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I've always had the feeling that working 'literally' from home is a recipe for heavy procrastination. I think I'd rather spend a little bit of money and get some office space somewhere, so I can somehow force myself a routine, interact with other human beings and so on. But maybe this is just me.

I think the majority of developers/startup founders have no problems sharing their idea or plan before launch date. They talk about it to attract new prospective clients, collaborators, create interest and so on. Very few operates in stealth mode nowadays.

So when you freely share your idea before launching the product you already consider the value of the idea alone basically zero, while you think the value resides all in your execution.

That's why I believe that if you have an idea you'd better be an exacutor or a sales person, otherwise there no or little value in your contribution. There's no shortage of ideas.

I know many will disagree with me, but I've always had the feeling that advertising on mobile apps is there to exploit user distraction. I haven't got any source to back my theory, nor any conversion rate stats, but I would say that a big chunk of clicks come from user mistakes, rather than genuine interest in the ads, and the same would apply to desktop applications imo.

This might happen on the web too, but with a lower order of magnitude, since the average internet surfer is more likely ready to evaluate an offer/purchase.

I like it :) the auto mode is a nice touch, but please get rid of the "OMZG! NO laziness detected!" thing, it's distracting and looks like an error message..

I just realized that Alexis = Reddit founder = kn0thing = the author of this -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Isk88nT0sRY

That is one of my favourite youtubes. Big kudos! I couldn't stop laughing the first time I watched it. It's amazing how most of it still applies after ~5 years

Hey guys, I've heard about Mashape before (tagliaerbe etc.) but never really had a chance to get a closer look at it.

As a developer myself, I can see what the whole thing is about, but it's not super clear what are the advantages of using that, from the API owner/developer standpoint. How can you help me increase visibility/traction? Should I fear getting exceedingly tied to your architecture? This should be clarified imho.

I also wish the API library were public and searchable without having to register, but maybe this is just an alpha version restriction.

The guide is clear and well redacted, but before getting started with the documentation, I'd rather see more real use examples, show me how to use the library or create the api.php/xml file.

All in all, very good execution. Keep up the good work!

You might want to have a look at this: http://tibleiz.net/asm-xml/index.html

It's a fast (200MB/sec) XML parser/decoder in pure x86 assembler.

When in doubt, you can also use my little webapp: http://phras.in

It also works if you type something like this: http://phras.in/realize/realise

/shameless plug

Great article, the whole analysis is spot-on. In a country where risk-aversion is intrinsecally rooted in the business culture, it's difficult to be serious about any business plan that dosen't lie in a well established market, but not impossible. Unfortunately, the university system (engineering, for my experience) is focused on producing well-manned corporate consultants whose main goal is to get an open-end contract, climb the ladder and wait for a bigger paycheck. Entrepreneurship isn't considered a prerogative for the 20-something 'kid', that's why it isn't taught or discussed in university classrooms. There is lots of room for improvement, David's petition could be a first little step in the right direction.

(This is a comment I originally posted on Jesper's blog)

Good job Roman, I enjoyed Mallette's interview. I'm not sure if having a completely heterogeneous set of guests is a good idea, rather than focusing on smaller niches. This way I feel like there are low chances that I'd be interested inyour next guest. On a positive note, the simple layout looks really effective to me.

P.S: I know it's a bit off-topic, but knowing Roman is Russian, I'm impressed by his american accent, I wonder how he got to achieve that. I'm Italian, I have lived a bit in UK in the past, and now when I speak English I sound like the Queen on crack, and there's no apparent way to fix my pronunciation.

- It's the only place I've lived where my geekiness wasn't the least bit unusual and where I wasn't usually the smartest person in the room, and that was refreshing. -

There's something I don't like in this sentence.

This isn't the first time I hear something like this on HN.

I was at home here in Italy, around 3pm or something like that. I was making websites back then and I used to work from home a couple of days a week, with my boss constantly on the phone.

After some talking he went like 'Have you seen that plane in NY? With all the possible places, the pilot manged to crash it into the tallest tower. It's on TV now, they even interrupted the programs'

So I switched on the TV to check it out, and then we quickly recovered our discussion and kept talking for another few minutes.

Then, all of a sudden, he went '..shit' in the middle of a sentence, and then silence for the next 10-20 seconds. The second plane had crashed into the other tower, with the whole fireball on live TV. I was watching it too. All I heard then was 'I call you later' and he hung up.

That night I was really expecting serious troubles.

Why on earth would you keep 600K on your paypal account anyway?

I don't get all the fuss here: The site was against their TOS and Rackspace had to pull it off.

