startup | petergroverman: I like the concept... kinda reminds me of PhrazIt.com |
Review my startup | ruddzw: Top N lists get submitted to digg and reddit all the time. The comments for those are always filled with people hating on top N lists, but they wouldn't get to the front page without people enjoying them. I think a site like this could go far in terms of popularity. But the lists I always found MOST interesting had a lot of text supporting each item. I'd make sure that this is possible for people to really get what they want out of a top N list, more than needing to click on an item to get a description.Also, maybe something about the ordering of the lists. All the lists I've seen so far go 1,2,3,4,5, and then runners up. What about 5,4,3,2,1? Kind of builds up the suspense. :) I might just not have looked enough about this one, though. |
How do you block Persistent Identification Elements? | olefoo: Well, you can go into the flash settings (right click on a flash object) and turn them off...For those who don't know what he's talking about this site http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/pie.htm has a fairly straight forward writeup.And although they are a bit obscure, they are basically cookies. Turning off flash, or using noscript will take care of them. |
Review my startup | byrneseyeview: http://www.5ives.com/ for the masses. |
Review my startup | myoung8: i don't think you can call this a "startup." |
Who's Hiring? | danyalanik: We are looking for RoR hackers and/or software engineering generalists at EMI Music. Read more about our job descriptions here: http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dg3h36zx_23c4ck9bc9 |
Who's Hiring? | DaniFong: I am told by my friend Tristan that Apture.com is looking for top notch javascript hackers. |
Review my startup | asmosoinio: Not working for me. I am trying to access it from the Philippines so it can be just me though. Other websites working fine at the moment. |
Implementing Auto-Copy | kaens: Auto-Copy as in the firefox extension? Or what?I think you're going to need to be a bit more specific here. |
Does solving math problems make you a good programmer? | nostrademons: It makes you a better programmer. It does not, in itself, make you a great programmer, and probably does not make you as good a programmer as if you'd written lots of code in problems that stretch yourself.Similarly, if you test for math ability in interviews, you will get better candidates, on average, than if you don't. But you aren't guaranteed a great candidate, and you'll like miss a few people that are qualified but just don't do well with those sort of problems. And it's not as reliable an indicator as having written lots of code in interesting problem domains, but the number of people who are hacker-famous is less than the size of most large companies. |
Does solving math problems make you a good programmer? | kaens: No, it shows that you're good at a particular type of problem-solving, which can be indicative of you being a good "programmer" all-around, as designing and implementing anything "larger" tends to involve the same type of mental processes used when you solve math problems like the ones you mention (at least from what I've seen).The problems that companies like Facebook put on their websites tend to be at least somewhat difficult - probably because they're dealing with rather non-trivial system design problems, and want to make sure you think in a way that will help them solve them, and don't want to limit themselves to the "I have x and y degrees" crowd. |
Implementing Auto-Copy | ivank: You would have to somehow get the user to click on the Flash object. I wouldn't rely on Flash for the user experience, though. What YouTube does is probably best (an input box that selects all on click). People are probably most familiar with that method.Even better would be to figure out a workflow where the user doesn't have to copy, or paste anything. |
Who's Hiring? | tomh: The startup that I work for, Akaza Research, is hiring: http://akazaresearch.com/about_akaza/careers.htmlMostly Java/J2EE, based in Cambridge MA. We deliver an open-source product to the life sciences, OpenClinica (http://openclinica.org/). Contact me through my profile (Linkedin, blog, etc) if you have questions. |
Who's Hiring? | ews: Ok, I was thinking whether to post this here or not for a couple of days, we are not a fancy startup (quite the opposite) and our requirements are far from common, but since it seems there are quite some people looking for jobs, there it goesWe are also hiring on Craigslist and actively looking for developers (aka rockstarts, pirates, ninjas, heroes, barbarians, wizards of oz) with knowledge and experience on perl/mysql/sphinx/javascript-jquery/csswe do what we do, our frontend is as unsexy as it looks (and I really hope this will change in a future) but we have a lot of interesting problems related to massive amounts of data and traffic/spam/scaling.mail at pablo at craigslist.org |
Does solving math problems make you a good programmer? | cabalamat: It doesn't prove you're a good programmer. But there is a correlation: if you take 100 programmers and give them a (non-programming) problem that 50 can solve, the ones who can solve it will on average be better than ther ones who can't. |
How to donate $$$ to Ruby? | jamesbritt: "I must admit I'm out of my depth when it comes to the brass tacks of starting foundations, but it seems to me that Ruby is ripe for one"Have you looked at Ruby Central? http://rubycentral.org/(There's also a similar org in Japan; I cannot recall the name).I believe RubyCentral helped coordinate the fund raising for Greg Brown to work full-time (albeit for only a few months) on Prawn. |
Does solving math problems make you a good programmer? | makecheck: It's not realistic in my opinion for interviewers to throw complex problems at people and expect to draw useful conclusions. For one thing, truly challenging problems are generally solved in teams. And there are plenty of differences between pure math and how computers do it (think of an entire course on numerical analysis).Interviewers should find out how well candidates might work in teams, how familiar they are with debugging on a computer, and how likely it is their "cleverness" won't result in a steaming pile of unmaintainable code. There are lots of reasons why someone may make it or not make it through a puzzle, and either way they may be an excellent candidate.What should occur is a reasonable bridge between abstract problem-solving and programming, to see if the candidate's aptitudes are strong where it counts. For example, numerical analysis is great: you could ask someone how they would make a machine perform a certain calculation expressed in "pure" math. (Does everyone know how to factor equations to minimize expensive instructions? Do all candidates realize the inherent quirks in things like the representation of floating-point numbers? This is the kind of stuff that comes up when math meets computers.) |
Is there a HN for music? | delackner: I would think part of the spirit of HN would manifest in a music site as a focus on music that in some way feels like it brings something new to the art. Almost all the music that becomes popular today, even within specific genres, is not that inventive.Yet there are some artists that, at specific times, try something that really feels new. In the dance music space for instance, about 2001(+- 2 years) artists discovered they could for instance loop over a segment of their song, then shorten the loop until it became a stuttered noisy instant, then continue with the rest of the song. This sounded amazing at first, then everyone copied it, now people are used to it and a song has to use it creatively to make people smile. |
