Hacker News Reader

dchson Rumpetroll - a new Websockets/HTML5/CSS3/JS experiment

Awesome chatting to the creators within the app!

dchson Kevin Rose: Digg Turned Down $80 Million Acquisition Offer

I think the real story here is that he is "burned out" at Digg but excited by his angel investing. Where might that lead?

dchson Ask HN: What's the big deal with startups anyways...

“When you meet an entrepreneur you are looking into the future. You are talking to a crystal ball. That is how I felt when I first spoke with Larry and Sergey.”

- Ron Conway

dchson Heard of Google Instant? Well, I built YouTube Instant.

Listening to that makes me feel a bit sick. To restore your faith in Marissa, here's a clip of her being serious:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw5j6aI8sg

dchson How a startup responds when a giant arrives

http://twitter.com/#search?q=ping%20like.fm

dchson Ask HN: Teaching programming to a 10 year old, and I'm kind of lost

The two vital things you can help a kid with are:

1. Setting tasks that are within reach but will stretch his ability (and getting his buy-in on the idea before you start)

2. Teaching him how to find the answers to his own questions

I'd do all the setup yourself so the kid can jump straight in to producing something. I'd use FTP as it's easy to conceptualize. Avoid the command line and version control.

I'd start with HTML (written in Notepad) so that you can learn to present any data output. Just teach basic tags: h1, p, table, a href. Use w3schools for reference. Build something like a 'My Family' website with a page for each family member and links to the others.

Then maybe stir in a bit of CSS - again just basic stuff (colors, borders, positioning) and again using w3schools for reference. Use this to make the My Family website a bit prettier.

Then try some PHP/MySQL. You could save each family member in a table and use one PHP file to display each one based on an id specified as a get var.

Simple project ideas to try after that could be a simple CMS or (my favourite) a very basic Twitter clone.

dchson Welcome Alexis

Yay!

dchson [dead]

Happens to the best of us!

dchson Ask HN: All startup websites look the same

I read on http://abtests.com/ that pink unicorns increase conversion by ~10%.

dchson How a 16-yo Kid Made His First Million Dollars

Dear Andrew Warner, please interview this guy. Thanks!

dchson Fred Wilson's vision of a family CRM service

Anyone up for building this?

dchson Nic Brisbourne responds to PG on seed funding

Duplicate of my comment on the blog:

How much are Twitter/Facebook/Spotify spending on customer acquisition? Is that really what they raised money for?

dchson An introduction to computational linguistics

Delighted to see our local university (Newcastle, UK) feature on HN!

dchson How to Take a Walk

"Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company."

- Seneca

dchson Experiment: Can You Mine Gold From Old Motherboards?

The challenge seems to be scaling this up... as ever!

dchson Ask HN: please review my site - Marrily.com

Awesome - nice move!

dchson Ask HN: please review my site - Marrily.com

I'd snap it up anyway and use it for links posted to Twitter.

dchson Richard Branson: In it for fun not just money

I don't think so. Branson now has more money than he could spend - if he was just in it for the money he could have stopped a long time ago.

dchson Twitter users most followed by readers of Hacker News

Great list! I made it into a list on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/DHS/hacker-news