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epi0Bauqu
New productivity tool launches Friday. Thoughts and feature requests?
palish
The idea aside, deleting my stuff would be incredibly annoying. Say the default is a day, which I assume it is from the write up. There are a ton of valid reasons I might miss a day, or even a week, e.g. medical reasons. And to come back and have my stuff deleted! Man, I don't know what else to say about that except I don't like it.
Hiya! Straight to what this tool can do for you: It will help you accomplish something every single day.Fill in the blank, "I'm going to _____ every day." Thinking of something? Great! Now go out there and do it, then return to the tool and click "I did it today!" You'll be congratulated and given the opportunity to write about your experience and post a picture.At that point, the picture becomes a link in your productivity chain. After you've formed a few links in the chain, I bet you won't want to stop. But if you do stop and miss a day, the entire chain breaks and everything is deleted.Now, if you just want to use the tool for just that, all by your lonesome, that's just fine. But we've included a social aspect to it as well. Whenever another person is doing the same thing as you, each one of your chain links will be submitted to a centralized place where you'll be able to explore and upvote others' chain links and post comments to everyone. On the front page, you'll see the top 20 popular chains and the fastest growing chains for today, as well as the top comments and featured users. Next to each chain is a plus sign that, when clicked, will enable you to do that same thing each day, too. You can also explore and find interesting chains and users.The time interval is adjustable. You can do something every day, weekday, weekend or week.The project was inspired by this post: http://lifehacker.com/software/motivation/jerry-seinfelds-pr... We're launching on Friday at 10PM CST. Everyone who registers in the first hour will start with 50 karma points, so bring a friend! If you have any feature requests, just let us know and they'll be waiting for you at launch.Common wisdom is that it's dangerous to let you all in on our secret before we're out there, but we wanted to give you the opportunity to make this tool better in your eyes.Thanks for your critique guys!Update: First feature request will be implemented for you: A vacation switch that you can toggle on and off. If it's on, your chains are frozen and won't be deleted.
3
6
2007-08-22 21:35:04 UTC
45,379
45,366
pg
Silicon Valley faces Web startup glut
nickb
in March 2006.
null
1
4
2007-08-22 21:53:50 UTC
45,381
45,355
myoung8
Web-Site Ideas from College Students (Humor, to lighten your rough day)
transburgh
the sad thing is that i have heard numerous people propose a "Facebook, just for college students."
null
1
3
2007-08-22 21:59:05 UTC
45,383
45,323
pg
The Character Traits for an Entrepreneur
ahsonwardak
From the data we have so far (which is starting to be a lot) the best predictor of success is determination. Then flexibility, intelligence, sense of design.
I know there's much written about being a great leader and how-to posts on starting a company, but I'm more interested in those innate characteristics of a startup founder. Founders at Work had many great interviews, but I'm looking for the synthesis here of all the successful webpreneurs.
0
6
2007-08-22 22:03:13 UTC
45,385
45,374
vlad
New productivity tool launches Friday. Thoughts and feature requests?
palish
The idea certainly works! Here's a competitor:http://everydaysystems.com/habitcal/
Hiya! Straight to what this tool can do for you: It will help you accomplish something every single day.Fill in the blank, "I'm going to _____ every day." Thinking of something? Great! Now go out there and do it, then return to the tool and click "I did it today!" You'll be congratulated and given the opportunity to write about your experience and post a picture.At that point, the picture becomes a link in your productivity chain. After you've formed a few links in the chain, I bet you won't want to stop. But if you do stop and miss a day, the entire chain breaks and everything is deleted.Now, if you just want to use the tool for just that, all by your lonesome, that's just fine. But we've included a social aspect to it as well. Whenever another person is doing the same thing as you, each one of your chain links will be submitted to a centralized place where you'll be able to explore and upvote others' chain links and post comments to everyone. On the front page, you'll see the top 20 popular chains and the fastest growing chains for today, as well as the top comments and featured users. Next to each chain is a plus sign that, when clicked, will enable you to do that same thing each day, too. You can also explore and find interesting chains and users.The time interval is adjustable. You can do something every day, weekday, weekend or week.The project was inspired by this post: http://lifehacker.com/software/motivation/jerry-seinfelds-pr... We're launching on Friday at 10PM CST. Everyone who registers in the first hour will start with 50 karma points, so bring a friend! If you have any feature requests, just let us know and they'll be waiting for you at launch.Common wisdom is that it's dangerous to let you all in on our secret before we're out there, but we wanted to give you the opportunity to make this tool better in your eyes.Thanks for your critique guys!Update: First feature request will be implemented for you: A vacation switch that you can toggle on and off. If it's on, your chains are frozen and won't be deleted.
2
6
2007-08-22 22:12:21 UTC
45,387
45,281
rokhayakebe
Ask pg.news.yc: How do acquisition prices get settled?
aswanson
Acquisition 101. Thou Shall Not Give A Price First 102. Thou Shall Triple Any Offer 103. Thou Shall End Up With Double What They Offer
For instance, PG, how did Viaweb and Yahoo agree on a sale price? Arbitration by investment bankers, the board, etc? What is the process? How can you trust the negotiators to work in your best interest?
4
23
2007-08-22 22:13:32 UTC
45,389
45,386
Xichekolas
The Skinny on Dry Loop DSL with AT&T
Xichekolas
Not trying to spam my blog or anything (I haven't made a cent yet off it anyway), but I am fed up with AT&T misleading people so I thought I'd tell others what I found out about this.
null
0
2
2007-08-22 22:14:45 UTC
45,391
45,374
kirubakaran
New productivity tool launches Friday. Thoughts and feature requests?
palish
I use: http://smarterfitter.com/chain for the same purpose. I like the social aspect of your idea though.