Does solving math problems make you a good programmer? | hs: math scales programmingcompare j=n*(n+1)/2 to for i in range(n+1): j+=ithe former being math and the latter programming for solving summation from 0 to n |
Implementing Auto-Copy | pclark: I like the idea of a popup box and making the cursor ideally select all the text. |
Implementing Auto-Copy | pclark: oh and could you make your bookmarklet popup in a new window? never got why people didnt do that. |
Implementing Auto-Copy | hopeless: http://url.ie (another url shortening service -- do we need yet more???!) does exactly what you want. I believe it's just javascript but you can check the page source for yourself |
How to exit as a co-founder? | noodle: why not try and ride out this campaign to see where things go. whats another 2ish months?then if the direction doesn't change, tell them that you can't keep going and want to quit. if you explain politely that you feel you should be compensated for your work, they'll hopefully understand.if not, let them know that it really comes down to two options -- either you're quitting with a cut, or you're not quitting but you'll be keeping all your shares and just not doing any work anymore. |
How to exit as a co-founder? | brk: How are your shares granted/allocated? Do you have a vesting schedule? Are they "yours" or the "companies"?It seems that there is a legal answer here, as well as a philosophical answer.Figure out who really owns the shares and what you are legally entitled to, and then process your decision. |
Who's Hiring? | ComputerGuru: Google is still hiring, got an email from them today. |
Help me find a good databases textbook | mwbrooks: Here is a vote for "Database Management Systems" by Ramakrishnan and GehrkeI learned from this book. I also know a few graduate students who studied databases (or some varient) and they continued to use this book throughout their studies.(I know nothing of the other book though, so this is a one-sided view) |
Does solving math problems make you a good programmer? | alphamule: I think that most people miss the point of these sorts of questions. I don't ask them just to figure out if the person can answer it or not. a scantron with all the answers filled in would be useless to me. I ask them to watch how the person approaches problems, how they think, how well they communicate and how they interact with people while trying to solve a problem. a person who spits out the answer in 5 seconds, but acts like this question is beneath them is a strong no hire, but someone who struggles a bit, but finds some interesting insights along the way has a good chance. |
Review my startup | cschneid: I landed on the page and got lost. Its fine if you haven't setup your sign up yet, but there's not even marketing copy telling me why I'm there, and what I'm supposed to do.What is unique about this photo sharing? Why would I use this over flickr, or any of the dozens of other photo sharing tools? |
Help me find a good databases textbook | neilc: Are you more interested in relational theory, or in implementation techniques for database systems? If the latter, the Ramakrishnan and Gehrke book (the "cow book") is really good: fairly broad coverage, but very well-written and precise. I haven't read the Date book. |
Review my startup | noodle: needs more information on purpose/benefits/features/signup/etc..i understand what its for and what it does, and so will most hackers, but this isn't really an app for hackers. you have to let the people know, on that first page, exactly whats happening, or they'll pass it by. |
Review my startup | dhpmx: It's a new site, so it's still very much in development. However that being said, I agree that I need to make the frontpage a little more inviting... Why would you use my site vs. flickr or picasa etc...
1. You keep 100% ownership of YOUR media, you don't have to sell you soul in exchange for a free service. That's why I created this site... those are my pictures and I refuse to give up my rights in exchange for a free service.
2. The other sites I tried are so clutered with "web 2.0" garbage that they are annoyingly slow or loaded with all kinds of ads or offensive material.
3. We try to make uploading and managing your videos and photos really easy... ie: mom approvedSo try to find a photo/video hosting site that is easy to use, fast, not loaded with ads or not loaded with offensive material.... hmmm !thanks for your input |
How to exit as a co-founder? | tjic: This makes no sense to me:> I cannot leave without their consent eitherWhat does that mean? Have you signed something saying that you can not quit?Regardless, the correct framework to think about this is BATNAhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiate...If you can't get the deal you want, and you're forced to abide by what you've already signed, what do you give and what do you get? It sounds like either
(i) you work for 1 year and get 1/4 of the company, or
(ii) you walk away today with 1/4 of the company, but no ability to sell the shares.(We need more data on what that means - are sales of the shares restricted until a certain date? Forever? What?)You are absolutely (both legally and ethically) entitled to some sort of compensation for your work. If you've already got shares, the company can't take them back (unless you've signed a repurchase agreement). The company can, both legally and ethically, dilute you afterwards. They can't issue everyone else 1 million shares each, thus diluting you to 0.00001%, but they can pay each person 2,000 shares per month, in lieu of salary. Over time, you'll end up with a smaller percent ... but that's fair. If they work for no salary for an additional year, they SHOULD have more stock.It's really hard to say more without knowing exactly what you've signed. |
Ideal startup office environment? | noodle: look, lets not get too fancy here. these are the basics, in my opinion: * good chairs
* big monitors, multiple monitors if necessary, and computers powerful enough to do your work smoothly
* windows, greenery and open spaces
* aesthetically interesting offices that are well designed and laid out
* a fun, but not too fun break room, perhaps with a wii, darts, or ping-pong table. the key is movement.
* free snacks/drinks.
* no helicopter management
edited to add: * casual dress code
there are some other "standards", but i don't know how much i agree with some of them. also, there's a lot to say about the structure of the company and management style/practices, but thats not really going to change with office space. i included helicopter management because it relates to the physicality and atmosphere of the space itself. |
Help me find a good databases textbook | jeeringmole: In addition to whatever textbook you decide on you should read Bill Kent's "Data and Reality" to widen your awareness of the profound difficulties involved in stuffing messy reality into a collection of bits. See http://www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/ItemDetail.aspx?bookid=... and http://www.bkent.net/Doc/darxrp.htm. |
Ideal startup office environment? | pedalpete: I personally disagree with a bunch of the stuff you are recommending.
I work from home, so take this with a grain of salt, but two IT companies I worked for had fooseball tables, and i always hated those things.
