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How do you manage work/life balance? | ideamonk: 6am - 5pm : for college5pm - 12am : trying to manage work/life balancethat 5-12 includes trying to take rest, managing college assignments if any... and basically trying to do too many things... so work/life balance hardly exists :(If I play some backetball in the evening I haven't the energy to do much that night. the "/" in "work/life" sometimes seems to translate to "work" OR "life".. choose any :P |
What type of Biz Credit Card do you have? | CaptainMorgan: Right now I'm using American Express. I was using Visa/Mastercard for quite some time, but lately and after reviewing what it offers, American Express has been too good to pass up. What I found to be of maximum value, was its deals for shopping at selected vendors and you get three times the point for every dollar.On a side note, like most of us, if I use a number a lot, I tend to remember it, and that goes for credit card numbers... comes in real handy when you don't have the card on your person. But switching to AE was ironic because it's not a typical 16-digit number, in fact, it's not even sixteen digits, but fifteen - but in an odd sequence(4-6-5), which I found to be interesting since every credit card I've ever used(even debit cards) have been 16 digits in groups of four numbers. :) |
How do you manage work/life balance? | pasbesoin: Make sure your home environment is one that you want to spend time in. If you are "avoiding home", you are at work for the wrong reason. |
What type of Biz Credit Card do you have? | ScottWhigham: I've seen this and I think you might get ideas: http://www.btgains.com/credit/card/Regular/Promo_Balance_Tra... |
What type of Biz Credit Card do you have? | pxlpshr: AMEX is one of the best cards for floating monthly expenses. Customer service is top notch, and you often get an extra year warranty on anything you buy. If you're irresponsible, prepared to get slaughtered by high interest rates that pay for these services... That said, I would not use an AMEX to bootstrap a company. You can find a better interest rate through VISA/Mastercard.I currently use an AMEX Blue (cash back) for my personal stuff, balance is paid IN FULL every month. And we have a business checking account for the iPhone company. $5/month through Wells Fargo.While I keep a few accounts at Wells Fargo, I bank through ING Direct. Love everything about ING, and they have great leadership. One complaint: for an online bank their web interface is freaking terrible. |
What type of Biz Credit Card do you have? | wallflower: Amex business. As an anecdote, I heard Jeff Barr say that Smugmug was charging all of their monthly Amazon S3 expenses on Amex Business Platinum (generating multiple first-class air tickets) |
How do you manage work/life balance? | justinchen: I just make sure that when my wife has time off, that I take time off to spend time with her. I close the computer and don't try to multi-task. Makes work and life more productive. |
Is our universe constantly expanding or constantly shrinking? | Allocator2008: I did not read that book, though I do know prevailing cosmological models say that the universe is expanding continually. If it keeps it up, eventually, no galaxy will be able to see any other galaxy, because the distances between them have increased so much. Later, galaxies all collapse into mega black holes. Still later, these mega black holes all evaporate over a very long epoch (10^60 years or something like that) via the process of Hawking Radiation. Once this happens, there is nothing left in the universe except radiation, and various short-lived "quantum vacuum" particles perhaps. Nothing but a homogeneous soup of particles that are not even atoms. Penrose has recently argued that this state could trigger another big bang, and start another "cycle" but I don't know that that view is very much accepted presently. The general thinking is that this final state of scattered radiation is all the fat lady sings. |
Is our universe constantly expanding or constantly shrinking? | vaksel: i'm on the side that its expanding. I reason that if big bang was an explosion that created everything, then the blastwave or whatever is still expanding indefinitely |
Is our universe constantly expanding or constantly shrinking? | Allocator2008: Oh, I just had another thought here. I would so very much prefer it if the Hoyle steady state theory were correct, the idea that as galaxies expand, new matter is created in the inter-galactic spaces formed by the expansions, and this new matter makes new galaxies, ad infinitum, so there would not be a big bang (a beginning) or a final state of dissolution into radiation that one finds in the eternal expansion model (an end).Also it is a clean, beautiful theory mathematically. But as Kepler found, when discovering that the planets use ellipses and not circles when orbiting the sun (circles were thought more "perfect" aesthetically at the time), the universe might not much care what we like or prefer or find to be beautiful or aesthetically pleasing. :-) In the case of steady state, it is hard to see how that can still be viable, given the microwave background radiation discovered in the early 60's, and the more recent discoveries of quantum density perturbations in the background, which is consistent with the big bang model. |