Hiya! Straight to what this tool can do for you: It will help you accomplish something every single day.Fill in the blank, "I'm going to _____ every day." Thinking of something? Great! Now go out there and do it, then return to the tool and click "I did it today!" You'll be congratulated and given the opportunity to write about your experience and post a picture.At that point, the picture becomes a link in your productivity chain. After you've formed a few links in the chain, I bet you won't want to stop. But if you do stop and miss a day, the entire chain breaks and everything is deleted.Now, if you just want to use the tool for just that, all by your lonesome, that's just fine. But we've included a social aspect to it as well. Whenever another person is doing the same thing as you, each one of your chain links will be submitted to a centralized place where you'll be able to explore and upvote others' chain links and post comments to everyone. On the front page, you'll see the top 20 popular chains and the fastest growing chains for today, as well as the top comments and featured users. Next to each chain is a plus sign that, when clicked, will enable you to do that same thing each day, too. You can also explore and find interesting chains and users.The time interval is adjustable. You can do something every day, weekday, weekend or week.The project was inspired by this post: http://lifehacker.com/software/motivation/jerry-seinfelds-pr... We're launching on Friday at 10PM CST. Everyone who registers in the first hour will start with 50 karma points, so bring a friend! If you have any feature requests, just let us know and they'll be waiting for you at launch.Common wisdom is that it's dangerous to let you all in on our secret before we're out there, but we wanted to give you the opportunity to make this tool better in your eyes.Thanks for your critique guys!Update: First feature request will be implemented for you: A vacation switch that you can toggle on and off. If it's on, your chains are frozen and won't be deleted.
0
6
2007-08-22 22:21:12 UTC
45,397
45,357
portLAN
A Whirlwind Week in Cali
dawie
Congratulations are in order for creating a community that understands each other. It almost looks like it was all a ploy to get a bunch of new like-minded friends!
null
0
31
2007-08-22 22:33:57 UTC
45,402
45,396
pg
Y Combinator's Hacker News NoFollows Some Links?
merrick33
(= follow-threshold* 5)
null
0
14
2007-08-22 22:49:32 UTC
45,405
45,396
merrick33
Y Combinator's Hacker News NoFollows Some Links?
merrick33
thanks for clearing this up.
null
2
14
2007-08-22 23:04:13 UTC
45,408
45,366
aswanson
Silicon Valley faces Web startup glut
nickb
Yeah, everthing's OK now. Nothing more to see here.
null
0
4
2007-08-22 23:09:49 UTC
45,410
45,219
jamiequint
Seth's Blog: Business card mistakes
kkim
4by6 does some amazing prints, its fairly expensive ($160 for 500 cards with matte finish) but worth it.
null
4
14
2007-08-22 23:15:13 UTC
45,414
45,393
vlad
Founders. We matter. repeat as much as we can
rokhayakebe
Who cares if the product is crappy as long as you learn about your strengths and weaknesses, and what you like to do and what you don't. At our age, just learning that is very helpful.
Yes we do. I am working on my startup.At the end of it my product may be truly crappy, but I matter. We build things that changes the way people connect between themselves and their environment. We always beat ourselves or worry so much about not doing enough that we fail to see what we have accomplish so far. No one can tell you what will work or not. No one knows if your product will beat Google's. it may, it may not. But at the end of the day do not quit, because you may changes lives upon lives and that buddy is worth more than the 30 millions Yahoo is going to offer you.
0
2
2007-08-22 23:31:53 UTC
45,419
45,362
pfedor
Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace Rocket Crashes and Burns
nickb
And to spice things up a bit, it seems that the reason for this crash was a bug in the vehicle's software: "Post-crash analysis has revealed what went wrong -- the automatic shutdown that should have triggered when Texel first touched down did not occur. That's because the computer was mistakenly told to expect a stronger signal from the touchdown sensor, beyond what it is actually capable of producing."
null
0
5
2007-08-22 23:50:38 UTC
45,422
45,343
rms
Idea: A genetic testing service to allow parents to exchange newborns to reduce conflict 16 years later
amichail
Genetic modification of children will catch on before this does. There's more money in genetic engineering too.
The idea here is that parents would exchange their babies according to the results of genetic testing to reduce overall conflict with their children 16 years later.For example, children who tend to take risks would be assigned to parents who also take risks as determined by similarities in their risk taking genetic profile.To encourage women to have healthy babies, the algorithm would take into account the health of the baby so that babies of similar health are exchanged.
2
2
2007-08-22 23:53:13 UTC
45,435
45,424
rms
What was reddit like before it got "Dugg"?
aswanson
A smaller community submitting higher quality links without dumb comments by 13 year olds. The initial community was seeded by Y Combinator and Paul Graham. Check out PG's links here: http://reddit.com/user/bugbear/submitted?offset=300
I never visited the site back when, so what made it so appealing? A lot of hackers here seem to have a nostalgia for the olden days.
3
5
2007-08-23 00:15:46 UTC
45,437
45,424
pg
What was reddit like before it got "Dugg"?
aswanson
It's all still there. http://reddit.com/info/bwbu/comments
I never visited the site back when, so what made it so appealing? A lot of hackers here seem to have a nostalgia for the olden days.
4
5
2007-08-23 00:19:14 UTC
45,444
45,443
rms
Satchmo - Open source web store written in Python/Django
nickb
Looks good. Anyone using it?
null
0
3
2007-08-23 00:34:36 UTC
45,449
45,393
portLAN
Founders. We matter. repeat as much as we can
rokhayakebe
And gosh darn it, people like me!
Yes we do. I am working on my startup.At the end of it my product may be truly crappy, but I matter. We build things that changes the way people connect between themselves and their environment. We always beat ourselves or worry so much about not doing enough that we fail to see what we have accomplish so far. No one can tell you what will work or not. No one knows if your product will beat Google's. it may, it may not. But at the end of the day do not quit, because you may changes lives upon lives and that buddy is worth more than the 30 millions Yahoo is going to offer you.
