Hacker News Reader

chwolfeon The Worth of Recommendation Engines

Does anyone have experience with recommendation services like MyBuys?

chwolfeon Ask YC: Feedback on early version of my startup, a digital whiteboard that doesn't suck

locked up my browser... os x 10.3.9 on firefox 2.0.0.14

chwolfeon Ask HN: Why be an option/futures/day trader when it is zero-sum?

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/63/fasttalk.html

"The basic worry that comes with having lots of money is no different from what worries everyone else. Whether you've got $100 or $100 million, you don't want to lose it. After we sold Broadcast.com, I hedged my stock with synthetic indexes, in case the market cratered in the six months before I could hedge my actual Yahoo shares. It cost me $20 million, but I protected what I had. Todd Wagner and I had a credo: "Pigs get fat; hogs get slaughtered.""

chwolfeon Ask HN: Why be an option/futures/day trader when it is zero-sum?

Correct. There is a big difference in leveraging options when you own tons of stock in a company vs. using options as a high class lotto ticket.

Example: Mark Cuban used options to guarantee he would be set for life no matter what happened to Yahoo's stock after they bought Broadcast.com for $5 billion (in stock mostly).

chwolfeon Ask YC: Learning to hack...

Teach Yourself Programming In Ten Years http://www.norvig.com/21-days.html

chwolfeon Ask YC: Best Tools, books to learn more about build, deployment process

Django (Python) - http://www.djangobook.com/en/1.0/chapter20/

chwolfeon qooxdoo: javascript framework for desktop-like web apps

Considering the pointy haired boss ignored your advice and let the customer run wild in the design phase, you have no reason to feel ashamed for that abomination.

chwolfeon Israel's Silicon Valley

Usually I'm not a big fan of "<some city/country>'s Silicon Valley" headlines, but I enjoyed this article.

chwolfeon Good area to work/live in?

Lived in Clarendon for years... In general, Arlington is a great city/county for walking (Driving on the other hand...)

chwolfeon Ideas to monetize new artifical intelligence

Sports Betting

chwolfeon JumpStart: Early-stage funding for Northeast Ohio start-ups

Are public sector funded incubators by definition doomed or is there hope that they can learn from their private sector brethren?

chwolfeon Reminder: The DARPA Car Race is on

Go Hokies! (VT CS '05)

chwolfeon Damn Cool Algorithms: BK-Trees

Very cool. Has anyone here used BK-Trees in their work?

chwolfeon What books would you recommend reading? Why?

Founders At Work - Startup advice straight from those who have done it and have been successful.

chwolfeon Powerset: Move Over, Google

The PR is so damn good it will probably cause expectations to be completely out of whack (usually a problem startups do not have to worry about).

chwolfeon ONLamp.com -- An Introduction to Erlang

Nice intro. If you haven't picked up "Programming Erlang: Software for a Concurrent World" by Joe Armstrong, I can not recommend it enough. One of the few programming books that you look forward to reading.

chwolfeon Need For Concern - Business Lending Tightening?

Will this hit tech startups looking for funding down the road?

chwolfeon Favorite PG essay?

Beating The Averages http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

chwolfeon Coding Horror: Rethinking Design Patterns

The real issue hackers have with members of the Design Patterns cult (other than the ridiculous jargon) is the notion that complex, generalized patterns are ALWAYS better than simple, specific solutions to a problem.

chwolfeon Wasting time on things that really don't matter

Amen.

For a much broader view on things that don't really matter, check out:

http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

chwolfeon What is the best way to learn flash?

http://www.Flex.org

chwolfeon Best flash/dhtml charts/bar graphing toolkit (free)?

I've been really impressed with flex charting and if the 300 bucks isn't too much for ya, I would recommend it. Google finance is a good example of it's power and integration ability with javascript.

chwolfeon Protect your paper millions

Mark Cuban used a similar stragety after Broadcast.com was bought by Yahoo! to protect against a downturn in the stock market:

"The basic worry that comes with having lots of money is no different from what worries everyone else. Whether you've got $100 or $100 million, you don't want to lose it. After we sold Broadcast.com, I hedged my stock with synthetic indexes, in case the market cratered in the six months before I could hedge my actual Yahoo shares. It cost me $20 million, but it protected what I had. Todd Wagner and I had a credo: "Pigs get fat; hogs get slaughtered.""

Note: Obviously meet with a financial advisor if any of this actually applies to you.

chwolfeon PG on Unions

Sorry... didn't notice the lack of a yc news link on the article. But to be fair, this article is closer to dealing with startups (labor relations, corporate structure) than a lot of things I've seen grace the front page.

chwolfeon When is an attorney necessary?

How long can you go without one and when must you have one?

chwolfeon How important is a woman's perspective for Web 2.0 startups?

Who are your potential customers? The higher the percentage of women who make up your customers, the more important a woman's perspective is during the design phase.

chwolfeon I'm getting a Mac. Which Mac do you use?

17 inch PowerBook G4...No problems the past two years.

chwolfeon Experiences with OpenLaszlo

Specifically has anyone used OpenLaszlo in an environment with Django, Ruby on Rails, etc?

chwolfeon What do you feel about Software Process like CMM/CMMi ?

I deal with CMM on a daily basis (gov. contracting). It is a huge waste of time, money, and resources. If people spent less time writing documents and more time writing software, the world would be a better place.

chwolfeon Startup Company Form: LLC or S-Corp? Which is easier and which is better?

From the article: "My personal practice has been to create an LLC (they are simple, avoid double taxation and still support multiple classes of stock if needed). If and when the time comes to convert the LLC to a C-corp, the process is not that difficult. Whatever costs you would incur in the conversion process, I think are offset by the upside you get during the time that you can benefit from being an LLC. An LLC can be setup for a few hundred dollars and likely meets the needs of most early-stage entrepreneurs."