What type of Biz Credit Card do you have? | tptacek: Amex Gold. |
What type of Biz Credit Card do you have? | brandong: Main Cards:* LOC linked to a visa cc through a local credit union (highly recommend going this route.)* Also a citibusiness cc. (pretty good for a multinational)* 3 other credit union cc's.Also have 2 other business loc's and many other credit cards not worth mentioning.I used to be a very Amex heavy business. Luckily I had my other options available so when I got Amex f/r'ed last year, I was able to cancel all Amex and switch without any major cash flow issues.I was very lucky in this respect, as Amex has jeopardized many businesses with their f/r, cdl, and verification practices. There is alot to say here, but to keep it short: If you rely on Amex for operating your business, go ahead and setup alternatives that can be switched to "just in case".Amex is the greatest when everything is peachy, but if they decide otherwise (and this does not require late payments, breaking your cl, or any other negs) they can and will shut you off until you work with them through it. I decided this type of unreliability was not an acceptable type of relationship I needed for my business financially. Their points & cash back programs are still the best I have encountered, however.Best of Luck! |
How do big web sites roll out new versions? | jonursenbach: When I worked at a fairly large "adult dating" website, we would:1) Up the code from our development environment to our staging server.2) Personally test the shit out of it. We didn't have any QA people, so have fun finding your own bugs after looking at the same screen for X minutes/hours/days/weeks.3) When all is good, have one of the senior developers run our sync script which would rsync the code off of our staging server to our master production server into a directory called something like: live_20081228.4) Log into the master production server and run another sync script that would copy the code from the folder created in step #3 into the live directory. Sync script would then sync that directory to all of our other production servers.5) If there's problems:
5a) Immediately roll back
5b) Pray that you still have a job.The process, overall, was pretty terrible and allowed for a lot of problems to arise (which happened regularly). |
How do we bring about world peace? | anamax: > Can we all promise not to kill each other and try to be nice?Sure we can. However, if you don't do/think/say {whatever} the correct way, you're not being nice and "good people" will be forced to kill you.....The phrase "not justice, no peace" expresses this concept. Some of the things that are considered "justice" are "interesting". |
What type of Biz Credit Card do you have? | there: american express platinum.no monthly/yearly fees, doesn't have to be paid off every month, and it does the whole reward point thing (i've used them to buy flight tickets). |
How do you manage work/life balance? | sharjeel: By calling work my life |
Is our universe constantly expanding or constantly shrinking? | russell: The latest theories say that the rate of expansion of the universe is accelerating due to the effect of dark energy which overcomes the attractive force of gravity over cosmic distances. There are competing theories that don't involve dark energy. |
Do YC Startups Lack Spine? | prospero: I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty certain no one's been turned down because they've been too "ready to rumble". |
Do YC Startups Lack Spine? | vaksel: What exactly do you mean by ready to rumble? |
What type of Biz Credit Card do you have? | goodkarma: We have http://www.plumcard.com/ and love it.2% cash back if you pay within 7 days of your statement. (But there is a minimum monthly spend of $1000 or something like that.) |
Do YC Startups Lack Spine? | paul9290: I'd say most here want to build awesome products that people use! Most are not businessman first, but our journey lead us to be such....Ruthless ... can anyone name a well known inventor who started off ruthless? Tough for me to even write that word as I want to create good in the world and profit from it. Being ruthless... blech! |
Do YC Startups Lack Spine? | noodle: i believe the yc startups follow the "if you build it they will come" type of philosophy, as opposed to the "shove it down your throats" or "cut costs to make a bigger margin" vibe i'm getting from the OP. |
