I pitched YC, was rejected, just closed a multi-million dollar round. - <AUTHOR> I realize it's not YC application season (edit: actually it looks like applications are open), but I figured I would post now since I would undoubtedly forget later.
A friend and I applied for YC Summer '09 for a search related company (actually what Greplin is doing now).  We made it to interviews but didn't make the final cut.
I went on to do other things and about a year later ended up back in start-up land with a different co-founder and a different idea.  We just closed a multi-million dollar deal on fantastic terms yesterday from one of the best VCs in the valley.
So the moral of the story is this: rejection doesn't matter.  To quote Randy Pausch: "The brick walls are not there to keep us out, they are there to give us a chance to show us how badly we want something."  Raising funding is only the beginning of this journey but if you didn't make it into YC or face a similar situation somewhere else, exceptions to the rule do exist (like us) and there's really no reason YOU could not be another.
Cheers!
(if you know who I am, please keep my identity a secret, thanks!) <comment><USER2> a decent chunk of the energy for writing delicious was in response to getting rejected by google years ago...

<comment><USER3> It is also nice that Techstars rejection notice says: _We hope that you are not deterred and we wish you the best of luck with your company_

And on the link of general explanation "Why Not Us?" (<http://www.techstars.org/whynotus/> ), they go even further: _If you've applied and received notification of non-selection, we sincerely hope that you will go on to do great things. It will not surprise us one bit. Good luck!_

It is really nice how people can reframe _rejection_ into _non-selection_ , and _non-rejection_ into _making great things_.

Thanks all for the inspiring examples.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A friend of mine got rejected from the current YC batch, but raised $1M from prominent investors less than a month after the YC interview.

<comment><USER5> I'd argue that raising money from YC (specifically) might be harder than raising money generally from angels/VCs.

There are still only a finite number of YC applications selected into every cohort (and my guess is, as the brand grows, the number of teams competing grows). But, the number of potential angels and VCs for a deal is not as constrained.

Summary: Getting into YC is not the same as raising money from angels/VCs. I wouldn't equate the two.

Besides, it's not just about the money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know one company that was rejected by yc that is happily investor free, profitable, and doing quite well for themselves.

I know another guy that was rejected from YC and just sold his company to another company all of you have heard of.

YC is great, but it's one of many paths. Every time I read, "YC rejected me but....." it sounds like "Harvard rejected me, but somehow my life didn't end."

Sometimes you wonder how a company managed to exit with their idea but people count for so much. I have friends that, if they had the dumbest idea in the world, I would put my money down because betting against them is a losing game. If it sounds ludicrous, is because you've never had friends like that.

</comment><comment><USER7> totally agree with the 'if at first you don't succeed' aspect of this post, but you have a different co-founder and a different concept now, so your prior rejection, while interesting, is not really related to your current situation.

<comment><USER8> I agree. I certainly read the title as meaning "I just closed funding on a pitch that PG rejected".

Also, congratulations. Glad you didn't give up!

<comment><USER9> _I certainly read the title as meaning "I just closed funding on a pitch that PG rejected"._

YC explicitly says they're looking for the best founders, not necessarily the best idea.

In other words they're rejecting you, not your idea.

<comment><USER10> If you think of it like this, you'll poison yourself. Maybe reframe it as "Declined the opportunity to invest in this team at this time."

(See also: college, job offers, consulting engagements, and -- took me decades to learn this -- dating.)

<comment><USER9> I agree with you 100%.

That said, I do think it's worth noting that the pleasant fiction of "it was the idea, not us" is patently false for YC.

A healthier (and more accurate) way to think of it would be to say that they're rejecting their perception of the team, rather than the team itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _To quote Randy Pausch: "The brick walls are not there to keep us out, they are there to give us a chance to show us how badly we want something."_

They are all in your head anyway. I've been thinking about the Harry Potter thing of how they get to the train station for wizarding school by running straight at the brick wall with confidence, which carries them through it and to a different world, where a train awaits to whisk them off to a magical place, a place to learn yet more magic. I think it's a great metaphor. The brick walls aren't really there. Just go at them head on, believing they aren't really there.

Oh, and there's no spoon either.

Best of luck.

<comment><USER12> I'm a huge Harry Potter fan, but it never occurred to me to relate that scene to startups in that way. It makes me smile. :) However, I would tweak the "solid wall" metaphor a bit in the context of startups. For example, running full ahead with a bad idea will never magically become a good idea simply by upping confidence level. I would say the metaphor is more like Book 2 where they hit the wall and bounce back painfully (because Dobby sealed it) but find another way to get to school anyway. I think that's more what startup success looks like. Simply having the confidence to run forward is more about how to look at life in general I'd say, when we talk ourselves out of attempting to do things for reasons which are really nothing but false fears.

<comment><USER11> I've had a lot of dreams in my life to the effect of coming to a brick wall and reaching forward and turning the door handle that didn't exist until I reached for it and opening a door and going through the brick wall, shutting it and watching it turn back into a brick wall for my pursuers. Sorry I can't explain better what needs to go on in one's head to walk through brick walls. But it can be done.

Peace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Congrats on closing a round of financing, but have you had your YC rejection in the back of your mind all along?

If you had pitched with the same co-founder and same idea and still got funded, you could have given PG a big 'told ya so', but different idea, different co-founder, is really a different sitation. Plus, I'm sure YC doesn't invest in many ideas/people that they wish they could, as they have to make selections on very little details.

Out of curiosity, what stage are you at with the new company? Did you close your round with a working prototype? moderate user traction? existing customers?

Again, congrats on the funding. Best of luck with the new biz.

<comment><AUTHOR> Working prototype w/ alpha users, but there's a lot of significant tech involved - i.e. it's not a rails app.

And no, YC hasn't been on my mind at all, nor is this a 'told ya so' to PG. I do hang out on HN under a different name though so I thought I'd post for anyone who was feeling frustrated in their own journeys since I know that in- the-moment rejection can sting disproportionally more than during the time that it actually matters, i.e. the rest of your life.

<comment><USER14> Well, at least it's not Rails!

Sheesh, did you work that into your pitch? I understand that you're feeling hot right now, but leave your unfounded technology biases out of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. I should have said "a todo app" or something similar - Rails was what came to mind first because of 37 Signals et al who make a lot of that kind of stuff.

Aside from that, I'm a huge fan of abstracting commonly made and agreed upon technical decisions further down the stack, making higher level development much simpler and less technically challenging - which is from my understanding what RoR was/is largely about. That's not to say that RoR as a framework isn't in and of itself a technical achievement though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just because you are rejected by VC's or YC doesn't mean anything. Even best of the VC's make mistakes, here is a firm which missed companies like Apple, Intel, Google, Paypal, Ebay etc...

<http://www.bvp.com/Portfolio/AntiPortfolio.aspx>

</comment><comment><USER16> i don't mind rejection. in fact, i kinda thrive off of it.

when YC has told us no in the past --> just sparked the fire that much more.

my personal motto: doubt me...please do ;)

<comment><USER17> @apoorvamehta Same here; "doubt me and I'll prove you wrong"

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a fantastic story. Congratulations, let us in on the loop when you're ready to share!

</comment><comment><USER19> I believe YC applications are open now, so its great timing actually!

</comment><comment><USER20> Why do people say they got funded as if that's it. They've made it. Job done. Success is now a given.

I'm not convinced ability to get funded matches with likelihood of profitability.

<comment><USER21> _Why do people say they got funded as if that's it._

Where did the OP say or imply this? In fact he even says this is only the beginning of the journey.

FWIW, I took his post as an inspirational thing. The demographic of YC applicants seems to skew towards younger people, sometimes with a bit too much pg-love. Getting rejected by your "idol" can be very discouraging, especially to an applicant who may not have gone through such a rejection before (eg: they've been mostly accepted to the schools and colleges of their choice) and/or has not had a lot of other career experience so their "one big dream" was just seemingly crushed.

IMO, I think it would be really cool for pg to create a roster list someplace of YC rejects that got alternate sources of funding and/or went to other ventures deemed successful. It could help some of the rejected applicants understand that YC is _one_ option, not _the_ option.

<comment><USER20> Yeah maybe I'm being harsh as usual. If I got funding I'd start panicking and thinking to myself "shit now I have to make them a return"... But it often feels like announcements of funding are more like "yay we have cash! Lets buy an office, some go-karts, etc"

My personal experience has been that there's only one group you need to impress - your users/customers. If no one else believes in you so what?

Likewise, if you manage to get funding (convince one person you might have future success), but have no users/customers, it's a bit "meh".

Being rejected from X but accepted at Y still doesn't demonstrate if the idea/person behind it/etc will be successful or not.

I'm rambling now so I'll stop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If everyone is unanimously excited about your company and agrees with your vision, then there is definitely something wrong there!

</comment><comment><USER23> Cheers indeed!