1
2
2007-08-23 01:16:13 UTC
45,450
45,420
nostrademons
Your server is vulnerable brute force password guessing: solution?
emmett
I have logwatch send me a daily report of any authentication failures on our server. The results for today: root (61-90-254-50.static.asianet.co.th): 399 Time(s) unknown (200.207.3.135): 6 Time(s) jonathan (pool-96-233-42-251.bstnma.east.verizon.net): 1 Time(s) mysql (200.207.3.135): 1 Time(s) root (200.207.3.135): 1 Time(s) unknown (61-90-254-50.static.asianet.co.th): 1 Time(s) unknown (62.147.231.49): 1 Time(s) Basically, we have bots attempting to crack us daily. And this is a site that's done very little publicity and isn't really known at all throughout the Internet. The crackbots started even before we officially launched.I'll probably implement the denyhosts tip on our box, along with disabling root login for SSH. But this should highlight the importance of using difficult-to-guess non-dictionary passwords. You will be attacked; don't make it easy for them.
null
0
12
2007-08-23 01:17:34 UTC
45,451
45,295
mynameishere
Firms, investors tend to prosper with founders at the helm
nickb
I worked in a factory during college--the founder was long dead, but people were still talking about how wonderful he was...these were cynical blue-collar union types. Obviously, everybody knows that the founders are the real operators and that subsequent CEOs are basically asskissers and backstabbers. Everyone knows this, and you're bound to get cynicism and disloyalty as a result.This is true, even of good CEOs. Walt Disney vs. Mike Eisner? Henry Ford versus Robert McNamara? (bad example).
null
1
7
2007-08-23 01:19:13 UTC
45,455
45,420
palish
Your server is vulnerable brute force password guessing: solution?
emmett
Cool. Thank you for this tip. We're about to go live using Debian, so the extra security can't hurt.
null
5
12
2007-08-23 01:32:00 UTC
45,458
45,420
epi0Bauqu
Your server is vulnerable brute force password guessing: solution?
emmett
pwgen
null
7
12
2007-08-23 01:40:15 UTC
45,460
45,420
nickb
Your server is vulnerable brute force password guessing: solution?
emmett
I think there is a better way. Disable ftp, telnet etc. Disable everything not needed (just leave web server, postfix and sshd running) and disable root account and disable SSH password authentication completely and choose key authentication instead. You will never have to worry about someone running a cracker.
null
1
12
2007-08-23 01:52:34 UTC
45,461
45,420
dfranke
Your server is vulnerable brute force password guessing: solution?
emmett
A nice variation on this theme is PortSentry, a portscan detector. I have it configured so that whenever it detects a portscan, it'll blackhole that IP for a few hours.
null
3
12
2007-08-23 01:59:41 UTC
45,463
45,448
rms
Sharing affiliate revenue with users
chmac
It's a good business model but most affiliate programs ban this type of revenue sharing. You'd have to individually negotiate with the affiliate programs or operate under the radar.I made a very respectable amount of money (and a polo shirt and hat) several years ago by paying my friends to sign up for Party Poker accounts under my affiliate bonus code. I could have made a lot more if I had more money to put up. It was debatable whether this was allowed under their terms of service... they froze my money for 6 months but I got it eventually.I believe that all the rakeback sites that are operating legitimately have individually negotiated agreements with the poker sites. Similarly, if you wanted to set up an Amazon buyer's club on facebook, you'd have to negotiate with Amazon.
A discussion about sharing affiliate revenue with the users who spend the money, effectively offering a discount scheme.
0
2
2007-08-23 02:15:50 UTC
45,464
45,420
staunch
Your server is vulnerable brute force password guessing: solution?
emmett
Ideally use a VPN connection to get into your internal network and firewall off all outside access.Your goal should be to prevent anyone from ever connecting to your sshd process at all. If they can do that you're in danger. Make it listen on a different port, so you're not the easiest target and use iptables to block access to all but your office/home ip range. Various forms of port knocking to poke a hole in the iptables firewall can be used to allow mobile access, etc.
null
2
12
2007-08-23 02:16:18 UTC
45,469
45,219
aswanson
Seth's Blog: Business card mistakes
kkim
That's nice Bateman.
null
5
14
2007-08-23 02:34:05 UTC
45,470
45,219
aswanson
Seth's Blog: Business card mistakes
kkim
Eggshell with romalian type. What do you think?
null
1
14
2007-08-23 02:38:11 UTC
45,473
45,104
patrickg-zill
Scaling a startup from 0 to 40 hits per second in 3 days
mmaunder
I suppose I will sound like a troll, but why not consider PostgreSQL?
null
5
45
2007-08-23 03:04:00 UTC
45,474
45,424
blored
What was reddit like before it got "Dugg"?
aswanson
Conjecture: I don't think Hacker News will ever have the same feel as reddit, or at least the type of banter than went on in those posts.Why? Because I think too many people reading these posts want to get YC funding and are therefore stepping on eggshells with what they say.On the converse side the conversation is probably more polite than other forums.
I never visited the site back when, so what made it so appealing? A lot of hackers here seem to have a nostalgia for the olden days.
2
5
2007-08-23 03:05:10 UTC
45,477
45,476
amichail
Impact of Facebook platform on CS enrollment
amichail
BTW, if you think that entrepreneurs would benefit from a specialized CS degree, maybe leave a comment there to that effect?
null
1
3
2007-08-23 03:10:01 UTC
45,481
45,355
limeade
Web-Site Ideas from College Students (Humor, to lighten your rough day)
transburgh
I'm not having a rough day
null
0
3
2007-08-23 03:36:13 UTC
45,482
45,295
daniel-cussen
Firms, investors tend to prosper with founders at the helm
nickb
Maybe this will make VCs less eager to kick founders out of their company.
null
5
7
2007-08-23 03:39:20 UTC
45,485
45,348
limeade
In Google Earth, a Service for Scanning the Heavens
pg
totally flippin sweet, a copernican revolution if you will, vive la revolution, companeros!
null
0
9
2007-08-23 03:50:54 UTC
45,486
45,478
aaroneous
Content-Aware Image Sizing
toffer
This seam carving technology is so very cool.
null
4
21
2007-08-23 03:56:02 UTC
45,494
45,466
Keios
Is it easy to set up a foreign entity in india? (corp,etc)
cellis
I don't understand the relevance of your link???
Acc to wikipedia, if you are a multinational company, it is available to the employees of that company that have worked in the foreign office for 1 year...does anyone know anything about this?
