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zackattackon Startups Are Hard

I always thought notifo was a terrible idea. It doesn't really add any value. Change your idea please. I mean look at your services page. The number one thing is "google voice alerts" so you can save money by not getting texts. Let's say you save someone $1. There's no way they're gonna pay you $1 for that. Then you also list Skribit on that page, a dead service.

I would take the mobile notification technology and pivot to notifying about something people care about, like people in the vicinity with similar interests.

zackattackon The investment that didn't happen

How did he put his neck on the line?

zackattackon Bitcoin hits US$ 4, after being mentioned on CNN yesterday

My friend used this strategy to make tremendous amounts of money during the Dot Com bubble.

zackattackon Non-Libyan URL Shortener

How do spammers successfully abuse shorteners?

zackattackon Give feedback on my "looking for another hacker to partner with" post?

What's the difference between the two?

zackattackon Tarsnap bug bounties

Can I exchange them for one bitcoin?

zackattackon Tarsnap bug bounties

My only regret is not waiting until the next pre-release to report them.

zackattackon Tarsnap bug bounties

Hi Colin,

I found two bugs.

  tar/multitape/multitape_internal.h:124: * missing files. Return 0 on success, 1 if the metadata file does not

  tar/multitape/multitape_metadata.c:406: * missing files. Return 0 on success, 1 if the metadata file does not

Throughout the rest of your source code, you adhere to the standard of French spacing, two spaces after a period. In these instances you deviate.

zackattackon Twitter in Talks to Buy TweetDeck

their UI is really good i don't want to have to spend the time to reinvent the wheel I just want to add some special search filters that require scripting

zackattackon Twitter in Talks to Buy TweetDeck

tweetdeck kicks ass, it's the only twitter client i use except ubertwitter. but it needs an API badly...(the amazing things I would do!) I hope this acquisition goes through.

zackattackon Ideas suck

i bet some people have a tendency to do this. i know my mind does. i try to make sweeping generalizations whenever possible. i feel like eventually some gems will fall out of a robust minimal ruleset i created.

zackattackon Ask HN: how to become a morning person?

For me, I can become a morning person AND cure my insomnia if I stick to these rules:

1) Set an alarm clock for 5am, and wake up.

2) No caffeine after 12pm

3) Daily exercise

4) No computer use after 5pm.

5) Go to sleep as soon as I'm tired.

* * *

I wish I were one of the elite who didn't need to adhere to these rules religiously to become a morning person, but I know that I need ALL of them. No exceptions allowed.

I think that another one of the reasons that it cures my insomnia is that by getting up early and setting an intention for my day, I get into my purposeful mode and my thoughts become organized accordingly. Good karma. Neuroscience in the Tao te Ching?

Another important component to me being able to stick to these rules is that I have a significantly personally compelling reason to be awake, something to do with my time, but more importantly something to fill all the extra hours. i.e. I need to have a reasonably accurate prediction of how I will spend the next day's time by the night before.

zackattackon Former Google VP Kai-Fu Lee Got a Nickname, Start-Copy Lee

Do you really believe this.

zackattackon Ask HN: How are lean startups easily accepting CC payments?

citibank business account

zackattackon Poll: Display points on comments?

agreed

i prefer browsing hn w/o comments since it lets me better evaluate each comment in an informational rather than social context.

zackattackon Ask HN: How are lean startups easily accepting CC payments?

assuming you already have a merchant account and gateway (which takes like a day to get approved, assuming you don't have your social security card on hand)... you can get integrated with Recurly in two days of intense concentration.

but if you just want to start taking customers' cash ASAP, you can do that with a paypal hosted button in about 5 minutes.

WPP lets you accept credit cards w/ paypal - no paypal acct necessary - and there's tons of sample code out there that's basically copy and pasteable, and lots of code monkeys are familiar with the intricacies of paypal integration.

zackattackon Stanford CS enrollment increase "downright scary"

what sorta tools you sellin, boss? :)

zackattackon Ask HN: how to kill it in university?

Steve Pavlina graduated in 3 semesters.

http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles/do-it-now.htm

Are you working out?

zackattackon Harvard's 1899 Entrance Exam [pdf]

And it is, to many Harvard grads.

zackattackon TweetDeck launches web client alternative to Twitter.com

tweetdeck needs an api, bad.

zackattackon Canadian-backed report says piracy is a market failure, not a legal one

Thanks. Why are you interested in the issues?

zackattackon Canadian-backed report says piracy is a market failure, not a legal one

I think we're wildly extrapolating in this report -- it's a Canadian-backed report, sure, but it's about emerging markets "at the low end of the socioeconomic ladder". I think a more interesting discussion might be about how the marginal costs of digital goods pushed towards consumers is going to be pushed closer to the cost of production for certain market segments. I don't know how to guide the discussion but I can offer some questions. Can we resegment the market and make apps for the wealthy? What is the elasticity curve, exactly, and what various strategies can we take to maximize revenue under it in this global economy?

I also don't see how you are jumping to the conclusion that ease of acquisition is the only way to compete with piracy, based on that report, or how it's particularly germane. Not to say that I disagree with it -- it's been my intuition as well, simply because people love convenience...

zackattackon Canadian-backed report says piracy is a market failure, not a legal one

"Apple makes money selling high-margin complements to piracy, not competing with it."

I read that iTunes was originally launched as a ploy to move hardware and then it turned into a major profit center for Apple, albeit not one they are eager to advertise.

"iTunes is a low-margin (to Apple) strategic incentive to convince labels not to look so closely at how many billions of dollars Apple makes drizzling the magic margin-increasing white paint on top of commodity hard drives sold, primarily, to pirates."

I don't think that most iPod and iPhone purchasers and consumers are pirates. Did I misread you?

zackattackon Some rules kids won't learn in school (1996)

Have you thought about studying these skills?

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/11/21/bill-clinton...

Hacking awkwardness away.

zackattackon Twitter Announces Fire Hose Marketplace: Up to 10k Keyword Filters for 30 Cents

When are you going to send pg the bill for your participation here?

zackattackon Withdrawing from Hacker News

years later, some internet sociologist will come out with a study saying that every community of size>N will have "I'm leaving" drama posts like this.

zackattackon Some rules kids won't learn in school (1996)

That's not very helpful, Socrates.

zackattackon Some rules kids won't learn in school (1996)

exactly...it seems like all the developments have ben purely cosmetic

zackattackon Some rules kids won't learn in school (1996)

Can you satisfy my curiosity and tell me more about your situation?

zackattackon Some rules kids won't learn in school (1996)

School a youngster. Exactly what would have been so difficult about building a spreadsheet interface for IE2?

Assuming a crap UI is tolerable for business purposes and assuming that you wouldn't have to market it.