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Title: I am about to ship my second app and I&#x27;d like to bring in a good friend of mine who I believe can contribute a lot in many areas that need to be covered in order to build a succesful app company. How do I go about forming a mutual agreement as to how to split equity?<p>To explain what I&#x27;ve done so far:<p>- Developed and shipped first app.<p>- first app has a few thousand downloads and growing.<p>- put up investment for the development of second app (validated market with customers, great potential).<p>- invested my time for 3 months almost full time (taking care of metrics, marketing, managing developer&#x2F;designer etc.)<p>Any more info that is needed please ask. All comments or helpful links are appreciated. Upvote:
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Title: Recent grad (F, May 2013). I plan on quitting immediately, like tomorrow or Friday and not going back, and I am terrified (like rather be deathly ill). If you feel the need to know why feel free to inquire, essence: personal issues, I am not getting done what they deserve, work is not my cup of tea. Been working there since mid March this year. Other job opportunities are in the works.<p>Working as a contractor on site for a government agency. I have two bosses: the one I see everyday that works for the government agency, and the one I never see that works for the contracting company I am hired by that is offsite 5 miles down the road.<p>I know not giving in your two weeks is kind of giving them the middle finger but I need to leave, not doing well. My boss that I see everyday will not see it coming and I foresee it getting ugly. I just don&#x27;t know if I can handle it.<p>This is not my typical, I have been working in industry since 2006 and have always been responsible and on track, nothing but good things until this job.<p>Any advice from anybody out there who have quit and not planned to stay for two weeks? Or any other advice? Thank you Upvote:
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Title: It seems like all companies that are valued at $1BN or more raised money in their early days. Upvote:
107
Title: I am soon taking a whole year off from client-work (a kind of &quot;sabbatical&quot;) and I&#x27;ve been looking all over the interwebs for ways to help my local government &#x2F; city through my skills as a front-end developer and designer... I&#x27;m stuck!<p>Does anyone know where to start finding problems that a local government might be facing and would like solutions (prototypes)? Has anyone tried this and would be willing to share their experience?<p>Sidenote: I recently got the chance to sit down with the Head of Social Service &amp; Care of the city I live in (2nd largest city in Denmark, Aarhus) who was &quot;mindblown&quot; about the fact that developers and designers actually would want to help out their communities and the local government. She said that they had many issues they could list publicly for anyone to jump on.<p>That made me think; I could make a non-techie-friendly platform for local governments to post their problems (maybe as a GitHub repo), embed it on their website and make it easy for developers and designers to fork a problem they&#x27;d like to work on, notifying the local government whenever something is released?<p>But that would take local governments to sign up and developers &#x2F; designers to begin solving problems that matter to their local society. Might be worth a shot though?<p>I&#x27;ve already looked at Random Hacks of Kindness, Code for Good and similar, but it&#x27;s not quite what I have in mind.<p>I know from experience that public healthcare can greatly benefit from prototypes and concepts made by freelance developers, which gives them major leverage against the large companies who they are often ball-and-chained to whenever they need IT-solutions. Many of these solutions have again and again proven themselves way too costly, bug-ridden, outdated and incredibly user-hostile. <i>rant</i>.<p>Any ideas are appreciated and I hope you&#x27;ll all have a great weekend! :-)<p>- Anders Upvote:
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Title: I&#x27;m mainly trying to think of something to do for my undergraduate thesis, but I&#x27;m also curious about the projects you would work on that aren&#x27;t academic. Upvote:
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Title: I&#x27;m trying to get a deeper understanding of how Java actually exploded into the mainstream &quot;enterprise&quot; and has continued to do so at least since the early 2000s. As a regular browser of HN, I&#x27;ve stumbled upon different flavors of commentary related to this in an ad-hoc fashion; some snarky like &quot;Oh you know, it&#x27;s a dumb-proof language that really doesn&#x27;t require people to have had a solid foundation in CS so hiring and ramp-up are easier&quot; and some more insightful like &quot;It&#x27;s not really Java the language, but Java the ecosystem (like JEE) and particularly the JVM that makes it an attractive proposition for enterprise companies&quot;. I&#x27;m wondering how much of this proliferation can be attributed to:<p>1. Features. Core functionality that the language&#x2F;ecosystem provides like the JVM, portability, relative ease in multi-threaded programming, garbage collection etc) 2. Timing. Was there a specific problem during the late 90s or early 2000s that was a sweet spot for solving using Java? Seeing that this was around the time when the internet really became mainstream, was Java primed to benefit from this in a way that set it apart from the then-contemporary programming ecosytems? 3. Scalability. In terms of the number of people you can hire while &quot;growing&quot; your company; could the popularity of SOA&#x2F;WebServices fueled this as well?<p>Disclaimer: I&#x27;m not generalizing that every &quot;big&quot; company uses Java and I&#x27;m not saying that the ones that do are obviously doing it for the right reasons; I&#x27;m purely looking at this from academic interest since there&#x27;s so much rich nuanced history that I feel I don&#x27;t understand. Such a discussion could be easily extended to ask &quot;What does this mean for functional programming languages based on the JVM like Clojure and Scala&quot;. Like Mark Twain said: &quot;History may not repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes.&quot; Upvote:
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Title: HN has always been one of the first things I&#x27;ve checked when I woke up. I know there is an amazing amount of experience and intellect here. 4 years ago, I applied to Stanford as a direct result of reading (here) about getting out of our comfort zones. I was living in a Bureau of Indian Affairs dormitory for high school students when I got the news that I was accepted. This was a huge deal, because statistically I am part of a demographic the comprises the bottom 1% of the income spectrum here in America. But I left Stanford after a year, partly because it was such a huge change, but also because I wanted see if I could succeed on reservation I grew up in (the Navajo Nation). I&#x27;m now 22, and I can say I used what little I had to try to make a difference. I&#x27;ve made mistakes - one of which was lying to my peers about leaving because I wasn&#x27;t prepared for the change that Stanford demanded. Another was not asking for help when I needed to. And, finally, I didn&#x27;t pursue a regular job when my family demanded it. And now, I don&#x27;t know what to do. I have about $20K in debt - student loans that have already been deferred, money I used to buy a computer (pretty much the only thing I own), and medical bills from a year of battling cancer. And, as of today, I had to get out of my step-parent&#x27;s house because it was not a good place for me to be anymore. I am at a park in the next town over - a town that tends to be particularly disdainful of Native Americans wandering the streets. I don&#x27;t know what I am looking for here on HN. It&#x27;s always been a source of encouragement to me, especially in those times that I felt the most uncomfortable or hopeless. I&#x27;ve learned a lot for living on a reservation where the nearest IT-related job is 100 miles away - and it really is thanks to you. Upvote:
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Title: Whether it&#x27;s for ongoing work, or starting a new project, what are tools that have become indispensable components of your workflow? Upvote:
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Title: Hello,<p>My parents attempted running a holiday-booking venture that didn&#x27;t go anywhere. In the process, they had a fairly advanced web app built with things like custom refund policies and self-service registration for the hotels.<p>This web app cost a lot and it would be nice to get back some of that money, so how would you go about recovering the cost?<p>Any failed business sale forums I don&#x27;t know about? Upvote:
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Title: I am a python developer and I am looking to contribute to some lesser known open source projects in python. Do you know of any such projects ?<p>Thanks Upvote:
61
Title: The question is simple. I found a problem I really want to solve, there&#x27;s a pretty big market for the solution (data collation and storage of automotive test data).<p>Except I&#x27;m purely a software guy, and I&#x27;ll openly admit I know nothing about developing a business, networking, or money. So I&#x27;ll likely need a team.<p>How do you find one? Upvote:
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Title: First, I&#x27;m extremely appreciative of Hacker News, its moderators, and the forum it provides for poor builders like myself to get some eyeballs on our infant products at no cost via Show HN.<p>However, it seems the 40-comment penalty is being applied to Show HN posts, which seems counter-productive to me. Isn&#x27;t the whole point of Show HN to generate healthy discussion and answer user questions? Shouldn&#x27;t they be exempt?<p>(Yesterday I posted a Show HN that had reached #15 on the front page when the 40th comment came in. Ding! Welcome to page 3. Irony: Several comments were my own, replying to questions.)<p>Source: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.righto.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;11&#x2F;how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html Upvote:
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Title: I have (what I think to be) a pretty good idea for a website. I also have a full-time job that I&#x27;m very happy with.<p>I&#x27;m thinking of launching my idea on Heroku, and the monthly fees would run around $300 a month. Mind you, this is with two dynos, two workers, and the &quot;production&quot; level of a few add-ons (Redis, Postgres, etc).<p>My problem is that I have no interest in charging money or providing an additional tier of features for people who would pay money. I want to try launching my idea, see if it&#x27;s useful, then scale the site&#x2F;add-ons to match those needs. I&#x27;d also like to open-source the whole site. But what happens if (a very large, hypothetical if) it does turn out to be more useful than I expected?<p>The only way I can think of breaking even is by asking for donations. Is donationware in the Internet age a viable option? Has anyone done it successfully? Upvote:
63
Title: And counting. Second time in about a week and during prime time hours. If it doesn&#x27;t get up quickly or if happens again to NYC2 in the next few weeks may be time to reconsider DO for hosting production sites. I love them, and glitches happen, but twice in a row clients have a hard time swallowing. Upvote:
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Title: previous posts<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6661536<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=4639271<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7094402 Upvote:
323
Title: I have no idea what the population of HN is, not the global distribution thereof. I&#x27;m working on a pet project that I would like to show of at some point, and in the event that it actually hits the front page (unlikely as it may be), I would like to know if I have the budget to spin up enough servers to handle the load, or if I should just point people at the github repo.<p>When other people have had their project show up on the front page, is there any pattern of how many concurrent users you topped out at, and how long most of them stuck around? Upvote:
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Title: I&#x27;ve been working on a library for a while and I&#x27;ve come up with a way to monetize it by making a web frontend for it. With a bit of marketing I think it could make some money (not a lot, maybe ~$10,000 a year given my sense of the rather niche market) I want to know what are the practical steps you take with this sort of business.<p>Do I have to form a company? Should I be patenting and trademarking logos and stuff? If I just make a website and start taking payments, what are the tax and legal implications? My library is Apache v2 licensed but I imagine the frontend &#x2F; service would be proprietary. I heard I should consider switching the library to MIT.<p>I am planning to move abroad in a few months so I don&#x27;t really want to start a company in the United States. I&#x27;ve just never created a paid service before so I&#x27;m really naive about how to go about it. If anyone has experience here or a good link, I&#x27;d appreciate it. Upvote:
49
Title: Looking for something new to read, curious to hear what others are reading Upvote:
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Title: I work at a big software company that treats its workers well. My product is well-respected in its niche, and I&#x27;m working on features that will make our customers happy. Nonetheless, I find it almost impossible to give a crap about the code I&#x27;m writing.<p>This doesn&#x27;t really matter when the work is easy; I can do it on autopilot. But as soon as I encounter a tricky design problem, I want to give up because I don&#x27;t care about the product enough to put in the effort.<p>I might switch jobs, even though I&#x27;ve only been here 6 months and would probably burn bridges by leaving. But, short of that, do you have any tricks to motivate yourself in this type of situation? Upvote:
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Title: I&#x27;m a web developer, happy to use my spare time to build one or several small passive income sites. Looking for ideas for what to build. Upvote:
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Title: I&#x27;m getting really tired of dreaming up cool ideas for apps, cranking out prototypes, and then finding there is zero interest. Here are my four best ideas for what to work on next. I don&#x27;t know how to &quot;validate&quot; them beyond a landing page&#x2F;adwords. Last time I attempted that, adwords banned my campaign immediately.<p>LongCal: Basically, a calendar that goes beyond the standard month&#x2F;week&#x2F;day view. Emphasis on long term thinking and planning. I made a very rough prototype here (click on logo to get some test data): http:&#x2F;&#x2F;humbit.com&#x2F;longcal&#x2F;<p>uTrim: A URL shortener for universities. The idea is to create trustworthy links that can only be created by people actually associated with a school. I already have a functioning app and if you don&#x27;t have an .edu account you can at least check out the landing page : https:&#x2F;&#x2F;utr.im&#x2F;<p>Vulgat Library: Helps businesses create an internal lending library (movies, books, games). I sold this to two game companies, so it&#x27;s the only thing I feel has proven demand. But I&#x27;d have no idea how to find more customers. This is the landing page that adwords objected to: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;vulgat.com&#x2F;<p>Business naming app: After all the naming debacles I&#x27;ve seen on HN, I think an app that generates names (and checks against .com registration and trademark) could be really useful. My big doubt is if anyone would pay for it.<p>Do any of these sound worthwhile? Maybe I should just suck it up and do 30x500... Upvote:
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Title: Usually it&#x27;s at 9AM no? Upvote:
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Title: Please lead with the location of the position and include the keywords INTERN, REMOTE, or VISA if the corresponding sort of candidate is welcome. Feel free to post any job that may interest HN readers from executive assistant to machine learning expert to CTO.<p>Please do not post recruiting firms or job boards. Upvote:
449
Title: Please lead with either SEEKING WORK or SEEKING FREELANCER, your location and whether remote work is a possibility. Upvote:
141
Title: Share your information if you are looking for work. Please use this format<p><pre><code> Location: Remote: Willing to relocate: Technologies: Resume: Email:</code></pre> Upvote:
225
Title: This bothered me for awhile. I consider myself pretty good software architect, with significant abstract thinking abilities. In the same time I am handy enough to fix my cars&#x2F;bike, make new copper&#x2F;pvc&#x2F;whatever piping at home, I can easily mount dry board and figure out how to make a nice texture on the wall. I can replace a bathtub, install gas water heater, read codes to find what are local requirements are, etc.<p>In my opinion all this stuff I do with hands is way easier than trying to come up with good thought through software&#x2F;hardware&#x2F;network system. I understand, that I am sorta &quot;IT plumber&quot; too, but I feel like my skills set is out of reach of most plumbers&#x2F;handymen out there.<p>Or put it simply - I can do basic plumbing and I can code, plumbers out there can do plumbing, but have hard time with craigslist.<p>So... My concern is that when I am asking $100-$125 &#x2F; hr only very few clients are OK with that (they usually either pass this cost on their client or get way more value out of my work.) On top of this I constantly get &quot;Impostor Syndrome&quot;. On the other hand plumber, who need just a bit of common sense and practice (and honesty to get nice feedbacks) charges $100+ an hour without even thinking twice, and everyone pays...<p>I constantly see in Craigslist&#x27;s Service section maid service for $25+&#x2F;hr (if they provide their supplies - it is extra), Handyman charging $50+&#x2F;hr for simple things like fixing drywall hole. Plumber&#x27;s help - from $75&#x2F;hr (it is good deal)<p>Why is that? Why becoming a plumber actually can be more profitable than trying to solve way harder problems? Either all IT professionals are heavily underpaid, or their work simply brings less value somehow?<p>Sorry for this rant, but this bothers me for quite a while. Were I grew up plumbing for for people who did not have enough will to pursue college degree. And here in US they somehow charge often more than I can do. Upvote:
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Title: Tox is now usable and has reached alpha (in other words, it is mostly working, but lacking some features, bugs might be apparent).<p>uTox is a lightweight (minimal dependencies) Tox client for Windows, Linux and (experimentally) Android. It supports text chat, file transfers, audio and video calling, desktop sharing (both as video and as screenshots). It also supports text-only group chats (with audio&#x2F;video being worked on).<p>For more info about Tox and uTox, see the project links below.<p>Windows updater&#x2F;downloader:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jenkins.libtoxcore.so&#x2F;job&#x2F;utox_update_win32&#x2F;lastSuccessfulBuild&#x2F;artifact&#x2F;utox-updater.zip<p>Linux nightlies:<p>64-bit:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jenkins.libtoxcore.so&#x2F;job&#x2F;uTox_linux_amd64&#x2F;lastSuccessfulBuild&#x2F;artifact&#x2F;utox&#x2F;utox_linux_amd64.tar.xz<p>32-bit:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jenkins.libtoxcore.so&#x2F;job&#x2F;uTox_linux_i686&#x2F;lastSuccessfulBuild&#x2F;artifact&#x2F;utox&#x2F;utox_linux_i686.tar.xz<p>If you use an operating system other than windows or linux (OSX or android) or want to try other Tox clients, see this page:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.tox.im&#x2F;Binaries<p>Project links:<p>Official Tox website:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tox.im<p>uTox Github:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;notsecure&#x2F;uTox<p>toxcore Github:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;irungentoo&#x2F;toxcore<p>Other links:<p>qTox Github:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tux3&#x2F;qTox<p>Antox Github:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Astonex&#x2F;Antox<p>Note about adding friends in Tox: in the settings area of uTox you can find your Tox ID, and you give that out to your friends so that they can add you. To solve the inconvenience of sharing long IDs, Tox also supports &quot;DNS names&quot;, for example &quot;[email protected]&quot;. You can register your own @toxme.se name on toxme.se<p>Tox is alpha software, bugs are expected.<p>Feel free to post any questions or feedback or visit us on IRC: #tox on freenode. Upvote:
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Title: I&#x27;m going to Africa for 5 weeks where I&#x27;ll have very little access to Internet. What interesting things should I download to my hard drive to read&#x2F;watch during this period? Thanks<p>Edit: my areas of interest are the largely the kind of things that get posted about on HN, but I&#x27;d like to broaden my horizons and just read interesting things about new topics and get away from tech stuff. Also, I can&#x27;t go out after dark alone for safety reasons so I&#x27;ll have 2-3 hours every day where I&#x27;ll just be in my room. Upvote:
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Title: I assume these companies probably run on ec2: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hostedgraphite.com&#x2F; https:&#x2F;&#x2F;circleci.com<p>And probably many more that I can&#x27;t think of at the moment...<p>I noticed many companies that do something similar offer a free trial for their services. How much money do you think they lose out this way? I assume they probably run an ec2 instance per customer, at least for the hosted graphite.<p>The cheapest ec2 instance is around $15&#x2F;mo. If the trial is 30 days I’d assume they’re likely losing a lot of $15&#x27;s here and there.<p>Am I wrong? Upvote:
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Title: Are there any better alternatives to ol&#x27; Paypal? Upvote:
44
Title: I&#x27;m just negotiating a freelance job with a company, who want &#x27;day&#x27; rate quoted. Being me, I want to define day: usually it&#x27;d be 8 hours.<p>However, I know I cannot program productively for a solid 8 hours.<p>How many hours do you do, and how do you handle it on such contracts? Upvote:
49
Title: So, I joined a startup 1,5 years ago. 2 non technical founders, a half baked product with no revenue at all, built with a freelancer. Joined remotely from a EU country, as a contractor with shit money and 10% equity in options. Fast forward to today, we got seed funding, are 17 people, and the founders want to take 4 points out of my 10 points to extend the options pool. They are each giving 4 points as well. The issue is, that in my situation 4 points represents 40 percent of my options, whereas in their case more like 10% of theirs. Talking undiluted percentages here.<p>I don&#x27;t know what to fucking do. I&#x27;m &quot;c level&quot;, but I&#x27;m feeling helpless. Also, we&#x27;ve set up an office here, and hired some people, so quitting and leaving feels like a bad option.<p>Also related question. I&#x27;m thinking of exercising my existing vested shares as soon as possible, but I&#x27;m not aware of possible legalities. Startup is US based, I&#x27;m EU based.<p>Experience + feedback much appreciated. Upvote:
152
Title: I&#x27;m a keen follower of the tech scene, especially all the great stuff that comes out of Silicon Valley and the rest of the world. Something that puzzles me is the sheer volume of projects and startups that are launched and receive funding.<p>Surely not all of them are able to generate any sustainable revenue that is long-term. What&#x27;s the value to the creators therefore who sink countless hours into creating them and to investors who pour in so much money?<p>There&#x27;s only so many consumer eyeballs and wallets in the world, it almost seems the supply of products and services is unimaginably over supplied to a fixed demand? Or is that the wrong way of looking at it? Upvote:
57
Title: I&#x27;m an independent developer living living Canada with some clients in the US. I am paid monthly by cheque in $US and I am looking for the most cost effective way of converting that money to $CAD.<p>I&#x27;m interested in hearing about banks, brokers or even using something like bit coin as a means of currency exchange. Upvote:
63
Title: I love programming and I enjoy solving good problems. Even though I am aware that there is some level of grunt work associated with each job but this one is just killing me.<p>Most of my job deals with adding CRUD functionality and bug fixes here and there. People don&#x27;t seem to be tiny bit interested in doing things better. Our front-end developer chooses to re-implement everything from modals, alert boxes, to validation in form of horrendously ugly code because he believes his code will be more understandable to &#x27;him&#x27;. The pay is not great and there nothing exciting associated with this job. In fact, out of 8 hours, I barely write code for 2 hours.<p>I only took this job in order to buy some time and create some interesting things but this job barely leaves me any time to do so. When I started looking for job, I didn&#x27;t get good response from HN hiring &#x2F; freelancing threads (maybe because I don&#x27;t have a good portfolio).<p>I feel I should know modern frameworks like Rails and Angular to have a better appeal but it would take months before I get proficient in them and I have never been good at learning new frameworks for just the purpose of learning. I have no idea what I should do? Upvote:
83
Title: Recently someone asked a question here on HN. I answered, and while it didn&#x27;t take long, it did take a moment or two of my time. Freely given.<p>Then the question was deleted. No thanks, no acknowledgement, no reply. Just summarily deleted.<p>In the grander scheme of things it&#x27;s small fry, but it irritated me. They probably don&#x27;t care. After all, who am I to them? But still, it rankled a bit.<p>People - don&#x27;t be a jerk. If you ask a question and someone answers, say thank you. They&#x27;ve taken the time, does it cost you too much to be polite?<p>Or am I just completely out of touch with reality? Upvote:
333
Title: I&#x27;m considering going to a front-end coding school and trust the people here more than other forums. I&#x27;m curious if those who attended, or know someone who attended, enjoyed or disliked the experience and why. Is it worth saving 10-20K and just subscribe to Lynda or Pluralsight? Thanks in advanced. Upvote:
57
Title: I was hired and unhired in 2 weeks, for no reason except being told that &quot;our plans changed&quot;.<p>I joined as employee #1 of a YC startup. I spent a week working with them before joining. They liked me, and I liked them. I officially joined as the COO. Deal was to work remotely, till we all figured out the visa.<p>And then, suddenly I was told over a ‘catch-up call’, that they have to rethink the hiring decision because they really needed someone with a different skill set. The conversation was friendly and polite.<p>Now <i>finger snap</i> - just like that – I am out! Specifically, I was politely asked to leave. Its the strangest experience of my life. They keep reiterating that its not performance related. I believe it.<p>The problem is: - I let all job offers go (I had a few good ones) - Told my friends&#x2F;family about the job, and that I will be moving to America - Reached out to all my contacts (including everyone who was trying to hire me) and attempted to sign them up for this YC service - I reached out to several people (e.g. at Google, FB, Partners at a management consultancy (i.e. my former employers)) asking them for a potential investment into this company (&quot;Use our personal networks&quot; was a key strategy), some of these helped me find a job that I turned down<p>I like the founders - they are good guys. I may even understand that they need someone else, but personally that has left me with few options and in a bit of a depressed state! For my wife, this was such a huge decision (to join a startup and move to another country), and it was just awkward to convince her first, and give her the news.<p>I am not being very articulate about why this sucks – but any help&#x2F;advice would be awesome. I have a masters in CS, a failed startup and 6 yrs of management consulting behind me.<p>Edit: Thank you. Thank you for the wonderful support and advice. I called my wife and showed her this thread! We are going through every word. We are very touched by the amount of concern and positivity here! Thanks. Upvote:
368
Title: Dan Ariely and I are looking for ways to help people with high email load. One idea was Shortwhale, which we&#x27;ve tested for a few months now. The idea is super simple: It&#x27;s a place to tell people how you prefer email and it offers a simple contact form that adds the necessary structure to email. Although technically trivial, it works extremely well for Dan. We have ideas on how to expand this but first we&#x27;d like to know if someone else might find this useful too (we know that this is only a solution for people who get tons of (unsolicited) email).<p>Underlying to all of this is the idea to put more demands on the sender (there are things to pick from a drop-down and people can create multiple-choice emails, which allows the receiver to answer with one click). However, what we found is that it can also make it easier for people to write Dan because it actually removes some demands from them: they know that he doesn&#x27;t expect any formalities and the structure helps them too. And, above all, senders are more likely to get a response (and quicker).<p>Please have a look:<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;shortwhale.com<p>As an example, here&#x27;s Dan&#x27;s Shortwhale page (he links to it from his website and in his email signature):<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;shortwhale.com&#x2F;danariely<p>HN, we&#x27;d love to hear what you think.<p>Many thanks, Dan Ariely and Dominik Grolimund<p>PS: If you&#x27;re interested, Lifehacker published an interview with Dan where he talks about &quot;how he works&quot;: lifehacker.com&#x2F;im-dan-ariely-author-and-professor-and-this-is-how-i-1615748781 Upvote:
40
Title: I&#x27;ve seen numbers thrown around in the range of $750K -$1.5M per employee, but this seems to be for VC funded companies correct? If you are a bootstrapped start-up with very little debt, 2-3 co-founders, but with no revenue or customers yet, what should be the per employee price for an acquihire? Upvote:
69
Title: I work as an Associate in the commercial real estate industry and wonder how many others like me are out there on HN. Is there a community here like me who have an interest in technology and entrepreneurship but aren&#x27;t hackers?<p>I love this site because: A) I get news on average 2-3 days before it makes it&#x27;s way through the news cycle. B) Technology interests me and I can see what new tech could benefit my industry C) I am a wantrepreneur and like reading about startups, hopefully wanting to start one someday.<p>Why are you here and what do you get out of the community? Upvote:
157
Title: I know the .Net tech stack very well, warts and all. I feel I could get to market quicker than if I were to build out using something JVM based or even node.js.<p>Would this put off potential suitors? My gut instinct is that it probably would to an extent, but I&#x27;m not sure it&#x27;d outweigh my personal advantage of experience. If it makes any difference, I am funding this myself initially.<p>So in your opinion should I bite the bullet or go with what I know? Upvote:
81
Title: I binge-watched it all yesterday. This is what all educational media should be like. Upvote:
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Title: I have been web scraping for several months and am starting to teach it at Meetups. I&#x27;m lucky enough to work for a company that has a few pre-crawled copies of the web that I can query against and a distributed processing platform to speed up any scraping I do.<p>I&#x27;m running out of ideas of what to build though. I build scrapers to produce content for the company based on the data and insights I find. They are usually marketing verticals though, such as finding all websites using feedback tools (I search based on their javascript widgets), and do analysis on that info.<p>So if you had these resources, what would you be looking for? I love building tools that help people so any feedback&#x2F;ideas would be great!<p>I&#x27;m also open to hearing what you would scrape for on the live web. I find that if I&#x27;m doing broad analysis then the pre-crawled copies are best, and for specific sites&#x2F;information I use the live web. Upvote:
129
Title: We are Imaginary Number, a small educational games startup with 3 founders, zero employees, and a handful of paying customers. I finally opened the letter from CSC, the Delaware agent responsible for collecting taxes. Here&#x27;s what they sent:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mathbreakers.com&#x2F;static&#x2F;img&#x2F;csc_delaware_tax.jpg<p>After 10 minutes of mounting panic, I came across some information which relieved me. Apparently Delaware likes to use the maximum method for calculating taxes for startups, when we actually only owe a tiny fraction of the amount they claim we owe (and they offer a hefty interest of $525.56 on this supposed balance as well!)<p>Here&#x27;s the article, if you&#x27;re a C-Corp in Delaware and at the seed stage, you&#x27;ll need to see this. http:&#x2F;&#x2F;capgenius.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;03&#x2F;02&#x2F;de-franchise-tax&#x2F;<p>Any other startups here gotten a nice &quot;tax surprise&quot;? Would love to hear about it! Upvote:
119
Title: For all the massive hype about docker, I am hugely dissapointed.<p>Not being able to change &#x2F;etc&#x2F;hosts, &#x2F;etc&#x2F;resolv.conf of a container, ugh. Requiring some really ugly hacks just to actually provide an real &quot;containement&quot; of an entire applications environment - &quot;uh yeah except hosts and resolv, cant do that&quot;.<p>The command syntax is lies, docker rmi can untag an image not really remove, and who came up with the name rmi? docker images already exist, docker images -rm someId would be sane.<p>The biggest flaw though, is that its a pain in the ass to setup a private repository and actually use it.<p>Isnt there some saner alternatives, like lxc with images and shareing? Upvote:
97
Title: Our industry is obsessed with shipping. And yet, I&#x27;ve been speaking to a lot of software teams lately, and it seems that everyone feels &quot;behind&quot;. They all want to be shipping better software, more frequently.<p>What do you think the problem is? What&#x27;s keeping your team from shipping? What slows down the development process? Upvote:
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Title: I think my question boils down to: is there a <i>fundamental</i> reason apps don&#x27;t use p2p networking, or is it just that there aren&#x27;t any good app P2P SDKs or programming techniques out there?<p>(Note: by P2P in this context I mean over the Internet, not the emerging wireless &quot;Internet of things&quot; P2P networking stuff. That&#x27;s a bit different, and has a different use case.)<p>Take an example: SnapChat. (Just using them as a hypothetical here.) Why didn&#x27;t they architect their app to send snaps directly when possible? It would have saved them a lot on bandwidth for starters. If they wanted to also store snaps on their servers they still could have done so, but they could have saved considerably on downstream bandwidth costs by sending snaps &quot;horizontally&quot; between users if these users happen to be online.<p>Is it just that it would have been too much work development-wise, or is there a more fundamental reason companies like this pass on P2P?<p>Spotify used a P2P protocol but last I heard they were moving away from it. Netflix -- about as bandwidth heavy as you can get -- doesn&#x27;t do it. Skype has moved away.<p>Why?<p>The only reasons I can think of are:<p>(1) It&#x27;s hard to program and there are few good SDKs to make it easier.<p>(2) Some users -- enough to be meaningful -- have bandwidth caps even on wired Internet connections.<p>(3) Cellular data connections almost always have bandwidth caps, and so users on these networks dislike p2p apps eating their bandwidth.<p>Which of these is most significant? Or are there other reasons? Upvote:
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Title: It&#x27;s been a while since I&#x27;ve seen any posts or new PG essays--just wondering if we can expect anything soon? :) Upvote:
54
Title: I co-founded a startup couple of years back which got acquired recently. Even though it was termed an acquisition, it was really an acqui-hire. When people congratulate me on that, I know in my heart that it&#x27;s not true and it doesn&#x27;t really make me happy.<p>Now, I&#x27;ve quit my job at that company because I just couldn&#x27;t work there any longer. And am trying to figure out what to do next.<p>I know for a fact that I want to run my own business and attain financial freedom but I can&#x27;t risk another startup at this moment because: 1. Startups are tough and I am afraid 2. I have a few financial responsibilities towards my family which I have to take care of.<p>Thus, I have picked up another job which I&#x27;ll join in a few weeks. It is not in a very &#x27;sexy&#x27; or &#x27;trendy&#x27; industry and I have no idea where it is going to take me in two years.<p>What do you do when you believe that you can do great things but something that you have no control over is holding you back? You believe that you are good at what you do and are meant for great things but you have to do your job even though it doesn&#x27;t do justice to your capabilities. How do you cope with that? Seeing your future as an underachiever pains you. What do you do?<p>In the course of trying to figure it out, I spoke to my friends about this, I realised that most of them are going through the same thing. But they haven&#x27;t figured out how to deal with it. I don&#x27;t know if this is what they call a quarter-life crisis.<p>Thus, this is as much a distress call as it is a rant. And not having anyone else to turn to, I am posting it here at HN assuming that this is not just a problem for a handful of people but a general problem for people who believe in their ability to do great things (whether it is true or not is irrelevant to them).<p>The questions I posed here aren&#x27;t the only ones I have in my mind. But, I hope I have been able to convey the message. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks! Upvote:
309
Title: I&#x27;m a full stack web dev and hacker by heart. However, all my front-end designs just can&#x27;t compete with anything delivered by a (semi-)professional designer. Are there any CodeAcademy-like resources that provide actionable advice on how to do better UI design? I&#x27;m getting tired of hiring freelancers.<p>I tried hackdesign.org, but figured it was way too high-level and since it&#x27;s only a blob of links to blog-posts it didn&#x27;t create any continious learning experience for me. I&#x27;m looking for resources that help me with practical problems like whitespace&#x2F;margins, color schemes, font-sizes etc... Upvote:
117