P.S. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b76VWp-voIk>

</comment><comment><USER24> Getting rejected by YC was the best thing to happen to my startup and to improve my motivation.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's impressive that YC helps founders succeed by putting them through a short but intense program.

It's even more impressive that YC helps founders succeed by rejecting their applications, and motivating them to try harder.

The latter is a truly scalable business model. Maybe YC should get a chunk of stock simply for letting companies apply to the program...

</comment><comment><USER8> So, is your start up in stealth? Or are you just trying not to brag? Why the anonymity?

<comment><USER26> That would muddy the core message of 'buck up and keep at it' and turn it into a "take that" at YC, which does not seem to be intended. Being anonymous makes sense here, I think. (I actually clicked through to see if it needed to be flagged because it could be a "take that" and it's not.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Bingo. YC is changing how the valley works, for the better, and should be recognized as doing so.

Additionally, running a (venture backed) company already puts enough scrutiny on me as a person and I'm in no hurry to increase that :)

<comment><USER8> Good to know.

Again, well done on your recent success. Now the real work (and fun) begins :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> i'd be interested in talking to you, can you e-mail me? it's on my profile

</comment><comment><USER28> just so we're all clear... the goal is more than raising money... right?

</comment><comment><USER29> Congratulations. :-)

</comment><comment><USER30> >(if you know who I am, please keep my identity a secret, thanks!)

Personally I wouldn't require this whatever possible, even in that case, but that is a different topic altogether so...

</comment><comment><USER9> Congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER31> I love the tenacity, Best of luck boys!</comment>


The 1k-Bed Comfort Was Supposed to Aid New York. It Has 20 Patients - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/nyregion/ny-coronavirus-usns-comfort.html <comment><USER2> This hospital ship was meant to house _non-covid_ patients. It's meant as surge capacity for the NY hospital system. Of course it isn't full yet. Of course it isn't full of covid patients right now, it isn't ever supposed to be full of covid patients. It's not a joke. The joke is that the Ny Times of all places let this ridiculous article go to print when a simple search, or even a _summary_ of the DAILY press conferences where this is covered would have explained the situation.

If NY thinks it's a joke, and it isn't being useful by being there, then NY should be calling for it to be sent somewhere else. I bet the 20 patients who are there now sure are happy to have a hospital that isn't infected with the virus[1] right now.

As a side note: this brand of journalism is disgusting to me. Articles like this absolutely do not help _anyone_. You can lump this sort of thing right in with the people who ask EVERY SINGLE DAY why we didn't start acting sooner. EVERY DAY they ask this at the press conference. People want to know things like when they can get tested, if their parents are going to die, or if they're going to be able to pay for food this week. But every day they waste this precious time we get with these experts asking stupid self-serving questions like why we didn't start sooner. What possible answer to the question could help any of the very real existential problems Americans and their families are facing right now?

[1]: There needs to be an easier name than "sars cov2" for this. It only creates confusion where people either choose to call it "coronavirus" or "covid".

<comment><USER3> This brand of journalism is the new norm. The media has abdicated its responsibility of reporting truth and facts, and instead turned into the opposition party to the President.

<comment><USER4> > instead turned into the opposition party to the President

If you think the last 3 years of kid-glove reporting has been "opposition party", then an _actual_ critical news media would blow your mind.

<comment><USER3> Oh it would! It would uncover all of the crimes and coverups of the democratic party. I would LOVE it if journalists acted like, you know, real journalists instead of tabloid political hacks.

<comment><USER4> It would also result in headlines constantly talking about "Trump Lied About $X", instead of "falsehood" or "baseless allegation" or whatever weasel word they pick that day to avoid saying what everybody already knows to be true.

Or to put it another way: remember the Obama-era scandal of the Tan Suit? Take that level of spite, and apply it to the most incompetent toddler to ever grace the office of President. That's what an opposition press would look like. If you have a problem with this, I really don't think you could handle that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We should not be surprised - this is what Puerto Rico saw after Maria:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/us/puerto-rico- hurricane-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/us/puerto-rico-hurricane- maria-hospital-ship.html)

> The ship was prepared to support 250 hospital beds, but over its 53-day > deployment, which included travel to and from the island, it admitted an > average of only six patients a day, or 290 in total. An additional 1,625 > people were treated aboard the ship as outpatients, all at no cost.

</comment><comment><USER6> It excludes COVID-19 patients. Patients have to be evaluated at local hospitals (presumably, contracting COVID-19).

 _"If I'm blunt about it, it's a joke," Michael Dowling, the head of New York's Northwell Health hospital system, told the Times._

Northwell has 70,000 employees.

</comment><comment><USER7> You could see this coming days ago when it was announced these ships would be for "non-virus patients". Obviously there's no way to know for sure that someone doesn't have the virus, in any reasonable time, even if you do test them .

</comment><comment><USER8> I assumed it was there for overflow of non-covid patients, is that not the case? Are NY hospitals over capacity?

edit: seems this is addressed later in the article but for some reason NYT is paywalling/registerwalling this after the fold for me.

<comment><USER9> From TFA:

> Ambulances cannot take patients directly to the Comfort; they must first > deliver patients to a city hospital for a lengthy evaluation — including a > test for the virus — and then pick them up again for transport to the ship.

> Ultimately, Mr. Dowling and others said, if the Comfort refuses to take > Covid patients, there are few patients to send. And given the pernicious > spread of the disease in New York City, where nearly 50,000 were infected as > of Thursday, dividing patients into those who have it and those who do not > is pointless, he said.

<comment><USER10> Given the proximity to Javitz you'd think they'd have a Covid wing for handling these cases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Shouldn't be cynical, it could be a matter of rampup, other hospitals knowing when to send, when not to, testing problems etc.. In not a long time it could very well be full.

</comment><comment><USER10> Let's all watch the Magnificent Leader play the blame game on this one.

</comment><comment><USER12> You know, there's been a common pattern among all of these screwups recently. The people in charge and involved don't seem to know what they're doing.

It's as if all of our systems are being tested, and they're all failing. There are systemic problems in the US that desperately need to be addressed. Perhaps this virus will force us to do so...one way or another.

<comment><USER13> It's almost as if choosing leaders based on whose soundbites generate the most media coverage isn't a good idea.</comment></comment>


so I managed to get out of my job, now what? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Understand the value of free time!, you might get lulled into this not having to go to the "office" every morning. But remember! The idea is to make this permanent! You have to work your ass off starting now. (Move or not). It will be cool to move to the valley, but don't loose focus. And make deadlines and stick to them. Deadlines are your friend.

Btw, I heard that your co-founder is a fucking genius, with complete qualifications (what with getting his ass kicked out of grad school :)) !

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> like most of you, I have been observing startup news for a while. Today, I managed to get out of my job, with a pretty good service package, and I am finding myself wondering: what now?

Should I move into the Valley where one of my cofounders is currently staying?

<comment><USER3> No brainer, if one of your cofounders is there - go for it. You'll find a lot more people out there will understand what you're doing.

On the other hand, you also risk getting caught up in the hype if you spend all your time in the valley.

<comment><USER4> _you also risk getting caught up in the hype if you spend all your time in the valley_

Or on YC news, Sam Odio... doesn't anybots give you enough work to do? ;)

<comment><USER5> I think Sam is still in Virginia. He's #2 in points because the robot sits on the computer and e-mails him stories all day.

The way I understand it, the robots like to browse open source hardware sites at night. They can afford to do this because YCombinator actually draws power from a transformer in the nearby subway system, that nobody has detected as of yet, because the only way to get to it is via a unicycle on a trapeze wire.

In the past, both robots were singularly responsible for two disparate California blackouts. Former television robot-turned Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, just turns his head. It will be interesting to see what happens this summer. (This is also why YCombinators Boston and Mountain View are located within 1 mile of the subway.)

<comment><USER6> Via a unicycle, obviously, not a tricycle. :)

<comment><USER5> Yes, that's what I meant to say (Trevor's unicycle)! Although, a tricycle would be even harder to ride down a trapeze wire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Code code code, blog, blog, blog, call, call, call, give, give, give, and hopefully sometimes later cash, cash, cash</comment>


Vagrant 1.4 - <AUTHOR> http://www.vagrantup.com/blog/vagrant-1-4.html <comment><USER2> For anyone who doesn't know. Vagrant acts like a wrapper around VMware, VirtualBox, or even AWS, so that you can easily automate testing. You can also share your Vagrant boxes (images) with others in an easy manner. Vagrant is one of those things, that once you start to use it, you wonder how you managed without it. I have created several screencasts about Vagrant:

Learning Vagrant @ [http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/4-vagrant](http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/4-vagrant)

Create a Vagrant box with Veewee @ [http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/5-create-a-vagrant-box- wit...](http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/5-create-a-vagrant-box-with-veewee)

Learning Puppet with Vagrant @ [http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/8-learning- puppet-with-vag...](http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/8-learning-puppet-with- vagrant)

Managing Iptables with Puppet @ [http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/18-managing-iptables- with-...](http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/18-managing-iptables-with-puppet)

<comment><USER3> Can you explain what Vagrant adds on top of VirtualBox? When I tried it it didn't seem that different than just using VirtualBox directly.