0
1
2007-08-23 04:20:34 UTC
45,495
45,081
jsnx
Is There Anything Good About Men?
jyrzyk
The author overstates some of his claims. For example, European women made excellent contributions to herbal medicine -- the only medicine around -- until the rise of 'scientific' medicine, which caused as much as harm as good for much of its early history. The author claims that medicine was all men's doing.This tendency to overstatement manifests as a pervasive one cause fallacy. There are many reasons for womens' and mens' relative different status -- some long term and unchanging (the politics of birth), some short term and malleable (prejudices relating to relative intellectual capacities), many in between these extremes. The author acknowledges the manifold causes of gender differences only to dismiss them -- and the motivating factors for women's cultural creation are left unexplored.
null
2
32
2007-08-23 04:27:13 UTC
45,496
45,424
minus1
What was reddit like before it got "Dugg"?
aswanson
richardkuliszhttp://reddit.com/user/richardkulisz/
I never visited the site back when, so what made it so appealing? A lot of hackers here seem to have a nostalgia for the olden days.
5
5
2007-08-23 04:29:23 UTC
45,502
45,424
mwerty
What was reddit like before it got "Dugg"?
aswanson
IMHO, reddit can do the following to clean up:1. make my.reddit.com the default and make it harder to get to the current default front page. 2. This was a while back so they may have fixed this already: Don't screw up on the cookie/log in process - I've had to log in several times to reddit despite not logging out. I finally stopped logging in. Their ip logs probably tell the story better and can validate my experience. Its a small bug and takes a while to realize the full impact on user experience. The auto-login is sacred for a site like reddit. 3. Work really hard on the recommendation engine for comments as well.
I never visited the site back when, so what made it so appealing? A lot of hackers here seem to have a nostalgia for the olden days.
1
5
2007-08-23 05:29:18 UTC
45,504
45,374
brett
New productivity tool launches Friday. Thoughts and feature requests?
palish
Holy shit! I've been working on a site based on the exact same post. Though mine is a pretty basic take on Seinfeld's method.
Hiya! Straight to what this tool can do for you: It will help you accomplish something every single day.Fill in the blank, "I'm going to _____ every day." Thinking of something? Great! Now go out there and do it, then return to the tool and click "I did it today!" You'll be congratulated and given the opportunity to write about your experience and post a picture.At that point, the picture becomes a link in your productivity chain. After you've formed a few links in the chain, I bet you won't want to stop. But if you do stop and miss a day, the entire chain breaks and everything is deleted.Now, if you just want to use the tool for just that, all by your lonesome, that's just fine. But we've included a social aspect to it as well. Whenever another person is doing the same thing as you, each one of your chain links will be submitted to a centralized place where you'll be able to explore and upvote others' chain links and post comments to everyone. On the front page, you'll see the top 20 popular chains and the fastest growing chains for today, as well as the top comments and featured users. Next to each chain is a plus sign that, when clicked, will enable you to do that same thing each day, too. You can also explore and find interesting chains and users.The time interval is adjustable. You can do something every day, weekday, weekend or week.The project was inspired by this post: http://lifehacker.com/software/motivation/jerry-seinfelds-pr... We're launching on Friday at 10PM CST. Everyone who registers in the first hour will start with 50 karma points, so bring a friend! If you have any feature requests, just let us know and they'll be waiting for you at launch.Common wisdom is that it's dangerous to let you all in on our secret before we're out there, but we wanted to give you the opportunity to make this tool better in your eyes.Thanks for your critique guys!Update: First feature request will be implemented for you: A vacation switch that you can toggle on and off. If it's on, your chains are frozen and won't be deleted.
4
6
2007-08-23 05:38:55 UTC
45,505
45,478
vlad
Content-Aware Image Sizing
toffer
Seam Carving PDF: http://www.faculty.idc.ac.il/arik/imret.pdfHigher Resolution QuickTime movie: http://www.faculty.idc.ac.il/arik/IMRet-All.movBoth links download at 5KB/s at this busy time...
null
0
21
2007-08-23 05:40:28 UTC
45,508
45,448
vlad
Sharing affiliate revenue with users
chmac
I've seen sites do this.. Read this post and the comments about Google AdSense revenue sharing:http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/006387.html
A discussion about sharing affiliate revenue with the users who spend the money, effectively offering a discount scheme.
1
2
2007-08-23 05:47:17 UTC
45,509
45,443
inklesspen
Satchmo - Open source web store written in Python/Django
nickb
"500 - Internal Server Error"Shoulda used Pylons. :P
null
1
3
2007-08-23 05:49:56 UTC
45,519
45,420
portLAN
Your server is vulnerable brute force password guessing: solution?
emmett
[ - Redacted - ]Alas, News.YC doesn't cope with Unicode.
null
6
12
2007-08-23 07:27:47 UTC
45,520
45,295
portLAN
Firms, investors tend to prosper with founders at the helm
nickb
> Amazon's 15-year stock gain: 4,381%Amazingly they have predicted Amazon's exact stock performance for the next 5 years. Someone over there better hide the electric drills.
null
3
7
2007-08-23 07:35:26 UTC
45,532
45,531
c1sc0
Poll ...Open APIs or Closed Silos?
c1sc0
I'm sharing the love, baby ! Open APIs for me all the way !
So what are you doing in your current app? Hoard the data or share the love through an Open API? Vote up the appropriate comment & explain why ...
4
2
2007-08-23 07:48:51 UTC
45,533
45,531
c1sc0
Poll ...Open APIs or Closed Silos?
c1sc0
I'd like to monetize this one day, ya know ... I'm keeping my data in a walled garden !
So what are you doing in your current app? Hoard the data or share the love through an Open API? Vote up the appropriate comment & explain why ...