Title: Hi folks, throwaway account obviously.<p>I&#x27;m a dev with a bit over 15 years experience. Right now I&#x27;m a senior dev working in &quot;cloud computing infrastructure&quot;. I&#x27;ve hit a point of malaise and I need help.<p>Admittedly, calling my problems problems is a disservice to real problems. I get that. But I hope you can empathize with the fact that anyone in any situation can become unhappy and want to feel happy and fulfilled again. So, hear me out.<p>I need change. I&#x27;m not burned out. I&#x27;m bored, maybe. Confused, perhaps?<p>Problem 1: My comp is high (total comp &gt; $200k last year), to the point where almost anywhere else I go will be a step down I feel. Having said that, I know if I randomly jump ship to another BigCo, I will keep that comp at least the same, and also pull down probably close to $100k in signing bonuses. So do I just bounce somewhere to pick up a pile of money?<p>Problem 2: My seniority is decreasing &quot;hands on keyboard&quot; time, which is what&#x27;s made me happy since I started programming in second grade. So I feel like my reward for accomplishment is to diminish what makes me happy. Some weird version of the Peter principle...<p>Problem 3: I literally have no idea what I want to work on. I&#x27;ve worked on lots of different things over the years, and I&#x27;m at the point where I look at the landscape out there - and it&#x27;s just &quot;meh&quot;. I don&#x27;t see much changing on a day to day basis from where I&#x27;m at now. Nothing is exciting me.<p>Problem 4: I don&#x27;t want to go into management, and I&#x27;m having a hard time understanding how to grow anymore as a developer.<p>Has anyone ever been here before? How did you get out? The tl;dr is &quot;don&#x27;t find satisfaction in what I&#x27;m working on, look around, don&#x27;t find anything appealing or any motivation to choose one thing over another.&quot; Is that it, have I just arrived at my professional plateau?<p>Help! Upvote:
85
Title: I am 18 years old startup founder from north africa : last year was my final year at high school.I spent most of my time working on my product so I got bad grades and didn&#x27;t qualify for engineering school.They did put me in design school and now I can&#x27;t get even a PHD or masters degree.I always wanted to be a computer scientist or at least an engineer : my dream is destroyed now.I can&#x27;t work without a degree in computer science and can&#x27;t even a get a visa for Europe or USA.What should I do ? Upvote:
47
Title: I think most of us have some abandoned projects collecting dust on Github. Post them here so others can work on it or you even get enough motivation to start working on it again.<p>For example, I started an user mode network stack in Python: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;fotcorn&#x2F;pynetworkstack which responses to ping requests, but nothing more. Upvote:
72
Title: I am a developer&#x2F;entrepreneur, and whenever I start a new project I tend to work pretty hard on it (i.e., 10+ hours per day, six days a week). I am already doing fine financially, so if I launch a new project it&#x27;s because it has the potential to solve a big problem and consequently to earn good money, that is why I get so motivated.<p>The first time I had a co-founder things didn&#x27;t work out, exactly because I felt I was doing a lot more than my co-founder. For instance, once we had the prototype done we started pitching it to clients, but for every 10 clients I pitched the product my co-founder would pitch to 1. I decided to abort the project as I didn&#x27;t want to do 80% of the work while earning only 50% of the profits. In this case my co-founder was also a developer.<p>After that experience I had the opportunity to co-found products with other people, but I always backed down for the same reason, I was afraid the other person wouldn&#x27;t be able to keep up with me, so I would end up doing most of the hard work. This fear gets amplified when the co-founder is not a technical person, which means I&#x27;ll certainly need to take care of the development aspect myself, while the other person focuses on the business aspects, which in my opinion are much less demanding on software related projects (at least in the early days).<p>And to be clear, I do know how to manage the business aspects too, so it&#x27;s not like without a business co-founder I would be lost.<p>My questions:<p>1. Psychological Aspect: How do I overcome this fear?<p>2. Practical Aspect: How do I structure things with my co-founders so that I don&#x27;t end up doing most of the hard work? Upvote:
40
Title: I&#x27;ve been working on a terminal&#x2F;console based GUI framework for Ruby for around 4&#x2F;5 months. Its still very basic, but there&#x27;s a complimentary mp3 playing app which uses it to showcase capabilities. Not quite cross-platform, and still needs a bit of work. Welcoming pull requests.<p>Vedeu: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;gavinlaking&#x2F;vedeu<p>(The mp3 player; Playa: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;gavinlaking&#x2F;playa). Upvote:
91
Title: I&#x27;m working on an application that makes heavy use of in-app drag-and-drop to categorize and update data. We aren&#x27;t using the DnD for sorting or arbitrary item placement, nor do we support dropping files or other media for upload. We simply need to be able to drag a type of element and handle hovering and dropping on others of that type as well as their container. We also only need to support Firefox and Chrome.<p>Originally it was built with HTML5 drag-and-drop, but we&#x27;ve started to see many issues, specifically in Chrome. For instance, previously we got a ghost image of the element for free in both Firefox and Chrome, but recently Chrome has reverted to a little gray box with the element text. We could use setDragImage, but since we&#x27;re dragging plain old DOM elements that seems excessive. Chrome also seems to treat the dragEnter events strangely, making nested element hover handling difficult.<p>We could potentially implement a custom solution (the front-end is React, so it wouldn&#x27;t be too hard) but that also seems excessive.<p>I&#x27;m about to add a dependency on jQuery and jQuery UI just to allow the use of their bulletproof Draggable and Droppable elements. Somehow that feels dirty. Is there a good, modern way to allow us to drag regular DOM elements and handle the hover and drop events? It doesn&#x27;t seem like it should be this hard. Upvote:
41
Title: I&#x27;ve noticed earlier today that a Job Ad posted on HN front-page started higher than usual and moved down much more slowly. Now, it&#x27;s back at the top, along with another Job Ad. Is this the new normal or just a result of live development?<p>Also, I&#x27;d like to remind all the startups posting Job Ads to HN that this is an international website and that not all its visitors live in &lt;your city&gt; or come from &lt;your country&gt;. Quite often I read Job Ads that don&#x27;t mention the location at all. For example, while the boostedboards.com Job Ad currently on the front-page prominently displays the location above the job description, the information is absent in the polleverywhere.com description and only visible in the sidebar below the link to the same Job Ad. Upvote:
143
Title: There are many sites out there, such as FounderDating, FoundersHookUp, CoFoundersLab, etc., that attempt to help solo startup founders find a co-founder. (To clarify, I am a tech founder.)<p>Is there any evidence that this actually works to create a great founding team? Have you used it successfully?<p>Relatedly, might it be better to be a solo founder than to find a co-founder you don&#x27;t already know well? Upvote:
57
Title: As of 22nd August (tomorrow for the hermits among us), Mechanical Turk is giving the huge middle finger to anyone who wants to be a requester and create HITs on MTurk if they aren&#x27;t a US resident.<p>I have used MTurk for years and it is infinitely easier than using alternative websites. For example, my startup which is still in somewhat of it&#x27;s early stage launch (I plan on doing a Show HN next week) has used it for about a hundred thousand HITs already.<p>I run a vacation rental marketing platform ( edit: www.rentivo.com for the curious) that also builds websites for home owners and agents and handles their payment processing issues. We need to do things like detect watermarks, tag images for inside&#x2F;outside. Label images. Do data transcription for one website to a strict scheme and we validate thousands of URLs to categorize them based on set questions that we provide.<p>Being able to have everything returned in a fixed CSV is so useful. We have have dozens&#x2F;hundreds of workers handle our HITs simulatenously...<p>But now Mechanical Turk is impossible to use if you don&#x27;t have a social security number. This is because you need to sign up to Amazon Payments to use Mechanical Turk.<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;requester.mturk.com&#x2F;mturk&#x2F;amazonpaymentsacctreqmts<p>There are no alternatives that exist from what I can gather. You have sites like CloudSource, CloudFlower, ClickWorker etc but all of these are just wrappers around Mechanical Turk and require a budget in the thousands.<p>The simplicity of MTurk meant that I could create a HIT with 70k HITs and have it completed over the weekend in the format I need.<p>If I hire someone on Freelancers or oDesk.. it would take weeks to do this!!<p>What solutions exist to overcome this huge gap! We really need to use MTurk.. and I don&#x27;t believe that any true alternatives exist.<p>Edit: Dont&#x27; CloudFlower have a minimum spend of $2,500 per month? That&#x27;s like 5 times our current monthly costs. There is no way we would ever be able to pay this. Plus, I want to handle the creation of the HITs myself. I don&#x27;t need someone to do it all for me. I typically managed to create HITs that would only cost a $400 at most! Upvote:
89
Title: I often miss out on responses and conversations die on HN. I have to revisit a page or check my profile to see if anyone has responded. Some, simple implementation of notifications would remedy that. I was wondering if other people felt the same way?<p>I know there was a lot of buzz about getting an official Show HN section which eventually was implemented. So I thought I&#x27;d throw this out there and see if there was support for the idea. Upvote:
55
Title: What is better to learn for an aspiring mobile game developer Ruby (with RubyMotion) or Swift ?<p>* RubyMotion:<p><pre><code> - pros: could target iOS, OSX and Android - cons: paid solution, no trial, not supported by Apple </code></pre> * Swift<p><pre><code> - pros: it is strongly promoted by Apple - cons: limited to iOS and OSX, new language</code></pre> Upvote:
42
Title: The article from a few days ago (&quot;This is your brain on silence&quot;) got me wondering how many of us here search out silence at home? And if so, why?<p>As I get older, I&#x27;m finding my preference for silence increases. Nature sounds are included in my definition of silence, thus I&#x27;m more talking about an aversion to man-made noise. I want my home to be free of noise and commotion, as those two things, in my mind, are related to the outside world and being in public. Basically, I want that option and contrast to always exist, between public and private…and I think an attempt at silence should be the norm, even in public (which makes me think I might enjoy living in Japan).<p>In terms of why I feel the way I do, well, I&#x27;m not quite sure (but it may have to do with liking nature, being an introvert, a minimalist, a writer, and with growing up in a house where silence was a pipe dream). Upvote:
67
Title: How do you guys and girls go about adding self employed periods to your CV?<p>Are they a help or hindrance in tech?<p>I&#x27;ve got quite a few periods in mine and are updating it at the moment. By reading some message boards it appears self employment is a really bad thing!<p>Any thoughts on how to market self employment?<p>Thanks :) Upvote:
98
Title: About 2 years ago, my firm developed software under contract. About 4 months later, after falling behind on payments, the customer &quot;charged back&quot; all his previous payments (via PayPal), and kept the software (it was not yet finished, but functional enough to charge customers).<p>We recouped about half the money through PayPal&#x27;s dispute process. We let the rest go, deciding it wasn&#x27;t worth trying to squeeze blood from a turnip.<p>Fast forward to today, the very same company is on the front page of HackerNews:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8225738<p>The business&#x27; name is Pigeon.ly &#x2F; fotopigeon.com (when we worked on it it was called pichurz.com &#x2F; picturgram.com). The owners names are Fredrick Hutson and Alfonzo Brooks.<p>So, HN, what should we do? We have a signed contract with them which states that the software becomes our property in the event of non-payment. Should we assert ownership of the software? Of their business? Should we sue them? Should we reach out to their investors (Kapor Capital and Base Ventures)? Should we include Kapor Capital and Base Ventures in the suit?<p>I would really appreciate any advice HN can offer. We will of course rely on our attorney&#x27;s advice primarily, but I am optimistic that someone here has dealt with a similar situation before.<p>Thank you for your time! Upvote:
231
Title: HN doesn&#x27;t allow resubmission of the same link that points to the change log [1], so here&#x27;s the change log:<p><pre><code> The --join option of the CLI is now deprecated. Source maps now use .js.map as file extension, instead of just .map. The CLI now exits with the exit code 1 when it fails to write a file to disk. The compiler no longer crashes on unterminated, single-quoted strings. Fixed location data for string interpolations, which made source maps out of sync. The error marker in error messages is now correctly positioned if the code is indented with tabs. Fixed a slight formatting error in CoffeeScript’s source map-patched stack traces. The %% operator now coerces its right operand only once. It is now possible to require CoffeeScript files from Cakefiles without having to register the compiler first. The CoffeeScript REPL is now exported and can be required using require &#x27;coffee-script&#x2F;repl&#x27;. Fixes for the REPL in Node 0.11. </code></pre> [1] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;coffeescript.org&#x2F;#changelog Upvote:
60
Title: Are there any that use cubicles or more private work spaces? Upvote:
71
Title: My name is Frederick Hutson, and I am the President and CEO of Pigeonly. I was recently made aware of a post made here:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8227225<p>In light of the defamatory nature of the poster’s statements, I felt compelled to respond. Well over two years ago, we entered into a work-for-hire agreement with the poster to write aspects of the software code for a beta version of our initial e-commerce platform. Our agreement with the poster makes it clear that we own all work product produced pursuant to the agreement. In the end, however, we were very unhappy with the quality of the poster’s work so we terminated the relationship and requested a refund.<p>In addition to my own assessment I consulted with several independent sources including a founding member of the CakePHP project (the framework the poster used). Everyone who evaluated the code said the same thing, to sum it up (in their professorial opinion) the framework was not utilized correctly which resulted in the numerous bugs and browser incompatibility issues. The truth is even if we wanted to work with the code the poster provided we couldn&#x27;t because it was flawed. So we were left with no choice but to start from scratch with a new developer.<p>The bottom line here is that through hard work and determination, we indeed built the Pigeonly platform from scratch and in no way incorporated any of the code produced by the poster. We are very proud of what we have built at Pigeonly, our mission is to build great products that solve the type of problems most would overlook. Upvote:
157
Title: I am a Ruby on Rails developer from Bangalore, India. Currently working for a startup in Bangalore as a full time employee.<p>Few months ago there were lots of posts on HN related to passive income. This gave me thought about having passive income which will give enough freedom to work on my own ideas&#x2F;project fulltime.<p>In India one can easily live on $500&#x2F;month, so keeping that in mind I have setup a timeline of 12-18 months(which I think should be enough) to generate that much amount.<p>Right now I don&#x27;t have any savings which I can invest to earn and I&#x27;ve free time available around weekends.I am working on few ideas of my own, but those will not necessarily generate income.<p>So what would you do suggest me to do? Upvote:
288
Title: &gt;Segregation Now ... Sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education, the schools in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, show how separate and unequal education is coming back<p>was trying to fit in the whole subtitle. Upvote:
48
Title: So it is Monday and as always I returned to my daily job refreshed by a restful weekend.<p>Pick up a coffee and <i>zap</i> work like hell.<p>I don&#x27;t feel the urge on Mondays on checking news here on HN, neither news&#x2F;posts&#x2F;tutorials on the 11 other websites which I follow everyday, by opening their tabs almost mechanically and reading them fast impulsively (after all, I&#x27;m at work).<p>The problem starts when I&#x27;m in mid-week, I probably check those websites every 30 minutes, trying to absorb new information.<p>So a few questions here:<p>1) How do you manage this urge of knowledge?<p>2) How do you manage then to balance work &#x2F; &quot;absorption&quot;?<p>3) How do you organize this new information? (personally I have 6 distinct categories [(H)news, generic articles, design inspiration, coding tutorials, design tutorials, new coding tools or technologies])<p>4) I&#x27;m alone here with this problem?<p>Thank you all in advance,<p>&#x2F;coffee finished Upvote:
49
Title: Share your information if you are looking for work. Please use this format<p><pre><code> Location: Remote: Willing to relocate: Technologies: Resume: Email:</code></pre> Upvote:
117
Title: Please lead with either SEEKING WORK or SEEKING FREELANCER, your location and whether remote work is a possibility. Upvote:
59
Title: Please lead with the location of the position and include the keywords INTERN, REMOTE, or VISA if the corresponding sort of candidate is welcome. Feel free to post any job that may interest HN readers from executive assistant to machine learning expert to CTO.<p>Please do not post recruiting firms or job boards. Upvote:
224
Title: Google translated article: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;translate?hl=en&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;sl=auto&amp;tl=en&amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Fwirtschaft%2Funternehmen%2Fuber-gericht-stoppt-taxidienst-in-ganz-deutschland-a-989332.html Upvote:
258
Title: As part of a huge &quot;let&#x27;s see what&#x27;s going on here and re-build this from scratch&quot; they dumped the whole code repository on me and my team.<p>We&#x27;ve started parsing it and tried to work on extracting abstract syntax trees and all that.<p>Any idea would help us a great deal.<p>Thanks. Upvote:
87
Title: Interested in seeing what others are reading.<p>My pick for now:<p>Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Siddhartha_(novel) Upvote:
49
