Hacker News Reader

blenderon Ask YC: Colocation?

BlueLock:

http://bluelock.com/solutions/hosting/sharedhosting.html

They are in Indianapolis and Salt Lake City.

Cheers

blenderon Ask HN: What's your philosophy?

Ever read Max Stirner's: "The Ego and Its Own"?

I sing as the bird sings That on the bough alights; The song that from me springs Is pay that well requites

Cheers

blenderon Ask HN: Buying servers?

For whitebox vendor you might want to look at Supermicro

Cheers

blenderon Ask HN: Does the SaaS model really work? Really?

I think there is always a market for business apps that deliver value. We're a startup ourselves and pay for Basecamp and Highrise - sure there are free alternatives but BC and HR are intuitive and easy to setup and when you have non-techies included in your business those things are important.

Someone mentioned Salesforce - also check out Netsuite.

You should determine if you're 100% pay (with maybe a 30-day free trial) and primarily directed towards SMBs or freemium model directed to users and businesses. If freemium you can expect a 1-5% uptake on the paid services.

Cheers

blenderon Ask HN: Advice for those getting started in the Web Industry?

Although the first rule of a startup is build something people want (after PG) more and more that something should solve some "serious" problem (after O'Reilly).

Please - no more social networks!

Cheers

blenderon ASK HN: Do you remember what it was like when you first used the internet

I remember when it was conspicuous when a corporation included their website addy in a commercial or in print or on the radio... now it is commonplace.

Cheers

blenderon Poll: How many hours of sleep do you get each day?

7 to 8, but rarely straight through (I have kids)

blenderon Ask HN: My host has me over a barrel. I've placed myself in a pickle. How to handle?

Couple quick things for Drupal:

Do you have Optimize CSS files (CSS file aggregation) enabled?

Do you have Caching mode (Normal) enabled?

Cheers

blenderon Ask Hackers/Entrepreneurs: How are/will you change(ing) the world?

We have built an online donation processing platform that exposes a web services API. We haven't launched yet - but our brochureware site is www.benevity.org

Our mission is to facilitate $1 Billion of online giving through the Benevity Network from individuals, integration partners and corporate sponsors by December 31, 2013.

Cheers

blenderon Ask HN: Do you think there is room for mobile startups that neglect the Iphone?

Symbian (Nokia) has something like 65% marketshare so definitely.

blenderon Ask HN: Will you be switching to Chrome?

Haven't tried it yet since I use Linux at work and Mac at home.

If nothing else I think Chrome sets the bar higher for the incumbents - process isolation in a browser is a nice innovation.

Cheers

blenderon Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself?

I forgot, I too pay for Jungledisk

blenderon Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself?

Consumer: iTunes, Club Penguin (for my daughter)

Business: CVSDude (VCS hosting), Highrise

blenderon Ask HN: How do you find interesting stuff to read besides HN?

Feel that way sometimes myself...

I do like The Register:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/headlines.atom

The have a slightly European bent (which is refreshing at times) and take sarcasm to new heights.

Cheers

blenderon Ask HN: What would you do with 4 lisp hackers and a designer somewhere in central europe?

The next new new thing?

blenderon Ask HN: What does the ideal deployment process look like for this scenario?

"Unscheduled downtime of more than a couple minutes is unacceptable any time."

Sounds like HA should be your #1 priority. DRBD + Heartbeat is a one solution but non-trivial to setup. There are some high-end hosting providers (BlueLock, Terremark) that offer VMWare HA configurations.

Sounds like VCS should be #2 - checkout cvsdude.com (no affiliation but we've used them and they're good)

Cheers

blenderon Ask HN: What is the job for a jack-of-all-trades?

Entrepreneur ;-)

blenderon Smartphone Decision for Young Programmer?

I've been considering getting an Openmoko:

http://www.openmoko.com

Cheers

blenderon What were you doing during the first dot boom?

I joined a market-leading publicly traded company in Sept/99 just in time to see the existing employees become wealthy at the peak of the bubble while my options which vested after the bubble gave very modest returns.

Luck and timing... luck and timing...

Cheers

blenderon Ask HN: How to set up a payment gateway

Anything is possible but the due diligence on your idea is enormous. Good luck getting investment. 1.5M probably won't even cover the upfront legal costs.

blenderon Ask YC: Speeding up PHP

You can use Xdebug to profile your application. KCacheGrind provides a pretty and useful GUI.

Cheers

blenderon Alternative to Amazon EC2?

Check out RightScale: http://www.rightscale.com

Cheers

blenderon Ask YC: Best Linux distro to deploy as a Server

There is no best - but like others have said Debian or CentOS.

blenderon Ask YC: Nonprofit funding

Maybe you can crowdsource your web-related initiatives.

I believe the christmasfuture.org site was a community effort - they have open sourced their technology:

http://donortrust.rubyforge.org/

Depends what your initiatives are I guess but maybe think outside of the box in terms of how to resource the projects.

Cheers

blenderon New Laptop

We use Toshiba A200-AH9 laptops running Ubuntu. Intel wifi just works. 9-cell battery. Only downside is the resolution if you don't use an external monitor and no bluetooth.

blenderon Ask YC: "Can a 40 year old, married with 3 children, start a start-up?"

Would highly recommend you read Barry Moltz's: "You Need to be a Little Crazy":

http://www.amazon.com/You-Need-Be-Little-Crazy/dp/079318018X...

I'm 39.5 with 3 kids and working at my 3rd startup. You make sacrifices and I'd be lying if I said my marriage hasn't been strained at times mostly due to financial worries.

It really comes down to this:

“If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.”

You have to bring it forth!

Cheers

blenderon Ask YC: Getting Involved in Open Source

Depends what you're interests are. Documentation is usually poor to non-existent in most open source projects (at least initially). I would argue that good user documentation at an early stage can mean the difference between a successful project and a ho-hum project. I wrote the first Asterisk Management Portal Installation Guide (AMP was a precursor to FreePBX) and I can tell you that that guide made a huge difference.

If you like to code, submit patches. Your patches will be scrutinized but that will make you a better programmer. Eventually you might get contributor status if your patches/code is solid.

If you like to help people there are always novices that will ask the questions that people who have been in the project for awhile will ignore because they've heard them a million times (because there's no good documentation).

Cheers

blenderon Ask YC: CMS? opinions?

Drupal, it's not really a CMS so much as it's a framework

blenderon Ask YC: How do you maintain motivation in face of boredom?

Highly suggest you find someone that likes marketing:

kluster.com cambrianhouse.com

You should be prepared to give equity in return for services.

Cheers

blenderon Ask YC: Why would someone leave his/her cushy job to join a startup?

Recommend Barry Molttz's "You Need to Be a Little Crazy: The Truth about Starting and Growing Your Business":

http://www.amazon.com/You-Need-Be-Little-Crazy/dp/079318018X...

Cheers