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Is $5k really worth 5%? | anamax: mu.The right question is something like "Is ycombinator worth the equity it will cost my company?"While other people have talked about what ycombinator is worth, the right answer to that question also depends on the meaning of "my company". |
If we woke up tomorrow and... | baddox: If every piece of human technology disappeared, I would probably die in a few seconds, since I sleep on the 7th hour. |
If we woke up tomorrow and... | cmos: Now that we have all witnessed the greatness that is online porn, probably not that long. |
how do you process payments? | lakeeffect: Amazon payments for cost efficiency. We thought considered using pay pal but it was more expensive. The other nice thing about Amazon is they let payers use their amazon payment accounts. |
How does the 10x coder overcome configuration headaches? | sunkencity: The trick is to be comfortable working with a system that you don't know much about. I personally love figuring out new systems, and starting to work in new unknown environments. Yes it takes a lot of time to figure things out, but when you have done it enough times (figured out 3rd party software), you get... |
Is $5k really worth 5%? | developingchris: The money is not the draw. The chance to be mentored, and get money earlier are to me. I would pay more than 5% of the current venture to benefit from being mentored by these people for long to come. |
The VC and the Geek. Do VC's only care about 'management team'? | pg: Only bad VCs are looking for startups founded by MBAs. The better ones are looking for people with technical backgrounds who are willing and able to figure out how business works. |
How does the 10x coder overcome configuration headaches? | DanielBMarkham: Use 3rd party stuff cautiously. I think "never use 3rd party stuff" is a little extreme, but remember that when you pick up the tool, the tool picks you up too. (Sorry -- watched too much Yoda) That is, you may want the tool for 1 or 2 really cool things, but the tool may demand out of you a week of pla... |
I've had some software developed, now the coder is holding me for ransom. | spacecowboy: To the original poster on this topic...I know you made a deal with this developer but the fact that your original deal was to build your app within 2 months and it has been almost a year now - you REALLY need to walk away. It hurts both emotionally and financially, but based on all the feedback you've rec... |
If we woke up tomorrow and... | brianobush: funny thing was just the other day I was showing my children how to make fire with two sticks. Didn't work. Father failure, though they did understand the idea of friction and the result: heat. Now, my second attempt is using a boot lace with bow (from curved stick) to turn a wood axle with a top brace. Mak... |
how do you process payments? | vaksel: I like cdgcommerce, they have reasonable rates and very good reputation. They also give good support. You can find a whole bunch of reviews on webhostingtalk |
Is $5k really worth 5%? | apinstein: Your question is nonsense.I'll assume for a moment that you are presently a "good software developer contractor" and you currently gross "$10k" a month.Given that, $10k a month is your opportunity cost for doing something else, for instance, doing a startup.That fact has little to do with your question "is y... |
If we woke up tomorrow and... | gcheong: Do you have an interview at Google or Microsoft? |
If we woke up tomorrow and... | raquo: So the question is whether the humanity will be able to stabilize before current generation (with the knowledge of technology) will die (including because of age) |
how do you process payments? | jng: I use Plimus (http://www.plimus.com) for ViEmu and Codekana sales (http://www.viemu.com and http://www.codekana.com). It's very good, and the price is good, too. I used to use share-it (http://www.shareit.com/) for a few years, but they were more expensive and less informative.I'm using them from the EU. ShareIt i... |
how do you process payments? | axod: I use paypal subscription thing atm, it seems to do the job ok. |
If we woke up tomorrow and... | pg: Despite the generally frivolous answers, this is an interesting question and one I often wonder about. What turns out to take up all the time if we want to reproduce where we are now? Presumably the optimal plan is to spend practically all your effort on machine tools.It would be interesting to be able to figure ... |
How does the 10x coder overcome configuration headaches? | antirez: My guess is that there are multiple factors:* Not invented here syndrome: 10x coder may code small things himself that many times is faster then learning other stuff.* Selection of the tools to use: it will use Ruby instead of Java, for example, and for a reason. In general he'll try to figure the fastest path... |
If we woke up tomorrow and... | nixme: Are you asking this question in reference to last night's Battlestar Galactica finale? It was somewhat surprising to see everyone give up technology so easily and start anew with just clothing, some food, and their own language. But I guess being cooped up in those ships for that long and seeing how the abuse of... |