<comment><USER4> The biggest thing it adds on top of VirtualBox is a consistent workflow. If it helps, think of what Vagrant does technically as useless, and think of Vagrant only as a process discipline: to get a dev environment for any project you "vagrant up", to close it out "vagrant destroy", to access it "vagrant ssh", etc.

As soon as you get this consistent workflow, then you can teach it to your entire organization and the whole company knows that ANY project in the company can be worked on using this workflow without any dependencies on their own machine.

And if ops decides to suddenly change the dev environment from VirtualBox to say... AWS... nothing changes! I've had large companies (200+ developers) switch from VirtualBox to VMware to AWS for their dev environments without their developers ever really noticing.

That is pretty cool.

Of course, on top of this, you get a lot of nice things: you get provisioners, you get automatic network configuration, you get the entire plugin community, you don't have to worry about stability on your own because you tap the collective stability of thousands of users, etc.

But the real power is workflow.

<comment><USER5> Is this mostly appropriate for web development? Could it work for embedded or desktop development? Seems like it might be a lot of overhead if you only need to install an IDE and a compiler.

Presumably this is also mostly used with Linux. How do people manage Windows licenses with Vagrant?

<comment><USER6> _Is this mostly appropriate for web development? Could it work for embedded or desktop development?_

No, it's very useful for desktop, and especially embedded development. It lets you have consistent images to test your code against.

 _Presumably this is also mostly used with Linux. How do people manage Windows licenses with Vagrant?_

No, it's very popular on both Windows and OS-X. Virtualbox is most popular on both platforms (because it is free).

<comment><USER7> > it's very popular on both Windows and OS-X.

No, I think that they meant with Windows Guests (hence the license question).

I don't think that Vagrant is used much for coding Windows applications, but rather coding Linux (web) applications from Windows hosts.

I've never used it, but it looks like there is a way to use this for Windows Guests as well: [http://www.thomasvjames.com/2013/09/create-a-windows-base- bo...](http://www.thomasvjames.com/2013/09/create-a-windows-base-box-for- vagrant/)

YMMV

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've just spent 5 minutes trying to learn what Vagrant is and how it works. The home page didn't help me with that AT ALL. It's full of vague terms like "development environment" and "work environment" and buzzwords claiming to "maximize productivity".

In your About page, please describe the typical USAGE SCENARIOS of your software and how does it help in those cases exactly.

<comment><USER9> > _I 've just spent 5 minutes trying to learn what Vagrant is and how it > works._

Well, it's 2013 and you're on HN. If you don't already know what Vagrant is, then perhaps you're not the most qualified information seeker.

<comment><USER10> Well to be fair the "Why Vagrant?" page [1] isn't exactly clear about whether this is a tool for building throwaway environments or if it's something I should use to build out production systems:

 _" If you're a developer, Vagrant will isolate dependencies and their configuration within a single ==>disposable<=="_

 _" If you're an operations engineer, Vagrant gives you a ==>disposable<== environment"_

All I can infer from the page is that this is a tool for building throwaway/local environments running on VM's on my desktop. But there isn't any context given on how this relates to my production environments, i.e. getting from Vagrant instance to production, there's a disconnect there for me.

[1]: [http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/why- vagrant/](http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/why-vagrant/)

<comment><USER9> > _Well to be fair the "Why Vagrant?" page [1] isn't exactly clear about > whether this is a tool for building throwaway environments or if it's > something I should use to build out production systems_

Perhaps not, but there's this wonderful tool called Google to help find out more. Also Wikipedia: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagrant_(software)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagrant_\(software\))

<comment><USER10> Yes, very good, I know what Vagrant is I'm just not sure where it fits into my workflow going from dev into production. Neither the official website or that scant Wikipedia article answers my question.

Perhaps if you have enough time to patronise others you could use it more fruitfully to be constructive.

<comment><USER9> > _Perhaps if you have enough time to patronise others you could use it more > fruitfully to be constructive._

Sure, but where's the fun in that?

In any case, there's the evergreen "using X in production" Google search. Substitute X gor Vagrant and you'll be well on your way of knowing if it's a good idea or not and how to do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I had hoped that their Docker support would be some magical mechanism that would treat Docker as a kind of VirtualBox. That is, instead of using VirtualBox to create VMs, they would use Docker to create containers. 'vagrant ssh' would then SSH directly into a container instead of the host VM.

Sadly, their Docker support is just a provisioner. :( I can do that myself too in a shell script.

<comment><USER12> If that is what you want, then just install docker on your system ;-)

<comment><USER13> +1

To use docker on my mac I have replaced Vagrant with boot2docker ([http://github.com/steeve/boot2docker](http://github.com/steeve/boot2docker)). I didn't need all the moving parts anyway - the VM is always the same, the application-specific bits are all defined inside the containers.

<comment><USER14> how do you launch boot2docker on your mac, raw virtualbox? or do you mean you actually dual-boot to it?

<comment><USER15> I would be interested to know this as well.

<comment><USER13> Just raw virtualbox - I point to the ISO as a virtual drive.

It looks like they're also working on a script to automate this - like a mini- Vagrant but which always boots the same image :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I like vagrant, but would love it to work with VMWare fusion, but cannot justify paying more than the cost of fusion for a vagrant plugin.

Anyone aware of an open source alternative to the official VMWare provisioner?

<comment><USER17> Why is using Virtual Box not an option if you are price sensitive?

<comment><USER18> VirtualBox is getting better, but it's still no match for vmware's performance(especially file share).

<comment><USER19> I last time I used vagrant was 1.2 on whatever the latest virtualbox at the time was. The performance was about half as good as the host machine. The host machine was running the desktop version of Ubuntu at the time. I was not able to easily identify if VirtualBox's performance problems were CPU or IO bound. If I hear that the performance is close to native, I'll give it another try. Otherwise, I can't see the point.

<comment><USER20> If you are on Linux, why not use vagrant with lxc containers?

<comment><USER19> When I was using vagrant 1.2, lxc containers were not fully functional so I didn't bother trying with lxc. I'll gladly give it another try to see if performance is significantly better than virtalbox. Thanks for the tip by the way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> We're using vagrant and ansible to manage local dev instances with the same ansible scripts responsible for provisioning/deployment to our production boxes. My thought being the less I manage with vagrant, and the more I codify stuff in ansible, the more predictable things are when I go to provision/deploy in production.

I'm thrilled with how vagrant helps the process locally, but at the same time want to do as little as possible _in_ vagrant because it's not applicable/involved when I provision/manage a box @ Linode or Digital Ocean.

Am I under-utilizing vagrant? Or missing a greater benefit by limiting its role?

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm afraid of upgrading vagrant now like I am afraid of upgrading bootstrap.

Too many things break - it's simply not worth the trouble of upgrading and finding all the gotchas scattered all over the place in my config files and code.

<comment><USER4> I started the vagrant-spec project to address this. A system like Vagrant is hard to fully unit test because there are a lot of side-effecty things that it does. In many cases, the best way to test it is to run things in a real-life scenario.

vagrant-spec includes a acceptance suite that we're going to be building up in order to test more of the features in a black box manner. It is slow to run but if we verify that things are passing before a release, we should be able to catch most daily use cases.

Vagrant 1.4 is the first release to run through vagrant-spec and while there are some early bug reports in some fringe areas of Vagrant trickling in, Vagrant seems to be a drop-in upgrade for most users. This shows that it is working, to some extent. And it'll only get better.

Of course, if you're nervous about it, it doesn't hurt to wait for a 1.4.1 or so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Congratulations to mitchellh and the Vagrant team. Vagrant is a fantastic tool for streamlining workflows, but also an amazing educational opportunity. Disposable Linux servers: Play, experiment, destroy, try again. Thank you for this, I can't believe how much I've learned.

</comment><comment><USER24> > Work will begin on pulling the Vagrant AWS integration into the core > distribution -- to start -- so that you can use Vagrant with AWS (and other > providers) right after installing it and without having to juggle plugin > versions.

This is awesome, I can't wait. I've been waiting for this!

<comment><USER25> I am thrilled about this as well.

Most of my projects right now have had all of their Vagrant plugin dependencies, including Vagrant itself, in the Gemfile because I wanted to make sure any developer could get a workable development environment without worrying too much about Vagrant versions. On one hand I like the fact that I can install up-to-date plugins this way, but on the other hand I just want it to work out of the box.

Although I doubt we'll be able to get away from this. More likely it will cause other frustrations such as needing to override a plugin with a monkey patch, etc.