Work isn't getting done/discussed over ping-pong. Ideas aren't getting shared while reading or naping, though I do agree that enabling napping at work isn't a bad idea, and having employees who are well read is also a good idea, I think doing this IN the office is a mistake.Walls made of whiteboard, or painted with chalkboard, and don't forget to always have pens or chalk EVERYWHERE is a good idea.Instead of spending money on reading rooms and ping-pong, why not focus on a culture of free-responsibility. The number of good things that have come out of meeting at a bar or over a coffee is of much more value than what you are getting over ping-pong.
Napping/reading are non-interactive, so I think that is a double loss.
Get your employees out for a bike ride or jog. I would rather have people that get out of the office while keeping their head in the game, than people who spend time in the office, but aren't getting any real work done.Make the office the place for work, and enable your workers to leave the space and do other things but if you can, make sure that they understand the priority of these things is to refresh them for work, or to still get work done. |
Help me find a good databases textbook | Maro: Some hardcore / research-level books are:The "red book": Readings in Database Systems, which is a collection of basic papers from the field. This is used by DB programs in top schools (eg. Berkeley).The "Jim Gray book": Transaction Processing. Look up Jim Gray to see why this may be worth looking into. |
Ideal startup office environment? | gtani: chk SO:http://stackoverflow.com/questions/96501/perks-for-new-progr...http://stackoverflow.com/questions/306708/must-haves-for-dev... |
Ideal startup office environment? | run4yourlives: Outside of the whiteboard walls, which can be functional, most "start-up style" stuff is fluff. A nap room? Seriously? Are you employing pre-schoolers?I'm quite a big fan of the Spolsky approach myself, especially for programmers. That is:* everyone gets an office.* high quality chairs (they don't have to be herman millers though, in fact, if you can afford it, let employees pick their own on the basis of comfort)* external large format monitors, multiple if desired* get everyone a laptop, it's nice to have a single computer, instead of 2-3* an open area for collaboration (can in fact be a boardroom, but doesn't have to be)* an open area for lunch/low intensity times (not the same as the collaborative space, and not filled with "cool things" like ping pong, but the spirit remains. Reading, eating and general socialization goes on here).I'm not a big fan of putting non-work stuff like ping-pong and nerf guns into offices not because I don't want people to have a bit of fun, but because I think people should spend that time "the fun time" outside of the office with their colleagues, other friends or family.It's a work environment, not a "life" environment. |
Review my startup | vorador: the french link doesn't work |
Review my startup | bjtitus: Needs more user friendly / readable URLs. Like easyfreeimages.com/{username} and the domain name is quite long. Could it be shortened to something like efi.com (probably not, but it would be a better option for quick typing and pasting urls in emails). |
Ideal startup office environment? | kamme: I always said that if I would start up a company I would paint every wall with chalkboard, especially the bathroom walls. I would also make a ball pit and have 'flexible' desks. That means everyone gets a desk and a laptop but are free to move as they want. Meetings should not be held in some room, but in the open. PM's should sit next to the developers and managers should know people's names. But as you might notice, most of those things are not something you should buy, you should create an atmosphere of innovation. And that is something that is only possible with open-minded people, freedom, flexability and happyness! |
Buying a new laptop, any suggestions? | tkho: You'll need a friend at UCLA, but I just had a buddy pick up a previous gen Macbook Pro for me this morning for $1099+tax. It's definitely better bang for the buck than the current MBP.http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/880148Anyway, there should also be good deals coming up for Black Friday. |
Buying a new laptop, any suggestions? | pedalpete: try not to laugh, but I got a gateway a few months ago, and i'm crazy impressed with the specs for the price.
I got the t-series, which doesn't output to the built in screen at the resolution you want on the 14", though i'm pretty sure it will bump up to that on an external monitor. but I think the 15" m series does.From the looks on their site they are getting ready to upgrade the t-series, so the next version might have higher resolution. |
Buying a new laptop, any suggestions? | qhoxie: I have been a content Dell Latitude user for about a year now. I have the D630 and it is fantastically rugged (on par with a thinkpad) and has great battery life. The new E series expands on these qualities.Thinkpad quality has diminished slightly, but they are still good laptops. |
Buying a new laptop, any suggestions? | whatusername: I've got a post-Lenovo Thinkpad (T60) - and it's been pretty solid for me. (At least as solid as my T30 / T43) |
Buying a new laptop, any suggestions? | kalvin: A brand new, sealed, warrantied Macbook Pro (the previous version) can be had on eBay for $1200 shipped if you're willing to do the following and use both ebay and paypal:a) sign up for a Live.com cashback account, do a search for "wii" or whatever the term is today (google for live.com cashback) on Live.com, and click through the eBay referral link offering 25% off, max $200 (it fluctuates, but has been 25 or 30 for most of the last few months)b) find a new macbook pro (early 2008) offered by a reputable reseller (100+ feedback, 99%+) selling for $1400 or less with the Buy It Now option (required for live.com CB) and pay via Paypal. Make sure the 25% CB banner appears at the top of the ebay page.I did this a few weeks ago for $1220, and I didn't spend any time at all waiting for lower-priced auction-- just bought one on the results page. I'd guess you could find one for $1100 ($1300) at this point, or at least $1150. |
How do you experiment to determine the right model w/o alienating users? | kaens: This is a great question, and something I've been thinking about lately. I assume it's pretty much exactly what you're doing combined with hopefully having people around that already know some reliable methods (that were probably learned through trial-and-error), if such things exist. |
How do you experiment to determine the right model w/o alienating users? | andrewf: People will always react angrily to pricing increases. About the only way to alleviate it is to weight yourself down with support for users on grandfathered/legacy schemes, and announce changes with enough notice to people to buy up at the current price before things change.Pricing decreases you're just doomed. People will resent having paid $40 last week instead of $25 this week.For the other stuff, are you being too noisy? Existing users shouldn't be affected by changes to trials and signup technicalities. |