If we woke up tomorrow and... | yters: One big problem is that we need working technology to access much of our technical knowledge. |
How does the 10x coder overcome configuration headaches? | conanite: The head-banging gets less and less over time. Or else I've developed a thick skull, not sure which.Experience makes a huge difference - simply because you've seen this problem before, or at least seen this kind of problem before, or maybe you saw the solution to this problem a year ago when you were googling... |
how do you process payments? | ScottWhigham: I use PayPal, Google, and Authorize.net currently. We are dumping Google in a few weeks - 1+ years of "1 in 5" chargebacks and poor (non-existent?) customer service. PayPal is best of breed but we do not use them as our primary payment handler; it's an option presented to customers upon checkout though. |
how do you process payments? | chaosmachine: Choose more than one. It's important to have redundancy when it comes to getting paid. Ask anyone who's had their PayPal account suspended for arbitrary reasons.I don't think you can get away from PayPal, their market share is just too big to ignore. Amazon Payments sounds like a good second choice, but i... |
Are you getting screwed? | tvon: > Is having a job alone good enough in this economy?Don't leave unless you have something else lined up. |
how do you process payments? | chops: I use Authorize.net and am quite pleased with it, though, admittedly, I've never used any other service.I don't currently accept automated payments through them, though they do have a recurring payment functionality built in. I haven't used Auth.net's recurring payment system.Before they implemented that, when ... |
How does the 10x coder overcome configuration headaches? | ghempton: 10x coders are also 10x system admins |
Is there online service like Delicious that saves series of URLs for later viewing? | bouncingsoul: I don't think it's possible for a website to do what you describe: a webpage doesn't have access to or even know about your other tabs.The best I can think to do would be to use the browser's bookmark all tabs feature and then export the bookmarks to a usb drive.Not pretty or convenient, but maybe faster ... |
I've had some software developed, now the coder is holding me for ransom. | joanou: Walk away. There is no point in having the relationship when trust can never be there. |
how do you process payments? | goodkarma: We use Payflow Pro Recurring Billing (PayPal).If you don't need access to the funds for a few days I would recommend using Braintree for recurring billing. But if you want the funds in your Paypal account immediately Paypal's Payflow Pro is a decent option. |
how do you process payments? | garethr: Paypal is good and pretty feature rich, but it's not the most straightforward thing to work with. It's not really that the API is under-documented, more that it can involve lots of back and forth and your code needs to deal with lots of cases. The advantage is ease of use. In terms of time to implement and wid... |
how do you process payments? | figured: http://www.zuora.com/http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/http://aws.amazon.com/fps/previous HN thread
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=432284 |
how do you process payments? | reidman: Google Checkout has no customer service, not for merchants at least. No phone number, no email address, just a knowledge base and a forum where GC merchants vent their frustration by making threats and typing in all caps:http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/checkout-merchants/lab...In addition to the rate hik... |
If we woke up tomorrow and... | kenver: If we woke up and all the technology was gone, would we want to get back to where we are now...a second time around would be a good chance to fix/improve stuff. |
If you woke up tomorrow and...part 2 | johngunderman: Microsoft :P no, I jest.Conventional knowledge would still exist for the most part (assuming an approx 10 year time frame), so we probably wouldnt have geocentric delusions or anything like that.I would guess that as far as technologies went, the internet would be designed in a much more secure manner. A... |
If we woke up tomorrow and... | cool-RR: I think it's a very interesting question.I would say three to five years. In my opinion, technological tools are overrated. Most things can be built by hand using common materials.Actually, it would be a very cool project! Take a bunch of hackers. Set up an isolated camp for them in a remote area. There will b... |
If we woke up tomorrow and... | geuis: Was this somehow inspired by the BSG finale?However, I find this kind of question fascinating. This question is posited in the book Marrow, and it takes a very advanced society about 5000 years to get back to where they were.I think the situation right away would work more or less like this. Within the first few... |
I've had some software developed, now the coder is holding me for ransom. | jodrellblank: Its now almost april and hes almost finished.Call me skeptical, but...:) |