You may not publish, transmit or store on or via the Rackspace Cloud's network and equipment any content or links to any content that the Rackspace Cloud reasonably believes:

- Constitutes, depicts, fosters, promotes or relates in any manner to child pornography, bestiality, or non-consensual sex acts;

- is excessively violent, incites violence, threatens violence or contains harassing content or hate speech;

- is unfair or deceptive under the consumer protection laws of any jurisdiction, including chain letters and pyramid schemes;

- is defamatory or violates a person's privacy;

- creates a risk to a person's safety or health, creates a risk to public safety or health, compromises national security or interferes with a investigation by law enforcement;

- improperly exposes trade secrets or other confidential or proprietary information of another person; - is intended to assist others in defeating technical copyright protections;

- infringes on another person's copyright, trade or service mark, patent or other property right;

- promotes illegal drugs, violates export control laws, relates to illegal gambling or illegal arms trafficking;

- is otherwise illegal or solicits conduct that is illegal under laws applicable to you or to the Rackspace Cloud;

- is otherwise malicious, fraudulent or may result in retaliation against the Rackspace Cloud by offended viewers.

Content "published or transmitted" via the Rackspace Cloud's network or equipment includes Web content, email, bulletin board postings, chat and any other type of posting or transmission that relies on the Internet.

I think that site was in clear contradiction with point no. 2

Probability of some old man clicking one of the four different links kindly proposed on the top of the page by Google while he's typing his search query is higher than the probability of him clicking the only ad shown to him with the old search technique. I guess.

Agreed.

Seems to me that they're just trying to inflate the number of adwords impressions this way, and not helping me in any way with my search. And it's utterly distracting too. Excuse the negativity.

This type of services were kind of popular 4-5 years ago, but never really got a critical mass of users. Some of them also had some troubles with the law and Bank lobbies. Here is a few examples:

Zopa

Prosper

Landing Club

I'm not American, so I can't really say anything on the subject, but one thing that always shocks me is that while American's health care is strictly bounded to their jobs, yet lots and lots of them seems to have no or little savings, and some even use credit for relatively small purchases.

If I were to live without enough money in the bank to sustain myself for at least a couple of years without a job, i'd be truly scared, even here in Italy where the health care is all paid. I assume it's mostly just a different social behaviour/mindset, nobody can really tell if it's better or not.

True, but the problem with voting rings is that links may be submitted by different participants to the ring each time, and if they all have genuine high karma, that is difficult to track down.

Overall, I agree with you, but there are a couple of observations that renders the article out of the completely bogus realm:

Marketers are spending money on iDevice apps at the expense of improving their mobile Web sites that everyone with a smart phone can access.

True. I guess it's mostly a matter of visibility rather than using the appropriate technology.

App business is a bubble? Nah, I don't think so.

I kinda like the show, but is this HN material? I don't think so.

Since many people have dynamic IPs, I think tracking geolocation patterns of the first 10-ish votes would be enough to distinguish suspect cases and eventually put them 'on-hold' (HN dosen't really need to get stories on the front page as soon as possible, it's not exactly a breaking news site).

There is a big difference between acting accordingly to the social group you're into and eventually see the different segments collide, and exposing a publicly available book of all your diverse personalities in the various stages of your life.

What I foresee isn't a clamp down on privacy policies, rather a general people's flattening of behavioral characteristics, in order to keep the acceptable boundaries between all the different, inevitably public, social situations.

For what I understand it's all about an update to Cyanogen's Android 2.2 ROM.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but all the devices listed are already supporting Android Froyo officially or unofficially by some time. I've been using my HTC Desire with the HTC update to Froyo for a month now, it's not like it couldn't run it before today.

Talk about linkbait:

"Rose, the founder and chief architect of Digg, took up the role of interim CEO when Jay Adelson resigned in April."

That's it. nothing to see here, move along..

I have a slightly different question: considering I have no interest in emigrating to the States, what if my hypothetical startup gets funded by YC or any other american early stage venture firm?

Would I be able to incorporate in US and pay taxes accordingly? Can I keep working from my home country? What are the real, tangible advantages of running your team in US, other then the favorable startup environment you can get in places such as the Valley/SF? Are investors much less inclined to funding foreign teams, does it makes it more troublesome?

Sorry for the loads of questions, but sometimes I fail at understanding why so many people think is a must to go to the states to get a startup off the ground.

And thanks to anyone who will take the time to answer.

In my very humble opinion, what I just read was a lengthy and macchiavellan explanation of a simple concept: if your co-workers are happy with their job and you don't, and you all get paid the same, you might want to consider looking for another job that better fill your expectations.

There's no need for EMH theories and graphs to get that.

Could you be a little more specific? What's your area of expertise?

If you havent read it yet, I'd suggest you to read Huxley's Brave New World, as opposed to 1984.

Given it was written in 1932 it surprisingly exposes present-day concerns.

French polynesia must be one of the most paradisiac places on this planet.