Hacker News Reader

waveon Groundbreaking drone coverage of tornado damage piques ire of FAA

I don't especially want a drove[sic] hovering over me wherever I go. What if it crashes into me?

This type of fear is common for any type of new technology. I am sure people had similar fear when automobiles started to appear in the streets. They might have said "what if the car hit me while I am walking". Eventually, we will all get used to it and start to live with risks associated with it.

waveon Ask HN: which is the most influencing quote you ever came across?

"You are confined only by the wall you build yourself"

waveon Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

The only suggestion I have is that it would be nice to see the patient's profiles get updated after being funded and treatment was given. We all like to see how our donations are making noticeable difference in people's lives.

I really like what Watsi is doing. They even "eat the credit card processing fees"

waveon An Amazon Engineer Had a Little Idea That Turned Into a Billion-Dollar Business

In case if you are wondering, Chris Pinkham[1] and Willem Van Biljon[2] came up with the idea. Here is the story: http://blog.b3k.us/2009/01/25/ec2-origins.html

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

[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_Van_Biljon

waveon UberTAXI is arriving in San Francisco

This is probably the fee they charge the taxi owners. This way, the added cost of their service is covered by the customers rather than the taxi owners.

waveon Referly (YC S12) Raises $1M To Bring Affiliate Commerce To Everyone

One suggestion I have for Refer.ly is that to create JavaScript that automatically convert links to affiliated-links for site owners. This simplifies the process of creating a link on Refer.ly, copy and paste it on a site they own. They can just embed the script and it should do all the work for them.

waveon Craigslist begins to roll out PadMapper-like map view for apartment listings

I was almost certain[1] that Craigslist was working on PadMapper like interface and it was the reason they sued. They should have done the right thing and hire/buy one person company PadMapper.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4149263

waveon 400,000 American homes have dumped pay-TV so far this year

People are asking for mobile app.

waveon 400,000 American homes have dumped pay-TV so far this year

I am using 5.1.7 and it works fine. Do you have flash blocker or JavaScript disabled?

waveon 400,000 American homes have dumped pay-TV so far this year

One thing I missed after canceling pay TV is the way I used to watch news. You just turn on the TV and there is news. So I created http://tiltview.com to gather current news and play it without having to do any work.

waveon Bye Bye Craigslist

Padmapper has been a wonderful service. It is confusing why Craigslist is blocking it unless they (Craigslist) are thinking about coming up with similar user interface soon. Craigslist has been hiring UI designers.

waveon A Skype call in Ethiopia will now get you 15 years in prison

It is in Amharic language written in Ge'ez script known as Fidel. Since you don't have the font installed, you weren't able to see it.

For those who are not familiar with the alphabet, it looks like this: http://www.amharicmachine.com/alphabet.gif

waveon Goodbye, CouchDB

This is similar to what FriendFeed did in 2009 - storing schema less data into MySQL: http://backchannel.org/blog/friendfeed-schemaless-mysql

waveon Why The US Can Beat China: The Facts About SpaceX Costs

Actual goal of Elon Musk is to send someone to Mars, but since seems far reaching goal for most people and since they might call him crazy, he is sticking with near space for now. Do not be surprise when he starts talking about Mars.

waveon Instagram is "worth" more than the New York Times

Facebook know exactly how much Instagram is worth. They don't even have to ask the data from Instagram. They can just look at their own Facebook data to see how many of their users use the service. Also, every photo you see on the web has a Facebook Like button. They have all the data they need to make the decision.

Looking at their data, Facebook feared that not acquiring Instagram is a risk to their business, so they rather lose $1 Billion than giving advantage to other social networking sites such as Google+. Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is determined to stay on top.

waveon Setting up Django + NGinx + Green Unicorn in an Ubuntu EC2 instance

I remember reading from Instagram blog that they found Gunicorn to be less CPU-intensive:

  We use http://gunicorn.org/ as our WSGI server; 
  we used to use mod_wsgi and Apache, but found 
  Gunicorn was much easier to configure, and less 
  CPU-intensive.

http://instagram-engineering.tumblr.com/post/13649370142/wha...

waveon Poll: How many hours do you work per week?

Yes. This is just to see how many hours people work for a company other than for themselves.

waveon Poll: How many hours do you work per week?

I wasn't able to add additional choice. I clicked on "add choice" and entered additional choice but doesn't show up on the poll. Am I doing something wrong?

edit: I think it didn't like when I entered "<40". Maybe it took it as html code. So I added "less than 40"

waveon Peak Facebook

It is because people don't search for "google.com" while they are already on google.com. Google Trends only contains data for large search volume.

waveon Wufoo's Interview

"We had to spend two months writing the whole billing system up; Chargify and those services didn’t exist at that point. So, if we wanted to have recurrent billing we had to write it ourselves and do all the logic"

If you implement a new service out of necessity to solve a problem you have at work, it is a very good indication that service is also needed by other companies. Instead of using this service you created internally only, you should release it and see if there is a great demand for it.

I think this was a missed opportunity for Wufoo to create another great service.

waveon The Economics of Dropbox

I am referring to in past when Yahoo used Google and other search engine solution instead of buying or building their own before it was too late.

waveon The Economics of Dropbox

Using Amazon's S3 is a good idea while your company is still acquiring a lot of users, but at some point in future if you are a storage company and you are in it for a long haul, you have to build your own storage solution.

I think Dropbox is approaching to the point when they have to build their own storage. You can't be a storage company without having your own storage solution in backend. It would be similar to Yahoo not having their own search engine while being a search company.

waveon Poll: What is the average monthly income from mobile apps?

You might get some idea if you convert it to annually.

waveon Ditch Starbucks and work at the library

It doesn't have to be either Starbucks or a library. It can be both.

waveon Y Combinator’s Paul Graham On The $150K Per Start-Up Offer

Let's assume that they have invested since the beginning of YC with the 250 startups:

   250 * 150 000 = $37 500 000

So far, 20 YC companies have been acquired generating $401 500 000 (data taken from yclist.com). If the investors own an average of 5% of the startups, their current position would have been about 50% loss:

   401 500 000 * .05 = $20 075 000

I don't think this is a bad position to be in since there are still great companies that have not been acquired or exited. The $150k investment may also reduce the failure rate.

waveon Ask HN: Review site for watching current news as TV

Clickable: http://tiltview.com

waveon How not to Pitch To Y Combinator (2006)

In this type of situation, simply telling someone the concern you have and asking to address it may lessen the misunderstanding.

waveon Bit.ly Raises $10 Million Series B, Still Growing Like Crazy

I run un-shortening service called http://unshort.me which is getting about 200K API requests/day.

  Sample of 1,000,000 requests from the service:

  bit.ly       612,170
  tinyurl.com   55,091
  goo.gl        41,812
  ow.ly         35,531
  is.gd         29,533 
  t.co          26,043
  j.mp          21,172
  other        178,648