how do you process payments? | knewter: Authorize.net is great for customer service, I've never once needed to talk to them and had to wait more than 5 minutes (granted, on-site text support, but it's useful and they're efficient).We used paypal's payflow pro on our latest project. PayPal is TERRIBLE for development. For auth.net, you just put the... |
I've had some software developed, now the coder is holding me for ransom. | pixpox3: Thanks for all the advice guys. I'm not from California or even the US, so I wasn't sure about my legal options here. But I've done a little reading and the advice here has helped a lot. It's amazing how solitary you can feel doing this sort of thing! Thanks to all. |
how do you process payments? | 10ren: Worldpay.comThey are a pain to work with, they delay payments by a month, and they're expensive but they do multi-currency. This is important for me in Australia, because it means a customer in the US can buy in US dollars, and their credit card is billed in US dollars, with exactly that amount (no mysterious cu... |
how do you process payments? | madmotive: Spreedly looks like an interesting alternative for outsourcing the hassle of subscription payments: http://spreedly.com/Not used them myself yet. |
The VC and the Geek. Do VC's only care about 'management team'? | kanny96: I agree with your thoughts. It is sometimes difficult to digest not getting a fair opportunity, but after all, the world outside the school is not, well, the school. I also have EE background, with .95 PhD, and despite being ahead of the tech horizon, it's especially painful to be rubbished by some haphazard i... |
If we woke up tomorrow and... | jodrellblank: All technology? I guess we're back at the bottom of the Civilization advances tree, eh? Do you want triremes, maths, militia or granaries?England has ~65 millions of people. Take away all manmade technology (including buildings, tarmac, concrete) and any city would be many square miles of bare earth colla... |
Do you teach the old generation to use internet? | mcav: Yes. I taught my grandma how to use the Internet, E-mail, and Skype. She played Freecell often before, but nothing else on the computer. (She still says "So can I X-this out?" to close a window.)I sat her down one afternoon and explained things very slowly, using metaphors such as the postman bringing mail to you... |
If we woke up tomorrow and... | stavrianos: Seems to me that there are two ways it could go, depending on how you take the question.If when all the tech disappears the resources reappear, I'd say it doesn't take too long at all. Maybe ten years, maybe a hundred, maybe a thousand, but nothing more than that. This is a sort of "If people with modern kn... |
How does the 10x coder overcome configuration headaches? | mattmcknight: My approach to this is that my creativity and expertise lie in creating unique software. I am not out there to build a web server, so I look for the stuff that is commonly used, well documented, and has easily googlable problems. I try to learn them really well. I stick with the stuff that works. With sm... |
How does the 10x coder overcome configuration headaches? | wheels: You use what you know rather than switching to the language of the month every, well, month.I've been using the same toolchain for a decade now. I don't have to futz with the configuration: I learned it 10 years ago.There's a balance there, between keeping on top of technology and focusing on solving problems... |
How does the 10x coder overcome configuration headaches? | mpk: Well, experience goes a long way.After having built software in different languages for different targets on different systems a few times, you start recognizing patterns.One of the strategies I use to become comfortable with new environments is to build a piece of software (usually a prototype) using only the cor... |
how do you process payments? | charliepark: We use Braintree (http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/), and I've never had a better experience with a service provider. They're consummately professional, know their product and category inside and out, and are eager to educate people on the ins and outs of credit card processing. I had heard at one ... |
Good SDK for client-to-client game prototype in the browser? | wmf: RTMFP or proxy all communication through the server, probably using Comet. |
I've had some software developed, now the coder is holding me for ransom. | Kaizyn: Go ahead and get this guy to give you a full copy of your source code as it now stands. Since he did not finish the project in two months as specified in the contract - you have a written contract, right? - you can terminate the business relationship on the grounds of breach of contract. There should be no ne... |
I've had some software developed, now the coder is holding me for ransom. | michaelneale: Yes reverse engineering is trivial (unless a very good obfuscator is used) if you have the binary jar files.However, like others have mentioned, its highly likely there is nothing there of value - so you there is a pretty good chance you will have to write it off.I have heard of similar things happening t... |