Buying a new laptop, any suggestions? | quellhorst: I would get new Macbook Pro or ThinkPad X301 if I wasn't using OS X. Both have 1440x900 resolution. For the amount of time I use my laptop I budget more $ then use it for ~2 years. |
Ideal startup office environment? | ErrantX: We're building a big new office at the moment and this is the ideas we like so far.* go for the BEST chairs you can. Buy them first and buy plenty (I'd say the number you want plus 10% more :)).* lots and lots and lots of desk space. encourage people to move about (laptops and plenty of desktops).* white board walls are a must (we have one glass wall and the facing wall will be one huge WB)* if you have servers and suchlike pop up some big screens with "monitors" of their status on them (this is stolen from last.fm :)). We are having 3 52" monitors with open casework and urgent notices etc. on them.* coffeee bar are - is essential. A proper area not just a ktichen. Make it off to one side of the main space with comfy chairs and an actual bar to seperate it* make a meeting space out of bean bags and a low japanese style table* make a collaboration area. slightly closed in with a smart projector and surrounded in white boards. It does wonders for group work!I agree with the others - nerfball and such like is neat (and if you have an outdoor area then you should put something in) but often has a reverse impact. One better option could be to install a gym of some description. Just a few bits and pieces. Gym is good exercise (which is always good for us programmers to get a break :D) and will help make your staff more active. But it is not something they can spend all day every day doing - and also somethign they would tend to do at the end (or start of the day). Oh and you'd need a shower too probably. |
Email Software for the Enterprise | run4yourlives: I think your idea is doomed, even if you achieve technical nirvana in email delivery. Here's why:1. You will not beat MS in the exchange market. "Everyone" uses office, therefore everyone has the outlook client, it's a short hop to installing Exchange, and it can scale right up to enterprise size adequately enough that you'll never be able to touch it. You can see how IBM and Novell have both been destroyed in this market if you're interested in the battle you face.EDIT: Corporations will not even talk to you, because honestly, email is a problem that is already solved for 99% of them. Additionally, if they're big, it is much easier for them to just go with the flow and use the common system - no one ever got fired for buying IBM, and no one ever got fired for using exchange. Look at Symantec, many people have them beat in the AV game, but they own the mid level market.2. On the startup end, you're competing with free software and hosted solutions. If startups aren't comfortable with gmail or similar, odds are they just stick with their domain host's offering and use the local client of their choice.I suppose there could be a very real market for a hosted email service that gives the flexibility of gmail with the comfort of a paid, secure service. I think though that it would be very difficult to firstly find this market, and second present an offering that is tempting enough for them to switch.Honestly, don't waste your time on this one... the work required just to meet the minimum expectations is so vast it isn't worth it. |
Help me find a good databases textbook | parenthesis: Thanks very much to everyone for their input. |
Boston or Silicon Valley? | gruseom: I don't have anything new to say about Boston vs. SV, but about this:would you rather be at an important team in a lesser-known company, or a less-important team in a well-known company... that's a no-brainer for me. I'd much rather be on an important team in a lesser-known company. By "important" I mean strategic to the business. Such projects tend to be a lot more satisfying, as well as more rational (assuming a basically functional environment). And the lessons they teach are better lessons.I've noticed two things about less important projects in larger companies. One is that they often get killed before they have a chance to release or gain traction - and it doesn't much matter how successful they are. This is because they're starved for executive support. The other is that they tend to end up in technical ghettos, working on something that seems cool at the time but is divorced from users and the business, and so doesn't have much value. |
Boston or Silicon Valley? | kqr2: With regards to Boston Pros, pt # 3 vs. Silicon Valley, you can always live in San Francisco even if you work in Mountain View. You can commute via Caltrain. |
Who's Hiring? | aaronsw: watchdog.net is looking for good people:http://transparencyjobs.com/jobs/49/ |
Boston or Silicon Valley? | mattmaroon: I kinda hated Cambridge. It was dirty and expensive, and the weather was brutal in the summer and I hear even worse in winter. Weather has a much bigger effect on our moods than most of us realize, and SV ranks up there with San Diego and Hawaii on that score.Food was decent though, especially for a college town. I liked Boston proper much better, but I didn't live there, and as with most cities I'm guessing your enjoyment will depend a lot on exactly which parts you live and work in.In fairness, I may have liked Cambridge better if I lived in Harvard square. I may have gotten sick of it really fast too, idk.SV is also expensive, though it's probably not much more nowadays. The exception being that you may well need a car there (which is a hell of a lot less painful than having a car in SF or Boston, since parking is free and ample, but still an expense to factor in) whereas Boston has really good public transportation and you can likely do without if you don't mind walking a bit. Your best bet is to just check around on Apartments.com and Craigslist and compare rent for similarly sized units in similar areas if you're concerned about price.If you're looking for investment for a software startup, or networking that might lead to that in the future, go directly to Silicon Valley. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Our startup was either the first or second YC company to get a single Boston investor as of this past August. The ratio of SV investors to Boston in YC startups has to be at least 20:1. I hear Boston is pretty awesome for biomed though. I imagine you can find great cofounders in either location, though in Boston you'd have to snag them before they left for SV.As for your hypothetical, I'd take big fish little pond any day. The pond can grow much faster and larger than the fish. And even if it doesn't, it will almost certainly be more fun and rewarding. Assuming you're normal college grad age, you've got your whole life to be another cog in the wheel. Give yourself a shot of avoiding it permanently. |
