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JMiao
2007-04-12T23:57:25
null
Closing a VC round is meant to HELP your company take off, not settle. There's a very good reason why it's often referred to as "runway."<p>The number one motivating factor for startups and the reason why they're able to operate more efficiently than larger competitors boils down to one thing: desperation. Having limited resources makes you desperate and hungry. Besides, living in a cramped apartment and eating ramen is a good reminder of what you get when you don't win (and having a roof over your head ain't too bad).<p>Paying yourselves $300K when you guys probably don't have revenue is a great way to mislead your investors, create politics amongst employees, and, most of all, make you complacent.<p>Now, (mis)using investors' money to live the life isn't unheard of. I once interned at a company that basically lost hundreds of millions of dollars every year and addressed this by systematic studio closures and layoffs. The company's misfortunes resulted from poor oversight by the management team and had almost nothing to do with those being laid off (they all went on the be headhunted by competing firms). Following suit, every year, product-producing employees were let go while executives maintained their $400K salaries. The management team basically did whatever they could to keep the company alive while they drew as much salary as possible. Interestingly enough, this behavior actually began when they got funded in the late 1980s.
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danielha
2007-04-13T00:01:13
FreshBooks For Web Invoices & More
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http://www.somewhatfrank.com/2007/04/freshbooks.html
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cbueno
2007-04-13T00:01:18
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Counterfeiting checks and legal tender. On newsprint. In pencil. I figured I'd bootstap into enough cash to buy proper pens and paper.
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danielha
2007-04-13T00:02:31
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I briefly poked around. It's an online app for managing your small business invoices and time-sheets; it's free for up to 3 clients.
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pg
2007-04-13T00:17:09
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There was one other one where we invested as angels in the series A round. Ordinarily we wouldn't invest that late, but these guys seemed exceptionally smart and driven.
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dfranke
2007-04-13T00:30:30
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C's libraries aren't terribly well-organized, but, for me at least, the standard ones all fit in one brainful so it's not really a problem.
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whacked_new
2007-04-13T00:34:39
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Yeah, I don't really understand this. My first language was C, and all these C-like languages look quite similar in syntax. I never thought these were "pretty," but they don't really stroke an emotional component in me.
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Alex3917
2007-04-13T00:35:41
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I sneaked into our HS principle's office after school was over one day and printed out a fake school ID saying I was a senior on the school's own printer. This allowed me to take my car off campus during lunch. I'd then come back with several bags of Chinese takeout and sell it for a good profit. :-)
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SwellJoe
2007-04-13T00:36:35
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I find Mountain View a good fit. Close enough to investors. Far enough away from anything resembling real night-life (because I'm here to work...really, really, work). I'll move to the city when I don't want to work anymore. I'm sure the city works for some startups, but I don't think it would work for me.
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usablecontent
2007-04-13T00:36:43
Googles Blogger Now Writes In Hindi
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http://startupmeme.com/2007/04/12/googles-blogger-now-writes-in-hindi/
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ACSparks
2007-04-13T00:37:17
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Have you checked out Code Igniter? It is a php framework that implements the MVC design pattern. Forcing the seperation of the different layers makes things much "prettier" in my opinion.<p><a href="http://www.codeigniter.com/">http://www.codeigniter.com/</a>
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mattculbreth
2007-04-13T00:37:47
Apple: Leopard delayed until October due to iPhone team developer poaching
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http://www.tuaw.com/2007/04/12/apple-announces-leopard-delays-due-to-the-iphone/
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mattculbreth
2007-04-13T00:40:01
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Well that's a bummer. Was looking forward to it. But they say they'll give away a "feature-complete" beta at the developer's conference.
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keithfrost
2007-04-13T00:45:23
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A full-text search facility for postings would be nice.
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mattjaynes
2007-04-13T00:45:33
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Yeah, I tried to make that clear at the beginning of the post. I guess not clear enough. I've added an update to my post including your comment. Yet another reason I prefer to podcast - way less work for me and much more accurate! I'll be sure to bring extra batteries with me next time, doh.
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zaidf
2007-04-13T00:46:05
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LMAO!<p>Reminded me of middle school where this one admin kept track of how many times you didn't have your school ID around your neck. The admin was my science teacher and saved everything in an Access db on a computer everyone used in his class. It was very enticing to just ... the db.