<comment><USER26> I really like how Gradle has solved this problem. You check in the Gradle wrapper ([http://www.gradle.org/docs/current/userguide/gradle_wrapper....](http://www.gradle.org/docs/current/userguide/gradle_wrapper.html)) into your source control (it's only 56K), and it automatically fetches Gradle for you if you don't have it. Updating the project's Gradle version is just a matter of changing one or two lines.

It's cool to think that the only requirement for anybody to jump into a Gradle project is to have the JDK installed. "git clone <project>", "./gradlew assemble" is all it takes for you to fetch all your dependencies and build the project.

I think it'd be interesting to see if Vagrant could incorporate something like this; it sounds like it would help your use case.

<comment><USER27> > It's cool to think that the only requirement for anybody to jump into a > Gradle project is to have the JDK installed.

Sounds like a commercial. Many people have good things to say about Gradle's functionality, but too bad about the programming language I have to use with it, i.e. Groovy, at an old 1.x version, with a bloated grammar spec using an old 2.x version of Antlr, i.e. [http://svn.codehaus.org/groovy/trunk/groovy/groovy- core/src/...](http://svn.codehaus.org/groovy/trunk/groovy/groovy- core/src/main/org/codehaus/groovy/antlr/groovy.g)

Too bad I can't use a language with a simplified easy-to-remember grammar, like Scala, to program Gradle.

The latest Gradle release notes [http://www.gradle.org/docs/current/release- notes](http://www.gradle.org/docs/current/release-notes) always mention both Groovy and Scala when describing how to build projects, but all the build script example code is in that Groovy language. Will Gradle ever expose an API so developers can choose to use the same language for the build scripts as they do for the projects they're building? Perhaps even ship Gradle with different build language options?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is fantastic! I just used Vagrant to help automate testing on an email library I wrote ([https://github.com/tedivm/Fetch](https://github.com/tedivm/Fetch), if anyone is interested- new tests are in the "testing" branch).

Vagrant made setting that up really easy. In fact, the hardest part was scripting different responses for whether the machine was already up or not, and the new Machine-Readable Output will make that far, far easier.

Thanks for making a great tool better!

</comment><comment><USER29> Probably not the right venue, but I'm a bit disappointed addressing the plugin versioning situation isn't listed as a thing for 1.5. There are plugins for managing plugins but they're really less than ideal.

I'd honestly just like to use bundler for it, since it's almost certainly better than anything anyone's likely to make to replace it, but using bundler to run vagrant is currently considered bad for some reason and outputs a frightening warning.

<comment><USER4> Bundler doesn't work with Vagrant because Vagrant ships with its own Ruby and RubyGems and all that. So... your Bundler you're executing has a really screwed up state of the world.

Its something that certainly needs to be solved, but I think solutions needs more time to mature in my head as well as others.

<comment><USER29> The problem right now is that plugins create a screwed up state of the world and their usefulness is rapidly climbing.

Installing the vagrant-chef-zero plugin, for example, is a real PITA because the dependency resolution doesn't deal with a json dependency correctly leading to it or chef zero failing to load unless you install them in a very specific order.

On the other end of the spectrum, when you're writing a Vagrantfile it's technically almost impossible to know what's going to happen when a user starts it up because of all the hooks plugins can throw in, and you can't tell Vagrant _not_ to load a plugin (which would be an incomplete solution anyways, since I can't know what plugins or plugin versions will have bad interactions).

I know you wrote vagrant, so you have a more inside perspective on this, but as a user and occasional plugin writer, it feels like with a gemfile I can specify a state of the world that's considerably _less_ screwed up than the completely random world any given user's install of Vagrant might be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Vagrant is an awesome tool for CI. I have used it extensively with Jenkins to provision environments, AWS deployments and Digital Ocean Servers. Recently I have used vagrant to easily manage OSX 10.8 guests on vmware-fusion, as the demand to provision environments for ios-related development is on the increase. I am not aware of any other tool that makes this easier. Vagrant RAWKS!

</comment><comment><USER31> So you can now enforce vagrant versions in your Vagrantfile, which is great, but this is a new feature thus older versions of vagrant won't honour it...so this feature is useless for me, at least for a while. I will continue to do this: [https://gist.github.com/badsyntax/7803472](https://gist.github.com/badsyntax/7803472)

</comment><comment><USER32> Vagrant 1.4 is now available by Brew Cask

[https://github.com/phinze/homebrew- cask/pull/2027](https://github.com/phinze/homebrew-cask/pull/2027)

$ brew update

$ brew cask install vagrant

</comment><comment><USER33> As someone who uses Vagrant for a ton of puppet testing, the part about the Windows guests in 1.5 made me incredibly happy.

</comment><comment><USER34> Anyone can give a short summary on what Docker adds/does different from server automation, e.g. Chef provisioner?

</comment><comment><USER35> The machine-readable output is interesting.

</comment><comment><USER36> Docker provisioner - that's great. I could use Ansible to provision Docker containers, but its nice to have a built-in option as well.</comment>


Malaysia Air MH17 – Preliminary accident report [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.onderzoeksraad.nl/uploads/phase-docs/701/b3923acad0ceprem-rapport-mh-17-en-interactief.pdf

<comment><USER2> A summary is available on the official website: [http://www.onderzoeksraad.nl/en/onderzoek/2049/investigation...](http://www.onderzoeksraad.nl/en/onderzoek/2049/investigation- crash-mh17-17-july-2014/preliminary-report/1562/preliminary-report-points- towards-external-cause-of-mh17-crash#fasen)</comment>


Combinatorial Creativity - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_creativity#Combinatorial_creativity

<comment><USER2> This is a concept I've been pondering in excess for the past several days. It has spontaneously appeared twice on HN. Why has this idea so recently risen within our collective subconsciousness?</comment>


Why the World's Best Mathematicians Are Hoarding Chalk [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhNUjg9X4g8 <comment><AUTHOR> "Quartz Obsession" published a great backgrounder on both Hagoromo chalk and chalk in general [0].

[0] [https://qz.com/emails/quartz- obsession/1636818/](https://qz.com/emails/quartz-obsession/1636818/)</comment>


Apple releases iOS 6.1 - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57566214-37/apple-releases-ios-6.1-with-additional-lte-support/ <comment><USER2> This page lists the LTE networks supported now: <http://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/>

It's interesting to note that, if it weren't for the US (& expansion packs), you could use a single iPhone model to access LTE networks all over the world...</comment>


Why Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella doesn't really worry about revenue - T-A http://uk.businessinsider.com/microsoft-exec-satya-nadella-is-more-interested-in-growth-than-revenue-2015-5?r=US

<comment><AUTHOR> Microsoft has so much cash and is pretty much the standard in many industries, they have the luxury of not worrying about revenue. Pretty much every other company does not have this luxury.</comment>


Y Combinator in Forbes' top 10 incubators - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/pictures/elld45fi/10-startup-incubators-that-are-changing-the-web/ Now with new improved easier to read link: http://notepad.cc/share/xgtb1nKPh4 <comment><USER3> Y Combinator Mountain View, Calif.

Paul Graham, an influential coder with a PhD from Harvard, started Y Combinator in 2005. Graham's claim to fame: selling his software company Viaweb to Yahoo! for $49 million in 1998. In the six years since its inception, Y Combinator has helped launch over 300 technology companies. Notable graduates include Dropbox, a file hosting company reportedly valued at $4 billion, and Airbnb, a booking service for short-term stays at private residences. With the help of veteran Silicon Valley investors Ron Conway and Yuri Milner, every Y Combinator company now receives an investment of $150,000 in convertible debt upon entering the program.

TechStars National

Started by David Cohen, Brad Feld, David Brown, and Jared Polis in 2006, TechStars operates intensive 12-week mentorship programs in five different cities in the United States. Its founders attract an average of nearly $1 million in funding following acceptance into the program. The fund recently released the Unified Seed Accelerator Application allowing prospective entrepreneurs to submit one form to a network of 19 participating incubator programs.

Excelerate Labs Chicago, Il.

Sam Yagan and Troy Henikoff know how to build companies. IAC acquired Yagan's OkCupid for $50 million in 2010 while Henikoff sold his SurePayroll for $115 million in 2011. Together they run Excelerate Labs, a 13-week summer program for startups. Companies receive a $25,000 seed investment in return for 6% in equity. New World Ventures, a local venture capital firm, offers each startup an additional $50,000 in convertible debt. Sessions culminate in "Demo Day" where companies pitch to a room of over 200 investors at the House of Blues music venue in Chicago.

500 Startups Mountain View, Calif.

A longtime fixture of Silicon Valley, angel investor Dave McClure houses both a seed fund and a startup accelerator under the 500 Startups brand. The accelerator, begun in 2010, invests $50,000 in each accepted company. Companies in the current program include Fitocracy, a website that turns workout statistics into a social game, and Forrst, an online community for software developers. One major perk: access to an international network of 160 expert mentors. (For more on McClure's seed fund, check out Road Warrior.)

