dmitri1981

I just got it sorted today and will prob announce on Monday. It will be good, promise.

It's close enough to the weekend so you don't have to worry too much about a cheeky extra beer and at the same time it's fairly convenient for most people to swing by after work.

Analytical Engine sounds brilliant. Could you drop me an email on d.grabov@gmail.com and we'll arrange it all.

Better still, come do a talk! I am sure you have tons of great stories to share.

> What does a $200 lipstick have that a $10 one does not?

A friend of mine used to work in a cosmetics factory and explained that the main difference between a cheap and an expensive lipstick is that the expensive version makes a satisfying click when you put the lid on.

Hi Mike, is there any way to sync the podcasts to my iTouch?

It might sound trivial, but on many systems it can lead to serious privilege escalation and expose huge vulnerabilities further up in the chain. Check out the case study below for an example in real world.

http://mobile.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Hackers-Hit-Apacheorg-C...

Also, if you want to learn more about avoiding these issues, OWASP is one of the best sources out there.

https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Main_Page

A few guesses:

a) The likes of Morgan Stanley, PWC and suchlike put a lot of effort into always being at the forefront of student minds, by sponsoring societies, etc. That often means they are the default first choice. They also organise a ton of events to show students how nice they are.

b) Money. No getting away from this one. A decent starting salary might be in the region of 25k, the companies mentioned above usually pay somewhere around 35k. That 10k makes a huge difference after 3-4 years of living in squalor.

c) Inexperience. Coming out of university a job is more-or-less a job. You write some code, get paid, that's it. It takes a bit of personal experience to fully appreciate the corporate reality of legacy code, bureaucracy and incompetence. In my experience it often takes those encounters with the beast that is corporate coding to make you run for the hills or startups.

d) Peers and parental pressure. Your mates are all getting golden hand shakes and nice lunches at Big Corp, it is natural to want the same. Also, when you get that job offer from PWC or similar, your parents' eyes light up with excitement and they run off to tell all their friends about it. When you get a job at a three man company, their reaction is likely to be mild confusion at best. Sad but true.

I wonder if any YC companies have passed on Milner's generous investment offer due to these allegations?

Waiting for one confirmation, will post the details probably on Monday.

Meetup is great for growing the event. However, I would suggest getting a few core people together to it started. One way of doing it is to go around other events and invite interesting people in person.

Mike Mahemoff set this up a while back, though it prob needs some more promoting to get it going.

https://convore.com/hnlondon/

We'll start out with a few beers and pizzas, then do some talks and presentations followed by more beers. The crowd is really friendly and you'll meet lots of great new people.

Sign up on meetup to help us track numbers. Otherwise just turn up. Thanks for the offer of help, think we just need a video person now.

thanks. a small army has already been recruited.

Thursday, September 29, 2011, 6:30 PM

Central Foundation Boys School

Cowper Street, London (map) Entrance through the blue doors on Cowper St, opposite XOYO.

I am very excited to announce the next Hacker News London meetup. After months of searching we have finally secured a new, large venue that will be able to accommodate all those who wish to come along, right next to the Old St roundabout.

However, the highlight of the evening is that Harj Taggar, YC partner and founder of Auctomatic, will be our headline speaker. In addition Harj will also hold a Q&A session, so please send us your questions or bring them along that evening. If you are looking to apply to YC or find out more about it, this is the perfect opportunity.

Nope. Probably a Tuesday vs Thursday thing.

Decent pubs get very crowded and noisy, plus it's difficult to fit many people in. A hall gives us the opportunity to do more techy presentations.

We actually started out in a pub and have evolved into present format over time. We have the hall until 10, so if you are really hardcore you can always head to the pub after, I can imagine there will be quite a few people joining you.

We've been doing them for over a year and I was really surprised you have not come along yet.

A very valid point. If you are a solo founder, nothing happens unless you make it happen and as you experience the downs it becomes very easy to lose momentum. Co-founders can provide a good counter balance and keep progress steadier.

> A lone founder never wastes time

I find it quite difficult to agree with this statement based on personal experience. For me, it is quite easy to try things to see if they work which often leads to going round in circles until a solution becomes obvious. I found that when working with other people, it is a lot easier to put ideas out there and you usually get the weak points shown to you right away. Also, having said that, I am also finding that the most of my dev activity on my current project involves stripping out functionality that simply turned out to be unnecessary or half baked. I feel that having a co-founder would be great help in avoiding some of the unnecessary work in first place.

Quick question for PG. Would you be interested in running a similar event in London? We've been organising an HN meetup for over a year and currently have a community of over 1100 people that would love to attend an event like this. There are also several YC companies including Songkick that have been involved in the meetup that I am certain would be interested in helping out.

Speaking of which, I highly recommend World War Z by Max Brooks. It is a brilliant book and provides an amazing insight into human and society behaviour in time of crisis.

http://www.amazon.com/World-War-Oral-History-Zombie/dp/03073...

A friend of mine once worked in a cosmetics factory and told me that by far the biggest difference between a £5 and a £20 lipstick is that the more expensive one makes a satisfying click when you put the lid on.

Tastebuds are still getting started, but have an interesting approach of matching based on people's music taste and Last.fm profile.

Don't get me wrong, I am all in favour of the work they are doing. I was just wondering about what was and what was not working for them.

I guess it's easy to get used to YC companies bursting out of the gates and making an impact from the get go that I thought it strange I did not know any companies from those accelerators.

Makes me wonder why there are so many iterations. Also, have there been any interesting success stories to come out of his accelerators?

One thing that irritates the hell out of me every time is meeting a 'business' guy with the world's best idea, who is prepared to let a lucky developer have 10% of the venture in return for building the damn thing.

I am yet to meet a developer who has not had this very same experience.

The programme was one of my favourite bits of TV and I've been trying to get more info about it since. Really excited to see that the BBC finally got round to releasing it.

For anyone that is interested in this topic, Zach Burt an excellent blog post about psychology and interaction between prisoners and guards in real life.

http://zacharyburt.com/2010/05/games-criminals-play-how-you-...

Does any know what other sites apart from Optimizely that use Guiders.js or have a similar interactive tour? I have been developing something very similar for my app and am very interested in seeing examples of how to best structure the walk-through.