Do YC Startups Lack Spine? | cabalamat: What is the optimum amount of ruthlessness for a startup to have?I think this depends entirely on what industry sector a startup is targeting. For example, a startup in the drug dealing, extortion, pimping or organised crime sectors should probably be very ruthless and very "ready to rumble".But for a website -- the sort of business most HN readers are more likely to be in -- ruthlessness is much less likely to be effective. The thing you're most likely to achieve with it is getting people to think you're an arsehole. |
Ask HN:The basic wardobe? | gruseom: Silly question. Jeans and t-shirt. On a more interesting note, some old-timer (I think Jerry Weinberg) said that the reason hi-tech dress codes are so lax is that in the early days of computing, programmers were so scarce that they could get away with pretty much whatever they wanted. With the notable exception of IBM ("go home and don't come back until you're properly attired"), many companies were unable to enforce what they considered correct behavior. I for one am very grateful to our deviant forebears. |
Do YC Startups Lack Spine? | gruseom: Evidence? |
What type of Biz Credit Card do you have? | thinkzig: I've had an Amex Gold Business Card since starting up in 2001. Their customer service is the best and their web site keeps getting better each year for tracking my transactions, etc.I've also had them go to bat for me a few times over disputed charges and I've always been very happy with the outcome. I'd highly recommend them. |
Which articles/blogs should I assign to my high school class? | thinkzig: I'll start by saying how cool it is that I think you're doing this for your class. I wish someone had turned me on to the possibilities that entrepreneurship brings when I was in high school.Hard to go wrong with some Seth Godin. Here's a link to Seth's best from the past two years.http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/09/best-of-the-...I also like this series from Mark Cuban called "Success and Motivation"http://blogmaverick.com/2007/12/24/success-and-motivation/ |
Do YC Startups Lack Spine? | mattmaroon: This really doesn't make any sense at all. |
Do YC Startups Lack Spine? | skmurphy: The kind of killing that Hewlett and Packard made in the marketplace was predicated on fair dealing and a commitment to their employees and their community. What entrepreneurs would you like to see HN readers emulate? |
What type of Biz Credit Card do you have? | quellhorst: American Express Plum Card. http://www.plumcard.com/
With early pay I get 2% cash back. If you need to push payments off you can pay 10% by the due date and pay the balance 2 months later without interest charges.I try to use this card for every expense I can, it can really help you manage your cash flow. |
Do YC Startups Lack Spine? | tptacek: This question doesn't make any sense. YC is open to older entrepreneurs. Who knows whether they're ruthless, or ruthless enough? And why accept your premise that what's needed to win is ruthlessness? |
Do YC Startups Lack Spine? | cchooper: I doubt it pays to be ruthless when you have nothing to back it up. If you can't dominate, you have to cooperate. |
Do YC Startups Lack Spine? | fallentimes: What business instincts are you talking about? Is this from the Brazen Careerist or something? It just seems like you're making generalizations driven by anecdotes.If you're more specific and backup your claims with data (or even concrete examples) I think you'll get better answers. |
What is the best way to promote your new fancy web application? | paul9290: - Get bloggers/writers to discover your svc serendipitously or through a friend or social media contact- Definitely small time bloggers need to focused on. You never know who reads what!- Submit your company to conference/contests like TechCrunch40/50. Go even if not selected or semi-finalist!- Once at these conferences make yourself standout in a sea of nobodies. Be different and get people talking |
Where to find a designer for a cheap startup | nreece: 99designs: http://99designs.com |
Do YC Startups Lack Spine? | SwellJoe: Check back in a few years. We're only three years into observing the YC experiment. The average exit in the valley takes seven years. Over the next five years, we'll have pretty solid data about whether the YC model, and its companies, can "really make a killing in the marketplace". |