Boston or Silicon Valley? | SwellJoe: "Is Boston significantly cheaper than SV (I'd probably be in the Mountain View area)? It's hard to find comparable areas for cost of apartments and such."Mountain View is very nearly the same price as San Francisco. Because of Google it is among the most expensive places in the valley. I've lived here since we did YC last year, and I've enjoyed it. It's a lovely, quiet, and highly technology focused area, with good restaurants (as long as you like Asian and Mediterranean food), cool little groceries and produce markets (mostly Asian and Mediterranean, but also the Milk Pail which is close to heaven for fans of fresh food), a fantastic library, and even a decent cultural scene (though it is very much white bread small town culture...the performing arts center is excellent for such a tiny town; the massive tax base of the city insures most city services are excellent).I don't know anything about Boston, but I've heard it's also quite expensive.I'm paying $2145/mo for a two bedroom rental house a few blocks from downtown Mountain View (with a garage). It's pretty big compared to where most of the folks I know out here are living, but I moved from an even bigger place in Austin, so it was definitely downsizing for me. I've been shopping for a place in SF, and have found that prices are pretty similar for smaller places--$1600-$2000 for a one bedroom (sometimes plus small office) apartment in a decent location.Salaries in California are enough to make up for most of the higher cost of living, as long as you don't have a strong desire to own your own home anytime soon."- Any advice on which of two hypothetical is better: big fish little pond or little fish big pond? Alternatively, would you rather be at an important team in a lesser-known company, or a less-important team in a well-known company?"How long is a piece of string? We can't tell you what the best work environment is for you. You'll need to try it and see. |
Boston or Silicon Valley? | mechanical_fish: I've lived in Boston, then moved to SV, then moved back to Boston, where I live now (modulo a few miles).IMHO, you're right on all counts about the pros and cons. I don't have recent data, but my impression is that Boston rents are not significantly cheaper (as they would be in, say, Alabama); savings will come from transportation costs. You can live without a car in Boston. Living without a car in Silicon Valley will make you feel like a second-class citizen. Obviously, Boston is closer to your folks if you're from NY.If I were going to do a startup, and was able to honestly utter the phrase "I lived in SV for a while and loved it"... it's very hard to argue with Silicon Valley. Yeah, it's a monoculture, but it's a monoculture designed around what you're trying to do. Aspiring screenwriters move to L.A.; aspiring musicians move to Nashville; aspiring software wizards move to Silicon Valley.But the most important thing is: you can change your mind. More than once. Pick the job that seems the best and don't sweat it. Sample Boston for a year or two if you want and make the move to SV later. |
Boston or Silicon Valley? | iigs: You'll find good jobs in either place. Do consider also the cultures of the two locations. I know granola west coasters that would not be able to hang with the east coast hustle, and I know east coasters that would be driven bananas by the happy go lucky California lifestyle. Which stereotype do you dislike less? You'll be interacting with these people when you're not at work and if one of these grates on your nerves it can easily build resentment and unhappiness toward your living arrangement.Whichever you choose, make a concerted effort to try to learn from and appreciate the different social norms of your new home. I didn't do all that I could/should have once, and I regret it. |
Boston or Silicon Valley? | anon120: I had offers in both SV and Boston and it was a tough choice. I'm still not sure I made the right one.While Boston is cheaper, it's not that much cheaper. I think you'll probably do slightly better off depending on the offer you get. (I currently live and work in Mountain View)Startup-wise Boston seemed pretty sparse compared to the Silicon Valley. That was definitely part of my decision (not just where to work, but as you say, networking, conferences to go to, etc).I still think little fish, big pond is the better way to go. It gets frustrating otherwise and limits your growth. Important team in a less known company also is much better for career and personal satisfaction.I'll be honest, weather also greatly influenced my decision. Also what's your move going to be like? Getting all my stuff across the country was yet another reason for me to stay in the SV.I personally actually much prefer Boston city and the general vibe of Boston, but career-wise I decided SV was better. |
Boston or Silicon Valley? | danielrhodes: In terms of locations:I lived in Boston for quite awhile and experienced a bit of the startup scene there. Bay Area beats it hands down. Boston/Cambridge isn't a bad place to be, but my experience has been that the diversity doesn't give you any benefit. Most of the time I was there and doing startups, I felt removed from where the action was really taking place. There's not a lot of momentum there. I'm a strong believer that the people you surround yourself with and who you let influence you have a big impact on your mentality/success.The price difference in terms of rent/everything else is negligible if you want it to be. As long as you don't need to be in a certain location to make you happy, you can live quite cheaply.In terms of your job offers:
You need to consider what you actually want out of the job. Most likely the real difference is not so great, so the actual consequences of your decision don't really matter. If you are just out of school, you should be focused on opening doors and making connections. But don't put so much emphasis on this one decision -- it's not like you are going to be there 20 years. For all you know, you could be there 6 months and realize that you want to do something else or move. |
Boston or Silicon Valley? | tdavis: After living and working in Boston since June, here's my take, in the form of completely random thoughts:- It's generally hot as balls in summer and has already gotten quite cold. Neither of these particularly bother me, assuming A/Cs and heaters are available.- It's cheap as hell to live here, as long as you live slightly off the beaten path. We're currently living in Medford, a 15 minute walk from Davis square and we pay about $1,400 (or was it $1,200?) a month for an apartment with 3 bedrooms (only two people, but we are gluttons for open space), an "office" (no idea the technical term of this room), living room, kitchen, etc. The building is old as shit and it would cost a small fortune to heat conventionally (hello 1920s oil heating!), but... it's damn cheap.- The start-up scene is a bit lacking, but there are lots of people here if you look. I probably can't walk into any random Starbucks and run into an entrepreneur, but we're here. We even have a poker night!- I don't think the pond analogy has any relevance here. With the proliferation of the Internet and a global economy, I'm not convinced it matters where you're located for the most part, especially if you're doing a web start-up. Yes, there are lots more investors in SV, but there are investors here, too -- ones who don't see 900 pitches a day. The investors here all talk about how they want to make Boston investing relevant again.