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whacked_new
2007-04-13T01:12:21
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how much cooperation between YC groups is there? first thing that comes to mind is writewith + scribd.
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Sam_Odio
2007-04-13T01:16:37
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I hate the censoring of comments on reddit & news.yc. It seems contrary to the entrepreneurial mindset. <p>If Steve Jobs got on a board like this in the '70s, and announced that he was going to start a company building PCs when mainframes were sexy, he probably would've been downvoted too.
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bootload
2007-04-13T01:21:06
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<i>'... which is nice because it means they give you actual technical information rather than burying you in incomprehensible marketing speak. ...'</i><p>Sometimes the message <i>gets lost</i> in the technical detail. Arstechnica usually does a good job of filtering the sig/noise giving you a nice summary at the expense of too much technical detail. But I do agree. If you look at the way most <i>news</i> sites work most of the time acting as second, third and sometimes fourth hand. <p>So what did you get out of idemix?
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hello_moto
2007-04-13T01:21:50
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Please explain what's wrong with the decision to create Wasabi
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jey
2007-04-13T01:24:15
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Sorry to threadjack, but what does this mean:<p>"timach notes that time is expanding between The Big Bang and The Advent of Human Consciousness. These are the opposite poles of existence."<p>I don't understand what you're trying to say by "time is expanding". It also seems to me like a rather anthropocentric view of the universe to put human consciousness at one "pole of existence". We've only observed a thin slice of existence thus far. If you could explain this, maybe I'd understand your following assertion that "the mathematical model of physical time using the complete ordered field of real numbers is a misleading metaphor".<p>I don't understand erdos2's discovery either, but I'll chalk that up to my complete ignorance when it comes to math.
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jmcmahon89
2007-04-13T01:30:56
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This is my first startup, so I don't know what I'm doing, but what has been successful for me before in my career is to try lots of things at once and see what works. I'm trying word of mouth, viral marketing, PR, google adwords, stumbleupon, and online ads on targeted sites. Of course, it would help if you visited us also at Wisdomology.com.
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timach
2007-04-13T01:40:02
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He's my cofounder and I don't understand what he is talking about either. As for what I am saying, the basic point is that only two interesting things have happened. One is The Big Bang, and the other is that we know it. All else is imaginary. The idea that "we've only observed a thin slice of existence" is falling prey to the metaphor to which I am objecting. There is no "existence" to slice up.
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ramen
2007-04-13T01:41:36
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My point is that PHP's lack of namespace hierarchy is just like C. In fact, most of PHP's libraries are very close to the underlying C libraries. The lack of apparent organization is mainly due to the fact that PHP pulls all these different, independently-written libraries together. If you were writing C, it would look about the same, except that you'd have to go out and find all these libraries and put them together yourself.
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bootload
2007-04-13T01:47:33
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<i>'... I am one of those guys who dropped from college because I simply couldn't see myself sitting in class learning about Nostradamus and interpretive theater while I was thinking of the application I was building at home ...'</i><p>Being smart, determined and doing stuff is good. But learning in a formal (or informal setting) has a couple of objectives. The first and most important one is to teach you <i>how to learn</i>. The second some fundamental skills. The third though cannot be taught, how to think.<p>To me original thinking backed up by skill and determination matters just as much. But theres one other dimension that education measures. The ability to complete.<p><i>'... Unfortunately, to many employers require that piece of paper that says, "I know my stuff." ...'</i><p>And it also does not demonstrate you can think. In fact it's really the bare minimum requirement.
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zaidf
2007-04-13T01:54:14
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May be html encode the link so it isn't treated as a link and thus not ignored by the reader?
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staunch
2007-04-13T02:00:36
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Another example of Brad Fitzpatrick showing what a hacker armed with Perl (and occasionally C) can do. He creates tools that obsolete expensive equipment in weekends.<p>Perlbal = Who needs a $200k "intelligent" hardware load balancer?<p>MogileFS = RAID my bank account? No thanks I'll use commodity disks on the cheap.<p>Memcached = A hundred DB servers? How about we just utilize the extra memory on the network and cache a lot, thanks.
