Hacker News Reader

robertgon Review my hackathon MVP - Amazon instant search

Excellent app. I can see why you won.

One minor thing I saw: when I searched for "C#" it returned "c programming"

robertgon DoJ: Apple, Google Now Free to Steal Each Other's Staff; This Is Better How?

"But, who benefits in this case?"

uh.... everyone. Trying to sue someone so you can force your employees to stay is lose/lose.

robertgon Ask HN: Is it worthwhile for a startup to use a professional designer?

Ditto on the PSD advice. There are plenty of PSD to HTML chop shops that will do a much better job slicing and creating standards compliant markup for your site.

It ends up costing a little more in the long run, but you also get a better quality product.

robertgon [dead]

My thoughts exactly. I actually like the fact that users can edit questions and answers. This, plus the voting mechanism ensures the best information is present in most cases.

robertgon Why We Shut Newstilt Down

I stopped reading after this...

"None of these problems should have been unassailable, which leads us to why NewsLabs failed as a company:

     * Nathan and I had major communication problems,
     * we weren’t intrinsically motivated by news and journalism,
     * making a new product required changes we could not make,
     * our motivation to make a successful company got destroyed by all of the above.

Overall, the most important of these are that Nathan and I had difficulty communicating in a way which would allow us save the company, and that this really drained out motivation."

Maybe you should figure this shit out before you take someone's hard earned money.

robertgon Greplin: A search engine for your life

I love that name.

robertgon Ask HN: How much do founders pay themselves?

I've been in business for 5 months and I pay myself $0.

robertgon What to Wear to Court

agreed. I guess a better term would be "believable upstanding citizen"

robertgon Just launched: http://talkMiner.com

great idea. great execution. poor design. You did the hard stuff, now make it look good and you'll have the complete package. Nice work.

robertgon Lego robot solves any Rubik's cube in less than 12 seconds

That's awesome, I like the solutions where the Rubik's cube isn't modified. I've seen several solutions where a hole has to be drilled in the cube, etc...

Also, being able to turn the cube on all 4 sides is a major plus.

robertgon What to Wear to Court

I can't believe people have to actually be told this stuff. I don't know why you'd want to show up and not look/act like a model up-standing citizen.

robertgon Review our startup: Lanyrd, the social conference directory

I like it. Nice layout and I like the fact that you can search/browse conferences without having to log in.

Nice job.

robertgon Review our startup: Lanyrd, the social conference directory

I agree. Also, I'm hesitant to log in from work since we block twitter here and I don't want to hit the web filter.

robertgon Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

Still better than reddit.com/r/programming

robertgon A chinese villager who sells more software daily than you do

Yeah, I thought that too... It might be a past/present kind of thing. Like, at the time the author was in China, he was making $5000/month and now that the article is published it's $5000/day.

Although, $5000/day seems a bit high, so I'm thinking it's a typo.

robertgon Google Flops & Failures - The Failed Google Graveyard

That's what happens when you encourage your employees to build things on their own. You have more failures than successes as far as products go.

Personally, I like that Google has these pet projects that they try out for a while and see if they work. Not everything you do is going to be successful.

I'll take my gmail/maps/apps/reader and be happy. And who knows, maybe in the near future they will come out with something new that I can't live without.

robertgon Clearance Sale: Barnes & Noble Didn't Evolve Enough

I wonder what will happen with my Nook. Probably should have went with the Kindle... oh well.

robertgon What do you want from Windows 8?

The same percentage of improvement as there was from vista to 7

robertgon More Startup Ideas

#4 exists - http://grooveshark.com

robertgon Ask HN: Has a candidate's political views ever stopped you from hiring them?

Diversity is one of the ingredients that makes projects successful. You need people on your project that think differently than you. As long as they aren't interested in terrorism or a complete asshole (which, consequently, can be anyone from any political affiliation) then you shouldn't pass up on the good talent. Smart people are hard enough to find these days, as long as they keep that shit out of the work place (and you too, by the way) then you should be fine.

Also, I would google and check the social media profiles of everyone I was about to hire. It's easier to get out of some marriages than it is to fire some people and you need to know what you are getting in to.

robertgon Ask HN: What stops you from starting today?

School is what did it for me, my program was pretty rigorous and I didn't want to mortgage my future by letting my grades suffer. Plus, I was working full time anyway. I just waited until 2 months before I graduated, started my LLC and have been slowly working at it ever since. We're just about ready to ship our first product and I didn't even quit my job. My main suggestion, write down your ideas as you have them and keep them somewhere for later when you have more time.

robertgon Ask HN: What stops you from starting today?

I have the same issue. I just started my company part-time on the side and it has worked out so far. Things move a bit slower but you don't have to worry about funding or coming up with enough every month to pay for the house.

robertgon Ask HN: Solo Entrepreneur, what are my chances and have you done it?

I'm a solo founder but I have a full time job and work my business on the side when I have time (beats the hell out of video games). It made sense to me to be a solo founder because I can take things at my own pace and I can call all of the shots. I'm also not looking for any funding either, and if I was going to quit my job to go after something like this full-time, I'd probably try to find someone smarter than me to help out. Good luck.

robertgon I'm a nearly broke developer/entrepreneur and felt like venting

Sorry to hear you're having such a rough time, it's tough when the money dries up. Good luck in the future.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

http://37signals.com/svn/archives/sanaz_ahari_just_ship_it.p... (replace big company with (seemingly) unlimited budget).

robertgon GitHub Stats by Programming Language

Representing C# developers who use Github. We're a super-minority.

robertgon Ask HN: Review My (first) Startup: jummpp.in

+1 for OpenID

robertgon Ask HN: Summer Reading Recommendations?

I really like the Sherlock Holmes stories.

They are a bit dated, but still good reads.

http://www.amazon.com/Study-Scarlet-Sherlock-Holmes-Mystery/...

robertgon Ask HN: I want to start a web company what books should I read?

http://37signals.com/rework/

I really like this book. It helps put things into perspective, especially for smaller companies.