hwork

Gabe's comment mid-way down is interesting.

It's interesting how much more captivating this is compared to anything NASA is doing currently. The rovers are cool, the fly-bys neat, hubble upgrades, etc. But this (and similar ventures) put real, albeit rich and crazy, people into space and that's so... cool. It's tangible.

maybe something like sub yc's for applications questions, one for jobs, one for bay area, one for boston, etc.

Is anyone in the loop and testing this feature out?

Seriously. I'm jazzed about this too.

I think mint is a fantastic startup.

Hey man. One thing you could try, if you're having a tough time with the sheer amount of things to learn out there, is to try to find a project to work on that's going to apply some external pressure on you to solve problems and learn new things. That way, you can sort of chip away at things.

http://www.pragprog.com/titles/rails2 is where I started.

I realize this is seemingly more gadgets than hacking news, but not for me. The Aibo, the goofy, expensive toy that Sony discontinued in 2006, was my introduction to hacking in college. For two years, I hacked this thing with a fury I'd never known. I got into 'RoboCup', aka Robot Soccer, and making these Aibos autonomous were my mission. Through this project, I learned how to code, run a project, and succeed. After two years of hard work, this summer my team, the fiery Northern Bites from small Bowdoin College, won the World Championship of robot dog soccer. Now I'm in Silicon Valley trying to take all that I learned from RoboCup and do something big. The chance of a new Aibo, a robot I got to know a lot of, brings back a lot of hacking memories for me. Anyways, just thought I share. Rock on.

Time to flood the site with YC votes.... I'm voting FuzzWich... in all categories.

Pretty awesome, and by awesome I mean totally sweet.

Yeah, I like that: 'Constant Gratification'. I think that is in essence what keeps coders going.

Good stuff. Very relevant for our crowd.

What lures me to programming is an obsession with progress. While I've learned to appreciate the process of programming, the elegance of properly done code, and the seeming lack of limitations, seeing day-to-day, week-to-week, yearly progress is huge for me. I like looking back and saying 'wow, my robot/program could not do this two weeks ago'. Maybe it's just because I am vain!

I think the most important thing Blake mentions here is the amount of customization required per network. Obviously, each system is not the same: they have different features, conventions, permissions, etc. But it'll be interesting to see whether or not developers can keep one application in its own branch in source or will they literally have to have multiple instances, one for each network.

If development feels like doing one app 14 times instead of one app once, that'll suck, but at least things will be familiar when you are duplicating code. Interesting to see how well this works. Roll, Google.

Damn, I'm going to be in Seattle this time around. But I'm sure my co-founder will jaunt up. Roll, YC start-upper dudes!

same!

I think the trick here is not the technology or the pricing: appealing interfaces and lower prices are doable. I think what's challenging about this is the barrier to entry to becoming a player in this space. That is, how do you get races and camps to get on board, and to ensure others will follow? It seems like this david-vs-goliath effort is how to build relationships with customers and really drive them to your site. Lower prices are definitely a start. But it might take a lot to build up the brand.

But seriously, man, all the props to ya. This idea clearly comes from frustration with the current competitors and a 'damn the man' attitude. Good luck!!

Interesting on the third co-founder advice... does anyone else have a perspective on this?

I'm for it! We've already taken the plunge and now are settled in MV. It's nice out here. Ran into the fuzzwich guys yesterday. Been to SuperHappyDevHouse and Googleplex. Come on out!

Here's something I thought of today whilst reading the gripes of reddit: their main issue can't be the community, but instead the amount of power they give individuals within the community.

Reddit could look to Wikipedia of all places and come up with some ways to give individuals within their community more clout over the stuff that hits the top few pages.

Here's one I'm dying to implement: user-generated reporting website for the wait times on the rides at Disneyland. I swear Disney distorts these for easier crowd control.

Hey man, thanks a lot for the overview. This is some of the best information I've gotten yet.

We've seen a bunch of places in Palo Alto and Mountain View that we could see ourselves living in. We've walked around Castro and University Ave's to get a feel for those city centers.

Thanks particularly descriptions of those other areas I've haven't heard about but now see popping up in the craigslist ings.

Hey man! Thanks a lot. This is all great stuff.

We actually visited a place very near 'apartment city' today. Not bad. I like MV a lot, despite it being quiet. I figure we can also go into the city and, without distractions, work is bound to flow.

I'll stay in touch!

Sebastian Thrun is a rockstar in the AI world. He's the guy that won the DARPA Grand Challenge. I got to see him speak at a conference last year. It only strikes me odd that he would found a company doing non-AI stuff.

Ah, maybe this is his first step towards a self-driven car revolution: to drive autonomously through cities, it's helpful to have a map. And a 3-d immersive map is better than a 2-d one.

Is this really 'leapfrogging' reliable services that offer 2+gigs for space? I don't know about other people's email usages, but gmail has a ceiling I will not be sneaking up on anytime soon. I guess it is nice to know that you do have unlimited space, but I don't think this announcement is nearly as cool as gmail's 1 gig.

Thankfully I don't make them. I'm involved in the RoboCup project: www.robocup.org. But I'm in a 'league' where software is king and hardware is standard: the 4 Legged League. Here's the link: http://www.tzi.de/4legged/

But if you're into making robots, pretty much every other league in RoboCup (save simulation) does hardware: humanoids, coffee-can robots, rescue robots, etc.

So yeah, I program robotic dogs to play soccer. Pretty ridiculous concept, but it's darn cute.

Bloody Robots. And they are not even bipedal dynamically self-balancing ones.

Estimated Time to Startup: 4 Months.

It might be interesting to try a decay function on the leader board.

Now, it's probably not cool to take away karma points, but it would reward activity. Plus, it'll get around the issue of single posters who post a single ridiculously popular post. They would have their hayday in karma but then slide back in the rankings in favor of the regulars.

Just added my local hotspots. Pretty cool stuff.