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jkopelman
2007-04-13T02:05:55
Know your Known Unknowns
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http://redeye.firstround.com/2006/03/known_unknowns.html
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jey
2007-04-13T02:08:50
null
Sure, that's (arguably) true within our <i>observation</i>. But I don't think you can claim to know what's going on outside the observable universe -- or even in the galaxy next door. Your statement is also not self-consistent because of this... we don't know what all the products resulting from the Big Bang are. Sure, we do know that our consciousness is a part of that. But even if you were to union together the observations and insights of every human consciousness that's ever existed, it's still only observed one thin slice of the products of the Big Bang (well, existence really). Don't fall prey to an anthropocentric view of the universe! And if we are going to rank the "interestingness" of events, I'd put the happy accident that started this evolutionary process that stumbled upon a fitness gradient giving human consciousness as higher than human consciousness itself. After all, at that point it's "just" a matter of using the fitness metric to wander through the state space.<p>Anyway, thanks for the explanation! I'm not going to respond to this thread further since this isn't the proper forum for philosophical flamewars. :)
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usablecontent
2007-04-13T02:11:59
CBS Finally Launches Its Distribution Network, Guns Youtube
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http://startupmeme.com/2007/04/12/cbs-finally-launches-its-distribution-network-guns-youtube/
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rms
2007-04-13T02:17:16
null
Not sure what this says, but I'm 20 and I read Rolling Stone. I didn't like that the author made a dig at Rolling Stone readers but says she loves Maxim and Us.<p>It's a logical move on Rolling Stones part, but it's not going to suddenly make their website relevant. Facebook is perfect. There are no other social networks.
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Goladus
2007-04-13T02:46:43
null
There are many ways to train and access the subconscious. Musical performance training is one example. I have used alchohol to get some creative brainstorming done. Yoga and Bhuddism have centuries of tradition centered around exploring the subconscious.<p>People can learn to meditate. Brain scans of people who just learned "fixed point meditation" (where you stare at a dot and tune out your environment) showed up nearly identical to experienced practitioners. The only difference was that the inexperienced people couldn't hold the meditation for very long. But they appeared to be doing it right. [1]<p>[1] Restak, Richard. "The Naked Brain: How the Emerging Neurosociety is Changing How We Live, Work, and Love." <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Brain-Emerging-Neurosociety-Changing/dp/1400098084">http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Brain-Emerging-Neurosociety-Changing/dp/1400098084</a>
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RyanGWU82
2007-04-13T03:01:33
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What do you find lame about North Beach? I kinda like that part of town myself.
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bmcginty
2007-04-13T03:03:06
null
I am disappointed that you came up with The Cliff Notes. John Dvorak has been saying that for a while. Thanks for the link to <a href="http://live.com.">http://live.com.</a> I typed in "microsoft is dead" and got a whole lot of irrevelant articles. Google had yours at the top along with Dvorak's. Gave me a good laugh.
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ericc
2007-04-13T03:08:30
Who should be CEO?
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ericc
2007-04-13T03:09:27
null
How did you guys decide about this? A very important and sensitive question, but if you guys can give some insight on this, that would be great!!
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nurall
2007-04-13T03:13:09
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Thanks for the recommendation!! I wish more people could explore within rather than look outside for answers.
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juwo
2007-04-13T03:26:34
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wisdom
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juwo
2007-04-13T03:28:02
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me five. but you guys were great. so it doesnt figure.
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goodgoblin
2007-04-13T03:36:50
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authorize.net - its not that hard. I was actually surprised at how easy it was to set up. If you are doing a consumer site paypal looks sort of amateur - remember the people who are coming to your site don't necessarily need to kmow that its 2 guys in a spare bedroom.
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zaidf
2007-04-13T03:37:27
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Usually the guy who is handling the business side of things--such as incorporation, running the marketing etc.
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joshwa
2007-04-13T03:46:16
Twitter trouble - handling 11,000 requests per second w/ Rails!
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http://www.loudthinking.com/arc/000608.html
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busy_beaver
2007-04-13T03:51:20
null
Bloglines shows the comments links fine, so not all feed readers ignore them.<p>What I'd like to see in the feed is some indication that the link points to an external site. We get that locally, but not in the feed.<p>Edit -- that looks unclear upon rereading. When we see an article in the list on news.ycombinator.com, it looks like this:<p>Y Combinator a new twist on finding hot companies (mercurynews.com)<p>The same article in the RSS feed doesn't show the (mercurynews.com) part. It would be convenient to have that in the feed as well, so we know that we need to pop two new tabs for that article, rather than just one.
