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subwindowon Where to find a good CTO for your startup?

Hire a lead developer. If they have the chops, promote them to CTO.

For a startup, there really isn't any other way unless you or your investors know somebody.

subwindowon Ask HN: Subscription web sites: How did you get your first customer?

For me, I get beta testers for a site I'm working on through my blog. I never advertised it (other than a link in my "Projects" page), and admit up front that it isn't even beta-quality yet. Still, I get about 10 signups a month.

Write a blog and publish the articles on social networking sites. You'll get beta signups naturally from that.

subwindowon My experiment with smart drugs: Viagra for the brain?

I've been experimenting with "smart drugs" (nootropics) for a few weeks. Piracetam, vinpocetine, aniracetam, inositol and choline. Varying effects, so far. Ranging from the equivalent of a cup of coffee (without the stimulant side effects), to extremely different "brain feels". None of them have (so far- I'm still experimenting) changed my productivity or memory drastically.

I don't view it as anything other than an experiment to see if my brain is underachieving in its normal state. So far, I'm reasonably satisfied with the conclusion.

I'd like to try provigil, but it is prescription only. Is there any way to get it semi-legally without a prescription?

subwindowon Ask YC: What's the most hacker-friendly keyboard?

I had one of those for a few years, and it was a joy. It really sprung back against your fingers, and had a really satisfying sound to it.

subwindowon Heading skyward to beat gridlock

That didn't work out too well for Cory Lidle. The Cirrus SR20 he was flying had a parachute just like that. The problem with parachutes is that you have to know you're going to crash before you crash. That doesn't always happen.

Now, cars aren't exactly the safest thing, either. I wonder how they match up with the most recent (safest) small planes.

subwindowon Code on the Road: Laid off? The one thing you absolutely need to do on the first day

This is my plan precisely. It'll be Ghana for me. A surprising amount of the third world has a decent internet connection these days. If you can get that plus a decent hotel room for a few hundred bucks a month, why not give it a shot?

subwindowon MySQL v PostgreSQL: Which have you used and why?

That's pretty much my exact same story. I came from an Oracle shop and wanted the same power that Oracle offered, but without paying $250k/yr in licensing fees. Postgres came the closest, and I've been really happy with it so far.

subwindowon Ask YC: What's the best advice you ever got?

Always smell the milk before you drink it.

subwindowon Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.

Is this purely a community support kind of thing? Or does it allow the patients to manage their condition using the site?

I probably can't help because of a non-compete (I'm working on something that sounds almost identical, minus social networking). However, this space is always interesting to me.

subwindowon Ask YC: What do you use for automated testing?

I've been using the ruby selenium driver as well. Works great.

subwindowon Ask YC: What would you do with 50K

I'd suggest the opposite, actually. Not going full time means that you'll go half-assed on the startup.

subwindowon How To Use Triggers to Track Changes in MySQL

This is a maintenance nightmare. Now, whenever you add/change/remove a column, you not only have to update the table definitions, but you have to update the triggers as well. Chances are you'll forget and then updates will start failing all over the place, and the last place you'll look is the triggers. What about deleting the row? Do you clean up the history too? Either way you need a delete trigger as well.

Audit logging like this should be handled on the application level. That way you get to know who did the change, which is generally one of the most important parts of an audit trail.

subwindowon The Gospel of Consumption

This is a really great article, if a bit long. This is something that is definitely coming to the fore in our circle. The 37signals "less is more", four day work week philosophy is becoming more and more popular, and this article lays the groundwork for the philosophy quite well.

I sincerely wonder why people don't strive to work less. When most people finally achieve a comfortable wage, the thought process is always "buy more" and never "work less." I wonder if we'll see that change in the near future. I hope so.

subwindowon Ask YC: What are the going rates for consulting gigs?

Not to sound blunt, but you can charge whatever you feel you're worth. I've never had a client blink when I told them what my hourly rate was. They do a calculation in their head, but it is not "Is this too expensive?" but it is "Do I think this guy is worth it?" Chances are if you yourself feel that you're worth that amount, they will too.

That said, DB consultants generally make a bit more because of the fragility and messiness of what they deal with. I've done some Oracle consulting at $100/hr and that, I realize now, was a very low rate.

subwindowon What do hackers think of PHP?

I used PHP heavily for a few years (~70% PHP, 20% perl, 10% Java), and enjoyed it for awhile. However, it seems like it is impossible to create clean and well-divided code in PHP. This weighed on me heavily, as I had two 10,000 line projects that I was the sole maintainer for. Even if you managed to create well-structured code, it was always very... ugly (too many unnecessary symbols $, ->, etc). It wasn't much fun to work in every day.

I'm using Ruby now and I would never go back.

Here's my rough order of language preference for server-side languages that I have experience in: Ruby > Python > C# > PHP > Perl > Visual Basic > Java > C

subwindowon Ask HN: What load balancing software do you use ?

I'm using Pound right now in one large installation, and nginx in another smaller installation, but it still has decent traffic.

