Hacker News Reader

piuson An instance of Feynman being quite, quite incorrect.

Flamebait.

piuson How to safely send your deck to investors.

This seemed to be pretty good advice to me. I'd improve on it by pre-registering a login for the investor so that you can simply give them a username and password without forcing them to jump through any registration hoops.

piuson Ask YC: Recent *nix history..

88 ss (alias for 'script/server')

81 rake

72 cd

34 git

23 sc (alias for 'script/console')

19 merb

18 sudo

14 ssh

13 nano

13 ls

piuson [dead]

Doh!

piuson Does Google Index Hacker News In Real Time?

It indexes Hacker News extremely quickly. In the few instances I've checked, new articles and comments were indexed in Google within minutes.

I'd imagine this makes our community a pretty heavy target for spammers.

piuson StreamFocus - An Organizational Power Tool Waiting To Be Unleashed

Cool, thanks

piuson StreamFocus - An Organizational Power Tool Waiting To Be Unleashed

Nice writeup . . . made me want to check out the software.

piuson Why Beautiful Women Marry Less Attractive Men

There is probably a strong inverse correlation between working hard for success and attractiveness in men.

Why?

piuson Israel: a country too far from Mike Arrington’s house

My buddy went on this and had a blast. If I were Jewish, I'd be all over it.

piuson Forget the Courts — Apple May Fight Mac Clones With Tech

That's an interesting point. Now's a good time to say IANAL and I'm just speculating, but as I understand it they're not really arguing that Apple's security measures are illegal, but that their business practices are illegal; Apple is entitled to have whatever security they'd like. If that's true, then the DMCA violation would still stand.

piuson Ask YC: Could you provide a specific account of how you personally come up with novel ideas?

Edgecraft.

Seth Godin describes the process in Free Prize Inside.

(http://decentmarketing.typepad.com/weblog/2004/05/on_the_edg...)

piuson Forget the Courts — Apple May Fight Mac Clones With Tech

If any part of the Leopard EFI has a component that can be construed to be a security measure to prevent the software from use on unauthorized hardware, Apple has a DMCA case. And the DMCA does have teeth.

piuson Ask YC: How important is location when your startup isn't looking for lots of VC money?

I've been thinking about it. :)

piuson Ask YC: How important is location when your startup isn't looking for lots of VC money?

Of course, if by saying "enterprise software", you mean "a market no one else is interested in, and thus I can build any old technology I want and people will have to buy mine", then sure. No matter where you are, you'll do fine. But what happens when an agile web-based competitor arrives who are using modern techniques and have hired the best nerds they could find in the technology center where they're based (which are, let's face it, better than the nerds you can find in a non-tech-focused city)?

Isn't it presumptuous to think that one's city would dictate one's knowledge of "modern" technology? If you're going to stagnate, you'll do it wherever you live.

I'll concede the point about local staffing but, again, if you've got your team together and build your startup so that it's profitable, you'll have no problem hiring when you need to.

piuson ASK YC: Dilemma - A few VCs interested, but we dont need funding. What do we do?

Wasn't it Eugene Kleiner who said, "Take the money when it's available." :P

piuson Ask YC: How important is location when your startup isn't looking for lots of VC money?

I've not got data, but I'd imagine that reporting bias causes a tendency to conflate the cool web 2.0 and 90's dot-com startups with the tech sector as a whole. There are plenty of less sexy tech companies that are thriving outside of hubs. The technology sector is not a unique snowflake -- microeconomics still applies. Lowering your costs is a good thing.

The world is flat. If you've founded, say, an enterprise software firm with no interest in outside funding and you have all the employees you need, there's no reason to be in a "startup hub" unless you want to be.

piuson Where Have All the Bold VCs Gone?

That's cool . . . wasn't trying to be a jerk, just genuinely curious.

piuson Where Have All the Bold VCs Gone?

Good article, but why that title?

piuson Ask YC: How important is location when your startup isn't looking for lots of VC money?

That said I believe a start up can start anywhere but needs to be prepared to relocate should the needs of the business demand that they do so.

Yeah, moving away from major hubs can be a good way to save money.

piuson Tumblr security hole (the gaping kind)

Ah.

piuson Tumblr security hole (the gaping kind)

No, it was only open and public for an hour. It could have been open for months, maybe longer.

piuson Tumblr security hole (the gaping kind)

Is that true that the passwords were revealed? All I saw was a reset link that I didn't click on.

piuson Tumblr security hole (the gaping kind)

Interestingly, I've looked at your comment about 10 times and just now noticed that you transposed the 'm' and 'b' in Tumblr. :)

piuson Tumblr security hole (the gaping kind)

[4:09 pm] Problem fixed. Response time: 43 minutes.

piuson Tumblr security hole (the gaping kind)

Elevation of privilege FTL.

piuson Tumblr security hole (the gaping kind)

It'll be interesting to see how this news spreads through the Twitterverse. Break the popcorn out: http://www.tweetscan.com/index.php?s=tumblr&u=

piuson Tumblr security hole (the gaping kind)

They were the first popular tumbleblogging platform. It's a really good service, this incident notwithstanding.

The perverse irony of all of this is that the incident reminded me that I've got a Tumblr account. Before today, I hadn't logged in for over a year!

piuson Tumblr security hole (the gaping kind)

...and how many people have found it and not said anything?

Scary.

piuson Tumblr security hole (the gaping kind)

This is a pretty critical exploit . . . you'd think they'd take the app down or at least change the admin URL while this is resolved. I shouldn't at this moment still be able to reset an arbitrary user's password by going to that URL.

piuson Tumblr security hole (the gaping kind)

That is absolutely unbelievable.