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acgourley
2007-04-13T04:02:02
null
Has anyone ever been slightly anxious with regards to the city, and then gotten over it? I grew up in a small town and whenever I go into sf, I just don't like it all that much. (I suspect this has something to do with the area of town around the Warfield, Fillmore, GAMS, etc). Is there anywhere that its easy to keep (and work on) a car while still being fairly connected to the rest of the city?
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erdos2
2007-04-13T04:17:56
null
I suggest outsourcing CEOs: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/09/opinion/09orlow.html?ex=1307505600&en=8926f03224ff1d65&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss">http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/09/opinion/09orlow.html?ex=1307505600&en=8926f03224ff1d65&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss</a>
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IMorgothI12
2007-04-13T04:25:36
null
The problem isn't when you have an idea and get rejected it's when you have a really good idea and still get rejected. <p>That's when it hurts.
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staunch
2007-04-13T04:27:40
GigaOM -- HOW TO: Deal with a MySpace Ban
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http://gigaom.com/2007/04/12/how-to-deal-with-a-myspace-ban/
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mynameishere
2007-04-13T04:29:37
null
Good way to lose money: Believe free advice from Goldman Sachs (or any financial corp).
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gibsonf1
2007-04-13T04:38:55
null
I've never tried meditation, but I do notice myself sometimes just staring out the window for a few minutes (especially when those good looking women egress from cnet.com - oops digressed). In those moments, I'm not really seeing anything (exception noted above) but my mind is just cranking on something. After a few of these sessions (the quantity varies on how complex the problem is I'm currently working on) I get the Aha! moment.<p>So I guess the skill is to be able to reduce conscious focus to free up access to your subconscious at opportune times. In my college days, I used to do this at inopportune moments, such as driving home. On several occasions, I would drive right by my apartment and basically start getting lost before realizing I had been in "subconscious" mode and had no idea where I was going.<p>An excellent way to access your subconscious is hard-core exercise. I've had the experience when swimming many laps, biking up a mountain, or cross-country skiing where I hit "the zone", the moment when your body is taking you with very little mental effort. That is when the subconscious flys and you can really solve some of the hardest problems.<p>I think sleep-deprivation is also a way to reduce conscious focus. I've hatched many integrations when running on too little sleep. There is the "sleeper's high" period which is especially good for subconscious work. Beware, however, of the big low you can get afterward. Push it too far, and you can get downright depressed. My record to date is 72 hours of focused work with very few breaks. I would have made it even longer if I hadn't bent over to tie my shoes after a shower - I woke up several hours later. (The good old college days.) The key to surviving the sleep deprivation lows is to work on really exciting and inspirational problems.
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waleedka
2007-04-13T04:42:19
null
The CEO is the business guy. As a CEO, you don't get to code. Instead, you'll get to do the paperwork, answering phones, making cold calls, a lot of meetings, and a lot of traveling. It's fun at first, but gets boring quickly for technical people. You have to be comfortable with that role and must be a good communicator and marketer. <p>It's a fancy title, but don't let that tempt you against your good judgement. The founders of a lot of technology startups go out and hire an outsider to be the CEO. Google is a good example. Even Steve Jobs hired a CEO in the early days of Apple. <p>If you're in the very early days, then just put Founder as a title for all founders. You don't need to get into conflicts too early.
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zach
2007-04-13T04:42:38
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Oh, that's a great book. Listen to a lecture he gave here:<p><a href="http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail135.html">http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail135.html</a>
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mdakin
2007-04-13T04:46:47
null
I have used both for different purposes and I can honestly say conceptually C is a very clean, fast assembly language substitute. If some dumb programmer pulls together 20 C libraries with different semantics and does not properly abstract over them and unify things it's the programmer that's the problem. PHP is fundamentally messy because of just that reason PLUS other significant problems at the language, not library level.
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ericc
2007-04-13T04:52:08
null
How much of a role do investors have in deciding the CEO?
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ericc
2007-04-13T04:52:48
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Makes sense!