3
2
2007-08-23 07:49:43 UTC
45,534
45,295
portLAN
Firms, investors tend to prosper with founders at the helm
nickb
>"It would really bother me to think that in a few years, my successor could weaken something I've spent 35 years building, my entire adult life," says Zimmer, 58. "That would be disturbing.">When pressed, Mason says it's unlikely that his successor will be as successful. Of course, because no successor has as large a stake in it as the original founder. Maybe they should do it like a kingship, slightly modified -- where the successor inherits HALF of the founder's equity. You would stand a much better chance of attracting the best people if they were going to get the billions when you stepped down -- subject to vesting and performance. Why would the top people want to join an existing company when the big equity has already been taken out of it?So, when you retire you vest half of the Founder's stock, if you've been there "long enough". Take a company from $10B market cap to $20B and you've doubled the Founder's share, so you get an amount equal to what the whole thing was when you started, and leave an equal amount to lure the next CEO.It's late so I may well be missing obvious flaws in the scheme, but some kind of equity retention strategy seems to be needed to promote long-term vitality because the current m.o. is the original founders and investors bleed it all out.
null
2
7
2007-08-23 07:59:25 UTC
45,537
45,476
jsjenkins168
Impact of Facebook platform on CS enrollment
amichail
The sad part is most CS programs have antiquated curriculum which does not involve much web development-type work. I think if courses like "numerical methods" and similar were replaced with cool web development classes which taught stuff like how to create a facebook platform app, it could increase enrollment. But in my experiences this is like trying to teach an old dog new tricks. Many (but NOT all) of the academic types do not understand startups because they themselves are not interested in them (hence the reason they are teaching rather than founding companies). Again, this is a generalization which doesn't apply to all people, but I'd say this is more often the case than not.But generally speaking I agree that CS enrollment could increase if the curriculum incorporated more involving program assignments like facebook platform apps.
null
0
3
2007-08-23 08:03:31 UTC
45,541
45,518
palish
How Many Machines Do You Need To Run Your Site?
aaroneous
I'll let you know after we launch if this works, but we just have a single dedicated box for 99/mo.
null
2
11
2007-08-23 08:37:53 UTC
45,545
45,535
mattmaroon
Ok, Ok. All Of You (even YouTube) Invented Video Overlay Ads "First"
terpua
I actually invented video ads in 2002. I have no evidence to back this up, but have already filed the patent app.
null
0
4
2007-08-23 09:11:15 UTC
45,547
45,082
mattmaroon
News.YC Library
bmaier
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Piggybacking on the recent Where to Start Programming and Hacker School Threads... What texts and works do you feel are essential and should be a part of every hackers library. Looking for books and also free online material. Any topic from strict programming texts to more abstract works.I'll start: Church-Turing Thesis: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/church-turing/
14
32
2007-08-23 09:15:00 UTC
45,552
45,305
Andys
Three Things to Unlearn from School
jey
Also known as, "Three things the President of the United States should unlearn" ...
null
0
9
2007-08-23 09:57:20 UTC
45,553
45,424
lebski88
What was reddit like before it got "Dugg"?
aswanson
It had an intelligent and interesting community that was almost exclusively made up of programmers. The submissions were made up of programming, science and general interest links. What made it great was the quality of comments; the discussion was the most interesting and insightful of any on-line community I've ever found. The links these days aren't the problem - its the comments. Sadly I've found the quality of my comments has dropped along with general trend - people tend to ignore long comments these days in favour of quick opinions.[edit] also the size of the community helped. You got to know regular posters and this lack of anonymity encouraged a quality of discussion.
I never visited the site back when, so what made it so appealing? A lot of hackers here seem to have a nostalgia for the olden days.
0
5
2007-08-23 10:18:35 UTC
45,555
45,475
djonesx
Do YC shares get diluted with funding?
blored
Working on the assumption that the funding will make their remaining shares worth more.
null
0
2
2007-08-23 10:45:18 UTC
45,556
45,554
brett
What happens to the YC applications after rejected?
eusman
I'm going with definitely no.edit - From the app itself:We don't make any formal promise about secrecy, but we don't plan to let anyone outside Y Combinator see these applications, including other startups we fund.
Is there any change they are sold to 3rd parties?
2
7
2007-08-23 10:45:30 UTC
45,562
45,539
edw519
What consulting means to me (/what I can't stand working at someone else's company)
fad
Exactly. All you gotta do is deliver.
If you're average, you fit right in. And if you're above average, the basic terms of employement and premise of the arrangement is against your interests.
1
9
2007-08-23 11:18:14 UTC
45,564
45,539
staunch
What consulting means to me (/what I can't stand working at someone else's company)
fad
Student -> Employee -> Contractor -> Founder -> Investor
If you're average, you fit right in. And if you're above average, the basic terms of employement and premise of the arrangement is against your interests.
0
9
2007-08-23 11:41:22 UTC
45,565
45,420
extantproject
Your server is vulnerable brute force password guessing: solution?
emmett
http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=sshd_config
null
4
12
2007-08-23 11:54:49 UTC
45,566
45,506
euccastro
Generalizing Palish's question: how would you fix high school?
dfranke
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_Schoolhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_modelhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling
There was a lot of disagreement over whether Palish's "hacker schools" could be viable, but I think most of here agree that high school in its current form is horribly broken. So, what would you do to make it less miserable, particularly for hackers but also in general?Don't cop out by just saying "hand out vouchers (or abolish public schooling) and let the free market take care of it". If you believe that's the right first step, then go on suppose that you're the headmaster of a private high school. What will it look like?
1
4
2007-08-23 11:56:26 UTC
45,567
45,554
staunch
What happens to the YC applications after rejected?
eusman
If you think ideas can be sold I'd be happy to sell you some great ones at very reasonable prices.
Is there any change they are sold to 3rd parties?
1
7
2007-08-23 11:58:42 UTC
45,568
45,219
extantproject
Seth's Blog: Business card mistakes
kkim
Remarkable!
null
6
14
2007-08-23 12:01:12 UTC
45,569
45,518
staunch
How Many Machines Do You Need To Run Your Site?
aaroneous
Servers are so damn powerful these days that it's a bit misleading to use the number of servers as a measurement. The standard a few years ago was dual processor PIII ~1Ghz machines with 1-4GB memory. These days it's a 4+ core monster with 8GB+ memory.Steve Huffman of Reddit posted on their latest server stats, which is interesting: http://reddit.com/info/2gdcv/comments/c2gekyMost of the sites these days with a ton of servers just have Google envy or investors who want money to be "put to work". Server and network gear is a really easy way to go through money.
null
0
11
2007-08-23 12:02:59 UTC
45,572
45,374
jamongkad
New productivity tool launches Friday. Thoughts and feature requests?
palish
Ohh great idea! I'm excited to see this happen.
