ShawnJG

you're right, "avoiding your customers" is not a scalable long-term solution for deployment. As businesses, big or small become more global this will become a bigger problem. As I'm sitting here reading this I see a potential for new business. We need to find some way to filter traffic. Think about two different versions of the website existing at the same address and in front of the website sits a fork (like a fork in the road) that splits incoming traffic into two groups. As traffic comes in a portion, say 20% is then the diverted to your brand-new deployment while the rest, 80% is directed to your older site. It's almost like having an semi-open beta in regards to the new deployment. It will be tested in real time under real circumstances. Then as bugs get ironed out you can increase the ratio from 80 – 20 gradually until all traffic is now being fed into the brand-new live site. so who wants to co-found this with me? we might be able to make it in time for the next round of Y Combinator!

by the way I didn't think you were saying that you should deploy during your busiest time, I just met all things being equal, the should definitely look for "off-peak" times to rollout new deployments. But we both seem to agree that the long-term solution. Globalization is going to make off-peak times a thing of the past. Hence see my solution above, we can get ahead of it and make some money.

if you dig deep on this site you will find examples of written applications and video submissions that were successful. That should give you an idea, just an idea mind you of what YC is looking for. While it seems you're coming up with a multitude of ideas for your project I will concentrate on producing some limited scope of what you have to show. This is not a Hollywood edition so razzle dazzle will not get you far. Substance is the key. If your idea was well articulated and got your point across, PG and the rest of the team will be able to evaluate application properly. You have until October 10, so look over your application and be concise and direct. if you've already accomplished that way and hope for the best, if not edit your application and resubmit. Good luck excavation!

here are two tips go online to your county clerk's office they will have a list of newly formed businesses. The listing usually includes name address and telephone number. It should be easy to get those people to listen to you as they are usually in a process of just getting started and I need of design services. Second you can either actively or passively look for old dated looking websites. Identify outdated designs and contact the company with one or two suggestions for improvement and offered to do it for them. The e-mail should include a link of your previous work.

not bad for a 48 hour build. A little attention to formatting and graphical aesthetics and I can see your site easily be used by some blogger. the most important thing you've already done, you major site valuable. It's a quick and easy way to look up caloric information about very popular foods. you make something people want it easy for the layman to understand and use. He followed the first rule of getting something to market fast now all you have to do is make incremental improvements based on user feedback.

I have to completely disagree with this author. Even if you're confident in your code, send your best people to work on it, are able to rollout a phased deployment and have the capability for quick rollback in overnight or off-peak deployment is preferable. If ever there was anything to happen unless people affected by it the better. Why put the strain of peak traffic and bandwidth up against a brand-new deployment?

while postponing your IPO may seem like a good idea, technology companies need to be aware of the fact that the industry changes so fast that competitors could emerge and given such fierce competition that their earnings outlook could start to look bleak at worst or make them obsolete thereby devaluing the whole company. What happened to myspace should be a cautionary tale to everyone.

I would first like to preface this by saying that I think insider trading is wrong. And individuals who blatantly and obviously take advantage of privileged private information for profit should be punished. However for most cases I find that the punishment far outweighs the crime. When bankers and CEOs on Wall Street manipulate the market for their own gains or cause industry crashes based on reckless behavior and ordinary people lose billions of dollars in net worth the Wall Street hotshot get to walk away Scott free. In my opinion I rather have a guy who purchased options on a tip in making money versus reckless money managers who lost his senior citizens entire life savings. The mortgage crisis was completely avoidable and most people agree that what companies did bordered on the illegal yet no one has been prosecuted for crime. These high-profile prosecutions by the SEC seemed to be just a bit of posturing to get the image polished in the news.

Martha Stewart and Mark Cuban for both in the same boat, bad knowledge that their investment was about to tank in there were about to lose money. What normal person would sit back and allow their money to go down the drain. Especially when information is not solicited by you. In both cases it seems someone came to them with the information they did not actively seek it out. How could you not act on that tip. I'm not crying for multimillionaires but it's hard to ignore the fact that any normal Joe blow citizen would do any differently. this is exactly the case with the factory workers. The chief mechanical executive was observant of his surroundings and concluded something was up. He was not involved in the deal, no one came to him and give him information, he pieced the puzzle together himself. He should not be penalized for that.

The problem is the vagueness of the law. Laws should not be left open for wide speculation and interpretation of said law. Especially in finance, it should be as defined in particular as possible. We definitely should have fair markets, without it Wall Street would evolve into an even more chaotic and corrupt place. The people need to know where they stand and what they can and cannot do.

This type of disparity in the law and its enforcement is not unique to the financial industry. Drug laws and penalties vary wildly. The Rockefeller drug laws are some of the most notoriously lopsided legislation that was ever passed. You could do decades for possession of crack but only a few years of probation for the equivalent amount of cocaine.

Define the laws, level the playing field and enforce penalties uniformly. It's really just a simple as that.

On a funny note the guys who used a Croatian seamstress at the front first tried to hire strippers to solicit tips from bankers while they were partying at a strip club. Illegal, yes but funny as hell.

