authentic

"Programming Clojure" is a really basic book and a bit outdated by now. A good way to begin but not sufficient to become good at writing idiomatic code.

You will be doing another startup.

My experience is that once you have worked for yourself/equity the mere thought of being employed by other people becomes impossible to bear.

I don't think so. More likely the investor driven cult of must-have-multiple-founders has distorted people's perception.

There are many rights that can in fact not be signed away.

You have no idea what you are talking about, do you? http://mattmaroon.com/2009/05/01/hacker-news-disease/

a user agreement cannot override statutory rights.

I have not changed my stance on anything.

Do not make deletions out to be more work than they really are, as others have mentioned the suppression of content from a particular account is already implemented to combat spam. Anyway, deletion of particular message is technically the same as allowing edits after 1hr with a fixed replacement text (such as "[deleted by user]").

User-triggered account "deletion" would be a trivial addition instantly obviating recurring, tedious discussions like this. Even Google lets you retract your submissions from their usenet archives and Groups in a simple way.

There are many valid reasons why a user may wish to have their messages removed that override the interest of forum integrity.

No right lapses after one hour since there is no permanent license grant for user submitted content to HN in the first place (lack of TOS). The copyright of entries remains with the user.

Not at all saying the subsidiary would be held responsible here (they are not operating the website in question anyway), it does however affect the question whether the parent is conducting significant business in a particular country. Whether this is practically enforceable (like the UK libel judgement against Arrington personally) is a different matter.

For me personally, pg acting on account and data deletion requests would simply be an act of courtesy that we can expect from him.

you misunderstood. it can be argued that once YC has established a sufficient nexus within a particular country it can be held to its laws (in this case, DE data protection and privacy laws which are far stricter than those of NL, afaik).

on a much larger scale, watch for the impending fight between the EU commission and facebook about this very issue.

technically, YC has a European subsidiary (a startup funded by them).

regulation outside the US may not apply here but this is not how the law works in the EU, which deals with the data itself rather than just identification.

not too long ago I compelled a telco who had pissed me off to send me a 200 page dump of all the data they had about me and subsequently delete all of it, using the legal system after they had initially refused.

i did mail pg with a similar request (different account), and he essentially responded that he could not be bothered to implement deletion or do it manually.

single founder, for the simple reason that i like to be in control.

imho, it is always a mistake to make somebody not strictly necessary for the business a founder. dishing out vanity co-founder titles at employee level equity stakes is debatable.

the correct singular is alumnus (m) or alumna (f), not alumni.

the correct singular is alumnus

few things bother me more than blatantly incorrect usage of Latin next to supposedly prestigious institutions

come on, my fiancee booked a flight for EUR 17 round trip recently, including their credit card handling fee (which can be avoided by using visa electron). if that's not budget then i don't know what is. i have booked GBP 20 round trip flights with ryanair or easyjet numerous times, you just have to know how to play their special offers game and be somewhat flexible on dates. often, getting to the airport or parking costs me more than the actual flight. if treating incompetent customers badly enables these prices then so be it.

Helping to nurture local startups is definitely cool. On the other hand, picking them off to integrate into their product pipeline also prevents greater things from happening. I feel that martinkl could have built a company able to stand on its own. The lure of an early exit is understandable however, particularly after a 2.5 year long slug.

I share your dislike for the Windows platform -- for uses other than as a web browser boot loader and media player -- but Red Gate are (smartly) following the money. How many non-MS developers do you know that pay for dev and admin tools?

comparing SV and the UK (where I live atm), it's very different.

in SV you will be meeting people working on a startup idea of some kind literally everywhere, people are focused on maximizing potential upside rather than minimizing downside, employees are willing to take some risk, and you have an actual market for investment (i.e. there is a sizable number of equity investors who will compete). i also think that UK people lack the level of passion and greed I have seen in SV.

while there are other good reasons to be in the UK i would choose SV over the UK for a startup anytime, especially if you are US based at the moment.

did not see this in time, too bad...

scenario a: operate at a loss for a while, maybe achieve target (but maybe not), draw the ire of regulators for anticompetitive behavior

scenario b: spend cash you can easily afford, have an immediate cash flow return, get a solution that is known to work, eliminate competitive threat without pissing off anyone in the process while ingesting talent at the same time

it's fairly easy to see why GOOG chose the latter option.

Their pricing seems far too high, though.

You're probably thinking of RealNames.

corollary: admitting to yourself that your idea has been wrong and requires change is much easier and thus more likely to happen than making a team of cofounders radically change course.

that's my startup's field as well (although not point-and-click since I believe that concept has failed in the past). i suspect there are quite a few people here working on similar things, just not discussing it on HN since there is very little overlap with the target customer and therefore little insight to be gained. feel free to contact me to chat.

this headline should read: fringe group of 44 wealthy germans demand higher taxes, strangely making the news.

the rest of the country opted to kick out the socialists from government in recent national elections, replacing them with a libertarian party running on a tax cut platform.

automaton

In reality, most employees are paid more than they produce, and a large part of the surplus generated by a productive minority inside a company goes to an unproductive majority rather than being skimmed by the controllers of capital. Therefore Marx' argument can only hold true in the aggregate.

I stopped after "JEE development, though challenging and exciting"

Cambridge, UK.