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mdakin
2007-04-13T04:55:47
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"You can nest function declarations, but with limited effect. Nested declarations do not limit the visibility of the inner-defined function, which may be called from anywhere in your program. The inner function does not automatically get the outer function's arguments. And, finally, the inner function cannot be called until the outer function has been called."<p>That's from "Programming PHP" by Rasmus Lerdorf et al. <p>This sort of messiness, repeated dozens of times in various ways is why I try my best to avoid PHP.
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jmtame
2007-04-13T04:56:08
What are the cheapest ways to live in the Valley?
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nostrademons
2007-04-13T05:04:43
null
It seems like it'd have to be around that just for time constraints, though. If they give each interview an hour, 30 teams means 15 hour days all through the weekend.
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brett
2007-04-13T05:07:32
null
Looks like reddit also adds a description tag with a couple escaped anchor tag inside of it<p>google reader and their home page thing both show these links along with the main link.<p>edit: there was an example but it's getting destroyed. can I wrap code in something so it gets put in a pre? just go look at reddit's rss:<p><a href="http://reddit.com/.rss">http://reddit.com/.rss</a><p>edit 2: while your making rss changes you could at a link tag to the head so browsers know the rss is there (replacing the "-lt-" and "-gt-"): -lt-link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="/rss" /-gt-
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nostrademons
2007-04-13T05:08:13
null
"I'm debating whether it means there was something fundamentally wrong with my app or if it's something fixable."<p>The only way to know, for real, is to build it and see if people come. No investor, nor even an entrepreneur, can tell whether an idea will work just by looking at an application. They can only judge which ones are <i>likely</i> to work.
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12,283
12,282
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12,459
comment
zaidf
2007-04-13T05:15:56
null
For us, giving the ceo title actually helps. I think even for startup you need that one guy who gives constant thought to the big picture. At the same time, you don't want your chief coder to be day dreaming too much about all the non-technical issues.<p>So having a ceo as the guy who brings together everything is a good way to establish responsibility and SOME structure in the startup.<p>I will say that while most ceos of big companies don't spend much time coding, for 2-3 person startups it is very common to find the ceo doing coding and/or designing IN ADDITION to business work.
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12,449
12,434
null
[ 12461 ]
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12,460
comment
gibsonf1
2007-04-13T05:22:19
null
A sleeping bag on the beach. (Beware of high tide)
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12,455
12,455
null
[ 12468 ]
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12,461
comment
ericc
2007-04-13T05:28:54
null
Makes perfect sense for a 2-3 member startup, where all the founders wear multiple hats and structuring the different efforts seems like an important undertaking.
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12,459
12,434
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story
gibsonf1
2007-04-13T05:33:13
Google as Evil Empire? Never - Apr. 12, 2007
null
http://money.cnn.com/2007/04/11/magazines/business2/google_defense.biz2/index.htm?postversion=2007041210
1
null
12,462
0
null
null
null
12,463
comment
brett
2007-04-13T05:35:21
null
To me this reads as relatively diplomatic for DHH. The interview in question is pretty critical and while DHH seems to suggest that scaling like this is going to suck rails or otherwise he does not address all the criticisms head on and his tone is slightly conciliatory. I guess there's not a lot he can say; arguing performance in the abstract is one thing, but if twitter is saying ruby and rails are slow(er) there's something to that. <p>It still seems like a good trade off if rails makes you more productive and you've got to get to twitter's size to feel it.
null
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12,441
12,441
null
[ 12481, 12467 ]
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12,464
story
gibsonf1
2007-04-13T05:36:50
Young Scientists Design Open-Source Program at NASA -
null
http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2007/04/cosmoscode_0409
2
null
12,464
0
null
null
null
12,465
comment
cbueno
2007-04-13T05:38:52
null
If you are not a snob Oakland has some great places to live on the bleeding edge of gentrification. I stayed at a friend's place near 17th st, a kind of brownstony place, 800 bucks/month, beautiful kitchen, right on the BART.
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12,455
12,455
null
[ 12509 ]
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12,466
comment
asdf333
2007-04-13T06:11:48
null
Being CEO has its downsides like any other job. It means you are the one that shields everyone else from verbal beatings if customers are unhappy. <p>You're the guy that takes the heat if something is not going well. Especially at a small company, if someone is going to get chewed out by the customer, its going to be you. It often means you have to stay later and work harder than everyone else. <p>So. With power (the final say) comes alot of responsibility. <p>So who should it be? It probably depends alot on the business but lots of styles could work.