Capital Factory Austin, Tex.

Capital Factory likes the number 20. Startups accepted into the program receive a $20,000 investment, another $20,000 worth of perks (think legal and web-hosting services) and round-the-clock access to 20 mentors. In return, Capital Factory gets a 5% equity stake in each company. Founder Joshua Baer co-teaches "One Semester Startup", an entrepreneurship course at the University of Texas in Austin.

DreamIt Ventures Philadelphia, Penn.

Founded by Steven Welch, Michael Levinson, and David Bookspan in 2007, DreamIt Ventures claims such notable alumni as SCVNGR, a location-based gaming company with over 2 million users, and SeatGeek, a popular search engine for event tickets. The incubator puts up $5,000 for each company, and another $5,000 for each co-founder. It takes a 6% equity stake in return. DreamIt also works with Comcast Ventures to run the Minority Entrepreneur Accelerator Program (MEAP), which funds and mentors minority-owned startups.

Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator New York City

ERA is the new kid on the tech block. Startups get a $25,000 investment and spend three months at ERA headquarters in Times Square. Recent grad Public Stuff, a software company that helps cities and buildings manage complaints, counts the Burj Khalifa – the tallest building in the world – as one of its clients. One unique perk: American Airlines gives each ERA company 10,000 travel points, good enough for five round-trip domestic flights.

I/O Ventures San Francisco, Calif.

Offers a co-working space, an accelerator program, and a coffee shop for startups---all under one roof. Founders include veterans of MySpace and BitTorrent. One graduate, damntheradio, which sets up Facebook fan pages, sold to FanBridge, an online fan management service for musicians, for an undisclosed sum in January 2011.

Tech Wilcatters Dallas, Tex.

Tech Wildcatters brings the incubator trend to a city better known for oil wells than open-source software. Founder Jon Feld sold his Navigator Systems to Hitachi Consulting in 2006 for an undisclosed amount. As part of the TechStars network, Tech Wildcatters accepts the Unified Seed Accelerators Application.

AngelPad San Francisco, Calif.

Founded by a team of former Google execs, AngelPad has launched a total of 37 startups in just under two years. In addition to a $20,000 equity investment, AngelPad companies can get up to $100,000 in convertible debt from two undisclosed venture capital firms. The Fall 2011 session received 2000 applications for 15 slots.

</comment><comment><USER4> The incubators so you don't have to click through:

Y Combinator (Mountain View, Calif.)

TechStars (National)

Excelerate Labs (Chicago, Il.)

500 Startups (Mountain View, Calif.)

Capital Factory (Austin, Tex.)

DreamIt Ventures (Philadelphia, Penn.)

Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (New York City)

I/O Ventures (San Francisco, Calif.)

Tech Wilcatters (Dallas, Tex.)

AngelPad (San Francisco, Calif.)

</comment><comment><USER5> It doesn't seem that's a list of top incubators. Possibly top _US_ incubators, which is hardly the same thing; I'd dare say that Seedcamp, HackFwd and some other European incubators are in many ways better than half of those listed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, but seeing as it is Forbes then not so surprising

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A well deserved number one spot for YC. Warning that this is one of those articles that makes you click 10 times to see the entire top 10 list - <USER2> really turns me off so I left after the seeing the first entry.

<comment><USER7> Agreed.

Can someone submit this instead?

<http://notepad.cc/share/xgtb1nKPh4>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The title should be Y Combinator tops the Forbes Incubator list :D

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried not to sensationalize too much :)

Actually, wasn't sure they had strictly been ranked within the top 10</comment></comment>


Startup Enables Students to Outsource Schoolwork to Highly Educated Professors - <AUTHOR> http://www.techvibes.com/blog/montreal-startup-enables-students-to-outsource-schoolwork-to-highly-educated-professionals-2012-01-12#comment-409087393

<comment><USER2> There was an article concerning custom-essay writing on HN a little while ago* so this isn't particularly ground breaking for me, but it does beg the question, why commit your time and energy (startups take up a big chunk of your life for at least a few years) to something so slimy? There's obviously a need for something like this as lazy people are willing to pay but wouldn't you rather do something more meaningful?

*<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2775789>

Full Disclosure: I've gamed the school system, and have not always gotten the full power of my education. I've done this by reading book reviews, google book snippets etc to reduce reading loads--so I have been there in a sense. I just don't understand that place of wanting to create a startup around the immoral. I'm not judging, I'm just curious.

</comment><comment><USER3> One could argue that someone who succeeds using a service like this is better prepared for the 'real world' where a large portion of those in business outsource or hire consultants to accomplish anything they can't figure out, hire for, or wish to learn themselves.

Everything in moderation, and it can be a double-edged sword, but I've seen it just as likely that someone 'fails' in the real-world because they don't think outside the box to someone else helping them solve their problem.

Look at the successes of crowdspring, fiverr, odesk, and elance.

I had a HS history teacher who gave all tests as take home, open book tests. One day I was really busy with other assignments and asked a friend if he could take my paper, copy his answers, he handed it to me the next day in class, I saw answers, I handed it in.

I got a 0% on that test. Not due to cheating, but due to lack of attention: The teacher had randomly handed out different versions of the test to different kids, the questions were the same, but the order was different. My friend copied all the answers... in to the wrong questions. The teacher obviously knew what happened - but he didn't lecture me about it. He knew I'd learned enough of a lesson with the 0% grade - He was right.

To me, the lesson wasn't "Don't cheat" but was either "Check your work" or "Know what you're taking responsibility for".

</comment><comment><USER4> "UnemployedProfessors.com offers a customized, safe, reliable, and plagiarism- free service for those willing to pay to have their coursework completed."

So handing in a paper someone else wrote and passing it off as your own work is not considered plagiarism anymore? I think they really mean that it's plagiarism that's not likely to get caught, but even that is unlikely: since the writers are paid by the paper and not by the hour, there would seem to be a strong incentive for them to recycle as much of their previous work as possible. Hey, if their customers cheat, why shouldn't they?

</comment><comment><USER5> I hope there's a few professors left who don't yet claim that anyone who cheats is only cheating themselves.

</comment><comment><USER6> The business idea is dubious. The website looks just very bad. The /competition page is just flaming about others. The blog starts with a big div over the text containing a video. advertisment?

Please, up your quality a bit!

</comment><comment><USER7> I find it highly ironic that the "firm's writers are screened on the basis of their educational achievements" and are supposed to have degrees. What would that matter?

</comment><comment><USER8> "Highly Educated Professors"? I _hope_ this is a tautology. On the other hand, given existence of sites like this, I am no longer so sure...

</comment><comment><USER9> When you have an environment, where someone sees the need for a startup to sell grades, you know the system is broken. Instead of emphasizing training and preparation for the real world, the system emphasizes getting a high GPA and finishing near the top of the class. It's a shame really.</comment>


Ask HN: Mashable getting worse?  - <AUTHOR>

I used to browse through techcrunch and mashable a lot before I discovered HN. I have slowly since then started to hate mashable. Look at these 2 articles mashable posted in the last 2 days:
http://mashable.com/2009/08/21/palm-pre-iphone-ad/
a complete misrepresentation of facts with an eye catching headline to gain traction
and than this is just plain simple ridiculous for a tech blog to post
http://mashable.com/2009/08/22/embarrassing-facebook/
a poor woman account probably got hacked or she was drunk enough to post it as her status, but bringing it to everyone's attention is just unethical.. IMHO.
Now, I dont read any article on mashable or techcrunch before I read user comments on that article on HN. What do you guys do? <comment><USER2> Thanks for the comments. I'll just add a few of my thoughts:

1\. If we misinterpret facts, please call us out in the comments or by emailing one of us (email@example.com in my case). We strive for accuracy, period.

2\. We're more than just a tech blog. We're also a social media blog, and we're not only interested in the technologies that make social media possible, but in its effect on society in general, the good and the bad. Social media and web technology has had such a profound impact on privacy and culture, and we're interested in covering that.

3\. The image you refer to is already becoming viral. Our goal's to try to sort fact from fiction because we have a platform and an audience to do that. We never write with the intention to harm or embarrass anyone.

4\. I think GVRV has it right: we do have a different, broader demographic than many other blogs. I tend to write my articles so that everyone can understand them, not just technical or entrepreneurial minds. I do write about programming and entrepreneurship when I can though, and love reviewing startups.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think Mashable is for people who know what they're doing. It's very good at getting pageviews -- the "Number Adjective Noun You Can Buzzword Buzzword Buzzword" formula kicks ass. My only problem with them is how oversaturated they are -- whenever there's an inane trending topic on Twitter, I know it's either related to sports, reality TV, or Mashable.