Do YC Startups Lack Spine? | pg: Textually this is a classic troll. But at least it's not an account newly created for the purpose, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and play along.Let's start by clarifying your question. Did Larry & Sergey, when they started, have these business instincts about making a killing in the marketplace that you're referring to? Because if they did they seem to have been well hidden. And if they didn't, these qualities don't seem to be worth much.Also, can you tell me more about the youth and inexperience of the people who apply to YC? No one, as far as we know, sees the applications except us.Your last question I can at least answer with certainty: no. It takes 4-5 years for a startup to achieve liquidity. No YC-funded startup is that old; the median is only about 18 months old. Our profitability now is therefore noise, which means no change in the applicants would have affected it significantly. |
Alan Kay or DHH? | gecko: Wow. That just makes me amazingly sad--not simply because it's factually wrong, but because attributing it to DHH loses its impact. DHH is an amazingly egotistical man who made a couple of somewhat popular websites and an okay web framework. Alan Kay, working with Dan Ingalls and other luminaries at Xerox PARC, invented many of the concepts that define what a personal computer means today. I am profoundly sad to see such historical ignorance. |
Alan Kay or DHH? | tlrobinson: Blasphemy. Alan Kay first said "The best way to predict the future is to invent it" in 1971, before DHH was born.If DHH decided to tweak Alan Kay's quote (changing "invent" to "implement") and attribute it to himself, well, that's bullshit. |
Alan Kay or DHH? | lsb: It's from Alan Kay, in 1971. Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
"The origin of the quote came from an early meeting in 1971 of PARC, Palo Alto Research Center, folks and the Xerox planners. In a fit of passion I uttered the quote!".
— Alan Kay, in an email on Sept 17, 1998 to Peter W. Lounthttp://www.smalltalk.org/alankay.html |
What is a "toy" language? | noodle: toy language is what you call a language that is incomplete or without a large enough featureset to be truly useful in solving problems or creating applications. or, a heavily pruned down version of a normal language.you'll mostly see toy languages in academia. i had to learn one for my compiler class.people referring to any widely used language as a toy languages are either trying to insult it, look down their nose at it, or are idiots. or, perhaps all 3. |
Alan Kay or DHH? | gruseom: This is a well-known statement by Kay:http://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/futures.htmI highly doubt that DHH claimed to have originated this. The problem here is the proliferation of adspam quote sites that attribute whatever to anybody. This same quote is even attributed to Lincoln on a few of them. |
Do YC Startups Lack Spine? | siong1987: Where he draws the conclusion from? |
Where to find a designer for a cheap startup | pedalpete: i've had good luck with crowdspring http://crowdspring.com |
Alan Kay or DHH? | acangiano: In all frankness this thread is gossipy. Most programmers know that Alan Kay is the author of the original quote and a simple Google search would verify that. Just because a site or two quote David Heinemeier Hansson on a variation of said quote, it doesn't mean that he claimed it was his quote. Your message is an open invitation to bash him for no good reason. Quite frankly this is the sort of attitude I'd expect on Reddit not on Hacker News. |
Alan Kay or DHH? | mynameishere: or...A lot of people:http://www.google.com/search?q=predict+future+create+-kayAnd a number of sites have Lincoln saying it,http://www.ehow.com/how_4415898_predict-your-future.htmlI'm sure there are earlier varieties. |
Which articles/blogs should I assign to my high school class? | alex_c: I am a big fan of Marc Andreessen's blog (Ning promotion notwithstanding). I'm not sure how interesting his writing would be for high school students, but you can look around and see if there's anything appropriate. Maybe this series:http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/09/the-pmarca-gu-1.html |
Alan Kay or DHH? | mileszs: The closest thing I found (via quick search) was a quote (apparently) by Paul Krugman:"Meanwhile, how much has our nation's future been damaged by the magnetic pull of quick personal wealth, which for years has drawn many of our best and brightest young people into investment banking, at the expense of science, public service and just about everything else?" |
Alan Kay or DHH? | xal: The quote is actually by Lincoln. I'm sure a lot more people cringe when it's attributed to Kay than when it's attributed to DHH.In neither case it has anything to do with the persons it's attributed to. The whole point behind attribution is that it's done by third parties.What a useless mud slinging invitation. |
What is a "toy" language? | leftnode: Yeah, you could easily see people call PHP a toy language because of its problems in the past (and some present), however, its one of the most widely used languages ever.Like noodle was saying, I saw a bunch of toy languages in college that a professor would write solely for the purpose of teaching something; a language that would never be used in industry. |