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12,434
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comment
ashu
2007-04-13T06:14:03
null
i think DHH's opinion is fair. without profiling, one really doesn't know what the hell is happening. and by being "slower", i just don't know what the comparison point is. sure, ruby is slower as a language - but for the complete application stack you'd need to compare the performance of django or cake to rails _for the same_ or relatively similar apps. only then, meaningful numbers will emerge regarding where the real difficulty lies.
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comment
rms
2007-04-13T06:20:29
null
is there free wireless?
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12,455
null
[ 12535 ]
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12,469
comment
marketer
2007-04-13T06:21:17
null
Robert Putnam is a brilliant political scientist, so there must be more to this concept than the article reveals. <p>I believe the marginal increase of happiness by using this method is less than doing more fundamental things like exercising daily, developing good friendships, having a girlfriend, etc.. <p>
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12,299
12,299
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12,470
comment
theoutlander
2007-04-13T06:22:08
null
I want to hear PG's thoughts on this site ... and why he thinks it will last long ... definitely not with one person ... how about a university professor wearing a cam or a coach??
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11,744
11,744
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12,471
comment
elialfordj
2007-04-13T06:24:22
null
"This is what VC's care about: A) traffic B) what other VC's think of you C) the quality of your team"<p>I had to stop reading. What about uuhmm...revenue?
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12,282
12,282
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[ 12479 ]
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12,472
story
bumberboey
2007-04-13T06:24:28
Is fund provided by Y Combinator only for US Citizen? what about ideas coming from outside of US, is Y combinator interested?
null
1
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3
[ 12473, 12665, 12488 ]
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12,473
comment
zaidf
2007-04-13T06:31:00
null
I am certain that ideas from non-US citizens are considered too.
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12,472
12,472
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null
12,474
story
ariejan
2007-04-13T06:31:11
Rails, Resources and permalinks
null
http://ariejan.net/2007/04/12/rails-resources-and-permalinks/
1
null
12,474
0
null
null
null
12,475
story
gibsonf1
2007-04-13T06:44:41
A conductor of history / The former Shockley Labs site now is simply a boarded-up fruit stand, awaiting renovation
null
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/12/BUGEIP6TGI1.DTL
2
null
12,475
0
null
null
null
12,476
comment
waleedka
2007-04-13T06:48:49
null
If you're in an early stage and seeking seed funding, then you should have everything thought out before talking to investors. Don't ask investors to help you decide which of the founders should be CEO because they'll take it as a sign that your partners and you can't work things out on your own. Investors want confident people who know what they're doing and go for it; they can smell fear and they'll disappear before you finish asking the question. Remember, it's YOUR company and it's YOUR responsibility. Investors help you with funding, introductions, and, maybe, some advice; but don't let them run your company for you. On the other hand, if you're in a later stage and seeking big VC funding then it's a whole different story. Talk to experienced entrepreneurs or close investors about the specific details of your situation; they’ll give you great insight. Although the key princeples are the same: it's your responsibility and you're expected to have strong leadership.
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12,452
12,434
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12,477
story
staunch
2007-04-13T06:55:10
Seth's Godin "Loosen up those worldviews"
null
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/04/id_ignore_him_t.html
1
null
12,477
0
null
null
null
12,478
story
staunch
2007-04-13T06:56:16
Tim O'Reilly: Web 2.0 Is About Controlling Data -
null
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/news/2007/04/timoreilly_0413
5
null
12,478
2
[ 12493, 12658 ]
null
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12,479
comment
brett
2007-04-13T06:57:14
null
The point he was making there was that while VC's claim team quality is the highest priority, it's not (and most VC's are unable to accurately evaluate team quality anyways).<p>Regardless: Are you claiming that all VC funded companies have revenue at the time of funding? To my knowledge VCs fund many pre-revenue companies. That would indicate that at least for those deals revenue was not an important factor. A lot of laundromats have more revenue than many early stage startups and VCs aren't knocking on their doors.