</comment><comment><USER4> I started reading Mashable when it launched. I recently deleted Mashable from my feed reader. It's a completely different site than it once was. I have no problem with that, I just don't have any use for it anymore.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't like mashable anymore...IMHO its becoming nothing more than a big advertisement for twitter.

</comment><comment><USER6> Personally I don't think Mashable is getting worse, it's just concentrating on a different demographic : people who are tech savvy but not hackers/founders. It has helped them find an audience and by some estimates it's bigger than TC.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yeah, TechCrunch is getting like this too, so I've stopped reading both of them. Nothing really wrong with that, just not what I want to read. Mostly for me it's now HN for tech and VentureBeat for funding related stuff. Oh well, things change and you can always vote with your feet (or eyes in this case I suppose).

</comment><comment><USER8> I removed mashable from my rss reader a couple months ago. Endless inane articles about twitter. Like a junkie rambling on about the wonders of his new found drug.

</comment><comment><USER9> I kind of admire Mashable because one could argue that they have in fact done what every business hopes to do - start niche and then grow to serve a mainstream market/audience. There is however always a risk that in doing so you alienate the very audience you initially set-up to serve. But if as a business you are comfortable with that then that's ok.

I do feel however that because of its undeniable success on Twitter, Mashable tends to show a little bit of bias in favour of Twitter and sometimes against Twitter's biggest rival Facebook - just my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER10> That Facebook story isn't unethical. Turns out her account and others have been hacked. It was a top story on HN today too. Hope that reassures you.

</comment><comment><USER11> _Now, I dont read any article on mashable or techcrunch before I read user comments on that article on HN._

I am guessing everybody has sites that fall into the category of "check HN comments first, and only then follow the link". I also do that depending on the title.

</comment><comment><USER12> I setup a filter to block the word "twitter" from Mashable in my RSS reader months ago.

</comment><comment><USER13> mashable is usually the last tech blog i read because the content is not too helpful and most of it is just cliche.

For more knowledgeable readers mashable just doesn't go deep enough.</comment>


Can someone make Paul Graham's essays into an audio book? - <AUTHOR> Walking around campus takes about 15 minutes. Would be perfect to listen to a Paul Graham essay each day. Please don't complain that I am lazy - I tend to remember certain things much better through hearing. <comment><USER2> Have you tried text to speech? - that might be a quick compromise. A very quick Google found [http://www.yakitome.com./tts/text_to_speech](http://www.yakitome.com./tts/text_to_speech)

</comment><comment><USER3> What am I missing here? At first (and third) glance, this seems pedantic, unthinking, and yes, lazy. In the time it took you to think of this idea and write this post, you could've recorded half of one into your phone's voice memo thing, couldn't you? Then you'd have it twice - once while you recorded it and once when you listened to it.

Besides, there is copyright to be concerned with - maybe pg doesn't want some random 3rd party releasing his works in any format. Who knows - maybe behind the scenes he's already had this idea, has hired a VO actor, and is doing it already.

<comment><USER3> I'd love to hear from anyone who has the courage to explain their downvote. Was it the copyright comment? I know how the teens and 20-somethings here love to hate on copyright so that's my guess. Or was it the calling the guy out for even asking the question? Hell, I don't care which I'd just like to hear from someone what it was. It won't likely change my thoughts but it seems childish to vote down something just b/c you disagree. I'm assuming that's what has happened here and I'm curious to see if anyone has the courage to say, "I voted it down and here's why."

<comment><USER4> Because it's just a stupid response. It's like someone saying "I could really use a SAAS that does [X]" and you going "You're so lazy, what a stupid question". I know we're all hackers here and we're supposed to just magically obtain the time, means and expertise to create any product we desire.

Obviously going onto a forum and asking people to steal/repurpose/redistribute someone else's work is a poor idea, but it's very possible OP was looking for someone to say "they already have them here [link]" or "hey, I'm a voice actor, if PG says it's ok that would be an awesome project" or something.

I think just scolding the guy and calling him lazy was a poor approach, and although I can't and didn't down vote you, I thought I would explain my reasoning.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How did you find your ideal job? - <AUTHOR>

I'll be graduating from an American University next semester, and I'm having a little trouble figuring out what jobs to apply for. Over the years I've worked on projects that involved programming, hardware prototyping, machine learning, and creating art installations, and I've learned a lot. I would like to find a job that allows me to at least practice all these skills. Am I deluded to think that there's a job out there that would allow me to utilize most of the skills I've learned, and learn new diverse ones? P.S. While I'm moderately interested in startups, they would not be a good fit for me right now, because I would need a company willing to sponsor a work visa for an international student. Please feel free to share your thoughts, I appreciate any and all feedback. <comment><USER2> > Am I deluded to think that there's a job out there that would allow me to > utilize most of the skills I've learned, and learn new diverse ones?

I currently am in such a job. I'm doing a very diverse range of things, from schematic and layout design to web programming (although I do the latter rather dreadfully). It is a fairly large company and not my ideal job, precisely because it is in a large company, where everything is slow and bloated. An guy I used to work with a another company was employed here; he recommended me to his boss when he heard they needed someone with my skills, they called me for a quick discussion and offered me the job.

I also had a similar job in a startup company a while back. It really was my ideal job. Bad business decisions strangled it after about two years, unfortunately. I landed that one via the boring route -- job ad on a website. Applied, went to interview, got the job.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are jobs that let you use multiple skills. I do a wide range of tasks because of my skillset, though I was hired to do only one of those things. It was just a natural progression of the job and taking on new responsibilities.

One framework I think is helpful is this: [http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/ask-ramit-how- do-y...](http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/ask-ramit-how-do-you- choose-one-passion/)

Talking with people about what a job actually entails, versus what the job posting says it does, seems really obvious when you say it, but sometimes obvious things need to be said. During my last job search I actually talked with people on my options, and found it extremely insightful between what I thought the job was and what it actually is.

</comment><comment><USER4> I very highly recommend contracting with a well-established company to attain the work visa, and freelancing with a few different companies to gain experience and perspective before signing on with a company.

I'd highly recommend against working for a company that doesn't value a subset of your skills more highly than the others; a somewhat specialized position will pay better.

I would also highly recommend that you work for a company (or many companies) with vision, mission, and values that you connect with strongly.

<comment><USER5> "I would also highly recommend that you work for a company (or many companies) with vision, mission, and values that you connect with strongly."

This statement is extremely important. You can walk through hell if you're in good company. If you end up working with on great technology with people you can't stand, you will not make it through your job. The opposite will generally lead to your work environment being a lot healthier for you.</comment></comment>


Facebook's Quest to Build an Artificial Brain Depends on Yann LeCun - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/08/deep-learning-yann-lecun/?

<comment><USER2> Lecun's work on LeNet was pioneering, and basically set the template for deep learning. However, it's not as simple as him being "right all along"; incremental advances in neural net architectures, a lot of developments in stochastic gradient methods, and orders-of-magnitude improvements in hardware and data availability have been what made deep learning as powerful as it is today.

The main point is that skeptics in the 2000's were basically right about neural nets being of limited use, but other technologies advanced and broke down the barriers.

Lecun's original convolutional nets in 1998 were run on the then-gigantic dataset of 60,000 images. Consider that a company like Facebook can provide billions of images with some form of tagging, and you see the different world we live in.

<comment><USER3> I don't think its fair, or sincere, for you to use past tense to describe anyone's current work.

<comment><USER2> I'm calling his work on LeNet in 1998 pioneering. I'm not trying to disparage his current work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd love to learn more about AI. What are some good resources to start learning?

<comment><USER5> The pricey but standard recommendation would be buying and working through "Artificial Intelligence - A Modern Approach". It's one of my favourite IT books :)

There's a pretty fun/good course on one of the free MOOCs that pretty much follows the book and uses pacman as an example. It uses Python. It's the course that has a cute robot on the slides :) Edit (found it, this one): [https://www.edx.org/course/uc-berkeleyx/uc-berkeleyx- cs188-1...](https://www.edx.org/course/uc-berkeleyx/uc-berkeleyx- cs188-1x-artificial-579)

Edit2: There's also this one but it's not the one I'm thinking of (it's also good though, Norvig is one of the authors of AI-AMA): [https://www.udacity.com/course/cs271](https://www.udacity.com/course/cs271)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Most likely you and your kids are gonna be wiped out by intellegent machines just in a few decades.

<comment><USER7> Probably, but it's unlikely to be from convolutional neural networks.</comment></comment>


Show HN: HotelSaver – Save money on your existing hotel reservations - <AUTHOR> https://www.hotelsaver.io

<comment><USER2> I think this is a great idea, and it would be a no-brainer for me to pay if you only charged when you save me money.

I think customers (thinking of myself) have a huge aversion to paying money for nothing, in the event there isn't a better deal. If there's any chance I am going to pay for a service that returns no value, I am going to be hesitant.

