apollo

I was also under the impression that permanent redirects preserve pagerank... how are you supposed to execute a domain change like this properly?

In Safari, videos don't start playing until you visit the tab. Good feature.

It may be earning them tons of money. The only links that actually work are the ad links.

Are you sure you're human?

Certain libraries are good.. in some of them you can even get a private study room with internet access. I would look at college campus libraries before public libraries. And libraries vary a lot, so I'd recommend checking out a few of them before giving up on this option.

Steve Jobs guided the design of the Pixar building. Here's a quote from Brad Bird (director of The Incredibles, Ratatouille):

"Then there's our building. Steve Jobs basically designed this building. In the center, he created this big atrium area, which seems initially like a waste of space. The reason he did it was that everybody goes off and works in their individual areas. People who work on software code are here, people who animate are there, and people who do designs are over there. Steve put the mailboxes, the meetings rooms, the cafeteria, and, most insidiously and brilliantly, the bathrooms in the center--which initially drove us crazy--so that you run into everybody during the course of a day. [Jobs] realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen. So he made it impossible for you not to run into the rest of the company."

Edit: here's the source article, although you'd have to register to read the whole thing: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/innovation_lessons_from_pix...

I see, but it's possible that they accept PayPal but don't use them to process the credit card charges. I always wondered how big operations like iTunes do their credit card processing.

I would like a hybrid office inspired by libraries... one center room with an open layout, one side room with general use study carrels which is quiet/soundproofed... and maybe one or two small rooms for private group meetings. The open layout in the middle will encourage interaction, but for people who have to disconnect and focus they can go claim a study carrel in the quiet room. What do you think?

I didn't know that iTunes uses PayPal for credit card charges. Do you have a source on this?

I was hoping for advice about specific issues. For example, don't have a picture of an iPhone in your logo (or anything else Apple trademarked). Any other specific issues people have run into?

This is ridiculous.. it just keeps loading and loading

100 backlinks? How come google only shows one?

How about Google app engine?

Damn that's some fine resolution. Unfortunately if you want to hire unique people you'll have to wait for the earth's population to increase about 12,000 times its current size.

Well I think the commercial aspect will probably be the ticket price for the trip. As far as for-sale accommodations during the trip, I expect them to be analogous to those you get during airplane flights: mostly refreshments. Since looking at the earth will probably be one of the main attractions of such an elevator trip, I bet most people will plan to bring binoculars, so I don't foresee a significant market for that particular item.

It sounds like he could have made it a success if he streamlined the production process and kept the cost per keychain down.

Good to know

Even if you restrict yourself to true information, there is still a ton of space to manipulate stock prices. A good writer can make a company look brilliant or like a loser using the same set of true facts.

Is it illegal? As far as I understand it's the business model for Mark Cuban's sharesleuth.com (although he fully discloses that's what he does)

You could make good money owning a news company by manipulating stock prices like this

Quantcast.com

It would probably work on me. What is that.. like $4?

Economics. It works, bitches.

No

Well startups that start in stealth mode might want to get feedback. They can post their business plan in public, go to VCs, ask whatever contacts they have in person. The problems are posting in public defeats the purpose of stealth mode, going to VCs doesn't make sense if you're not ready or are bootstrapped, and you may not have many contacts with sufficient experience in entrepreneurship.

It's true that there are potentially dangerous incentives, and it won't work for startups with significant trade secrets. However, there are a large range of startups, and some people are even willing to share their idea in public! This would be sort of a middle-way. If you have a business idea that you'd prefer to not post publicly on Hacker News but you're not afraid of it being stolen by experience entrepreneurs, then this would be the way to go.

Lastly, although VCs are a good source of feedback, usually going and pitching your idea means a significant commitment (quit your job already, developing the idea). Furthermore, this form of feedback doesn't work for bootstrapped startups and startups in small markets.

Yes, that is probably the best alternative. However, the main problems are

1) rigor; comments have a tendency to be whatever pops into a person's head rather than a rigorous assessment of a business model. I think rigorous feedback would provide an opinion on each component of a successful business.

2) reputation; I know people here are very smart, but if you have a selected pool of entrepreneurs you can guarantee a certain level of reputation for your feedback. On ycombinator, you can still get a scathing review from a 17 year old startup wannabe and then sit there wondering whether they really know what they're talking about.

3) non-disclosure; when you post on ycombinator, your business plan reaches a public audience and gets indexed on google. With a random selection of 3 reviewers from a selected pool of advisors, this narrows the audience down, and furthermore you can get NDAs from them. Also, if your business magically appears the next day, you have some legal recourse if it's one of the reviewer's best friends.