What is a "toy" language? | mdasen: There are definitely toy languages. lolcode is definitely a toy.On a serious note, people dislike PHP because many of the language choices seem to have been made oddly to put it nicely. It's also domain specific. While I wouldn't want to play a 3D game written in Python or Ruby, they're programming languages that you can make whatever in. When someone tries to make a desktop app in PHP, it's just odd. PHP is a language in the way that JSP is. It's wonderfully useful for web stuff, but it's not a programming language made for everything - just web stuff.And, to be honest, PHP does a lot of things that really aren't good practice if you're doing something other than creating a domain specific language. Like, you connect to a database with mysql_connect() and then run queries with mysql_query() and you don't have to pass in a link identifier unless you're querying a new DB. It completely isolates programmers from the reality of how variables like that get managed in memory. It's not a bad thing when you're just trying to get something done, but it also means that PHP people have no idea what a local static variable is and what that means (maybe it clings to you after you run the laundry?).Likewise, a lot of programming is dealing with scope. PHP tends to muddle scope with globals in a way that can be convenient for web programs, but also means that you get a lot of people that don't know program design messing around in it.Similarly, PHP isolates users from types more than most scripting languages. What's false? Who knows? It's actually a problem as 0 == 'apple' returns true. Yep. Integer zero is equal to any string. While I'm not a typist, I do think there are problems when you muddle too much casting to different types automatically.In terms of Python/Perl/Ruby, well, some people are against scripting languages. They're slower than something like C or Java and want to be snotty about the relaxed programming they offer. Plus, well, you don't find C programmers that don't understand things like garbage collection or algorithm performance standards. Sometimes in the scripting world there are a bunch of cut/paste, keep trying something until it works programmers. They don't know what they're doing and stumble along not realizing why something works or doesn't. How many scripting programmers have thought about references vs. copies?A lot of it is people being snotty about things, but a lot of programmers really don't understand programming. So, whatever. People call things names. It's going to happen whether they're geniuses or idiots. |
Alan Kay or DHH? | divia: I'm not sure if it's what you meant, but I found this:Perhaps it was commercialization in the 1980s that killed off the next expected new thing. Our plan and our hope was that the next generation of kids would come along and do something better than Smalltalk around 1984 or so. We all thought that the next level of programming language would be much more strategic and even policy-oriented and would have much more knowledge about what it was trying to do. But a variety of different things conspired together, and that next generation actually didn’t show up. One could actually argue—as I sometimes do—that the success of commercial personal computing and operating systems has actually led to a considerable retrogression in many, many respects.You could think of it as putting a low-pass filter on some of the good ideas from the ’60s and ’70s, as computing spread out much, much faster than educating unsophisticated people can happen. In the last 25 years or so, we actually got something like a pop culture, similar to what happened when television came on the scene and some of its inventors thought it would be a way of getting Shakespeare to the masses. But they forgot that you have to be more sophisticated and have more perspective to understand Shakespeare. What television was able to do was to capture people as they were.So I think the lack of a real computer science today, and the lack of real software engineering today, is partly due to this pop culture.http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~sue/475/AlanKay.html(Edit: I just saw that this was from a 2005 interview, so it can't be what you were referring to.) |
New Years Resolution(s)? | kwamenum86: - live healthier- learn Python (I wrote this one before I read the 5th item of the above)- save/invest more money- spend less time on HN- figure out how to monetize my free time and then do it- set up linux and mac os x boxes in addition to my windows box |
New Years Resolution(s)? | siong1987: - get things done instead of thinking what new year resolutions I want for next year. |
Where to find a designer for a cheap startup | symptic: I'm another student / designer / entrepreneur. Maybe it'd be worth talking? My portfolio: http://sicret.netMy email is in my profile. |