Part of the problem is I didn't see any "success rate" metric, so I don't know what my chances are of saving money. If you knew it was almost 100% given enough days before the trip - then you could even give someone a money-back guarantee, which would kill the "pay money for nothing" objection as well.

<comment><USER3> I recently read a discussion of evaluating unsolicited vendor proposals that are supposed to save you money, by making the vendor take on the risk.

For example, say a company promises that by using their product, you'll save $500 per month, for an initial investment of $5,000. Only take them up if they're willing to front the initial cost and pay themselves back with the savings, or at the very least guarantee the savings.

This will quickly show you how much confidence the vender hasin their claims of savings.

HotelSaver's pricing model screams, "We're not confident we can offer you any savings."

If you're not confident enough in your skills or business model to risk $20 worth of effort on my behalf, why should I be confident enough to risk $20 on your skills and business model?

My guess is that there's a wide variation in available savings, depending on things like how far in advance the hotel is booked, where it's booked, what hotel/chain the booking is at. While you might need some manual effort to find the best deal possible, I'll bet you could filter out "good" vs. "bad" prospects pretty quickly in a completely automated manner.

For example, someone submits a reservation that's 40% below average rates for a stay in a week, at a hotel that doesn't typically price match? It should be possible to develop an automated system that says, "Sorry, we can't offer any savings on this reservation." Your staff doesn't spend any time, and your customer doesn't spend any money.

Someone on the other hand submits a reservation at 10% above average rates at a hotel in 4 months? You can fairly safely take that bet and save them some money.

Find a pricing model that lets you do this. Maybe it's a percentage of the savings, maybe a flat-fee that's refunded if you can't save them more than the fee. Maybe it's something else. Either way, you need to show your customers that you're confident in your ability to save them money.

Another great service would be automated re-booking. Partner with a service like FancyHands, so that you can call and request price-matches/adjustments for your customers. For people like me that hate picking up the phone, it'd be a huge benefit. It would also let you verify/confirm the savings.

<comment><USER4> I think your idea is fine for HotelSaver, but your example, $500 per month savings on $5,000 initial investment, is flawed. When you flip the script around, it's not just the vendor's confidence in your savings, but now the vendor takes on the following risks:

\- Risk of nonpayment because of the client

\- Risk of nonpayment because the client disputes that the saving is a result of the product

\- Payment is delayed until claims can be verified

\- Payment can be further delayed because of the client

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You should definitely charge a percentage of the amount saved instead of a flat, non-refundable fee. You have created value here but very few people are going to use it if they have to risk $20 up front. I have killed a few of my own otherwise viable projects with unnecessarily restrictive revenue models, and that's the worst kind of death because it is entirely preventable.

</comment><comment><USER6> I, too, will gladly pay $20 success fee, but not if you cannot find me a better deal.

On a separate question, where do you get the hotel inventory and pricing data from? I only ask because you had mentioned that this was a small side project. Which makes me think there are structured data sources for hotel data.

Thanks.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks guys for all the feedback. Didn't want associate this with a specific comment but here is what we're hearing:

* Look at how to make this a risk free opportunity, money back guarantee, etc.

* Play with pricing, percentage of amount saved vs flat fee. Our biggest worry with that is trying to get someone to pay later on. As right now we aren't rebooking it, if we sent you an alert "go rebook on XYZ.com and save 500 bucks" we have no way to force you to rebook or verify if you actually got the deal we found.

We'll definitely be taking in all the feedback here and hopefully trying to work it all into the next version of this.

</comment><comment><USER7> $20 to see if you might be able to save me money? You are joking. No way I'd pay this unless I knew you could do it, and in 30 seconds of looking you didn't convince me. Shut the front door.

</comment><comment><USER8> Too many exclamation points in the copy, especially when apologizing for taking $20 from a customer without promising they'll get anything out of it.

</comment><comment><USER9> The only way I would pay a fixed price without guarantee of savings is if it were pitched as a monthly or yearly subscription, and then I just run all my reservations through it.

<comment><USER2> Yeah that might work for me as well. The only problem I would have with that is that it's more loosely tied to customer success - so there's a chance people won't get enough value out of the service. By just charging per reservation, they sidestep that possibility and perfectly extract more money out of those that get more value.

<comment><USER9> Maybe some plan tiers based on number of reservations processed? I can't see myself paying anywhere near $20 each on average though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Tingo.com does the same thing but doesn't have a $20 fee

<comment><AUTHOR> We saw this before, but we're not tied to a specific data source or affiliation. We're hoping that by having a broader range of sources, we'll be able to find more savings.

Also - I haven't used Tingo.com specifically in the past, but I haven't had much success in sites which say "book with us and if others book lower you can get a refund." Have you had good experiences with Tingo?

<comment><USER10> I've only used them once because I don't travel much but I got $63.68 back on my trip to Portland.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You may want to look at how CruiseFish.net does their revenue model... They have an up-front fee, but it is very low relative to the price for the tracked cruise reservation. That takes a lot of the sting out of the 'You have to pay up front and you might not actually hear about a lower rate'. They also use their forum to provide 'evidence' that their site works for its users.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a small side project I made after finding I could make hotel reservations far in advanced and then get price matches or resubmit new ones if the prices fell. Figured there must be others who would like to save money on their reservations and threw together this MVP.

Let me know what you think and any feedback you have.

<comment><USER12> "We spend the time and energy searching all over the web for cheaper reservations for you", are you really spending time on searching things _manually_? If so, I wouldn't pay anything for such a service, because you may apparently go on holiday and don't care about my reservation. If all is automatic, then I could go for it. However, then "spending time and energy" is a lie.

I believe anyone should be able to submit their reservation, along with credit card details. If you do find the cheaper rate somewhere, you charge them at that point and present with the offer.

BTW, A typo: we can try to _ehysave_ you money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Typo fixed, thanks!

As for the automatic it is partially automatic. As we're gauging interest right now we haven't fully automated it.

For the pricing we're looking into different options such as taking only a %'d of amount saved, only charging if we save you money, etc. We'll be doing some testing in the very near future on different pricing models.

<comment><USER13> Congrats on shipping. :) As others have mentioned, I was turned off by the pricing model. Your idea of taking a % of amount saved, or charging me after you've achieved savings would be much more palatable.

That said, if you have the data for it, it would be awesome to show some proof that this is a widespread thing - that prices do fluctuate regularly and there are these drops in price people can take advantage of - if they are using your service. I think that would help your case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is an awesome concept- I always find myself trying to get the best deals. The biggest issue for me is the upfront fee. A percentage of final savings would be far preferable.

</comment><comment><USER15> Most of my reservations are just for a single night, so $20 each isn't worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER16> Do I understand correctly that there is no refund if a cheaper rate is not found? IMO this sounds really shady.</comment>


The Original Java Whitepaper - <AUTHOR> http://java.sun.com/docs/white/langenv/

<comment><USER2> Strange, my first edition Java in a Nutshell was published February 1996, three months earlier.</comment>


Man (Re)Builds Mexican Island Paradise on 250,000 Recycled Floating Bottles - <AUTHOR> http://ecoble.com/2007/11/18/250000-bottles-amazing-recycled-mexican-island-paradise/

<comment><USER2> I met this guy Richie in Tulum in 2005, just after hurricane Gilberto tore up his first island. He plays guitar. His plan to rebuild his island was to charge admission. I imagine that's how he's paying for it, but he started by hand. From the video, sounds like the Mexican government wants a piece of the tourism action, so sounds like Richie wants to teach his island to travel.

</comment><comment><USER3> That island was washed ashore by a hurricane in 2005 (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_Island>). He has since built a second island. More info here: <http://www.spiralislanders.com/>

<comment><USER4> On the spiralislanders.com site:

"First tour group... when we arrived we were blown away!"

Made me chuckle, anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very cool, short video. This guy has the right idea, esp. since the housing market is collapsing and lending is going to get really tight, not to mention the low environmental footprint of this "island."

One thing I wish they had asked him, though. What happens when the bottles/nets begin to deteriorate? (Does he replace bottles on a revolving basis?)

<comment><USER6> Plastics degrade into smaller plastic particles. Assuming the land mass above them is sufficiently rough to entangle rising particles, the degraded material would still provide buoyancy, and simply contribute to the underlayer of the island.

<comment><USER7> Plastic is heavier than water; are you suggesting that plastic bottles degrade into smaller plastic bottles?

<comment><USER8> That would be so cute!!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Where does he have the money to do this from? It must be quite expensive. Does he work in insurance or something, and this is his hobby?

<comment><USER10> The video says he moved to Mexico and started collecting bottles for cash. I imagine that at first he wanted a super-simple lifestyle and then decided that this would make a great hobby.

I don't think he has much money but he has a lot of time and the skills (he was a carpenter) to make it happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ah, so that's why those homeless people keep stealing bottles out of my trash.

