CRASCH

full online backup

bare metal restore

windows only for now.

Interesting performance advantages can be seen in the screen casts here:

http://www.hybir.com/Action/HybirBackupAction.html

(blatent self promotion)

It looks like the Crunchpad just runs fusiongarage software. Maybe they just didn't like the terms to run their software on the device. This seems like a strong possibility.

The offer from PG is in the range of what they do, seed capitol. I imagine that they have x capitol allocated with y slots and they needed to squeeze in your deal.

The important part from my perspective is the guidance and connections. No you probably don't need the seed capital.

But you may benefit tremendously from the guidance and connections. You could easily give away 7% or more to board members for guidance and connections that probably is not as good as you would get from PG and YC.

If I was in your position I would ask how they think they can facilitate growing your companies position in the marketplace. If they can setup some great meetings that have the potential to grow your business. And these opportunities are beyond your reach it is most likely worth it.

If the contributions in guidance and connections only benefit you as a 5% increase in sales and a 5% in savings it is still a net win. I would expect that in the worst case it would be significantly better than that.

A bad programmer won't understand or take into consideration the limits of the target platform.

A good example is posting an article to a host with limited bandwidth.

BTW I really appreciate taking the time to share your point of view.

I didn't plan on writing an article so I don't have any official bench marks. I'm guessing they dropped from over a minute and a half for a full recompile to under 30 seconds. Incremental builds used to take about 20 seconds and now take between 2 and ten seconds.

I went from a athlon X64 at 2.2Ghz and 2GB Ram with a 74GB raptor and another 74GB raptor for code to a Core i7 Extreme at 4Ghz and 12GB Ram with 2x80GB intel SSDs in raid 0 and 1 80GB intel SSD for code.

A couple of important things to keep in mind. Intel is still the way to go. The other SSDs can actually be slower in write performance than a normal hard drive if the usage pattern is small files. That is pretty much what you get when you compile.

One other point is that crappy anti-virus software can affect IO performance anywhere from 12X trend micro, 24X Norton. Yes that is Norton will reduce your IO by 2400% in my tests. AVG Free is 19%. So he could have negated the performance gain from the SSD by running bad anti-virus software.

I can say my productivity feels like it nearly tripled.

The important measurement from a programming perspective is not necessarily just the second or two here or there. My work flow changed. I used to hit build and walk out and get drink from the fridge in the garage and it would still be compiling. Now I can't even do anything but glance at my email. These interruptions sometimes take you out of the zone and it can take a long time to get back in the zone. Getting up could easily cost me fifteen minutes or even a half an hour. Just because I lost my train of thought.

Update: I'm running windows 7 and visual studio 8 on this machine.

I'm always trying to meet more hackers in my area which is Denver.

I would argue that it makes absolutely no sense to offshore code for a hacker.

It typically takes me longer to document the requirements of what I want than to actually write it. I would expect the same out of any good hacker. If it is code that would take less time to document than to write. That most likely isn't code you could send off to an average programmer now is it?

You are going to get code that stopped being developed at barely good enough. I don't know about everyone else but I don't want code that is barely good enough in my app.

You lose the domain knowledge of that component you outsourced. That is what you need to take your app to the next level.

You most likely will end up debugging that code at some point.

You miss the opportunity to iterate.

I'm sure there are just as many (proportionally) great developers off shore as on shore. It is harder to go across the world than across town, across town is harder than across the room. My final point is that I have a much better chance of getting someone great here than off shore. I've worked with thousands of developers over my career so far. I can count on one or two hands developers that I could say write me an X and I know I would get a really well written X. Most of the others would eventually get me a working X but we would have go through several iterations. If I have to iterate I could have written it faster myself.

It may possibly make sense in some situations. The Hacker startup world is not that place.

As a hacker it makes absolutely NO sense. Okay last point. Most of us have read Pauls' Essays. We are all trying to "Build Something Great", That hopefully people want. Would Leonardo outsource? Build me a design for a flying machine / Tank / Submarine. What the hell do you think he would have gotten back? Right, I didn't think so either.

I decided to list the ones outside my code that I've found in the last year or so. These are windows / .net bugs.

1. When you add a program to run at startup to the registry and that program has a space in it. Like this "CoolCompany CoolSoftware.exe" it will also launch the program in the same directory called "CoolCompany ReallyCoolSoftware.exe"

2. The FILETIME data type in .net is mis-defined as signed. This leads to conversion problems that were really hard to track down. File times would magically change in certain conditions by a few seconds to a few minutes. This was still in the 3.0 version which is the last I checked.

3. .net Socket library pins the buffer in memory to prevent garbage collection and allow the call to not lose the buffer. Unfortunately it never unpins the memory. This looks like a memory leak and fragments the heap badly.

4. The split control width is reported differently on XP and Vista. Hiding the split on one platform will give a width of zero. On the other one it reports the width.

5. The zip lib on .net CLR ends up with much worse compression than a properly implemented zip lib. Ironically the J# zip lib works well.

6. The windows setup in visual studio release build fails to install required components like .net. The debug build will?

7. The .net file and directory objects don't support long paths. A user can easily create a path longer than the limit by dragging another user's directory to their desktop. These files will (un)conveniently be unreachable by any .net app not making direct win32 calls.

8. I don't even want to think about the threading model in .net with delegates (they don't always work) etc. Bonus they work differently on Vista yea! Give me a semaphore, a mutex, etc.

9. Vista UAC is such an embarrassment. I'm completely astonished it got released. In my opinion everyone who even saw it should be fired. The design is worse than privilege elevation designed over a quarter century earlier. The implementation is so bad any still sane person that uses their computer for more than light work will turn it off.