New Years Resolution(s)? | jmtame: I don't believe in New Year's Resolutions, much like I don't believe in a state of "I _will do_ something." You won't do something if you aren't already doing it, unless a major force compels you.Going to the gym and having a healthy diet is not a "new year's resolution." It's a lifestyle. You have to do it for your entire life, otherwise why even bother starting? |
New Years Resolution(s)? | joshsharp: It's funny how similar some of mine are. Or maybe it's not funny at all, maybe that's why we're all here...- Start blogging again- Learn Python properly (I know a bit, but would like to be comfortable/fluent)- Lose some weightbut also (and these are optimistic/long-term, but hey):- Really work to grow my client base, further my business's reputation, etc- Release one of my as-yet-unfinished SaaS apps for some passive income- Get an office and my first employee (currently freelancing from home office) |
Thoughts on Zoho CloudSQL? | jamiequint: I just heard about this from a friend yesterday. You can effectively use this with Zoho Creator as a MySQL database in the cloud. The latency, especially with some of the caching magic they do, seemed really good from what I saw. Does anyone have any theories/experiences on how well this would perform at scale?Link to architecture page here: http://cloudsql.wiki.zoho.com/Zoho-CloudSQL-Architecture.htm... |
New Years Resolution(s)? | sgupta: A new slinkset for New Year's resolutions:
http://resolutions.slinkset.com/ |
Alan Kay or DHH? | hernan7: DHH was probably paraphrasing Kay's quote, and assuming the readers of the interview would be familiar with the original. |
Do YC Startups Lack Spine? | tyler: This would be a much more interesting question if you were to give specific examples of how specific YC startups are "spineless", and perhaps how they could be less "spineless". Without that, I'd simple respond: "They're not." |
New Years Resolution(s)? | mmilenko: Last year's NYR was to quit smoking. A year later I'm happy to report I've been smoke free for a year and am now actually disgusted by the smell of smoke.So this year's resolution is to focus on making a bunch of mobile games and make a million by this time next year. I figure since I'm on a roll...Can't be that much harder than quitting smoking. |
New Years Resolution(s)? | wallflower: I believe New Year's resolutions are like the fast food of goals/personal development: easy to come up with, may make you feel better in the short-term, and like fast food.. exit your system quickly.Do yourself a favor and work towards your goals every day. Even fifteen minutes a day accumulates compound interest over time. |
New Years Resolution(s)? | cperciva: Two things come to mind:1. Reach profitability with tarsnap. (This shouldn't be hard... I'm almost there already.)2. Be a better friend to my friends. (This will hopefully be easier once resolution #1 is achieved, due to lower stress levels.) |
New Years Resolution(s)? | geuis: Not making resolutions. Whatever happens, happens. |
New Years Resolution(s)? | axod: * Attend lots of comferences/meetups
* Get funded
* Launch paid for product
* Grow advertising revenue
* Sell the company
* Profit!! |
New Years Resolution(s)? | albertni: 1. Collect underwear3. Profit |
Alan Kay or DHH? | palish: It doesn't matter. Good advice stands on its own, and doesn't need its creator's name to help it along. |
New Years Resolution(s)? | Prrometheus: Do better next year. |
New Years Resolution(s)? | hbien: Instead of having a ton like last year and failing, this year I'm just going to have one resolution:- Waste less time |
Alan Kay or DHH? | sfk: Worldofquotes attributes the quote to Theodore Hook, source: Bubbles of 1825, in "John Bull"http://www.worldofquotes.com/author/Theodore-Hook/1/index.ht... |
New Years Resolution(s)? | snprbob86: Ship. |
New Years Resolution(s)? | Herring: 1680x1050 |
Alan Kay or DHH? | dhh: I'm truly honored to have a whole post dedicated to me because a mistake on a list of 101 computer quotes. Someone has too much time on their hands.Oh, and OF COURSE I was quoting Alan Kay. |
New Years Resolution(s)? | mlLK: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=403013 |
New Years Resolution(s)? | markessien: I plan to1. Be able to jog for 10 kilometers2. Make a video that reaches 500.000 views on YouTube3. Release at least one more app that brings in $2000 or more a monthModest goals are easier to reach, and a goal that cannot be measured is no goal. |
New Years Resolution(s)? | ashleyw: Mine are really similar: - Get Healthier (not just losing weight, but eating better and drinking less soda/sugar drinks)
- Read the piles of books on my desk
- Start blogging
- Learn a new programming language (C/C++/Objective-C, and the OpenGL library)
- Make a decent income online where afford to buy a brand new Macbook Pro without putting it on a card I can't afford to repay...
