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... and this game of "let's play Twitter engineer from outside Twitter" the entire space is playing is pathetic. Twitter will grow Twitter. Ev has been through this before and will guide the team and the service to stability. For the rest of us there are better things to do than trying to scale Twitter from an armchair.

extantprojecton Poll: Hacker News (Myers-Briggs) Personality Types

no.

extantprojecton OpenID: A Contrarian View

If there's a security question I use a string of random characters as the answer and don't record it (which effectively disables the feature on most sites).

You're right about email being central to authentication on the Web. This makes it important to protect.

extantprojecton OpenID: A Contrarian View

Yes, I use different passwords for every site. The idea of tiers of importance is a good one also.

extantprojecton OpenID: A Contrarian View

I don't use OpenID because multiple accounts would be compromised if my single set of OpenID credentials were compromised. This seems like a bad idea.

extantprojecton Ask YC: How do you achieve laser focus and concentration?

http://brainrules.net

neat site.

extantprojecton Safire - An iPhone Web Application Framework

The logo looks like the "Facets of Ruby" logo, for one:

http://a1055.g.akamai.net/f/1055/1401/5h/images.barnesandnob...

extantprojecton Ask YC: Email Invite System Etiquette

What?

extantprojecton YC Analysis: "37signals/DHH style" companies?

They don't; they have good products and tell a compelling story.

extantprojecton Ask YC: open geoip databases?

The MaxMind GeoIP City Database includes latitude and longitude. You could buy their "Web Service" at $20 per 50,000 queries...

extantprojecton Ask YC: open geoip databases?

The GeoLite Country database at:

http://www.maxmind.com/app/geolitecountry)

is just fine for countries. The Ruby gem works nicely:

http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/...

... and there are other APIs as well:

http://www.maxmind.com/app/api

MaxMind is the standard.

extantprojecton Night Hacking (the productivity boost of 2 am)

Sleep is cyclic; it comes in phases of varying depth. (http://www.helpguide.org/life/sleeping.htm) I find the difference between seven and a half hours of sleep and six hours isn't bad, but the difference between six hours of sleep and four hours of sleep is much more difficult to deal with. Looking at the diagram on the linked page, it's obvious why: sleep stages three and four are important and if you sleep less than six hours they get screwed up. More REM sleep gets messed up too, which is also important.

Day-to-day energy levels are cyclic too. Every day I want to take a nap at 3:00 in the afternoon. I'm also most energized from around 10:00 to 11:00 in the morning. It's a pattern.

A boost of energy at a certain time at night happens likely for the same reason it does during the day: levels of consciousness are cyclic.

As far as nighttime being more productive: there are fewer interruptions which means you can concentrate. It's easier when your cell phone/RSS/Twitter/blog/text/email isn't blowing up.

extantprojecton I built it but they wouldn't come!

What's the URL?

extantprojecton Ask YC: Which OS are you using on your app's server(s)?

I also found my way back to FreeBSD when I wandered -- so often, in fact, that now I don't use anything else except OS X on my PowerBook.

extantprojecton Google Jumps Head First Into Web Services With Google App Engine

The code written and the content created is not the property or problem of Google. Read the Terms of Service (especially section 6) at:

http://code.google.com/appengine/terms.html

extantprojecton Google Jumps Head First Into Web Services With Google App Engine

Lock-in? Google "obtains no right, title or interest" in what is created; the creator is responsible for what is created and can take it down and host it elsewhere.

From the "Google App Engine Terms of Service" (http://code.google.com/appengine/terms.html):

"6.3. Except as provided in Section 8, Google acknowledges and agrees that it obtains no right, title or interest from you (or your licensors) under these Terms in or to any Content or the Application that you create, submit, post, transmit or display on, or through, the Service, including any intellectual property rights which subsist in that Content and the Application (whether those rights happen to be registered or not, and wherever in the world those rights may exist). Unless you have agreed otherwise in writing with Google, you agree that you are responsible for protecting and enforcing those rights and that Google has no obligation to do so on your behalf."

extantprojecton A VC: The Declining Power Of The Firm

Here's the original post this is based on, which is much better: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=156547

extantprojecton Ask YC: Hiring without pay

It probably helps for them to be interested in what you're making; if they're not, then hiring them is a bad decision.

extantprojecton Post your ideas to increase the quality of YC News

Submitting relevant links increases the signal. Voting limits the noise. I've never done either despite following Hacker News since it came online. Now I'm going to submit and vote more often because I want to see it continue to be the best. If each of us does this we'll have interesting news to read every day.

It's easy to forget that we make Hacker News. We can fend off the garbage by remembering to participate.

Submit and vote!

extantprojecton Post your ideas to increase the quality of YC News

I submitted his post.

extantprojecton Ask YC: Securing your servers?

deny by default and trust only people that need to know

extantprojecton Ask YC: When do you incorporate?

If you're going to take investment form a C-Corporation. If you're not going to take investment right away (or ever) elect S-Corporation status.

It's a hassle to sell "shares" of an LLC to investors for capital, so I wouldn't bother because it the possibility is left open with a C-Corporation or S-Corporation.

Being a sole-proprietor or partnership doesn't limit your liability and investment doesn't really apply to either, so they're right out at the start.

And if you're just making something for yourself then there's no need for any of this.

extantprojecton Ask YC: When do you incorporate?

Do you really need the equipment?