pud

People ask me all the time to bring it back. Was fun when it was happening and I tried to be funny and good-spirited, but now I have more of an appreciation for entrepreneurs and how hard it is to build a business... so I won't bring it back.

Also won't bring it back because of onwards and upwards.. and so on.

Thanks for asking though :) Still makes me happy when people tell me they like my work.

Here's a book I wrote that covers 150 failed internet startups from the late 90's.

http://amazon.com/FD-Companies-Spectacular-Dot-com-Flameouts...

I think many of them could be successful if relaunched today.

Nice.

Now just give me an iPhone app where I push a button and it sends me the cheapest, closest car from any of those companies.

Glad to hear it.

- DistroKid founder

Sometimes wifi is great in one room, but the signal doesn't reach another room. I HAVE A DREAM that, one day, people review the wifi of different rooms in the same hotel.

I'm so glad someone built this. I've been wanting it (or to build it) forever.

Even if I'm not picking up the tab, I'd rather stay at a crappy hotel with great wifi--vs a Four Seasons with crappy wifi.

Hopefully hotels realize this and start competing on wifi quality.

This'll make some people switch from cable, back to dialup modems (sort of). Which is funny/cool.

If anyone wants to snooze email without auth'ing your Gmail account, here's one I built in 2008 that's still going strong.

http://hitmelater.com/

It costs $30/yr for the high-end service but send me a note and I'll give you a link to signup for free.

Marc said in an interview once, "being CEO is basically a constant stream of bad news."

I love that.

I started my first company while employed as a project manager at a web design shop. I started a (smaller) web design shop.

While employed, I spent some evenings and weekends trying to find clients. I quit my job when I got my first paying client.

The company I started isn't around anymore -- but here I am 18 years later still happily self-employed and doing well. So I'd say it was a success.

Edit: Last month I gave a convocation address at Syracuse University graduation where I talk about how I got started as an entrepreneur:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5RJAN5mNhA

He should rename them to the LA Clippys.

(I know I'm risking downvotes by posting this. But c'mon.)

I was a huge user of Google Website Optimizer. It was so easy -- you just put Google's JavaScript in your site and it shows your users different versions of the page.

When Google shut it down, I tried Optimizely a few times. It was so much more complicated, I didn't have the time or skill to setup tests.

Optimizely- Congrats on the funding. I still want to use you. And maybe I'm dumb, but I have trouble figuring you out. Anything I can do?

Anyone know of a simpler alternative to Optimizely?

Great article but it makes no mention of Michael Moschen, who many (including me) consider the best & most creative juggler in the world.

Here are some mind-blowing physics that I think the HN community, in particular, would enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjHoedoSUXY

He's also well-known for "contact juggling," where the balls don't leave the hands:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OTb8tga-yg

Give it a retractable cord and I'm sold.

In one place on the front page, it says delivery takes 18 minutes. In another place on the same page, it says 20 minutes.

Not that 2 minutes makes a difference, but the numbers should be consistent.

I like 18 minutes because it sounds precise.

Wikipedia's database is public and used by Google with permission. You can probably use it for your projects, too.

So this is neither scraping, nor against the rules.

Here are dumps in SQL and XML format:

http://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/

Ps- Yes the original post was meant to be funny and it was; I do have a sense of humor. :)

Just a reminder that anyone can bid any amount for anything on eBay, with no repercussions.

Source: I once put a website for sale on eBay. Bids went up to $10M. The press covered it like crazy. Turned out the bids were fake.

For example:

http://www.salon.com/2000/09/11/ebay_deadpool/

There were articles about it in Forbes and Cnet also.

This looks awesome. Scared to put the Javascript on my site though, because it's unclear to me how the embedded Javascript will be able to differentiate me (the site owner) from regular users.

I don't want regular users seeing the "1 test generated" thing on each page. Maybe clarify this a little on the page where you give me the Javascript snippet.

Thanks to this article, today I learned that there's a name for the thing I have, "delayed sleep disorder."

I became an entrepreneur at age 22 not because I wanted to change the world, but because I just wasn't able to wake up early enough for a "real job." I figured there had to be a way to make the same amount of money I was making at the time, but keep my own hours. I always tell people I have "vampire hours."

I'm 38 years old now. I typically go to sleep around 4am+ every night and wake up around 11am or noon. I usually don't take meetings before 1pm and have unknowingly designed my life and career around this disorder.

I was also diagnosed with ADHD as a kid, which, according to Wikipedia, is linked to this sleep disorder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder

Model S

Model E

Model X

Google could check if GUID_1.jpg is the exact same image as GUID_2.jpg.

If the same, just show a cached version. No more tracking.

(of course, email marketers would thwart this by making each image slightly different. google would respond by checking if the images are almost exactly the same. repeat. whack-a-mole ad infinitum).

About 5% of users try to steal. About half of those come clean when presented with the method here:

http://pud.com/post/65374847162/how-i-deal-with-users-who-st...

I love this form.

I can't stand credit card forms that split the credit card number into 4 inputs ("[XXXX] [XXXX] [XXXX] [XXXX]") because I can't paste my number in (the first box has a maxlength of 4 usually)

Yet, for people who are typing in the number (vs pasting it), the 4 sections makes it easier.

This form is the best of both worlds.

Here's a link for the lazy: https://safesource.forbes.com/

Unrelated, but this is the first time I've seen blog post on SequoiaCap.com. Can't help but think they were inspired by YC/HN (and the design seems inspired by Medium.com).

I love it and hope more companies like Sequoia publish useful content for entrepreneurs, whatever the medium -- their own site, or wherever.

Update: I made some edits and re-posted on pud.com, tried deleting this HN submission but now the "delete" link is gone. Hope it doesn't look like I'm trying to game the system (which is exactly what my post is about, kind of, heh.).

But if it looks like I submitted the same thing twice, that's why. Unintentional.

Thanks. No difference yet, though scholarships accounts are flagged as such in the database. So we can treat them differently one day if we want to.

Good idea about the picture. I was thinking maybe even a YouTube embedded video of me explaining how scholarship accounts work.

Every time I see an emulator like this on HN, my mind is blown.

Can someone explain to me and any other run-of-the-mill hackers reading this, how an emulator like this is made?

I wouldn't even know where to start.

Tell the audience why they want it. Not what it does.

And be specific. "Make smarter decisions and increase revenue!" does not mean anything. You could literally say that about anything. What does your product specifically help them with?

Also, the exclamation mark seems condescending, like it's a service for kids. But that's just my personal taste.

The purpose of these big rounds, usually, is founder liquidity.

Snapchat could easily get acquired, making the founders (and early employees) very rich.

But investors don't want them to sell yet. So investors buy a lot of common stock (from founders/employees) at a big valuation, making the founders (aka the only board members who aren't already rich) rich, so that the founders are less interested in selling.

Some of the money goes to the company. But it's not usual for 20-25% of big rounds to go to founders/early employees.

I use ColdFusion (well, technically I use Railo) and I love it.

I agree that the owner of the website here needs a <CFERROR> tag, which tells the server what to do instead of showing that big error message.