— Start a totally bootstrapped company |
New Years Resolution(s)? | ahoyhere: Remember peeps, good goals are measurable and specific. |
New Years Resolution(s)? | jjs: 1. Finish writing my current desktop app2. Incorporate (probably as an LLC)3. Sell copies of said app to people in exchange for money.4. Relax more.5. Exercise more.6. Visit more places and people.7. If steps 1-3 work, buy Wil Shipley a drink!8. Spend next xmas in Munich. |
New Years Resolution(s)? | thinkzig: Why wait until the new year?Why not push away from the keyboard right now and go spend 15 minutes on something that will move you closer to one of your goals?You'll feel a lot better, and you'll be 3 days ahead of the game. :) |
New Years Resolution(s)? | Mystalic: I don't do new years resolutions, and it has been my policy since I was a kid.My rationale: if you want to change your life or do something, don't procrastinate - start right then. Putting an arbitrary date on things you want to do never made sense to me. You just have to write it down and then follow through. |
Alan Kay or DHH? | redsquirrel: There are themes of what you're looking for in http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html |
New Years Resolution(s)? | pavelludiq: Ask this girl out. |
New Years Resolution(s)? | patio11: In the sense of "If it isn't actionable and quantifiable its a delayed failure rather than a goal:"1) Go to gym 100 times for at least 45 minutes.2) Sell $30,000 worth of Bingo Card Creator.3) Take money from customers for 2nd project. (sales > $0)4) Not disclosed.5) Reduce food budget to 1/2 of current level.6) Declare income resulting from wages of exactly zero yen/dollars for December 2009 to appropriate tax authorities. |
What type of Biz Credit Card do you have? | drhowarddrfine: I've been in business for 23 years. I look for the best interest rate on a card, no matter what it is. I don't care about cash back because it's never enough to balance the interest rate charged. If ToysRUs had a better deal, that's what I would use.Now my wife is my accountant and we have a Amazon Visa card. I don't know anything more than that but, knowing how she investigates all that, I know it's the best deal. The only other card we have is a Discover card because that's the only one used by Sams Club. |
New Years Resolution(s)? | dmpayton: Same as last year...- Lose weight
- Learn C
- Don't waste (too much) time
- Get shit doneI did pretty well on the last two in 2008. Hopefully I can keep it up while making the first two happen. |
New Years Resolution(s)? | gcheong: 1.Work through Stroustrup's Programming: Principle's and Practice Using C++ (always good to review the basics)2.Write an app and sell it for enough to replace my current income3.Train for and run the Bay to Breakers4.Achieve "Archer" level in recurve style archery. |
New Years Resolution(s)? | popschedule: -Finish popalerts, & popschedule
-Get portfolio site together
-Figure out first year C corp taxes due.
-Develop better communication and public speaking skills.
-Make more connections with outside web consultants.
-Wake up to the sound of an alarm.
-Stop arguing with my girlfirend
-Drink more tea, less coffee
-Make Lists, get organized
-Build large business web concepts (coke, nike, honda,...)