If we woke up tomorrow and... | nazgulnarsil: I think people speculating in this thread would greatly enjoy Earth Abides by George Stewart. |
If we woke up tomorrow and... | tesseract: You'd hopefully get pretty far while current experts are still alive. Otherwise, you'd better at least have a plan for getting printing and libraries up and running pretty darn quickly so they can leave instructions for the next generation... |
If we woke up tomorrow and... | electromagnetic: Well I suppose the bigger question is, does everything the technology created go away too?Technology built everything, but do all our houses disappear or just all the wiring and plumbing and crap? Because if the house goes, then surely so should all the people who were brought about by technology.Reali... |
If you woke up tomorrow and...part 2 | rglovejoy: Vacuum Tubes. We would go straight to transistors and other solid-state devices. |
how do you process payments? | plusbryan: Cybersource is an oft-overlooked option I'd recommend considering. We were going to go with the defacto AuthNet, but ended up choosing Cybersource for the added features (better recurring payments, international currency support) and the fact they gave us a pretty sweet deal (same price as Authorize.Net, whi... |
how do you process payments? | teuobk: On a related note, could anybody comment on their experience getting PCI compliance?I'd like to have the payment process a bit more integrated with my web site, but many of those solutions seem to require PCI compliance, and that looks rather involved. |
Is there online service like Delicious that saves series of URLs for later viewing? | ashwinl: thanks for the suggestions |
how do you process payments? | dhyasama: I work at PowerPay which is a payment processor. Unless the person or organization you sign up with is a registered ISO than you are actually doing business with a company such as PowerPay. Visa and Mastercard require the ISO to be clearly stated on the merchant account application. Most of the time mercha... |
how do you process payments? | izak30: I got a local merchant account (huntington national bank), which is flexible, and I get a choice of gateways (we chose authorize.net). Great service at both the merchant account and gateway level, also pretty good rates. |
Do you teach the old generation to use internet? | tokenadult: I'm IN the older generation. But I've been using the Internet since before AOL and other commercial online services set up gateways to Internet services. My parents' generation among my relatives includes people who don't use the Internet at all, and some who use it for email. I've had to tell one relative ... |
Is $5k really worth 5%? | MaysonL: If you and your company are good enough to be accepted by YC, then it probably is, both for you and for YC. It's the classic win-win proposition. YC will probably get a return on their money, and your company will be worth enough more that your share, now 95% instead of 100%, will be worth quite a bit more tha... |
Do you teach the old generation to use internet? | buugs: I help them if they ask, my grandfather learned how to use the net and email on his own and knows about the hazardous attachments that live and about spam, and I'm guessing my grandmother checks email through him, on the other side my other grandmother has no use for the internet and has no plans of ever using a... |
If you woke up tomorrow and...part 2 | daydream: Anyone ever read "A Canticle for Lebowitz"? I recently recently discovered it and am very intrigued. |
Can't Find Old Post | tokenadult: any other information that would help me find this articlehttp://searchyc.com/orhttp://www.google.com/search?q=email+newsletter+site%3Anews.... |
Can't Find Old Post | ctingom: I don't know about the post, but Carsonified used to / still has a product that did exactly that. |
Good SDK for client-to-client game prototype in the browser? | cpr: Cappuccino might be a good start, as it's pretty cognant to Objective-C, and also provides the same kind of graphics primitives as you'd be using on the iPhone. |
If we woke up tomorrow and... | jodrellblank: On reading the replies, I suddenly remembered this: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/09/planning-fallac.htmlMy revised estimate for the time it would take to recreate all of history is approximately as long as it took the last time, plus a bit. |
how do you process payments? | grandalf: We use authorize.net ... authorize.net provides remotely stored credit cards (you just store a token). This is available through pretty much all auth.net resellers.For some reason Braintree has gotten a lot of hype but offers nothing any better than the most lowly auth.net reseller. |
If we woke up tomorrow and... | jodrellblank: The last time a similar topic came up at HN, it was the "what if you time travelled back to the past" question.I didn't think of it in time for that thread, but I wanted to turn the question around: Looking back through history, if we wanted to spot a technologically advanced person appearing in the past ... |
How does the 10x coder overcome configuration headaches? | known: I had been through this phase.
Since most of the 3rd party software is closed source I could not debug their code.