null
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12,282
null
[ 12489 ]
null
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12,480
comment
staunch
2007-04-13T06:58:01
null
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12,455
12,455
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null
null
true
12,481
comment
aston
2007-04-13T06:58:25
null
There's only so much to that productivity argument. I suspect the time it takes to make big changes to the Rails stack for performance sake far exceeds the relatively small savings in initial development time. According to Compete, Twitter's not <i>that</i> big [0].<p>[0]<a href="http://snapshot.compete.com/twitter.com+techcrunch.com?metric=uv">http://snapshot.compete.com/twitter.com+techcrunch.com?metric=uv</a><p>
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12,441
null
[ 12483, 12713, 12586 ]
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comment
felipe
2007-04-13T07:01:40
null
IMHO the article in the PDF is highly biased, like for example when it takes the "Sixteen Decisions" completely out of context. The article also makes a number of claims without mentioning any sources at all. The only piece of reference provided is the infamous 2001 WSJ article, which was already extensively debunked way before the Nobel Prize.<p>There is no feminist agenda. Grameen lands mostly to women based on their own experience showing that: 1) Women are more likely to pay the loan back; and 2) Women tend to invest the loan in long-term basis (ex: buying a cow to sell milk). The fact is that women are highly marginalized in developing countries, and men magically starts to listen to them when they somehow are able to make decisions without the men's approval. Women have a vested interest in the loan, and therefore they tend to be better payers.<p>Don't believe on such "experts" -- If their theories were right, developing countries would be prosper by now :)
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12,168
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12,483
comment
brett
2007-04-13T07:07:53
null
Yeah. It's a give and take to be sure. I'd take Twitter's current position any day. But you're right they're still in a position to stay ahead of competition and net productivity of development and scaling has to be considered. <p>Worth noting Twitter's audience is using it a lot differently than Techcrunch's is, so relative audience size is not totally meaningful.
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12,441
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12,484
story
bootload
2007-04-13T07:09:37
My Web 2.0 stack
null
http://darwinianweb.com/archive/2005/121.html
1
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12,484
0
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null
null
12,485
comment
bootload
2007-04-13T07:20:06
null
Gotta agree. Best thing MT & 6Apart did hiring this guy. I can't help think that if some of these tools intelligently applied with twitter (or MySpace) they might be doing better than '11,000 s' ~ <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=12441">http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=12441</a><p>The reason I added this was I was looking for topics on scaling. Google (lots of reads), Livejournal (lots of writes & reads) must be doing something right in scaling to have a look at. One point Paul Buchheit [0] made in Startup School 2007 was the difference b/w types of data. Big data & small data. The later you should use DRAM for. Wonder if Twitter uses 'memcached'?<p> Reference<p>[0] Startup School 2007 Wiki, 'Paul Buchheit creator of GMAIL at YCombinator Startup School'<p><a href="http://wiki.startupschool.org/doku.php?id=notes">http://wiki.startupschool.org/doku.php?id=notes</a><p>
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12,345
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[ 12492 ]
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12,486
comment
felipe
2007-04-13T07:33:09
null
I totally agree with the concept that speed does not really matter because hardware is cheaper than programmers. And I never understood the criticism towards Ruby being slow... If it improves my productivity, who cares?<p>However, the REAL problem I see here is that apparently the very features that make Rails productive must be thrown away for the application to scale. If that's the case, then that's a <i>huge</i> issue and even a show-stopper if you ask me.<p>I think the problem lies on how clustering is usually implemented in Rails. I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that Mongrel distributes the load across multiple web servers, right? If that's the case, then the bottleneck becomes the database, and that's the key issue IMHO (and the hardest one to solve).<p>In Java (more specifically JBoss), clustering is implemented at the application logic level: The app server manages the state of the application and then it caches and replicates the state whenever necessary.<p>I really don't see how Rails will solve this problem unless with some kind of application-level communication across the servers... And that's a tough one. Suffice to say that the Java community took like 10 years to come up with something effective!<p>Note: Please don't take me wrong: I'm not trying to start a Rails vs. Java war here! I'm just sharing my experience on how Java solved this issue...
null
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12,441
12,441
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[ 12491 ]
null
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12,487
comment
gyro_robo
2007-04-13T07:35:52
null
What cold calls is a CEO making?
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12,449
12,434
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[ 12591 ]
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12,488
comment
rms
2007-04-13T07:36:45
null
All are welcomed, but you've gotta get the visa by yourself.