Title: Two years ago, I launched a social media gaming company called Cashsquare. Our small team set out to create the first real-life virtual game that lets people buy and sell real-life properties, but in a virtual gaming environment.<p>We wanted to bring online games to the real world and we did everything the right way. We brought together a talented team of developers and marketers, as well as individuals with years of experience in real estate development. We built a business plan. We found office space, which we shared to save costs. We secured our first round of investment. And we spent countless hours developing the game - all while legally dotting all of our i’s and crossing all of our t’s along the way. We were starting to see all of our efforts paying off.<p>Then, we got sued by Square, Inc. – the payment processing company. It turns out we were not the only victims. Square, Inc. also sued other startups with the word “square” in their names. Apparently, Square, Inc. feels that it has the monopoly on the word “square,” and it doesn’t matter that there’s no likelihood of confusion (to use the trademark parlance) between our real-life virtual game and Square Inc.’s payment processing business. It’s only a matter of time before Square, Inc. insists that Moscow’s Red Square or Beijing’s Tiananmen Square change their names.<p>What are we going to do?<p>We’re moving forward. We just launched our new version and our developers are pushing hard to make new features the next month. We feel we’ve invested a lot in our name and our brand, and we’re not backing down just because a larger company feels it can bully startups into submission.<p>This is a very realistic issue that many startups and founders may face. We are going to fight it and believe our startup will survive, because we do it for the love of the game.<p>We encourage all startups and founders to follow their passion and persevere in the face of adversity.<p>Boris Co-Founder, Cashsquare Upvote:
43
Title: I built this[1] because I couldn&#x27;t find any other such tools that met all of the following criteria:<p>* Use SSL * Save settings through localStorage * Allow PDF export w&#x2F;o any watermarks * The exported invoice must look identical to the preview<p>1: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.free-invoice-generator.com Upvote:
89
Title: My latest free webstore app (Link given below) is being attacked by group of cyber bullies from past 2 days. Here are the details:<p>Day 0: - I had almost 100 reviews on my app. Most of them were 5&#x2F;5. And chrome webstore was showing full five stars for this app.<p>Day 1: - A guy (with empty profile) posted a 1&#x2F;5 rating, claiming that my app is not safe to use. And interestingly only the same day, I got more than 20 new 1-out-of-5 ratings, and none of them had any text reviews. Generally I rarely get less than 5&#x2F;5 rating, you can check from the below link.<p>Day 2: At Day 1&#x27;s end, I posted a reply on the guy&#x27;s review that my app is safe, and you can contact me on the given ID. Next day I woke up and saw, his 1&#x2F;5 review starting with &quot;Avoid this app&quot; is on the top, and my reply was completely removed. Which can only happen when lot of people click on mark-as-spam.<p>So, I need help from you guys. I do not have any contact at Google, and even if there was not sure how much they can help. Any suggestions what should I do next?<p>Note: We can discuss this later&#x2F;seperately, but my app is 100% safe and I am an ethical developer.<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chrome.google.com&#x2F;webstore&#x2F;detail&#x2F;sticky-notes-just-popped&#x2F;plpdjbappofmfbgdmhoaabefbobddchk&#x2F; Upvote:
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Title: Hi all!<p>I&#x27;m a 17-year old self-taught developer just starting to tap into the mobile world! :3<p>This summer, I&#x27;ve worked on a minimalist distance-based alarm clock app that wakes you up before you miss your stop!<p>Check it out here! http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.windowsphone.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;store&#x2F;app&#x2F;commuter-buddy&#x2F;cb9b5107-41e0-4d2b-b0d6-110fe555fc3b<p>Feedback and comments are welcome, thanks :) Upvote:
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Title: Disco is tiny app I built over the weekend to try and make browsing git better.<p>Inspired heavily by Tower, it also adds pull request integration and is run in the browser. It&#x27;s only for public repositories.<p>Checkout:<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;disco.88cartell.com&#x2F;#&#x2F;rails&#x2F;rails<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;disco.88cartell.com&#x2F;#&#x2F;emberjs&#x2F;ember.js<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;disco.88cartell.com&#x2F;#&#x2F;angular&#x2F;angular.js Upvote:
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Title: I like startups and creating webapplications. But my main income (after working hours) is still selling websites &#x2F; hosting or invoicing packages (=&gt; customization of the invoice layout, configuring webapps, ...), which is like 85% of my income). The rest is mostly from hosting (webapps &#x2F; websites)<p>I&#x27;m wondering, what do you sell to people (webapps, websites, cms), which contains hosting and is fairly easy to create a recurring revenue with?<p>And do you upsell? (eg. selling a website + email marketing application + affliate gmail for biz) Upvote:
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Title: This question is a bit toungue in cheek, but I am wondering if it is possible to shape a career towards the title goal.<p>I am pretty successful in my current work life - Under 25 with a 100k ish total compensation. I&#x27;ve always pushed myself, but lately I just feel lazy.<p>I&#x27;ve heard stories of boring positions in big companies where you don&#x27;t have to do much of anything, you don&#x27;t learn anything, and you don&#x27;t advance, but you can collect high salaries if you get the position and there&#x27;s not a lot of work expectations.<p>Is there a way to reliably get a job with a decent salary, but one can coast along doing very little from 9-5? Upvote:
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Title: Many of my favorite tech podcasts seem to be vanishing. What are your favorites and why? Upvote:
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Title: Got anything you&#x27;ve been working on in the last few weeks&#x2F;months? Go ahead give us a short demo of it! What does it do? What problem does it solve? When will it launch? Upvote:
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Title: Here is a simple rust code:<p>&#x2F;&#x2F; main.rs<p>&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;<p>struct Point { x: int, y: int, }<p>fn main() { let origin = Point { x: 0i, y: 0i }; println!(&quot;The origin is at ({}, {})&quot;, origin.x, origin.y); }<p>&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;&#x2F;<p>Compile it using `rustc main.rs`<p>Now open the compiled `main` file in a text editor and search for this text:<p>It was from the artists and poets that the pertinent answers came, and I know that panic would have broken loose had they been able to compare notes. As it was, lacking their original letters, I half suspected the compiler of having asked leading questions, or of having edited the correspondence in corroboration of what he had latently resolved to see..... Upvote:
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Title: What tech stack do the YC software startups tend to use these days?<p>I&#x27;m going to guess Ruby on Rails, AWS, Angular. Upvote:
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Title: I&#x27;ve tried to make it as light as possible. It&#x27;s only tested with Firefox and Chrome, however I intend to test it in IE down to 9. What would you change? What would you add? Any feedback or pull request is greatly welcome! MIT Licensed Upvote:
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Title: I asked Peter if I could post some of his new book on HN. Here is Chapter Two, which I think will be interesting to people here.<p>Party Like It’s 1999<p>Our contrarian question—What important truth do very few people agree with you on?—is difficult to answer directly. It may be easier to start with a preliminary: what does everybody agree on? “Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule,” Nietzsche wrote (before he went mad). If you can identify a delusional popular belief, you can find what lies hidden behind it: the contrarian truth.<p>Consider an elementary proposition: companies exist to make money, not to lose it. This should be obvious to any thinking person. But it wasn’t so obvious to many in the late1990s, when no loss was too big to be described as an investment in an even bigger, brighter future. The conventional wisdom of the “New Economy” accepted page views as a more authoritative, forward‐looking financial metric than something as pedestrian as profit.<p>Conventional beliefs only ever come to appear arbitrary and wrong in retrospect; whenever one collapses, we call the old belief a bubble. But the distortions caused by bubbles don’t disappear when they pop. The internet bubble of the ’90s was the biggest of the last eight decades, and the lessons learned afterward define and distort almost all thinking about technology today. The first step to thinking clearly is to question what we think we know about the past.<p>A Quick History of the ’90s<p>The 1990s have a good image. We tend to remember them as a prosperous, optimistic decade that happened to end with the internet boom and bust. But many of those years were not as cheerful as our nostalgia holds. We’ve long since forgotten the global context for the 18 months of dot‐com mania at decade’s end.<p>CONTINUE HERE: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pastebin.com&#x2F;NuxLFmW4 Upvote:
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Title: If so, which one do you use? If not, how are you actually monitoring updates from all your favorite news sources? Upvote:
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Title: I moved my family from Denver to the Bay Area to work for a medical device startup. The pay was very good. After about 4 months, I decided to part ways with them for personal reasons.<p>The timing was unfortunate as I quit the day after I received a performance award. I did finish up a major project before I quit though.<p>The day I announced my intention to quit, my manager asked me to reconsider my decision. After I stuck to my decision, he had the VP of HR talk to me. This was when things became a little unsettling. HR manager advised that I pack my belongings and leave the building before either VP A or VP B found out about my decision to leave. I was also told that I would not find any positions in the Medical Device Industry in the Bay Area. Towards the end of our conversation, HR lady mentioned that her mental state was transitioning towards anger. Due to these comments, I thought it best to leave the premises as soon as possible. I cleaned out my desk (on a friday), stayed for a few more hours, transitioned everything that I could think of to other co-workers, turned over my keys and left.<p>I later found out from another pretty reliable source that the company has decided to make life as difficult for me as possible. Other employees have been questioned of their interactions with me after I quit.<p>1. I need to discuss the issue with a good attorney if possible. I am really new to this area and don&#x27;t have any contacts. References are appreciated.<p>2. I was asked to return a 100% of my sign-on bonus. I am willing to return it. However, about 30-40% of that was withheld for tax purposes. Do I give them the entire amount and claim the taxed amount from IRS?<p>3. I know that most of the issues here would probably be best discussed with an attorney. However, I would appreciate HN advise as well. Upvote:
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Title: Here is where we are:<p>We have a valid product, paying customers, Currently $50K MRR and we are growing.<p>We have competitors, they are bigger, got huge investment rounds (we only got small seed round from friends), yet we have a better product. Much better!<p>How do I know? Customers, customers who left them, told us clear and simple. This product is far beyond what we have had with A and B.<p>Now, A and B are strong with PR, most of it are exaggerations (typical to PR), one even get to post almost every week at HN&#x27;s front page.<p>To really really beat them, we will need to inject some cash and start the PR channels, conference attending and spend a lot of time in marketing. I hate doing that. I am happy to develop the product. Very happy to meet customers and present the product, and strongly convinced the world deserve to know about our product.<p>Open sourcing will make the product better, will make it well known and might even speed up our growth.<p>I will be happy to see companies that started as closed source, then went open source, and succeeded.<p>Got some examples? Upvote:
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Title: Go check your email. Upvote:
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Title: I am embarking on an upcoming Magento e-commerce project, target demographic is security-aware business customers. The extended validation (green bar) SSL is -- in my view -- required for the website.<p>There was an Ask HN thread [1] from nearly three years ago that asked the same question, and a variety of answers were provided. On the one hand, there&#x27;s the &quot;don&#x27;t spend more than x&quot; on a certificate, and there&#x27;s the flip side of &quot;get a green bar, it&#x27;s worth it&quot;.<p>The specifics:<p>- site is running atop Magento 1.9 on LAMP, payments processed offsite by Braintree (i.e., no credit card details stored on the website) - initially 1x IP address, hosted from a UK data centre - static components may be served from a non-www subdomain (i.e., static.example.com) in future, which may be the same or different IP address<p>My questions:<p>1. Who&#x27;s worth shortlisting in 2014? 2. If you consider yourself a security-aware shopper, would you be dissuaded from purchasing from a site with standard (`non-green`, if you will) SSL?<p>Thank you in advance.<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=3556796 Upvote:
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Title: This is one of those things that we&#x27;re just going to have to wait and see about, but I can&#x27;t get the question out of my mind - if the FCC chooses to back the ISPs, what happens next?<p>Is a hacktivist group, deciding that the internet shouldn&#x27;t be turned against it&#x27;s users, going to DDoS the root DNS servers? Is everybody going to just hold their breaths, and continue with business as usual? Will a significant number of developers jump ship?<p>What do you think? Upvote:
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Title: There is lot of fuss going around why to use parse.com, is it really worth it. Assuming my app will have 100 active users, $800&#x2F;month isn&#x27;t quite expensive ? Upvote:
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Title: I wanted to use my calendar in Windows Metro. No biggie right? Wrong.<p>I get forced to create a &quot;microsoft account&quot;, I have to come with a random email address, which I do, followed by a password, equally as long and random. I do. It asks me for my phone, I say no thanks later.<p>I reboot my PC.<p>My login has suddenly changed. It displays the email address I just used to setup my calendar. My password doesn&#x27;t work.<p>Panic.<p>I try again, now it has done a remote server checked, determined I have had too many tries and asks me to use an ONLINE recovery sysem OR Enter in my last password.<p>There was no last password, it is a brand new top of the range laptop. Ofcourse it wont let me enter in no password.<p>I go online with my 2nd laptop, I click on password recovery.<p>It asks me for &quot;subjects&quot; and &quot;emails in my sent folder&quot; to verify my ID.<p>I have none, it is a brand new account.<p>I just received this in the mail. Notice it is &#x27;unmonitored&#x27; and there is are contact details for me to get ahold of someone, seeing as this is apparently all automated.<p>&quot;Microsoft Account - Unmonitored Automated Email &lt;[email protected]&gt; 16:06 (11 minutes ago)<p>We recently received a request to recover your Microsoft account <i></i><i></i><i>@outlook.com. Unfortunately, our automated system has determined that the information you provided was not sufficient for us to validate your account ownership. Microsoft takes the security and privacy of our customers very seriously, and our commitment to protecting your personal information requires that we take the utmost care in ensuring that you are the account owner.&quot;<p>I no longer have a computer I can use, which my professional life depends on, I might even get fired over not being to use my computer today.<p>Please let me make this clear - there was no indication at any point the password for my MACHINE was going to be reset to be this new password I was using for an &quot;Outlook&quot; email address I was prompted to create when trying to use the Calendar application, which is why I naturally did not spend time memorizing these details.<p>WTF microsoft. All this, without warning, because I wanted to try and sync my calendar.<p></i><i></i>UPDATE - Please if there is ANYONE at Microsoft who can help me access my machine please contact me, I am ofcourse using the same IP address as I did when I signed up for the account, and remember just about all of the credentials I used when signing up. ( I dont remember the password perfectly obviously). <i></i><p>Update 2: RECEIVED 2ND REJECTION Microsoft Account - Unmonitored Automated Email &lt;[email protected]&gt; 16:15 (20 minutes ago) to me We recently received a request to recover your Microsoft account *@outlook.com. Unfortunately, our automated system has determined that the information you provided was not sufficient for us to validate your account ownership. Microsoft takes the security and privacy of our customers very seriously, and our commitment to protecting your personal information requires that we take the utmost care in ensuring that you are the account owner. Upvote:
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Title: I&#x27;ve been developing using languages like Python, Java and the like with automatic memory management for the past few years. The way I learned these languages was - read their language definition from learnxinyminutes.com, think of personal projects I wanted to make&#x2F;port, google the API and done.<p>C&#x2F;C++ is different, I&#x27;m afraid of pointers. I can&#x27;t think of anything that I will like to make in C&#x2F;C++ since it is so low-level. What I can do in one line in Ruby will take dozens.<p>I will really appreciate any pointers on how do I learn them. (no pun intended) Upvote:
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Title: While going through a ProductHunt post[1] I came across a fellow HNer[2] who was following NYT Cooking[3] and cooking with a plan on a regular basis. I was very curious to understand how he spaces time to cook and work. And the type of stuff he cooks.<p>Which kind of inspired me to start working on project to follow someone and get inspired by their – meal plans, shopping patterns, recipes, hacks, tips etc (Another inspiration [4])<p>I am trying to find hackers who cook at home on a regular basis (even if its only 2-3 times a week).<p>If you cook, some questions:<p>1. Why do you cook? Is it to save cash or is it recreation? Or something else?<p>2. Do you plan ahead? Like a weekly meal plan?<p>3. What kind of things do you cook usually?<p>4. Do you follow any diet? Atkins, Slow Carb etc.<p>5. Do you have any life hacks, tips to be more productive as a cook?<p>Disclosure: I run Cucumbertown (http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cucumbertown.com&#x2F;), the Tumblr for cooks.<p>[1] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.producthunt.com&#x2F;posts&#x2F;new-york-times-apis<p>[2] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;user?id=cdavis565<p>[3] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cooking.nytimes.com&#x2F;<p>[4] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;EatCheapAndHealthy&#x2F;comments&#x2F;2gutuk&#x2F;26_2021_1592_grocery_list_meal_plan_and_recipes&#x2F;<p>Edit:<p>Seems like this was taken off the homepage for some reason. The comment rate’s coming down.<p>Thanks a lot for the encouraging comments. A short but exciting Q&amp;A. If you can help me out more, please reach me on [email protected] Upvote:
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