tpatke

By that measure the movie, television and music industries also accomplish abosolutely nothing. ...oh, and also facebook and video games.

I wish I could accomplish so little. :-)

I have been on this routine for about 18 months. Waking up early in the morning is not easy or fun, but the alternative is to work in the evening or not at all. I find working in the evening really difficult because after a full day of work and a nice dinner with my wife - I am not really in the mood to "go back to work". Waking up early allows me to put my personal project into a set routine. 2 hours every day - not 2.5 or 3 or an all-nighter. This constraint is great for focusing the mind and making those 2 hours really productive.

There is one downside. I really need to be asleep by 9:30 (I actually wake up at 4:30). This is difficult to do when I meet up with friends. For example, this week I have two meetups planned - both of which will probably cause me to get home past 10:30 which means I am more likely lie in the next morning. ...and I agree with the OP - it is much easier to keep a schedule like this if you do it every day.

While I think that PG is probably right in his observation, it is not actually very helpful. It is kind of like when he said, "When we haven't heard from, or about, a startup for a couple months, that's a bad sign. If we send them an email asking what's up, and they don't reply, that's a really bad sign." [1] Well... ok. But is that cause or effect? I doubt business was booming and they just decided to stop responding to email.

If you have a startup that is growing I am sure it is easier to take advice and get funding. ...all sorts of things. If the business is not doing as well I can see where it is more difficult to see the correct action.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html

Makes me wonder how may of Apple's Think Different personalities were paid for their "endorsement".

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Different

I think the issue is access control. Clearly they can and do look at their customers personal data. Thats not very funny - even if it happens to be a picture of a cat.

You might also want to check out an article the BBC is running today which says that sky scrapers are linked with impending financial crashes. Specifically mentions China.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16494013

Apparently, whole cities are being built in anticipation of people wanting to live there (ie, filling demand which doesn't exist).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2010/11...

I wonder how this relates to the "entrepreneurial selection process".

According to PG [1]:

- hard work is necessary but insufficient

- entrepreneurs either have a very high probability of success or "epsilon".

- it is easy to know (or find out) what group you are in.

PG makes a strong argument...but then, so does this guy from MIT. Maybe they are talking about different things? Is intelligence more important for a startup founder then it is for a kid at MIT?

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3392049

I love the picture of the programmers at the bottom of the page. Clearly not the best working conditions even though the office has nice desk space available (see background). Just shows how much more developers are respected now. ...thanks in part to these guys.

This conversation looks an aweful lot like the anti-Walmart and anti-Starbucks movements. When a business starts to become massively successful such that they start to kill small business - people start worrying about 'the community'.

Change is hard. No doubt this is just the beginning. Amazon is going to get a lot bigger. It is not too hard to see anti-trust charges in the not too distent future.

Food for thought: people like to talk about what Facebook's database is worth but Amazon has my online purchase history going back 10+ years. I know which data I would rather own.

I am not quite sure what to make of this. Steve Blank teaches a class on entrepreneurship. If you have a team of Hacker, Hustler, Designer, Visionary Stanford graduates - sounds like you are 90% of the way there. Hell - I will give you money. You can say pretty much anything to a team like that and they are going to succeed. Almost sounds more like investing than teaching.

So...has Steve Blank discovered that teams of people from Ivy league schools who personally know Steve Blank and have his implicit backing tend to be successful?

Miguel de Icaza is living the life right now. He managed to get Novell to fund his idea and then effectively bought it off of them for a steal. Well done!

Incidentally, I think this is the best way to start a business if you ever find yourself in the right position. Big companies are ditching / spinning off successful products which are just not "successful enough" and you can often pick them up for the cost of supporting existing customers.

Meh. This is hardly the most ridiculous thing I have seen on the internet. I am sure this methodology will work sometimes for some clients. Heck, I bet a lot of startups here on HackerNews are using similar methodologies - but without the early usability testing. If nothing else, at least this company are differentiating themselves. Haven't seen a lot of other consultancies get posted up here on HackerNews.

Every project is different. We should try and not be too dogmatic about these things.

This is an iterative improvement. Not a revolution. Microsoft has some serious catching up to do here and I would like to see a little more innovation coming from MSFT's camp. "Hey, nobody is really using our platform, but you can save fifty-bucks" isn't really going to cut it.

How about - MSFT covers all costs for the first 2 years (keep 100% of what you make)? Heck, even a contest with some real prizes would be something...

I would add the the SEC is a notoriously corrupt organization in that they need the banks help in order to understand what is going on AND people who work for the SEC tend to find their way into cushie bank jobs. The idea of giving them more power doesn't seem to me like any kind of solution at all.

The real problem is that people just don't care enough about white collar crime. When someone mugs you for $5 you want vigilante justice, but when billions (trillions?) of dollars are on the line, we are happy to just shrug our shoulders.

There is a big difference between PG and Arrington: PG states that you should be working for yourself. YC is set up to allow entrepreneurs to make money if they work hard and a big part of that is allowing a company to grow before being required to take VC money - allowing for a better valuation.

