alex1

In some ways, Facebook does have a direct impact on real issues. It is much easier now for non-profits to get their message out to people, through Facebook. Applications like Causes makes it easier for organizations that do have an impact on real issues to collect donations from Facebook users.

Am I the only one skeptical about CloudFlare? I, for one, would not be comfortable changing my name servers to them. Shouldn't we actually find and patch security flaws instead of putting it behind some 'firewall in the cloud' (security through obscurity, anyone?) which can cease to exist any second?

And, why do they call themselves a CDN? I watched the video on their site and I still don't really understand how they work. Do they work like a reverse proxy? A reverse proxy would create an even greater security concern than what it tries to solve. An attacker would be able to deface thousands of sites by attacking just one of their proxy nodes.

I thought Bill Gates left school to start a company. He hadn't even started a company before dropping out.

I think that saying something like "dropping out of college increases your chance of success in a startup, just look at the Forbes 'Richest People in America' list" is a huge fallacy. Let's face it, most college dropouts will not become billionaires.

But, there are exceptions.

I recently went through the Forbes billionaire list and picked out everyone that made their fortune through technology. I found that about ~35% had no Bachelor's degrees and ~55% had no Master's degrees. Then I looked at the top 7 on the list and saw that more than 50% did not have Bachelor's degrees. It is also interesting to note that billionaire college dropouts are worth $9bn on average, compared to billionaires with Ph.D.'s, worth an average of $3bn.

Most college dropouts don't become billionaires. But, an overwhelming number of tech billionaires are college dropouts. Interesting...

Why is there such a high percentage of tech billionaires that are college dropouts? My theory is that there are people that are born entrepreneurs and will become billionaires whichever path they take in life. Most of these people are very smart, and, as a result, end up going to Ivy Leagues. But, a time comes (usually around age 19 or sophomore year in college), when something just wakes up in them and they decide to drop out and take the plunge. These are the Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world.

Dropping out of college does not increase your chances of success. If you look at statistics, it decreases your chances. It's just that the born entrepreneurs "wake up" right around age 19-20 (which happens to be right in the middle of college), and end up dropping out. Only if you are in this tiny group of born entrepreneurs would it make sense for you to drop out of college.

I like to think of what others think of as "failures" as just temporary obstacles to get to where I want to be.

The success of an entrepreneur may depend on what exactly they consider to be a failure, rather than just a temporary obstacle.

If money is your sole motivator, I don't think you'll get very far, at least in the startup world.

You should do what you love. Make peoples' lives easier. Financial gain is just a by-product.

Go out and change the world, with a passion to change the world (rather than financial gain), and the rewards (whatever they may be, money or otherwise) will come.

It doesn't seem to be up on the pricing page yet (http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/). Are 32-bit and 64-bit the same price?

But, there is something that I'm willing to bet most of these successful people had in common. And that is a definite purpose[1], the ability to ignore what their friends and skeptics thought about whatever they were doing, and persistence.

[1] Rarely, this is substituted by insane amounts of luck.

The best money market account rates in the US are actually around 1-1.3% now (Ally, Capital One, Discover, ING, AIG).

Definitely not 4%. That was in 2005.

I'm pretty sure this type of business is considered a "payment aggregator" by merchant account providers and acquiring banks. It's usually difficult for a young startup to get an acquiring bank to underwrite such an account.

You can find some more information on payment aggregators here: http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/blog/high-risk-mech...

You should also try out Amazon FPS: https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/helpTab/Amazon-Flexibl...

In the 9th paragraph:

"Try to get yourself into situations where the most urgent problems are ones you want think about."

Should be:

"Try to get yourself into situations where the most urgent problems are ones you want to think about."

Right?

I don't think they're avoiding Cassandra as their tweet store because it's not capable of performing well. It's probably more cause it would be a really long process migrating every tweet into Cassandra. I'm sure if they could, they would go back to the first day Twitter launched, and use Cassandra as the tweets store.

As for query time, maybe your problem was I/O throughput? I've read Cassandra can be really slow if you have poor I/O throughput. This happens a lot in the cloud, where I/O is usually shared.

FlockDB isn't a data store itself. They use FlockDB on top of MySQL AFAIK.

