dbul

In the beginning we drew up diagrams for database tables, wrote out what made us different from competitors, why people would like us, wrote a version of the site, then scrapped all of it and rewrote everything multiple times over in several months. At this point it was just us doing this in our spare time.

As time went by, I realized my cofounder wasn't going to give up as much as I was willing to, and that's when I realized I need a backup plan or two. My cf is a great hacker and decent at design, so one plan was to go solo, but my design sucked. Another plan was a different site where design didn't matter, so I decided to work on this second site while waiting for my cf to switch from a second job freelancing to rejoining the project. Lesson here is simply have backup plans.

Finally his girlfriend broke up with him and we are bros again. He put down the framework for our new attack plan and I started hacking away on the meat of it. He refused to keep working until we talked with clients, so I set up some meetings. Now I'm hacking half the time, doing the business side the other half, and maybe a couple hours for eating and spending time on HN and so on. After meeting with clients to find out what they want, I was sure he would be into it. Wrong. Now I have to handle clients which means a lot of socializing and a lot less hacking, yet I have to code the four or five features that the clients requested.

You may think get another founder, but you guessed it, I tried. I know several people who would make great founders. The problem is that they can't give up their social lives and that's really what you have to do until you can hire people to take some of the weight off your shoulders. Specifically, girls are a major interest to them. And as most of us know, having a girlfriend (or wife in one case) is a full time job.

So be prepared to multitask and try to account for losing your founder (I never thought it would happen: I've known mine since 1st grade). Also have a backup plan and maybe learn what you are weak at (design in my case) to a reasonable competency.

There have been several mine accidents in the past few years in the US and no robots to assist rescuers in a practical way. A roboticist from CMU who specializes in snake robots even says they are still a few years away from something useful. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8536

Maybe I'm being too critical of these robots, but just seeing them slither on the nice polished Tokyo Institute of Technology floor makes me suspicious that I will never see breaking news in which one of these robots is videotaped as a hero slithering over concrete and bent rebar in an earthquake disaster.

Exactly.

I also was surprised to see such a post come from a user who has consistently high-karma comments. My suggestion to DanielBMarkham is this: read the political article, extract those questions you found thought-provoking, write about it in your blog quietly referencing the political article, then post the link to your blog. (Don't feel bashful about posting a link to your own blog. It's not much different than an Ask HN post.)

MacAir (lil guy next to it will soon drown): http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_QdVzmQAz0JQ/ShEHWvpIW1I/AAAAAAAAAE...

White boards (my friend is in the pic): http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_QdVzmQAz0JQ/ShEHIm3Q9vI/AAAAAAAAAE...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=608963

This sounds like you are giving up. I try to abstain from uncouth language on HN, but there is a saying: "Shit happens." I know little about this situation, but I do know of other unfair situations: illegal aliens cooking up Japanese food in the back of a restaurant down the street from me; a small company outside of Pittsburgh who hired a Chinese person just so the Chinese guy could get a green card (and then the guy quit as soon as he was on his way).

To quote an inspirational fictional character, no matter how tough you think you are it'll always bring you to your knees and keep you there. Permanently if you let it. You or nobody ain’t never gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep movin forward

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1tXhJniSEc

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=567298

I knew when I wrote that it would probably be received poorly; indeed, it was volatile. But it was creative, and there was some truth to it.

HN is too simplistic. I would venture to say it ultimately doesn't work, with evidence in responses like "Pot, socially" being #2 in the top comments under lists. HN is fun to experiment with, though.

775, not 755

So you may want to consider a way to create something like I just watched this video, I would like to hear more about the issues than this one video presented to me and then contact their rep.

(To satisfy your model:

1. Google is coming out with a new product called latitude. It is related to finding people around you.

2. loopt has a product called loopt. It is related to finding people around you.

3. rms observed that #1->product and #2->product are related, and if their technology doesn't explicitly overlap, loopt might be a good candidate for acquisition in order to broaden Google's hold on finding people around you.)

Not everything on Hacker News must be

  P1
  P2
  P3
  --
  Q

Here you have two powerful companies, Wolfram and loopt. Google has interests in technologies similar to what these two companies offer. They didn't buy/license loopt's technology, so why should they buy/license Alpha? There is no basis for what rms said.

Questionable judgement of priorities aside, isn't this really the responsibility of the ad networks? What is the FTC going to do about such a complicated problem.

When I read about all of these problems with click fraud or a network not paying out, I can't help but think there may be an opening for a startup to develop a more concrete method of connecting an advertiser with a user.

The best solution would be to put a chatterous widget on HN so people can take such conversations off the thread. I'm still not sure why this can't be done or hasn't been done yet.