-Paint more
-Drink less |
New Years Resolution(s)? | rokhayakebe: Learn how to code because some idiots did not figure that computer science should be thought in elementary school just as Mathematics, Biology, etc...The plan HTML>CSS>Javascript>Python or PHP |
Sources to determine "reasonable compensation?" for web CEO's | Mystalic: Reasonable to the IRS just means you aren't giving yourself a $300 salary and saying that's payment. Calculate general cost of living and use that number. You can justify that number to the IRS. |
Sources to determine "reasonable compensation?" for web CEO's | wmorein: Do you really have to pay yourself "reasonable" compensation? I don't doubt that you were told that, but it is interesting that multiple CEOs of large, public companies (e.g. Brin/Schmidt/Page at Google, Jobs at Apple) pay themselves $1 per year.See proxy statements at http://edgarest.com/company/name/1288776/Google_Inc_ and http://edgarest.com/company/name/320193/APPLE_INC for reference. |
New Years Resolution(s)? | tjic: - do more marketing for SmartFlix and HeavyInk (I hate doing it, but it works)- I started lifting again three weeks ago - keep doing it.- Get to the range more often to practice and carry my pistol more often day to day. |
What do you think of my Typepad/Feedburner hack ? (Would you use it ?) | nirmal: I like it! I've added it to Google Reader. Would it be possible to get the trailers that Apple releases at http://www.apple.com/trailers/ ? |
Sources to determine "reasonable compensation?" for web CEO's | fnazeeri: According to this (http://www.altgate.com/blog/2008/10/2008-startup-compensatio...) 10-year old survey executive compensation of 600+ venture-backed startups, a founding CEO of a software company with <$5MM in revenue is in the $160-230K range (25th %ile and 75th %ile respectively). As an aside, equity is in the 8-30% range (same percentiles).This isn't terribly helpful to you question since it's for venture-backed companies, but it's at least an upper threshold. |
Sources to determine "reasonable compensation?" for web CEO's | amobilebiz: Disclaimer: I am not an accountant or attorney so take this how you will.My understanding of the law from our accountants and attorneys is that you do not have to pay yourself anything if you don't want to. BUT...if you do decide to pay yourself, the salary must be "reasonable and comparable" to salaries of persons with similar job descriptions and titles. In other words, if your company takes in $1M in revenues a year and you pay yourself a $500K salary it may raise a red-flag. On the other hand, if you pay yourself $1 it may also raise a red-flag. My advice is to pay yourself what you feel you are worth and the company can afford to pay you, but don't be greedy. You can always give yourself an end-of-year bonus. The point of the law is to keep you from operating the company for a profit, writing off all your expenses as business expenses and claiming on your personal taxes that you did not earn an income while the company cut you checks out of the "owner draw" account. Depending on size and revenues of your company you can always claim an S-Corp exemption and just flow through the profits/losses to your personal taxes thus alleviating a lot of this for you.Again, I am not an attorney or accountant so I would definitely double check everything. |
New Years Resolution(s)? | creativeembassy: Learn a functional programming language. (Maybe Haskell, but I'm open to other ideas). |
New Years Resolution(s)? | code_devil: It's not a New Year Resoultion, but certain goals/milestones that I'd like to see achieved :1) Develop some Social Networking Applications for Facebook etc.2) Learn Cocoa Touch for iPhone and Develop Apps.3) Learn a MVC framework like Django/RoR in and out.4) Be consistent with the gym schedule and get some muscles :)5) TBD soon :) |
Sources to determine "reasonable compensation?" for web CEO's | pelle: It sounds like you are incorporating an S-Corp. There aren't really any IRS rules like that for C-Corps, which is why Steve Jobs can get paid $1 pa.The rule is essentially there to make sure that you pay FICA. The limit for paying FICA in 2008 is $10,200. So that should be a safe reasonable compensation. Anything you pay yourself on top of this should be done as an S-Corp distribution.That said you could probably get away with paying less. But really your CPA should be able to guide you on this. You may be able to get away with $50k pa. |
Sources to determine "reasonable compensation?" for web CEO's | mdasen: I think that $75k would be reasonable. That's on the low side (25th percentile), but reasonable. Below $50k and I'd say you're begging to be audited. But I don't do this for a living or anything.Really, your CPA and lawyer should be able to give you an exact figure. That's their business. It's a little odd to ask for that advice here when you are already paying professionals in the field for that advice. Your CPA/lawyer should have experience with what is safe. Use it. |
Sources to determine "reasonable compensation?" for web CEO's | vaksel: isn't the "reasonable" compensation more about the max you can pay yourself, not the min? So that you can't set your salary at whatever your profit is, in order to avoid paying business taxes. |
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