Hiya! Straight to what this tool can do for you: It will help you accomplish something every single day.Fill in the blank, "I'm going to _____ every day." Thinking of something? Great! Now go out there and do it, then return to the tool and click "I did it today!" You'll be congratulated and given the opportunity to write about your experience and post a picture.At that point, the picture becomes a link in your productivity chain. After you've formed a few links in the chain, I bet you won't want to stop. But if you do stop and miss a day, the entire chain breaks and everything is deleted.Now, if you just want to use the tool for just that, all by your lonesome, that's just fine. But we've included a social aspect to it as well. Whenever another person is doing the same thing as you, each one of your chain links will be submitted to a centralized place where you'll be able to explore and upvote others' chain links and post comments to everyone. On the front page, you'll see the top 20 popular chains and the fastest growing chains for today, as well as the top comments and featured users. Next to each chain is a plus sign that, when clicked, will enable you to do that same thing each day, too. You can also explore and find interesting chains and users.The time interval is adjustable. You can do something every day, weekday, weekend or week.The project was inspired by this post: http://lifehacker.com/software/motivation/jerry-seinfelds-pr... We're launching on Friday at 10PM CST. Everyone who registers in the first hour will start with 50 karma points, so bring a friend! If you have any feature requests, just let us know and they'll be waiting for you at launch.Common wisdom is that it's dangerous to let you all in on our secret before we're out there, but we wanted to give you the opportunity to make this tool better in your eyes.Thanks for your critique guys!Update: First feature request will be implemented for you: A vacation switch that you can toggle on and off. If it's on, your chains are frozen and won't be deleted.
5
6
2007-08-23 12:19:29 UTC
45,573
45,518
chmac
How Many Machines Do You Need To Run Your Site?
aaroneous
HighScalability is an insane site. Their stuff on how Google's datacentre works is crazy! http://highscalability.com/google-architecture
null
1
11
2007-08-23 12:19:36 UTC
45,578
45,531
bootload
Poll ...Open APIs or Closed Silos?
c1sc0
Open- Lock-in is Lock-Out (users are getting wary of this)- Staying Because of the Freedom to Leave (no roach motels please)Simon Phipps makes these agreeable observations in the "Zen of Free", mp3, 9Mb 20min. http://osc.gigavox.com/shows/detail1674.html
So what are you doing in your current app? Hoard the data or share the love through an Open API? Vote up the appropriate comment & explain why ...
0
2
2007-08-23 12:30:10 UTC
45,583
45,582
chmac
The YC RSS feed content-type header
chmac
It would also be great to be able to get an RSS feed for individual threads, or even for all comments (that would be a lot of data though).
A quick tamper data (firefox extension) shows that when requesting the YC RSS feed the content-type header is "text/html" while I think it should be "text/xml".<p>I know that the RSS feed doesn't work on my local Liferea install, I think this could be the problem because I can definitely access the feed in my browser.
0
2
2007-08-23 13:01:10 UTC
45,584
45,577
brlewis
Steve "spez" Huffman of Reddit on The Total Rewrite Decision
staunch
Raldi's comment is hilarious.
null
2
22
2007-08-23 13:02:16 UTC
45,585
45,506
brlewis
Generalizing Palish's question: how would you fix high school?
dfranke
http://www.michaelolaf.net/montessori12-18.html
There was a lot of disagreement over whether Palish's "hacker schools" could be viable, but I think most of here agree that high school in its current form is horribly broken. So, what would you do to make it less miserable, particularly for hackers but also in general?Don't cop out by just saying "hand out vouchers (or abolish public schooling) and let the free market take care of it". If you believe that's the right first step, then go on suppose that you're the headmaster of a private high school. What will it look like?
2
4
2007-08-23 13:03:47 UTC
45,586
45,535
cmars232
Ok, Ok. All Of You (even YouTube) Invented Video Overlay Ads "First"
terpua
Now who's going to invent a Flash video ad blocker first, that's what I'm waiting for... :)
null
1
4
2007-08-23 13:04:22 UTC
45,587
45,490
brlewis
Iacocca's Nine Cs of Leadership
donna
I expected the list not to be very good because of the cheesy same-initial-letter aspect, but it turned out to be good.
null
0
4
2007-08-23 13:08:44 UTC
45,591
45,577
nostrademons
Steve "spez" Huffman of Reddit on The Total Rewrite Decision
staunch
Chris's comment is interesting...http://reddit.com/info/2h8kd/comments/c2hccvSo I guess Reddit is now on Pylons, using Mako as the templating engine.
null
1
22
2007-08-23 13:14:10 UTC
45,593
45,487
flyhighplato
Freebase Launches
rams
How do I get an invitation code?
null
3
14
2007-08-23 13:15:21 UTC
45,594
45,581
c1sc0
No, I'm not giving you my Google password
nailer
Most people don't know / care. It seems only the technically inclined & paranoid lose sleep over this. Until somebody they know gets hit by identity theft, that is ...
A year after Google released their account authentication system, why are sites still asking for passwords that most users don't even give their loved ones?
0
18
2007-08-23 13:18:09 UTC
45,600
45,531
c1sc0
Poll ...Open APIs or Closed Silos?
c1sc0
Anyone has data on the ROI of providing Open APIs? Are the services charging for use of their API making any profit? You guessed it, I need to justify the business case for Open APIs.
So what are you doing in your current app? Hoard the data or share the love through an Open API? Vote up the appropriate comment & explain why ...
2
2
2007-08-23 13:42:36 UTC
45,604
45,577
palish
Steve "spez" Huffman of Reddit on The Total Rewrite Decision
staunch
A rewrite only tastes sweet after a long process of freaking out that you just threw away all your code.And since time is the most precious resource in a startup then rewriting is the worst decision you could make, if that logic is correct.However, Reddit isn't really a startup anymore, so they can probably afford it.
null
3
22
2007-08-23 13:46:53 UTC
45,605
45,603
euccastro
c10k: Handling 10 thousand symultaneous connections.
euccastro
This is an oldie, but I haven't found any reference in news.yc so I thought it may be of use to some of you. Also, it's more up to date than it looks in the first few paragraphs.
null
2
13
2007-08-23 13:46:57 UTC
45,607
45,478
palish
Content-Aware Image Sizing
toffer
Now that's just awesome.
null
3
21
2007-08-23 13:50:20 UTC
45,608
45,554
palish
What happens to the YC applications after rejected?
eusman
They're given to your closest competitors. Haven't you heard of Competitor Day? You'd better keep your idea to yourself.