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12,472
12,472
null
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12,489
comment
elialfordj
2007-04-13T07:39:59
null
Do all VC funded startups have traffic? Do all VC funded Startups have a reputation among VCs? I was obviously not making a statement about "all" VC funded companies. If we're talking about what is important to venture capitalists when evaluating startups seeking early stage financing, I think revenue should have been a good candidate for that short list of qualities. If you can show in a small test market that your model is capable of generating revenue, and your model is scalable, this is going to look pretty appealing to your prospective financier. Not every startup involves some abstract technical concept, it is possible to build a company with revenues from the start.
null
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12,479
12,282
null
[ 12504 ]
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12,490
comment
felipe
2007-04-13T07:40:56
null
No night-life in MV? C'mon, how about Molly McGee?? :)
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12,290
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12,491
comment
bootload
2007-04-13T07:50:19
null
<i>'... I really don't see how Rails will solve this problem unless with some kind of application-level communication across the servers ...'</i><p>This is something that appears to popping up again and again in Web2 [0]. Is Twitter utilising 'memcached' & 'MogileFS' [1] in their optimisations trying to reduce the load on MySql?<p>Reference <p>[0] Myspace thread ~ <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=1015">http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=1015</a><p>[1] Distributed file storage: MogileFS ~ <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=12345">http://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=12345</a>
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12,441
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comment
staunch
2007-04-13T07:53:31
null
Six Apart didn't hire Brad -- they acquired LiveJournal from him and named him "Chief Architect" or something. He's an amazing hacker and a reluctantly-badass entrepreneur.<p>I'm sure Twitter will use memcached, like Facebook/Digg both do. Dealing with 11k rps doesn't really tell us much though -- how many are dynamic and how many are cachable/static?<p>From the "5 questions" interview their developer does not seem to be amazingly qualified to do what he's doing -- definitely no Fitzpatrick.
null
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12,485
12,345
null
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null
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12,493
comment
mauricecheeks
2007-04-13T08:33:47
null
Thats awesome that he mentions Amazon & ebay as giants of Web 1.0 :-) <a href="http://revvu.com">http://revvu.com</a> is gearing up for that scene.
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12,478
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story
mattculbreth
2007-04-13T08:35:34
Y Combinator: A new twist on finding hot companies
null
http://origin.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_5654015?nclick_check=1
3
null
12,494
0
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12,495
story
mattjaynes
2007-04-13T08:37:25
YC App: What was your answer to the last question?
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null
9
null
12,495
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[ 12496, 12544, 12646, 12510, 12640, 12500, 12943 ]
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comment
mattjaynes
2007-04-13T08:41:00
null
Since this came up recently, I thought I'd share my answer and also ask other applicants to share theirs. I'm sure there were some great ones! <p>Also, non-applicants - what <i>would</i> you have answered? :)<p>------------<p>### Question: <p>Please tell us something surprising or amusing that one of you has discovered. (The answer need not be related to your project.)<p>### Answer:<p> Personal discovery: To get your bottom <i>really</i> clean after a BM:<p>1. Wipe<p>2. Put a dab of lotion or soft-soap (lotion works better) on some doubled-up toilet paper<p>3. Wipe again and repeat until you are squeeky clean<p>I know this is random - but man it works great!<p>Bonus: Those air-freshener sprays don't work. You end up with a bathroom smelling like air-freshener and poo vapors. What works fantastic is the squirt body sprays from the Body Shop - for some reason if you just squirt those in the air after the BM, it totally kills the BM smell and all you can smell is the body spray (disclaimer: I learned that from a girlfriend).
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12,495
12,495
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[ 12682 ]
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12,497
comment
menloparkbum
2007-04-13T08:47:37
null
youth hostel on 23rd and Bryant in SF<p>friend's couch<p>shack up with an older gay man
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12,455
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[ 12800 ]
null
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12,498
comment
mattjaynes
2007-04-13T08:49:05
null
He he, nope - it's under GPL ;)<p>I created a new thread so others could add their answers. My answer is here:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=12495">http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=12495</a>
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12,499
story
mattculbreth
2007-04-13T08:49:15
Mozilla moves to next generation version control system (and it's not SVN)
null
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/preed/2007/04/version_control_system_shootou_1.html
5
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12,499
0
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