</comment><comment><USER10> What I want to know is this:

What kind of internet speeds does he get on his island?</comment>


Ask HN: Should I offer to work for a free month to prove my worth at startup? - <AUTHOR> I perform okay in interviews but not stellar and was curious if current or past founders here on HN would consider allowing someone to do a "trial" month or two of free work to let a promising candidate prove their worth before negotiating a full-time employment / contract agreement.
I understand if this is entirely off base, but curious if it's another potential avenue to enter a startup or show your dedication and skills outside of an on-site interview or take-home challenge?
EDIT
Seems like the overwhelming consensus is NO
For some context, I have a few years of professional experience under my belt after graduating with a CS degree.
Have 2+ years of experience at early stage startups from college.  Also took some time off in college to work in the bay area. <comment><USER2> NO. NEVER work for free. You demonstrate you don't value yourself. Do a take home test(max a few hours) but no free trials. Let alone a month. You probably don't want to work in place that even would consider doing that, it really shows that they would value some money way more than your worth as a person.

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it!

Thanks for the feedback. Consensus seems solidly in the direction of NO.

If they were on the fence, could I offer to negotiate a trial month with pay? I.E. enough to break even but with an understanding I'd walk away if low- balled later?

<comment><USER2> Eh, I have heard of people asking for a remunerated week trial (40 hours, could be spread over more weeks if the candidate is working another job) personally not a fan but I guess it could work. One month is a lot of effort and you really risk being used for low paid work and then being discarded.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

As someone who's planning on leaving a FAANG that starts with A and ends with N/M/R ;)

I'm more than aware of what it's like to be brazenly mismanaged and taken advantage of. Not really where I wanted this thread to go, but has to do with being involved as a NCG at a company recently acquired by aforementioned FAANG.

<comment><USER2> If you have worked in a FAANG, chances are, you won't have a problem finding employment in another company. My suggestion is to always value yourself, and if you see that a company doesn't value yourself a you do, find another company. There are many and we can usually get to pick one that fits well. Also, I suggest not beating yourself up if an interview doesn't well, they can be really hit or miss and I don't think they often really evaluate you but rather they evaluate how you would fit in that team, which is VERY different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Absolutely not. They'll get too used to you not getting paid. Please seek appropriate compensation, and understand that most interview processes have no way to find your true future productivity so just game the interviews and see if the company is a fit for yourself after getting hired.

</comment><comment><USER4> How does working for free prove your value? It proves that you work for free, so you value your work at $0. If anything you could work on a contract basis at an hourly or daily rate on a short project and at the end of that period they could choose to hire or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea was to limit the risk of hiring someone like me who might not be as experienced as they were hoping - by offering to show them what my velocity / ability was like actually doing work for them.

I might be totally off-base and naive about this - totally willing to be called out / corrected :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hard No. Don't be a fool. Just spend some time and invest in doing leetcode for that month or 2 and you'll be better off than working for that cheap ass startup

</comment><comment><USER6> Working for money is already a huge tradeoff, but working for free ... I wouldn't even imagine it.

That's why there are trial periods: both sides can stop at any point for any reasons, but you still get compensated for your time.

</comment><comment><USER7> No. The answer to the problem may be to get a 3-month contract, with option for them to hire you at the end of it. But work for free? No.

</comment><comment><USER8> Never work for free. If a startup is asking you to do that, don't waste your time with them.

/thread.

</comment><comment><USER5> Also what the name of the startup :) hahaha

<comment><USER8> Yes! Name and shame.</comment></comment>


Apture and Kiw.is = URL shortening with a twist – Blog – Apture.com - <AUTHOR> http://blog.apture.com/2009/07/apture-and-kiwis-url-shortening-with-a-twist/ <comment><USER2> My reaction to redirect pages is always the same: "What? Oh." _finds and clicks the skip ad button_. So I don't really understand why sites bother with them.

Does anyone know of any metrics as to what percentage of the time that "skip" link is clicked? Does anyone know of any eyeball tracking studies to see how often people look immediately top right for that link?

I just can't believe those landing pages are of much value, but then I doubt I'm a typical user.

<comment><USER3> Those are all good points and questions.

I think it also relies on the actual message in the content of the page. If that content is actually good, people will want to look at it. The percentage that the content is good? That's the question. Probably not too many.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great to see Apture and Kiw.is coming together. Huge fan of both products.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Apture is actually really powerful and adds a lot to content (even automatically). I played with it at <http://www.apture.com/create/> before implementing it into Kiwis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here's the example link from the post: <http://kiw.is/5q>

</comment><comment><USER5> Yay link-jacking?

I'll send a memo to my squad of social media engine search optimization experts.

<comment><USER3> not link jacking, it's putting a message before the redirect. You're still redirected to the original page. One way to think of it is a reverse twitter, instead of a message with a link, it's a link then a message.

<comment><USER5> It seems you work on Kiw.is so I'm not sure if I should even try to articulate why I find your product to be annoying.

<comment><USER3> It's unfortunate that you'd like to tell us what annoys you, rather than being constructively supportive. Hacker News is a community where hackers get together and support one another, being blunt about feedback is one. Talking about personal annoyances does not fit in to what this community is all about.

I'm thinking I'm misunderstanding you, but if you have any feedback, we'd love to hear it. If it just plain annoys you, that's fine as well. If you don't mean it personally, I won't take it that way.

<comment><USER6> Blunt? Ok.

It's bad for users.

<comment><USER3> What kind of users? Do you have more feedback on that end? Thanks!

<comment><USER6> Are you serious?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> you think a 10 second holding page is good?

<comment><USER3> if it has good content. it would suck to get spammers or advertisers using it only, similar to following a Twitter user who's just spamming. But then there are the twitter accounts you like. It definitely can't mitigate all awful content. You're also getting these links from people you know hopefully.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a web framework that is focused on stability and LTS? - <AUTHOR> If you were to build a web application that should last the next 10-15 years, what technologies would you choose? <comment><USER2> I think any of the major frameworks (React, Angular, Vue) would be a safe bet. They are and will be well maintained and documented.

Of course it also depends on what you're building: if it's simple you could go for old school technologies like jQuery and <script> tags. All those things will still work in 10-15 years time. (generally functionalities are only added to the web, not removed, which means websites from the 90's should still work on modern day browsers)

I'm personally a React developer and I like that over the last couple of years there have been only a few (and very minor) breaking changes. Upgrading React on any project has not caused me any troubles, which is great.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think I'd care much about the tech.

What the web will look like in 10 years is completely unknown. What I would concentrate on is making sure the requirements, APIs and schemas are as solid as possible. In 10 years time if you decide modern web dev is better than what you built a decade ago then moving the app to a new platform will be _much_ simpler if you _KNOW_ what the app does, what shape the data has to be, what the product owner actually needed, and how to make things backwards compatible.

</comment><comment><USER4> PHP</comment>


Ask HN: What helps you to be productive? - <AUTHOR> Hello guys, I want to little update my life. Sometime I feel procrastination and I'm exhausted because of it. How do you deal with such a condition? <comment><USER2> For some it may help to understand the root cause of procrastination, but that in itself can lead to procrastination by trying to understand...procrastination. So don't.

First off, don't reward yourself. What I mean by this is don't make a good cup of coffee to settle in and get the work done. Start the work with a set timer, say 15 to 30 minutes. Once the timer goes off, then get the coffee. You may find yourself in a groove and go past the time. This is good. Second, remove your distractions. This is easy to say, but it is much harder to achieve. Turn the phone off, lock off the social media. Set yourself up with a schedule to check your email. Turn off notifications.

Sounds help, but don't let the need to find the right one turn into procrastination. I like [http://rainycafe.com/](http://rainycafe.com/) as it drowns out office noise, or at least mutes it a little. Here is an interesting article on this topic: [https://medium.com/life-learning/how-music-affects- your-prod...](https://medium.com/life-learning/how-music-affects-your- productivity-42a6dfa6fdfe#.7gr18jnhe)

Curious to see what others put here. This will be my procrastination today :)

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you, I'll try :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It took me a long time to realize that procrastination, not work, is what's been draining me. The Pomodoro Technique is what really brought it to light: I noticed that on days when I complete 6+ pomodoros (25-minute work sessions) I'm energized to hack on stuff when I get home; when I only get 4 or fewer done, it's a struggle.

I use a little desktop application [0] that pops up whenever a work session or break is finished. Just that little prod is usually enough motivation to switch before I start feeling worn out.

[0] Tomighty ([http://www.tomighty.org/](http://www.tomighty.org/))

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much! I heard good reviews about Pomodoro Technique, I'll try it absolutely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find the best way to fight it is I try to do at least one thing per day towards my work, no matter how small. This usually puts me into a mental state where I make lots of progress. I wish I had also taken this tactic in high school and college. I remember usually delaying the start of assignments until the last minute. Simply starting is the most difficult part for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, usually, I try to do something. Thank you!</comment></comment>