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heyjonboyon Ask HN: I just thought of a startup, got funding and now I am stuck...

I've been asked to do this for a couple non-tech founder friends. All I really do is have a fairly casual 20-30 minute conversation with the job candidate about the state of whatever tech the product will be built in - "what's the quirkiest thing you've found in iOS?", "which backend platforms do you like? why that one instead of this one?", etc. Throw in a question about big O notation if you think this job requires some CS knowledge.

It's generally pretty easy to see who can walk the walk, without resorting to grilling candidates with trivia or detailed hypotheticals.

heyjonboyon Is Facebook making us sad?

David Foster Wallace wrote a very similar essay about television and how it makes people depressed.

He argues that TV makes people feel lonely by showing other people having fun. At the same time, TV is a short-term cure for loneliness because the viewer gets to hang out with their friends inside the TV. Wallace calls TV a "malignant addiction", because the act of watching TV is a short-term cure for the harmful effects of TV. Alcohol is another common malignant addiction; exercise addiction is an example of a non-malignant addiction.

The essay is called E Unibus Pluram. Full text here (pdf): http://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf

heyjonboyon No opting out from Facebook turning your check-ins, likes into ads

You're already getting something for free - you get to use Facebook to communicate with friends and share photos, free of charge.

heyjonboyon Ask HN: Any recommendations for bug tracking software?

http://www.unfuddle.com

It's basically a hosted, prettied-up version of Trac, with hosted SVN and Git integrated. It's not as pretty or collaborative as GitHub, but the issue tracking is much beefier.

heyjonboyon Who is living off their startup fulltime?

ParkWhiz (http://www.parkwhiz.com) is fully bootstrapped and paying full-time salaries to both founders. It took us 3 years of being ramen-profitable to get to that point, though.

heyjonboyon Hey Gmail, 1994 Called, It Wants Its Dial-Up Level Performance Back

Based on a personal experience, it seems to be some sort of data fragmentation problem.

I had similar problems with Gmail a few weeks ago - sending a message would take ~30 seconds, accessing labels took up to a minute, messages were appearing in the inbox 30 minutes after they arrived, etc. The slowness persisted for about a week.

2 weeks ago my account went down for about 10 minutes. Accessing mail.google.com while logged into my Gmail account would return a 503 error; my backup Gmail account, which had now slowness, was accessible. 10 minutes later, I was able to access my account and the slowness was gone.

My guess is that Gmail took my account offline while my messages were re-indexed.

heyjonboyon Groupon’s Success Disaster

"Groupon’s $3 was almost pure profit"

Completely wrong. Just because Groupon doesn't have any variable cost doesn't mean all of their revenue is profit. Credit card processing, bank fees, and chargebacks will eat up 2-5% of the (gross) revenue, and Groupon spends much more than that buying clicks to drive traffic to the merchant's deal.

heyjonboyon Apparently, employers are still asking for Windows 95 and Windows 3.1 skills

Why wouldn't you just use Linux for embedded systems? Seems wasteful to use a GUI-based OS for something that will most likely be a single-purpose device.

heyjonboyon iOS 4 Update Now Avaliable

I had been looking forward to orientation locking (http://www.tuaw.com/2010/05/04/iphone-os-4-beta-3-adds-orien...). Apparently they tied that feature to multitasking, so no orientation locking on 3G.

heyjonboyon Ask HN: Who's Hiring?

Will you be staying in the Bay Area?

heyjonboyon So You'd Like to Send Some Email (Through Code)

Comcast requires that the sending address be a real mailbox on the server pointed to by your domain's MX records -- a catch-all address doesn't cut it. When in doubt, check the logs from your mail server.

heyjonboyon Ask HN: Feedback on our startup (LabApp.com)

Looks pretty sharp. When building a homepage for marketplace-type sites, it can be really difficult to effectively connect with both your buyer and seller audiences at the same time. I think you guys nailed it.

I'm sure this is already on your todo list, but a friendlier login would make the checkout process much smoother. It's jarring to click the button to download software and then get directed to a page that simply says "You need to log in."

The button to download software is confusing -- the button text seems to default to the license name. Looks like you're planning to offer software under multiple licenses, but the button text should still contain a verb. Maybe "Download [license]" or "Purchase [license]".

With all the attention Apple's App marketplace gets, it's surprising that there aren't more marketplaces for traditional software. Seems like a big opportunity.

heyjonboyon Chargify vs. Spreedly vs. Cheddargetter: Subscription-Billing Service Prices

Some of those companies are actually based on the new PayPal X.

We used PayPal's Recurring Payments for http://www.placevine.com and it has been an absolute nightmare. Charges get declined for seemingly random reasons, the management console is riddled with bugs, and support has been useless.

I highly recommend using Braintree (http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/). I've worked with them as the payment processor for http://www.parkwhiz.com for 3 years and they've been fantastic.

heyjonboyon Ask HN: Who's hiring (take 3)?

For those in NYC, Connected Ventures (CollegeHumor.com) is looking for a PHP developer. http://www.collegehumor.com/jobs

heyjonboyon Poll: Universities for Aspiring Hacker?

If we can include graduate programs, NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program is about as hacker as it gets. It's a multidisciplinary program that combines engineering, art, psychology, and sociology. Dodgeball (which was acquired by Google) began as a class project there.