Windows aside. If anyone is developing a commercial app on windows. I strongly recommend writing directly to the win32 API. If you try to implement anything non-trivial (like I did) you may end up with a huge rewrite. In my opinion the convenience of .net is just not worth the loss of control.

I'm in mid port to a native code version of my application. I've lost 95% of the re-distributable size and increased performance by 50%.

Seriously though. I think there is a general problem with programming.

Part of the problem is the workaround. There is a certain amount pride / respect someone gets for figuring out a work around to a tough problem. The issue with this is that it discourages the fixing of the root problem.

The other part of the problem is consistency. "I don't care what the interface is as long as it is concise and consistent." I often feel like a turn of the century mechanic trying to build a car from a box of randomly sourced parts. At the turn of the century there were not any standards for important things like bolts. Everything varied from thread width to thread angle to thread spacing. The situation with non standard mechanical parts is pretty close to what we have today with software. Sometimes I think all I do is write code to convert data from one type to another. All to appease the requirements of the various APIs I need to use.

Someone will probably note that I'm on windows and X is so much better to code to. I will prematurely completely agree. I typically hack on my mac and my grid runs on linux boxes. I need a windows component for market reasons.

Bonus!!! The Unknown or expired link when posting to Hacker News after typing for a long time.

I would not worry about it. It might be time for a reality check though.

Step back and take a look at your idea. Does it have legs. Is it something that people want. Can you monetize it. Don't take your own opinion seriously, ask people if they would use it and see ads or pay for it. If you can't find anyone who would, come up with another idea.

Figure out what it would take to get to the next step. If the answer is a boatload of money or a team of people then it may be time to come up with another idea that has a lower bar to clear. If the answer is a couple of months of working nights for the founders go for it.

One more thing. I've been lurking here for awhile and I see the passion and desire to make things happen here all the time. It motivates me to work harder and make it happen for my project. I think this small community is a great virtual community. We can all use it to push each other to succeed. I know I am. I wonder how many YC rejects will succeed? I'm guessing a lot more than normal.

I couldn't apply with my reality. I'm too old. I need too much money. I can't move. etc...

But it does not matter. I will finish my project and I will release it and see if it has legs.

I can't wait to see more new products announced here by the YC rejects. I'll keep lurking...

This I think is pretty simple. If I got your question right. If you are building a new site that does rss feeds aggregation with dynamic custom filters that track your web surfing to automatically rate content based on pages you spent time on, for example. Wow that was a mouthful. Err. Forget that. If you are building a better reddit.You have some new idea and that is your competitive edge and reason for doing the work. If you open source that you just gave away your reason for building your site.

So there is a conscious decision to either build a site and try to monetize it, or build an open source platform and gain traction. The difference here is what you are trying to accomplish. If you are trying to differentiate a site with new technology or features you don't want to give away the secret sauce (source) to your incumbent competitors or your future competitors. While your busy focusing on and perfecting the technology. They can be busy focusing on getting to market.

If google or ebay had open sourced their technology how hard would it be for Microsoft or Amazon to clone it and take it to the next level? If we use google as an example here. If microsoft could see exactly how page rank worked and the architecture that allows google to scale. Could they create their own version and possibly improve it. I think they could. If google open sourced in the beginning super live search would have happened before google got their ridiculous market share and google may not even exist today...

A really different approach to online backups. My nightly full backups take only a couple of minutes over broadband...

Right now I'm porting C# code to win32 C/C++. .Net has some really nasty bugs. So half my code is already in win32 C/C++.

I will give away some free subscriptions here when I am ready.

I thought about another idea that would work for me though and might be fun and helpful for you.

I think you guys should also have a virtual guest hacker stay at the house. Setup some sort of video chat and the virtual guest hacker would hang out virtually and you could trade ideas and do the same type of hanging out except the shared pizza/ramen. I'd do the same type of selection process and maybe limit it to a day or a week. You might even get some famous hackers to hang out. You might consider targeting the profile of the guest hacker too. There are specific steps that need to be done along the path to success. Why not try to get the hacker of the week that has experience doing what your working on. It could also generate some buzz if you do it right.

I thought about another idea that would work for me though and might be fun and helpful for you.

I think you guys should also have a virtual guest hacker stay at the house. Setup some sort of video chat and the virtual guest hacker would hang out virtually and you could trade ideas and do the same type of hanging out except the shared pizza/ramen. I'd do the same type of selection process and maybe limit it to a day or a week. You might even get some famous hackers to hang out. You might consider targeting the profile of the guest hacker too. There are specific steps that need to be done along the path to success. Why not try to get the hacker of the week that has experience doing what your working on. It could also generate some buzz if you do it right.

I have personally taken less than market value. I would never do that again. I would suggest that a founders value is much higher to the acquiring company than it is to the market. Hence a higher market value. On the other hand you are worth what you negotiate. Their job is to negotiate the best deal for themselves.

Make sure that there are escape clauses if your liquidity depends on a promised liquidity event. Mine has not happened yet and may never happen. Also if earn outs depend on anything outside of your control make sure that if those events don't happen your earn out goals are adjusted accordingly. We missed an earn out by less than 10% . The acquiring company did not sign deals they committed to signing that would have facilitated at least 30% toward the earn out. Ouch.

Architectures are designed to solve the known set of problems at the time of inception. When that problem set changes people try to adapt the architecture to solve the new problem set. Usually this is done through the path of least resistance. The easiest to implement with the least known side effects.

My favorite example: Web browsers were never ever meant to host applications when they were first designed. They can only passably do so today through elaborate hacks. This is why writing a good web application is so difficult and time consuming. These hacks are now well known established parts of what is the accepted architecture of web browsers but they were once hacks and are still hacks.

Similar examples exist all over the place. Design for the future and build for today...