- And they're proactive about it. They regularly host firm-sponsored events and invite a bunch of interesting companies. We've been to a small dinner party and have a cocktail party coming up. We were even taken out Paintballing by Battery Ventures (Adam Marcus is a great guy, btw) -- that was a profitable day; we got to keep the Battery-stamped masks they provided and ended up taking home 3 cases of beer. We met some interesting companies too, but I was mostly busy shooting VCs.- Boston as a city is fun and there is certainly a lot to do on the rare occasions we go out. I sure as hell miss all my entrepreneur friends who moved to SF (traitors!), but Dan and I are kept busy enough by the business that I might notice the lessened night-life/culture more if I had more free time.All that being said, the Pros you supplied for SV are definitely true. We plan to move to SF (Mountain View is pretty dull in my experience, but SF is a great time) when we have more revenue (we did the math; it's a lot cheaper here), but for now I don't really feel like we're handicapped by our location and we're definitely better off than we'd be somewhere like the black hole I come from (Ohio; just threw up in my mouth a little).I can't speak for your company, but as a business with very low costs and the advantage of not having to immediately and aggressively seek out investment, Boston is the perfect place for us right now. The low cost of living allowed us to become profitable the first month we operated and this type of city allows us to take part in a very diverse (though comparatively sparse) start-up community while supplying plenty of entertainment and cheap/convenient transportation to get to it.Edit: I should point out that personal preference / taste matters here, too. You might be able to live for a comparable price in SV/SF if, unlike Dan and I, you do not become instantly claustrophobic when supplied with less than twice the amount of space most people seem OK with.Finally, unless you already have an excessive number of possessions (like a family), moving isn't that serious of a deal and you might find in either location that after 6 months you want to try the other. |
What resources did you use to learn PHP? | woodsier: I'm also interested in what your views are with learning inside a framework such as CakePHP?I ask this because I can see the upsides (learning in an environment which fosters really good habits and quality code, however I can also see the downside insofar that you are for the most part 1-step-removed from a lot of the core functionality which is important to know. |
What resources did you use to learn PHP? | smoody: As with all languages, I think it requires being goal driven -- have something you want to build -- and look up answers as required.If you have the time, I recommend building a framework complete with a simple ORM. Nothing will give you a quicker broad overview of any language's strengths and weaknesses.Also, most of the 'learning' about PHP is wrapping your head around the included gigantic library of function calls and methods. There are a lot of people who don't. When I was first learning, I'd search for ways to get specific things done and almost always come across code where people manually implemented things and I'd find out later that there's a function call that does the job. Sometimes thats due to people not knowing about the fucntion and sometimes that due to the post being outdated, so always look for the dates on which advice is given. There are PHP5 ways to do things and pre-PHP5 ways to do things.Because of that, spend a few days browsing the included library. And, make sure you browse the comments people have left in the online documentation. They are generally good quality, contain code samples, etc. If someone posts bad code, others are quick to point out the flaws.In the case of PHP, there is a lot of bad advice out there in general, so choose wisely.And, there are a few things that are hard to search for because they require searching for single characters and search engines generally suck at it. Some examples:@ as in @function(x,y) - used for error suppression.
& as in &$foo - pass by reference instead of by value (automatic with objects but not arrays)
$ as in $foo(x,y,z) - dynamic function calling. the value of the string is the name of the function that will be called.
$ as in $foo->$bar - same thing with object methods.
$$ as in $$foo() - double dereference function calling. yuk.Finally, I'd also browse around http://www.stackoverflow.com and look at the php-tagged questions and answers. |
What resources did you use to learn PHP? | Fuca: Just asked the same thing...Thanks everybody for the help |
37 signals loathing mixed content - A possible solution? | jamess: Ever hear the term "computationally expensive"? Here's a hint, modular exponentiation of very big numbers is an extremely expensive operation. Encrypting a block of plaintext with a bulk cipher is a very cheap operation. Thanks to the marvels of HTTP keep-alive and TLS session resumption, serving the content over HTTPS is almost guaranteed cheaper than employing this crude hack. This is not even to touch upon the problems not addressed like the HTTP response is designed to be mutable, or that this "solution" offers no replay protection. Also, two words; Hash MAC.Want a real solution to the problem, here: http://www.sun.com/products/networking/sslaccel/suncryptoacc... |
What IRC rooms do you frequent? | stuartcw: #space when there is a shuttle launch or other interesting live NASA TV coverage |
Is Gmail crashing your browsers too? | cabalamat: Nope. I run Firefox 3 on Ubuntu and have no problems with gmail. |
Is Gmail crashing your browsers too? | bdfh42: Nope - FF3 and Chrome both OK |
Boston or Silicon Valley? | sethg: I'll repeat something I said here a while ago: the startups I've encountered in Boston (including my own employer, MetaCarta) tend to do B2B or government-contracting work, often bootstrapped with consulting or SBIR money. The Valley startups I've read about seem more focused on consumer-facing applications. So if you have a preference for what kind of product you want to be contributing to, that may affect which city you should live in. |
Is Gmail crashing your browsers too? | olefoo: could you have a corrupted shared library. |
Boston or Silicon Valley? | iamelgringo: So, my wife and I lived in Providence, RI for 3 years.My wife worked as an admin in a startup for 2-3 weeks in Cambridge, and hated the job, hated the commute, hated the culture so much, she quit her job and went back to school to finish her video production degree. She had hoped it was like her job working at US Robotics/3Com, but it was very, very different.The thing that we really struggled with in New England was the "Townies" and the culture. There really are two different classes of people in New England: *"Townies" (people born and raised in the towns of New England)
* "Gownies" (People who move to New England to go to good schools and then settle in and work white collar jobs or get their grad degree and leave).