Is there any change they are sold to 3rd parties?
0
7
2007-08-23 13:51:59 UTC
45,613
45,554
ivankirigin
What happens to the YC applications after rejected?
eusman
I thought this was going to be a thread about what people do to continue their StartUp after they are rejected. It could have been an inspirational story about striving through rejection and building something good.Sigh
Is there any change they are sold to 3rd parties?
4
7
2007-08-23 14:15:19 UTC
45,614
45,487
bls
Freebase Launches
rams
This seems to be like a site that is supposed to appeal to the general public. Aren't you worried that it won't get through the content filters at businesses and schools due to the name? Building your brand around cocaine seems pretty risky.It seems like you feel that the API and the highly structured organization of the data is what differentiates you from Wikipedia. But, Wikipedia already has huge mindshare, and there are very few people that would ever your added value features. That means advertising is not a viable revenue source. Charging for access is out unless you change the name; who would you pay for something labeled "free"? So, what's the business model?The people that WOULD need the data to be very structured need to have some assurance that the data is reliable. Usually, somebody who has spent a lot of time and effort to build an accurate data set will want a return on their investment. I could see somebody building a business by aggregating sets of reliable data from reputable data sources (universities, government laboratories, medical journals, etc.), and renting out the data sets to users and/or charging subscription fees. That is what junk mail companies due with mailing lists, for example. But, it is hard to imagine giving it all away for free and still making a living.
null
1
14
2007-08-23 14:15:26 UTC
45,615
45,306
jgamman
Two More Things to Unlearn from School
jey
>I recall reading, though I can't remember where, that physicists in some country were more likely to become extreme religious fanatics. i gave up at this point. or is he being sarcastic? i think he broke all the rules in the above paragraphs in that one sentence.
null
0
17
2007-08-23 14:17:06 UTC
45,617
45,478
amichail
Content-Aware Image Sizing
toffer
Can you use something like this to change movie dimensions? How would you incorporate the time dimension so that you do not remove parts of an image that will become important soon?How would you improve the efficiency of the algorithm for a movie?
null
1
21
2007-08-23 14:27:23 UTC
45,622
45,619
brlewis
What happened to you after you were rejected?
palish
I don't think any of the applicants, accepted or rejected, are ready to rest on their laurels just yet.I've gained users in the past few months, but am nowhere near popularity.
Has anyone applied to YCombinator, been rejected, then built something popular?There was a line from the rejection email:"We realize this process is fraught with error. It's practically certain that groups we rejected will go on to create successful startups. If you do, we'd appreciate it if you'd send us an email making fun of us; we want to learn from our mistakes."Has anyone done that? If not, YCombinator picks the winners pretty well.
3
22
2007-08-23 14:32:39 UTC
45,623
45,506
jgamman
Generalizing Palish's question: how would you fix high school?
dfranke
school vouchers don't need to be aggregated to the school level, just the teacher. a headmaster is then the facilities manager (school sports and stuff are a good part of school). you may not like vouchers and they are not the whole answer but connecting teachers to shock, horror gasp, the kids they teach has to part of the solution
There was a lot of disagreement over whether Palish's "hacker schools" could be viable, but I think most of here agree that high school in its current form is horribly broken. So, what would you do to make it less miserable, particularly for hackers but also in general?Don't cop out by just saying "hand out vouchers (or abolish public schooling) and let the free market take care of it". If you believe that's the right first step, then go on suppose that you're the headmaster of a private high school. What will it look like?
3
4
2007-08-23 14:36:41 UTC
45,624
45,561
euccastro
Stackless Python-like coroutines in Scheme.
euccastro
A highlighted version so you can avoid the noise on first reading and go straight to the meat:http://pastebin.com/f774fd6c1I forgot to add before: if you have questions, I'm eager to reply them. If you have advice, I'm eager to hear it.
After some time of doing only toy tests and book exercises, I'm getting deeper into Scheme for a real application. One of the things I missed was Stackless Python's simple to use coroutine API. In Scheme you have- raw continuations, which I find a bit too wild and low-level for my current purposes, or- full-fledged preemptive threading systems, which seemed way too complex for my needs. Besides, these are implementation specific, and I didn't want to marry any implementation yet.So I decided to give it a try and roll my own on plain R5RS (I'm sorry it's quite verbose as a result. I may reduce noise with macros in the future, but this is my first shot at it). It was easier than I was afraid, and great fun!If you are into Scheme/Lisp, please tell me what you think about it. [Edit: I'm especially interested in comments on the API and semantics. This is more frugal than Stackless's, but I don't miss anything worthy. Do you?]http://pastebin.com/ff732013NOTE: This is just a one day hack; use it at your own risk. If you are interested in getting future versions of this, just write me at the address in the profile and I'll ping you when I'm confident it's reliable.
1
8
2007-08-23 14:44:14 UTC
45,625
45,616
epi0Bauqu
How do you brainstorm for ideas for products?
dawie
I never try to force it. All the good ideas I've had have just popped into my head when I wasn't trying to think of them, often in the shower or bath. However, this doesn't just happen without preparation. I do a few things to maintain especially fertile ground for new ideas.First, I read a lot: the WSJ every day, sites like this one, articles on a variety of subjects, and books. Second, I free up lots of time to do nothing in particular in terms of thinking, such as going out to eat, taking long showers and baths, watching TV, etc. Third, I'm always looking for problems people are having. Fourth, I try talk to people about their general experiences on the Internet. Fifth, I bounce ideas off my wife. In your case, that would be with your co-founder. Finally, sometimes I just build things for a day or two on a whim to see where it goes.
I recently found a co-founder and we are going to build a product. We are going to start brainstorming product ideas soon and I was wondering how the YC readers came up with their ideas.
0
10
2007-08-23 14:47:39 UTC
45,628
45,374
bmaier
New productivity tool launches Friday. Thoughts and feature requests?
palish
I'm not sure if I'm missing something entirely but to what URL would you like us to bring our friends and earn these karma points? Might be helpful to get that out there.