Sleeping under your desk with .05% equity? Probably a bad investment.

Sleeping under your desk for 45% equity? Well, roll the dice. At least you will get paid if it works.

When I think about all of the problems with the education system I am not sure that "teaching coding" would top that list. The bottom line is that coding is a profession which is not suited to everyone. I remember being a TA at university in the late 90s when IT was booming. Everyone wanted to learn to program. Once they learned enough to realize it meant sitting in front of a computer alone all day - most moved on to something else. Few people have the concentration / (lack of :-) social aptitude. I believe most people have the intelligence.

Basic computer skills need to be taught. Coding? It should possibly be a required semester in university for all majors. ...beyond that? Does everyone really need to know about recursion?

I think the license now allows commercial development. Additionally Microsoft is announcing that they have partnered with TechStars giving your commercial kinect idea an optional funding route. The six percent goes to TechStars. Not Microsoft.

Who cares? Whatever browser is the market leader doesn't matter because you will still need to support IE, Chrome, Firefox and Safari for the foreseeable future. Nobody has ever made a (significant) profit from a browser. In fact, Microsoft lost billions for their efforts (see U.S. vs. MSFT).

Can someone please explain to me why this matters?

First of all - I wasn't making a value judgement. Personally, I agree with you - it is reprehensible and disgusting. That is part of the reason I don't work at Goldman's anymore. I always found it a bit embarrassing to be associated with them. By "good" bankers - I ment the one's making all the money. Not those who are morally good.

Second - it is how things work. Not just in commodities, but in everything Goldman's does. There is always an angle which greatly reduces risk. That angle might be insider trading, advanced statistics, or just a rigged market. Goldman's is doing nothing illegal that I am aware of or anyone can prove. ...it is just how things work.

I used to work at Goldman's. This story doesn't surprise me at all. This is what all good bankers do. I think the story hasn't gotten attention because it is not a story. It is just how things work.

First thing I noticed is that the links at the top of the page don't work (in IE9). ...so, basically, they are looking for developers who "think in algorithms, dream in code, and eat control structures" so they can fix those pesky main navigation links. :-)

I think there is something poetic going on here. Sometimes we try so hard to hire people like ourselves we fail to hire the people we need most - those that can fill our blind spots. In this case by doing some boring site maintenance work.

For those of you who haven't heard about this, CNN has a bit more facts in it's coverage: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/06/politics/occupy-wall-stree...

The full impact of the greek default hasn't hit yet and it is not unreasonable to expect that Italy or Spain may default next. People have already started leaderless protests. Meanwhile - it's pretty easy to make money on the way down assuming you have it to begin with.

It is not hard to predict some pretty big changes in the next few years.

Microsoft still has the better P/E ratio. 9.4 for MSFT vs 14.5 for IBM. I can't say I understand why investors would value IBM's growth potential higher then Microsoft's.

The next big milestone is when Apple is worth two Microsofts. Heh.

Aside from raising the price issue they have also (apparently) caught the Autonomy CEO in a lie. ...which would make me a bit uncomfortable if I was about to write a 10 billion dollar check. Makes me wonder why he lied and what else he lied about.

You should read The Economics of Innocent Fraud. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Economics-Innocent-Fraud-Pocket-Peng...

>Whatever they don't consume is reinvested in the economy.

This is true of all financial transactions. The question is, are resources being allocated efficiently? As the authors state - that 5 trillion is not going to build schools or hospitals.

>Going to college doesn't mean you deserve a job

I think the point was that this is affecting a wide range of people including the educated and hard working. I didn't see the entitlement slant.

>America is still a country where one can post up signs on a telephone pole

Sure. 9% of the working population can post a sign on a telephone pole. Let me know how that works out for you.

>Being poor sucks, sure. But guess what -- learning to withstand it is a good skill to have.

Ah, the benefits of a calcutta education! Maybe we can start a charity to help to these people realise how lucky they are?

>not having a job does not mean someone is a failure.

People are saying that when they have trouble paying their bills, that effects their self worth. This is different than saying that they are worthless because they are not a vice-president.

My guess is you don't have a family and you have never had to go without.

If you want to change the world, empathy would be a good skill to acquire.

I wonder how many patents were transferred to the new company. Motorola certainly has a lot and MSFT and Apple have been overpaying lately...

I was going to comment that Google, Facebook and Twitter are platforms for search, connections and communicating respectively. Ads are simply a revenue model. If Facebook charged $20 per month, would you work for them then?

However, after seeing comments like: I work for facebook - "advertising is itself a worthwhile problem."

and... I work for google - "People in non-advertising teams hardly ever ask 'how will this effect click-through rates?'."

Hardly ever? :-) Maybe it is more about advertising then I realize.

Thanks for pointing that out. I didn't realize.

Not sure why YC should be getting blamed here? I give them a lot of credit as it appears that hacker news broke this story. If there was anything sinister going on I think they could have just deleted the story.

Airbnb is another matter. Asking the blogger to remove the post sounds like such a bone-headed move that I have trouble believing it is true.

Airbnb has lost all credibility in my book.