We never found to many Gownies like us to hang out with, and spent most of our time hanging out at work/school with the townies. And, while they're really nice people, hardworking, fun accents. They tend to be rather insular against outsiders. We were there for 3 years, and I don't have any friends I'd consider going back and visiting.So, where you live in Boston-land is important. I think that if you're living in the East Side of Providence, or Harvard Square in Cambridge, it can make all the difference in your social life. It's really hard to get a vibe about that until you've lived there. Each town has a distinct flavor, and a distinct attitude towards outsiders. Choose wisely.Silicon Valley: I've almost lived here longer than anywhere else I've ever lived: 3 years. And, I'm not planning on moving anywhere in the near future. I really like it here, and I'm not moving away unless I have to. That's never happened to me ever before. (I've moved over 25 times in 35 years.)The people are great. The chance to meet other people and make friends with others that are doing the same things is astounding. I started http://hackersandfounders.com as a meetup group, and it's doubled in size every month but the last. There's just a ton of hackers interested in founding businesses here.That means a ton of emotional/cultural support that you really can't put a price tag on. Services are also really easy to come by: like it's really easy to get groceries delivered, getting a maid is rather inexpensive and very much worth it. Prepared foods can be outsourced pretty easily using something like Dream Dinners or Dinner A'Fare. You're never very far from really cool things if you need to take a day trip and get away to recharge the batteries.And finally, housing. If you're considering moving to SV, you really should take a look at renting a house with someone. We live in San Jose, and we split rent on a 4 bedroom, 2 bath house for $2k. Not only do we have a ton of space and a back yard, we turned the formal living room into the startup office. Not bad, when my friends are paying $1700 for a nice one-two bedrooms in an apartment complex. And, you're away from the fun cultural stuff of San Francisco, but it's only a 75 minute drive without traffic, Mountain View is 30 minutes away, and a bunch of restaurants, coffee shops, movie theaters and a FedEx/Kinko's are 3-4 minutes away. Pretty ideal for a startup if you ask me. |
Boston or Silicon Valley? | nostrademons: I've lived in Boston my whole life. Don't have much experience with the Bay Area (beyond knowing a couple friends there and visiting once), so I'll stick mostly to the Boston side of the equation.Boston is cheaper, but I'm not sure I'd say significantly cheaper. 1BRs start at about $1200/month here - I've heard that the minimum in Mountain View is about $1500/month. With roommates, you can get a room for $700ish/month in the Davis Square area, which is about on par or a little less than Mountain View. Gas prices are a little lower (talking pennies, though), restaurant prices seemed a little higher in Boston (though maybe my friends just took me to inexpensive restaurants in Mountain View), and I didn't get a chance to check out stores in California.You can save a ton of money here by living away from the major subway lines. A friend of mine has $400/month rent (3 roommates) in Brighton because he's at the end of the Green Line, which is frigging slow. Another friend had $450/month (1 roommate) in a gigantic 2BR on the Newton/Watertown border. I looked at rents in the Teele/Inman square areas in Somerville; they're about $200-300/month less than equivalent apartments in nearby Davis/Harvard squares, because they aren't directly on the subway line. If you need a car anyway, definitely consider living in one of the areas that's not well served by public transportation - you'll make up for it in rent.The suburbs also have lots of greenery, particularly once you get outside the 128 belt. It's not like suburbs elsewhere in the country, all strip malls and parking lots laid out on a grid. Typical towns in the Boston area have one or two major roads running through them, residential roads branching off them, and lots of unused space because none of the roads are straight. We're on an acre of land, extending about 500 feet back from the road, and when one of my dad's friends from Cupertino visited, his son said "Wow, you live on a park."Driving in Boston sucks. Whenever possible, I drive into Alewife and take the subway in.The diversity in the Boston area is a major plus. It's likely that you'll have normal friends here, the kind that think that yet another social network is just a burden and not an opportunity. There's a significant tech population, but it's not like everyone lives and breathes technology.As for the startup scene: there's an important cultural difference between Boston and the Bay Area. In Boston, the expectation is that you'll work for an established company for 10-20 years, pay your dues, and then start a company. When I talk about startup founders I know, West-coasters seem to assume they're my age - no, most of them are parents of friends or older coworkers I've worked with.This has been changing a bit recently, because of the general trend of younger people starting companies and the large college population in Boston. But it still seems to be the expectation among investors. Maybe someone who's sought funding more recently could comment, but when my cofounder was testing out investors, many of them seemed very skeptical. Encouraging, but not willing to part with cash for a couple guys 2 years out of school.Lastly, I'd encourage you to go far from home. I didn't; actually, I moved back home after college, since there were no shortage of jobs in my field close to where I lived, and I could save up cash and use it to fund my own startup. Which is good, it gave me options and let me do stuff I wouldn't otherwise be able to - but now I'm looking to move out to Silicon Valley, precisely because it's on the other side of the country. |
What resources did you use to learn PHP? | zandorg: At University. They gave us handout sheets. The coursework used SQL and PHP to have an online register of school employees (eg, teachers). |
Boston or Silicon Valley? | mhidalgo: I know the post is whether to choose from Boston or SV, but I see your from NY. I been around the NYC startup scene for while and there a bunch of activity here and it only has increased since Wall St. decided to die. Brooklyn and Manhattan have a bunch of startup opportunities, even some startups from Ycombinator are located here like Buglabs and Frogmetrics. Not to mention organizations/meetups like Jelly ( coworking started in nyc), Meetup.com's ( located in nyc as well)NYC tech meetup, and http://www.nextny.org/. Obviously if you feel the need to move to Boston or SV I understand completely given there status in tech world but don't overlook your backyard as well. |
What resources did you use to learn PHP? | adityakothadiya: When I started learning PHP, after basic tutorials of PHP, I jumped on MVC framework called Symfony (http://symfony-project.org/). It's a great framework and the documentation is really extensive with some basic examples as well. You might wonder isn't starting with MVC was more extensive, but here are the adavantages I found -
1. MVC helped me to automate many things, so it was faster productivity
2. It showed me how to organize and structure the code
3. Though initially it kept details unknown from me, it was good because it didn't baffle me a lot initially.Once I started get going with my actual application, I started reading more details of PHP as on when required. But MVC helped to accelerate my process of building the real thing instead of investing of time in reading tutorials.Also, I found these tutorials are good for plain PHP - http://www.phpro.org/tutorials/ . It also explains the MVC and all. So you might want to read these tutorials, and then start with Symfony.I hope this helps. |
Buying servers? | vaksel: go on eBay, lots of refurbished stuff there, a guy I know buys all his stuff from one user.Me personally, I prefer to just lease them |