Hiya! Straight to what this tool can do for you: It will help you accomplish something every single day.Fill in the blank, "I'm going to _____ every day." Thinking of something? Great! Now go out there and do it, then return to the tool and click "I did it today!" You'll be congratulated and given the opportunity to write about your experience and post a picture.At that point, the picture becomes a link in your productivity chain. After you've formed a few links in the chain, I bet you won't want to stop. But if you do stop and miss a day, the entire chain breaks and everything is deleted.Now, if you just want to use the tool for just that, all by your lonesome, that's just fine. But we've included a social aspect to it as well. Whenever another person is doing the same thing as you, each one of your chain links will be submitted to a centralized place where you'll be able to explore and upvote others' chain links and post comments to everyone. On the front page, you'll see the top 20 popular chains and the fastest growing chains for today, as well as the top comments and featured users. Next to each chain is a plus sign that, when clicked, will enable you to do that same thing each day, too. You can also explore and find interesting chains and users.The time interval is adjustable. You can do something every day, weekday, weekend or week.The project was inspired by this post: http://lifehacker.com/software/motivation/jerry-seinfelds-pr... We're launching on Friday at 10PM CST. Everyone who registers in the first hour will start with 50 karma points, so bring a friend! If you have any feature requests, just let us know and they'll be waiting for you at launch.Common wisdom is that it's dangerous to let you all in on our secret before we're out there, but we wanted to give you the opportunity to make this tool better in your eyes.Thanks for your critique guys!Update: First feature request will be implemented for you: A vacation switch that you can toggle on and off. If it's on, your chains are frozen and won't be deleted.
1
6
2007-08-23 14:49:58 UTC
45,629
45,487
rams
Freebase Launches
rams
Danny Hillis is associated with this company. They seem to be into the semantic web "thing" - not exactly a hot favourite with most programmers. Check out this podcast with one of the freebase guys - http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail1879.html
null
0
14
2007-08-23 14:50:59 UTC
45,630
45,487
palish
Freebase Launches
rams
The frontpage is extremely noisy. They didn't emphasize the correct things.
null
2
14
2007-08-23 14:52:42 UTC
45,631
45,510
chaostheory
Online CSS grid generator
sabhishek
here's yahoo's version for yui: http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/grids/builder/
null
1
6
2007-08-23 14:53:59 UTC
45,641
45,619
ivankirigin
What happened to you after you were rejected?
palish
YC folks describe the accelerator effect of getting into the program. I think that makes sense. People expect non-failure from an openly declared intention to start a company. Founders respond to the fear of failure by working hard.Many of those rejected probably don't consider themselves startups, just working on side projects. No build-up of expectation.I have every intention to continue if not accepted into the next YC round.
Has anyone applied to YCombinator, been rejected, then built something popular?There was a line from the rejection email:"We realize this process is fraught with error. It's practically certain that groups we rejected will go on to create successful startups. If you do, we'd appreciate it if you'd send us an email making fun of us; we want to learn from our mistakes."Has anyone done that? If not, YCombinator picks the winners pretty well.
5
22
2007-08-23 15:15:44 UTC
45,642
45,554
altano
What happens to the YC applications after rejected?
eusman
Well in the case of my application, the submitter of that application, namely me, went on to live a meaningless existence.
Is there any change they are sold to 3rd parties?
3
7
2007-08-23 15:17:36 UTC
45,646
45,619
ratsbane
What happened to you after you were rejected?
palish
That line you quoted from the rejection email is just perfect. It also shows quite the opposite attitude of the average big company. Reforming corporate America seems like a lost cause. It's time to start taking over.
Has anyone applied to YCombinator, been rejected, then built something popular?There was a line from the rejection email:"We realize this process is fraught with error. It's practically certain that groups we rejected will go on to create successful startups. If you do, we'd appreciate it if you'd send us an email making fun of us; we want to learn from our mistakes."Has anyone done that? If not, YCombinator picks the winners pretty well.
6
22
2007-08-23 15:21:23 UTC
45,648
45,619
wensing
What happened to you after you were rejected?
palish
I'm very happy with the way things are going. I wouldn't call us a 'winner' (yet), but I don't think YCombinator's "rejection" is going to be the reason we fail, if we do. Plenty of successful technology companies have been started outside of YCombinator. In retrospect, it's kind of a funny question.
Has anyone applied to YCombinator, been rejected, then built something popular?There was a line from the rejection email:"We realize this process is fraught with error. It's practically certain that groups we rejected will go on to create successful startups. If you do, we'd appreciate it if you'd send us an email making fun of us; we want to learn from our mistakes."Has anyone done that? If not, YCombinator picks the winners pretty well.
2
22
2007-08-23 15:24:33 UTC
45,649
45,323
colortone
The Character Traits for an Entrepreneur
ahsonwardak
Entrepreneurs need to see the full picture, all the time.This is basically a stack of dualities:Detail-oriented + Huge visionDriven, focused + flexible, nimbleEnjoys relationships + makes tough business decisionsRelentless about customer service + Engineering-centricet ceteraYOU HAVE TO HAVE IT ALL!
I know there's much written about being a great leader and how-to posts on starting a company, but I'm more interested in those innate characteristics of a startup founder. Founders at Work had many great interviews, but I'm looking for the synthesis here of all the successful webpreneurs.
2
6
2007-08-23 15:24:48 UTC
45,651
45,616
tocomment
How do you brainstorm for ideas for products?
dawie
Another idea is to keep a continual list of the all the problems you see in your life without automatically thinking of solutions right away. Then sit down later and see if you can solve any of them, or turn the problem on its head perhaps and then solve it.
I recently found a co-founder and we are going to build a product. We are going to start brainstorming product ideas soon and I was wondering how the YC readers came up with their ideas.
6
10
2007-08-23 15:27:32 UTC
45,654
45,616
henning
How do you brainstorm for ideas for products?
dawie
see http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html .i'm not a PG fanboy, your question is just directly relevant to what he wrote and i think he's right.basically, often times ideas that turn into billion-dollar ideas come from doing stuff smart people would already be doing anyway - writing BASIC interpreters (microsoft), good search engines (google), etc.
I recently found a co-founder and we are going to build a product. We are going to start brainstorming product ideas soon and I was wondering how the YC readers came up with their ideas.
5
10
2007-08-23 15:33:20 UTC