Hacker News Reader

jranckon Ask HN: OK to use the word "bullshit" in our company tagline?

It depends, does the risk of offending potential users outweigh the gain? Or do you think you'll get more users with a more radical marketing approach? If you guys like it that much I would A/B test it and see what works.

jranckon Ask HN: How do I short a stock?

How does that work? I thought most investors who get access to an IPO are usually obliged to hold on to their shares for at least 30 days. I'm guessing there are ways around this but only at your own risk as it will probably be the last IPO you're invited into.

jranckon Ask HN: Technical skills needed for any Google interview/job?

You best bet would be the job description for the job you're applying for. You could also check out glassdoor.com to see what previous interviewers have encountered.

jranckon [dead]

You could downvote the submissions but I think the main benefit of HN is in the discussion and commentary. I personally read the comments before I click on a story because I like to have a frame of reference when choosing to read an article. I don't think a post should be ranked on its upvotes but on its number of comments and range of discussion.

I should also add that just because a submission is bad doesn't mean the discussion under it isn't worthwhile.

jranckon Why Instapaper Free is taking an extended vacation

I think what is happening is there's a threshold for successful applications. Every application and website has a vetting period where momentum and marketing can advance to certain levels where a reputation is attained. This is where Instapaper is right now. Marco wouldn't have the audience he has now if it wasn't a free service to begin with. Now that the service has a reputation and a successful following you are allowed to charge a premium.

jranckon Why Instapaper Free is taking an extended vacation

I applaud the fact that a developer can charge for his time and effort into building a good product. While I love hearing about these success stories, lets not forget the fact that all applications are different. There is an inherit and perceived value for everything and it's all dependent on the audience. The ROI per user is different for everyone, what works for you may not work for someone else. Marco's audience is made up of mostly tech savvy individuals where the implied value is greater than the cost of the service. This isn't the exception to the rule but it isn't the typical audience that a lot of startups are trying to capture. Every audience and product is different and take inspiration with a grain of salt. With that being said nice work Marco.

jranckon Ask HN: What do you read every day?

Some staples for me are:

Techcrunch

Mashable

Lifehacker

Signal vs. Noise (37 signals)

Smashing Magazine's Network

A VC (Fred Wilson)

Drudge Report

NY Times

ESPN or, shameless plug, my site fanreader.com

jranckon Ask HN: Email Service Provider For Web Apps

Amazon: http://aws.amazon.com/ses/

Rackspace: http://www.rackspace.com/apps/email_hosting/

jranckon Portland Seed Fund seeks inspiration from Y Combinator grads

Good question, does anyone know if they're using public funds as a loan instrument or are they taking equity in these companies?

jranckon Portland Seed Fund seeks inspiration from Y Combinator grads

I have to disagree here both Oregon and Oregon State are underrated universities. I'm a bit biased towards Oregon State as I graduated from there but their Engineering and Science colleges do a fantastic job.

jranckon How we almost didn’t raise $800K in the worst investment market in years

This is very informative, kudos to you guys for sharing. How did you guys set your goals as far as how much to raise and the amount of equity you were willing to give up? What did having the extra investment mean for you guys starting out?

jranckon The Complete Guide for Starting iPhone and iOS Development

What works for you may or may not work for someone else. I don't think I'm alone when I say that more quality resources on a subject is never a bad thing.

jranckon Show HN: Readability-like API Using Machine Learning

This looks great. I'd love to find out more about your API and what type of web scraping techniques you're using. It looks like this is going to be available publicly to developers? What type of usage do you guys allow?

jranckon Are America's Best Days Behind Us?

While I think this article raises some interesting points on the future of America, as a hacker with entrepreneurial aspirations I have some reservations. With all of the innovation and opportunities brought up and discussed on HN what do you all think?

jranckon Ask HN: Feeling Sick

I think the key here is set some short-term goals. Although it's important to have some long-term, you need to get the ball rolling. Set some short-term/easily attainable goals that way you'll have some successes to build off of.

jranckon Show/Ask HN: My side project for over a year; should I take it on full time?

Use the traction you've already got in the productivity category with this app to tackle other problems in that area. Be the next 37signals of the Android marketplace.

jranckon I'm 15. I just got covered on Mashable and TNW

Congratulations on getting some nice media coverage. How is this different from Formspring or the hundreds of other annoying quiz apps on Facebook?

jranckon Introducing AWS CloudFormation

These guys are on a roll. Makes me debate switching from Rackspace Cloud. They've got some catching up to do.

jranckon Why I stopped travelling to the US and largely stopped doing business in the US

"He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither."

Unfortunately I don't see this changing any time soon with the TSA unionizing.

jranckon I'm a designer who learned Django and launched her first webapp in 6 weeks

Check out djangobook.com its online and free to everyone. It will give you a good understanding of the fundamentals as well as a few advanced topics. Other than that the best advice I could give you is to jump in feet first and don't look back.

jranckon Microsoft: 'We do not copy Google's results'

This remains as relevant as ever...

"Bad artists copy. Good artists steal." -Picasso

jranckon Review my startup - E

This looks pretty cool, nice job on the UI. I don't really understand the name of your service but at least it wouldn't be hard to remember.

Are you guys planning on allowing users to customize their cards to match their actual business card?

Either way good luck taking on Bump, it's good to have a couple options in the marketplace.

jranckon The Real Problem With China

IP theft continues to be a growing problem in China, I was reading a report that almost 60% of applications running on Asian computers are pirated (compare this to 20% in North America.)

Here's the report if you're interested: http://portal.bsa.org/globalpiracy2009/studies/09_Piracy_Stu...

I'm beginning to wonder if this is something we can continue to count our politicians to work on or if we need to address as a community. It will be interesting to see the stats in coming years due to the trend toward proprietary app stores and SaaS.

jranckon Ask HN: Inspirational movies

A Beautiful Mind

The Shawshank Redemption

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Pirates of Silicon Valley

jranckon Ask HN: What time do you work? When are you most productive?

Day Job: 9am-6pm Startup: 8pm-12am

My most productive time is usually after lunch as my mornings are usually filled with meetings, phone calls and emails. Evenings I work on my own projects and freelance. I'm more enthused about the work but find there are more distractions as well.

jranckon Tell HN: Your social widgets are losing you visitors right now

You can also team Firebug up with Yahoo's fantastic benchmarking utility YSlow.

jranckon MongoDB's lead developer: Foursquare outage post mortem

I didn't realize you only had 10 guys behind the scenes, that's pretty impressive in and of itself. In all actuality this is a good problem to have and one I wouldn't mind having. It means you're growing and fast.

jranckon MongoDB's lead developer: Foursquare outage post mortem

For example, if we had notifications in place to alert us 12 hours earlier that we needed more capacity, we could have added a third shard, migrated data, and then compacted the slaves.

Where did Foursquare find their engineers? I hope no one lost their job here but this is pretty elementary stuff.

jranckon Microsoft Buying Adobe?

Razorfish was acquired when Microsoft bought aQuantive. It was then spun off and sold to Publicis.

jranckon Tech CEOs tell US gov't how to cut $1 trillion from deficit

Too true, hence the need for more businessmen/women in office. I would think a lot of cuts they're recommending could be accomplished through executive orders as a lot of them are involving federal programs and mandates. If not we could only hope both sides could come to an agreement and pass them through the houses.