Buying servers? | brk: Yes, you will get better deals by talking to a sales person, ESPECIALLY in about 2 weeks (as the quarter and year are coming to a close and people are trying to make their numbers).Make it clear that you know the value of what you are after and are ready to make a purchase as soon as you find the right deal. |
Buying servers? | johnm: (A) Lease vs. Buy: If you can swing it, lease them instead - tax benefits, etc.(B) Do you really need 8 cores per box? I.e., you can get used dual-dual machines a lot cheaper than 50% of the price of the dual-quad machines.(C) If you know what you want and are buying new then going with a white box builder is significantly cheaper than buying from Dell/HP/etc. I've been pretty happy with ASA especially since they've delivered/picked-up/serviced machines directly to/from/in our colo but there are plenty of decent vendors and they most end up using SuperMicro-based systems anyways.(D) Do you really need 1U? Why? Power/cooling issues are putting more constraints on things than size at many places and a 2U is often cheaper, more flexible, fixable, etc.(E) Really knowing exactly what you want can make a big difference in talking with the salespeople. Buying at the end of the quarter is a good thing if you can swing it.(F) More ram is more better and 32GB is the current sweet spot in terms of lots of memory for a good price. Pay particular attention to the motherboards that you're considering as there can be a price premium at the various steps depending on if you need the flexibility to upgrade the memory a lot later.(G) You mention that disk isn't much of a concern. Is that because you just want lots of compute nodes or because you're putting everything into a NAS/SAN or what? |
Buying servers? | iigs: We have a smattering of 100-150 HP DL380s and BL460c blades. We've seen approximately a 5% infant mortality rate (DOA or issues in the first 90 days). Depending on the channel HP's custom configurations come as a base and add on accessories -- if you order a dual 5160 DL380 with 32G of ram and 4x146g SAS you might get a preassembled 1x5160 4G 1x146 and a CPU, 14 2g DIMMS, and 3 disks, each in a separate shipping carton. You then spend about one person day per two computers unpacking individual components from cardboard and shipping foam boxes and installing CPUs, DIMMs, and disks. It's not my favorite thing to do, and it means that you only get about three computers per pallet. It's also, of course, not burnt-in beforehand, so you get to rack and memtest them for a day or two yourself.In contrast we've had really good luck with a regional whitebox VAR -- they would assemble Intel reference platforms and Supermicro systems, burn them in, and ship them, assembled, in the one box the case came in. As far as I know we've had closer to a 1% failure rate over three years with these (exclusive of HD failures but not environmental, over-heat, issues).On balance it's a tough call, because HP (and I assume Dell) have a much slicker lights-out-management solution than the last IPMI demo I saw. Maybe the whiteboxes have improved, but I assume the HP machines are still easier to support. |
Buying servers? | volida: You may consider 8anet.com. You can customize the server according to your needs. They also setup for you the server for 20 or 50 dollars. I don't remember exactl |
Buying servers? | brianm: So, some lessons learned...1. lights out management matters2. ensure your OS is happy on the hardware ahead of time3. if you are expecting to make regular purchases, with growth for example, tell the vendor that4. always negotiate5. dell actually makes good servers now6. look hard at the power density you get wherever your servers will live and factor cost of rack space into server cost numbers -- if you have low power density, slightly pricier servers with lower power reqs may win out |
Buying servers? | blender: For whitebox vendor you might want to look at SupermicroCheers |
Buying servers? | kvogt: We've tried several vendors at Justin.tv, but we always end up circling back to Dell. Pricing is great, spare parts are readily available on Ebay, and they're quality machines. Definitely get in touch will their sales guys and plan your purchase for the end of the month, or better yet, end of the quarter.You're making the right choice on 1U 8-core boxes. We've done the math and there's no better combination of price, performance, density, and power consumption out there.-Kyle |
Buying servers? | wehriam: Amazon EC2 has a large VM if you don't want to purchase or lease hardware yet:"Extra Large Instance 15 GB of memory, 8 EC2 Compute Units (4 virtual cores with 2 EC2 Compute Units each), 1690 GB of instance storage, 64-bit platform"$0.80/hour - about $730/month. |
Buying servers? | merrick33: I used to do IT Consulting and was responsible for procuring hardware from dell at a few companies including now my own.What I learned - End of Quarter yields huge savings at Dell. If you are going to buy 10 servers for sure, create an account, spec out one server and call in to the small business division. Ask the salesman what he can do if you buy 5 of the one in your cart, he will give you a number let him know you have to talk to your partner put him on hold or call back. Then ask what he can do if you buy 10 - watch the price go down again on the quote. |
Buying servers? | mmmurf: You can save a lot of money by going with the sales guy. Just be sure he knows that you are growing and you'll be placing a big order every few months.First go to the Dell website and price out the equipment. Then when you're speaking to the sales guy, tell him you priced it out on the website and it came out to about 88% of the actual price the site gave you.Then tell him you've heard that talking to the sales guy is the way to start a business relationship and that you were hoping he could quote it out for you. Tell him you're ready to make the purchase decision immediately but the pricing has to make sense. Tell him the pricing on the website looks like it's marked up quite a bit.It may take him a day or more to generate the quote.Be aware that he has tremendous room to wiggle on some items, but not on others. Last order I placed the salesman could discount heavily some items but not others. You don't really care as long as the overall price makes sense. So when you eventually go over the quote with him, be sure to focus on your "budget" for the equipment, and not on where the specific pricing comes from.You should also have a simultaneous dialog like this going with a rep from any other companies you'd buy from.To the salesperson, the equation is effort vs time. If he knows you're ready to buy soon, then he has every incentive to make you a good deal b/c in a day the sale will be made and so he'll be willing to take a small commission in exchange for a quick sale. He has some constraints about how he can price items, but has a lot of flexibility on price.If you're buying 10 to 20 servers you should be looking at least a 25% discount off of the website price. The only reason they publish those prices is to give the salesperson a starting point to work down from (or to sucker naive shoppers into paying full price via the web).You want to come across as decisive and ready to buy at all times, if only he can solve the "issues with the pricing".Frankly Dell's sales process stinks, and it is annoying to have to work with some of the salespeople there. But I've saved a substantial amount of money over the web prices by negotiating with them, so it's worth it.You may also be able to save money by modifying some of the configurations slightly, b/c Dell lets salespeople discount based on the need to move inventory.Don't be afraid to tell the salesperson it's OK if he needs to ask permission from his manager to make the deal, but that you're eager to get the order placed today. Tell him he can put you on hold while he speaks to the manager.Good luck! |
Buying servers? | ezmobius: Supermicro servers have served me very well. All of our clusters at engineyard.com are built on supermicro 1u's with 32gig ram and 8cores. Highly recommended. |
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