I definitely prefer Nginx. It seems much faster, and has definitely given fewer headaches. It seems like an issue with Pound crops up every few weeks. My Pound config file is about 600 lines long now, and it is starting to get unmaintainable.

subwindowon Twitter Said To Be Abandoning Ruby on Rails

It shouldn't be an all-or-nothing situation. There are obviously parts of Twitter that would work best as non-Rails. Ruby is too slow for certain things, and so you determine which of those certain things are in your application and you build them in C or Java.

For Twitter, I think some parts of the API need to be in C. But the whole service? I doubt it.

subwindowon Ask YC: Employee stock options

Don't ask for the number authorized, it is nearly useless. Outstanding and issued are the two ones that matter to you.

subwindowon Ask YC: Employee stock options

You can find out the number of authorized shares from the Secretary of State of whatever state the company is incorporated in.

That won't tell you much (most companies never issue anywhere close to the number they have authorized), but it least it will narrow it down. If they have 1,000,000 authorized, 30,000 is pretty OK. But I'm guessing, given the money they've raised, that they have >10,000,000 authorized. In that case, 30,000 is probably nearly worthless at this point.

subwindowon Social Networking Goes Open Source With Insoshi

"the code he released under an MIT License in July 2007 should be considered the first RoR open source code."

I hope that's a typo. If the writer honestly believes that sentence, he has no business writing for TechCrunch (or anyone, really).

I think he's talking about "the first RoR open source code for a social network." But even that is a sketchy claim. I've contributed to open source RoR projects that were loose social networks as early as 2005.

subwindowon America's Most Overrated Product: the Bachelor's Degree

It was an easy choice for me. I got paid to go to college. In Georgia, the HOPE scholarship paid for 100% of my tuition and fees, and the Pell grant paid for a decent portion of my living costs.

That said, education is one of the most valuable things in the world. If you're thinking of it as a risk/reward based on how much you pay versus how much you could earn, you're doing it wrong.

subwindowon An Open Challenge to Silicon Valley

The thing here is that big, immediate and obvious problems are almost never solved in Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley is good at two things: 1) Solving small problems 2) Solving big, lingering problems that most people don't even realize are problems.

I work for a medical device startup that is hard at work trying to solve big, immediate and obvious problems (heart failure, hypertension) that kill millions of people a year. We're in Atlanta, not SV. Other medical device companies are in Boston, L.A., or even Minneapolis. None of them are in SV. I wonder why.

SV really only does three startup industries well: Software, Computer Hardware, and Green tech. And even the third is pushing it. If you're looking for innovation outside of those three areas, you should look outside of Silicon Valley.

subwindowon Corduroy: A billing system for your startup (launched today)

This won't do your tax returns.

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

The Craigslist comparison comes from:

1) The fact that in SF and NYC, they charge directly per listing in certain categories.

2) The fact that they didn't take VC funding.

3) The fact that they stayed small.

4) The fact that they didn't sell the company.

All of these would have been extremely easy to stray from, but instead they stuck to the core philosophy. What DHH was talking about was just that: a philosophy. Any company can stick by that philosophy, regardless of how it attracts customers or the specifics behind their product or service.

Asking the question "what other web or software companies make a living the 37signals way?" is kind of a weird question. The 37signals way is actually the normal way to run a business. It just seems weird because the scale of the web has thus far screwed up everyone's minds to the point where everybody forgets the past.

subwindowon Ask YC: How do you lose weight?

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1797596

Exercise. Establishing a lasting exercise routine is the only way to stay healthy for life. I was about 40 pounds overweight for 5 years and tried all sorts of diet changes, and nothing lasted for more than a month or so.

Instead of going on another diet, I started running. The above route is almost 6 miles that I ran last week. In February, I could barely run a half mile. It didn't take that long to get into great running shape, and I feel fantastic. I've only lost about 10 pounds, but I figure I've gained about 10 pounds of muscle and lost about 20 pounds of fat. Instead of concentrating merely on what's on the scale, concentrate on how you feel- the scale will come around eventually.

subwindowon What music do you listen to while programming?

I like stuff with driving beats that keep me focused on what's in front of me.

Talking Heads is really great hacking music. "Born Under Punches" is a really good example of a song that you can hack to.

I listen to an insane variety of music while hacking. Some highlights of the past month or so: Bob Dylan, Ruby Suns, Evangelicals, Paul Simon, Anton Webern, The Dodos, Xiu Xiu, The Velvet Teen. A pretty good variety of classic rock, indie rock, experimental and classical.

subwindowon Ask YC: How would you sell your business?

I'd second going to an investment bank or business broker.

This kind of revenue is similar to what a lot of small sandwich shops and retail stores get. While your business is different, there are many groups out there comfortable with deals of this size.

subwindowon Ask YC: open geoip databases?

I looked for a solid week earlier this year, and didn't find anything that was really free or open. Kind of disappointing.

What I needed was to be able to take an IP, and get a reasonably accurate (25 miles) lat/long out of it. If anyone knows of one that exists, please let me know...

subwindowon Ask HN: Lead generation? (consulting)

By far the best source I've had is to build real-life applications.

Two applications that I built in about a weekend each have netted me around 5 gigs around release time, plus about one per month.

People are much more likely to want to hire you based on seeing your work in action than anything else.