Pretty sure this is her LinkedIn, still up: http://www.linkedin.com/in/chapmananna

The ironic thing is that you could also use FaceTime while walking on the street if you're walking with a friend that has an Android phone with the ability to make his phone a WiFi hot spot.

I bet this seller was one of PG's first clients at ViaWeb.

I'm also from Pasadena. I would definitely be there.

Not all small businesses dream of getting "big." In fact, very little do.

Different people have different definitions of a "startup." To me and (I think) to many others on HN, a "startup" is a business designed to scale dramatically. It's an innovative company with high-growth potential.

The new corner coffee shop would be a small business but not a startup. The owner just wants to make a decent living.

If you don't plan on getting rich (or whatever outcome you dream of) from your startup, then why are you doing it? If you want a modest outcome and to be your own boss, then start a small business. It kind of sounds like this guy failed at a couple startups and has just lost all faith in major startup success.

On another blog post on his site (http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2009/09/22/why-luck-is-a-terrib...), I found this line:

"I know a handful of people – including myself – who have reached for the startup life. Each of us did it for one, maybe two startups (you can only do so many before you burn out). Not surprisingly, none of us “made it.”"

Are you kidding me? Most startups fail, but you have to keep trying. If you stop after 2 startup failures, then I don't think you have real entrepreneur spirit. You need to keep going until you get what you want, even if you have to start 50 startups. And if you keep going, you will eventually get what you want, including riches. Guaranteed.

Luck isn't something that magically falls out of the sky and lands on you. Luck is a combination of opportunity and preparation.

As an entrepreneur, you need to have lofty goals. When you tell your friends and family what your goals are, you better get a response along the lines of "You're crazy, you should aim for something lower." That's a good thing. Aim high. Very high. Even if you don't get to your lofty goals, you will probably get much further than you would aiming for modest goals.

If there is an intermediate server involved (probably a STUN server), it just helps set up the connection. The actual UDP packets don't go through any middle man. This is how residential VoIP services have been working without requiring any firewall/router configuration by the customer. It's also the same thing when you set up an iChat or Skype video call with both parties being behind a NAT.

It will be really successful when you can video chat with any device whether it's an iPhone, Mac, Windows, Android, anything. And when it works over 3G.

Biggest disappointments (for me, at least):

- AT&T no longer offers unlimited data

- Video calling is only iPhone to iPhone

- Video calling is WiFi only

- No 4G

- Still AT&T only

June 24. Pre-orders starting June 15.

Great article but I would have to disagree with it saying that you need a budget for development after launch. What if the founders are hackers?

Right, yeah, looks like S-Corps don't pay federal corporate taxes. I knew it was to avoid double taxation but I had forgotten which taxation S-Corps were exempt from. My bad. Unfortunately, for California, you owe the 1.5% (minimum $800) franchise tax on company income whether you're an LLC or S-Corp or C-Corp. In NYC, you are subject to the full corporate income tax rate, even as an S-Corp.

An S-Corp just avoids double taxation. Salaries paid out are subject to FICA. As for the remaining business income, each shareholder would still owe taxes based on how much of the business they own. This is different than a C-Corp where the business income would be taxed at the corporate level in addition to the owners paying income tax on their salaries. And if the owners of a C-Corp decided to pay themselves huge dividends to avoid normal income taxation, that would raise red flags.

In California, S-Corps pay a 1.5% franchise tax on net income (minimum $800). You pay this even if your net income is zero or negative. You pay this no matter what.

Disclosure: I'm also not a CPA.

The big reason people do an S-Corp is to avoid double taxation (and to be a corporation rather than LLC while not having the complex structures of a C-Corp). Better than being a sole proprietor. Keep in mind that S-Corps can only have a certain number of shares and shareholders (100?) in one class of stock, so a startup or large corporation can't be an S-Corp and take advantage of the tax benefits. Also, here in California, all corporations (S and C and even LLC) owe tax even if the company's net income is zero.

I think their pricing is based on the service's value to you rather than what their costs are.

Yup, I'm also in Los Angeles area and a search for #flotilla gets no results, not even a "No Results" message.

The original Tweet of the attack from the organization which the ship belonged to: http://twitter.com/freegazaorg/status/15083677239