I ended up writing work-around code to circumvent the bugs in closed source 3rd party software. And the culprit here is MS Excel and VBA. |
If you woke up tomorrow and...part 2 | czcar: Drum brakes? ...something i have always found interesting is what mistakes could we have avoided. Serious mistakes brought on by ignorance and pseudo-science, such as the act of bleeding to heal. |
how do you process payments? | rbiffl: TrustCommerce.com is very fast (<2 sec.) and developer-friendly, and they run on open source systems if that's important to you. |
If we woke up tomorrow and... | known: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cast_Away |
how do you process payments? | known: http://www.ccavenue.com/ for Indian customers |
how do you process payments? | mjtokelly: Amazon Simple Pay Subscription has worked out very well for me. Startlingly easy site integration.https://payments-sandbox.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/business?sn=pa...It's described as being in closed beta, but Amazon's friendly representative gave me access minutes after I emailed them. |
If we woke up tomorrow and... | kellishaver: I think you would see a large drop in population before we were able to rebuild. Population growth only occurs when the technology can support it.If we were starting over without any of the knowledge we have now, then it seems reasonable to assume that it would take roughly the same amount of time.If we ha... |
lighttpd or nginx for a low grade server? | dfranke: Have a look at mathopd: http://www.mathopd.org/. Very lightweight and stable/mature, and unlike lighttpd, an excellent security track record. |
lighttpd or nginx for a low grade server? | petercooper: I'm not a heavy user of nginx although I've read more than I care to about all of the various options lately.. and my single data point is that nginx would be the better option of the two right now. |
lighttpd or nginx for a low grade server? | zepolen: I've used Lighttpd, Cherokee, Nginx and of course Apache (although stripped down for speed) on a high load production site for serving static files and reverse proxying.Nginx wins no contest. Highly stable, serving for almost 2 years now with zero issues.Lots of features, much simpler config, uses less resourc... |
Is $5k really worth 5%? | sjs382: The real question is whether $5k + $5k/founder AND startup school is worth 5%. |
lighttpd or nginx for a low grade server? | ezmobius: nginx hands down. nginx is probably the most stable piece of software with the least problems we run here at engineyard. We've had thousands of nginx instances in production for years now and I can truly say it is one of my favorite pieces of software. |
Are you getting screwed? | ram1024: uhh... 2 years will get you half a mill in addition to your normal salary?why wouldn't you stay? :| |
Can't Find Old Post | chanux: I Google for
site:news.ycombinator.com <key_words_here>
when I want to find an old article. |
how do you process payments? | edsull: Hey...my name is Ed and I'm the founder of Aria Systems (www.ariasystems.com) which we started based on my experience building a very large subscription based service (2.5 Million users). I'd encourage you to think about a few things when creating a subscription based service:1. Think beyond taking people's ... |
If you woke up tomorrow and...part 2 | raquo: no QWERTY! |
What's your favorite beer? | gstar: Beer is hacker news on Sunday, so my answers:* USA: Sierra Navada Pale* Australia, in order: Little Creatures Pale (on tap, at the brewery), Coopers Sparking and Coopers Vintage Stout* Belgium: tripel karmeliet, duval or hoegaarden (too many good'uns and styles, can't choose)* UK: Anything from Meantime is prett... |
lighttpd or nginx for a low grade server? | sho: To add my voice to the chorus: Nginx, hands down. It's a great piece of software - simple enough to configure, small and efficient, and it just works and keeps working. I have literally never seen it crash or do anything it wasn't supposed to do.As for lighttpd, I messed with it a while ago and while it has its ad... |
What's your favorite beer? | akeefer: I'm a fan of Belgian-styles ales. At the moment, my favorites are La Fin Du Monde (actually made in Quebec), Golden Draak, and Gouden Carolus d'Or (Red). For more regular bottled beers my favorites are probably Leffe, Hoegaarden, Blue Moon, and Paulaner Heffeweisen. |
What's your favorite beer? | sho: Asahi Super Dry. It's just got this really clean, pure taste. I like quite a few others, of course, but .. ASD's the one I always "come home" to. |
What's your favorite beer? | vaksel: I'm not really a huge beer drinker, so I don't really know the specialty brands that well.From the ones I tried so far, I prefer Heineken the most |
What's your favorite beer? | nanexcool: Indio, XX Ambar, Victoria, Bohemia Oscura. We don't know why Corona is so popular outside Mexico. |
What's your favorite beer? | lyime: Coors Light. |
Review my relaunched startup | aristus: Quick notes:The design is a turn-off.The demo editor does not work. I gave my page a name, but none of the link or text buttons work.Posting a review request at noon on Sunday limits your exposure.I don't quite get the value prop here -- even if making a page is "easy", it's not easier than writing something o... |
What's your favorite beer? | shizcakes: Easy to Find: Guinness
Hard to Find: Bellhaven Scotch Ale
Impossible to Find: Milly's Pumpkin Ale (Seasonal, Manchester NH brewpub) |
What's your favorite beer? | tbeseda: Pandora's Bock from Breckenridge Brewery here in CO. nomnom |
What's your favorite beer? | jimfl: I will have Manny's Pale Ale from Georgetown Brewery anytime I find it on tap. It's a perfect balance of hops and malt. |
What's your favorite beer? | ComputerGuru: I don't drink... ever. :) |
What's your favorite beer? | weaksauce: Craft brews: Stone IPA is one of my favorites and Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale is great when it is in season.
Sierra Nevada Pale is great too. |
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