Great start! You had an idea and was motivated enough to follow through. I wish you the best and hope your app is a big success. I'm going to go take a look at it now in support a fellow HN message board member.

and here is the second repost bynextparadigms...

Make it even more decentralized and more P2P based. Eliminate as many points of failure as possible. Use something like the Phantom Protocol for increased freedom and security as well:

http://code.google.com/p/phantom/

I posted this topic super early in the morning and it got pushed down before a lot of people could see it. I did manage to get two really good comments before that happened. I'm going to repost them here including the usernames of the people who posted them.

Originally posted by sandroyong

I would replace the server - I mean, do we really need servers? In short, the internet and networks in general were not designed with security in mind. (I would like to apologize in advance for the lengthy response but I want to make myself clear)

The Client-Server model is the most widely adopted model of networking. As the basis of the internet, it is also most difficult to depose. Even in its most basic form, it precludes security and rejects attempts to secure interacting systems for the following reasons: 1) The server is just that - a slave that serves its masters, the clients. Despite security measures to limit and control client access, the server must at least: a) Listen for client requests - clients must be able to locate, and thus can target servers. b) Attempt to interpret, then determine whether to grant or deny the request - performing redundant (permissions are decided a-priori) and risky work in its own environment. 2) Clients need servers throughout their entire presence on the network, so servers remain open to attack throughout a client’s session. 3) Servers have access to all resources and to other clients’ data during any session with an individual client. 4) Exploiting a server confers the ability to exploit all of its clients and all resources.

The mode of implementation of networks introduces even more insecurities: 1) The system relies on explicit security-related information - such information can be falsified, thus the system cannot support non-repudiation. 2) The system transports clients to any destination they specify - it is up to the destination to defend itself against unwanted guests. 3 )Any client or server on the network can be discovered by any other client or server - the network can be searched systematically to find and exploit vulnerable targets.

In short, the server is and will continue to be a target for hackers. However, if the target (server) was removed, would we have security breaches? Probably not, but more importantly for all users, we would not have an internet as we know it. Therefore, we need a medium that accomplishes both - a hardware element that allows for network communications (but without the insecure handles that make up a server) as well as allowing us to make up the network we now call the internet. Pure fantasy or are we just too engrained with what we have to be able to ‘think outside the box’?

Let’s look at why? There have been admirable strides towards making today’s systems more secure. There is also significant and proactive efforts focused on finding vulnerabilities and developing patches to fix them before they can be exploited. Although security measures exist, none are truly pre-emptive. In my view, everyone is just making variations of the same thing and, more importantly, we’re just ‘barking up the wrong tree’! Current defense strategies follow three common underlying themes: 1) most tend to focus on particular attackers, attacks, or attack methodologies; 2) many aim to defend particular targets or groups of targets; 3) all are confined and subverted by the existing framework for computing and networks. In its entirety and more importantly, current defensive strategies cannot 1) prevent most unknown attacks; 2) make targets unavailable for exploitation, nor 3) compensate for design flaws in the system being defended. Therefore, would it not be more instructive to examine what enables the initiation of attacks? i.e., what are the handles that allow the system to be breached?

As I eluded to above, the interaction between client and server software/systems, on which (often flawed) software is based, presents too many handles for misuse and abuse. Therefore, this argument points to one and only one common denominator - the network is inherently insecure by design, i.e., this is the problem that security people should be addressing, not a new variant-kind-of patch. So, if I could travel back to the 1990’s to design the networks/internet (as you have suggested) and knowing what I know now, what and how would I design it? More importantly, can it be redesigned today? Or should security product developers stay content and conform to the present hardware and software platforms and just develop ‘patches’? Even if software could be made flawless in logic, it may not be feasible to prevent the misuse of software. Don’t forget the human element - that in itself is the weakest ‘link’ in network security.

We are therefore left with redesigning the computer and network environments to allow flawed software (and people) to operate securely and render such software (and people) inoffensive should their flaws (and actions) be targeted (be used) for exploitation. This implies that the network (and elements of the network) be fault-tolerant or, more to the point, secure by design. So, we can have the benefits of a network and the protection from network security into one all encompassing computer-network infrastructure.

My suggestion: It should be conceivable and possible to map and mete out resources to clients/users as they are accepted onto the network. This is the basis of client completion; for each user/client, a host environment is created in which all allowable services and resources are locally available and locally supported. We already pre-determine the "stuff" the user needs/requires to have access to on the server - so why not bypass the server? Since access to and management of these resources is local, there is no need, or means by which, to interact with the server or the network; the client is thus complete - a discrete entity on the network. The containment of this discrete component must be as complete as possible to ensure that there is no "leakage" to other client or server environments if the user exploits any vulnerability in the client.

I can see a distinct and separate internet from the current one and more businesses and services coming out from this model.

OK, I've said enough...hopefully that will spur more discussions on this subject =)

Everything in balance. You definitely should not delay the launch of a product because you can't think of a name. But getting to market and changing your name/brand later defeats the whole purpose of branding. In fact it's the opposite of branding. For the latest example just think about Netflix and what they did by naming their DVD mailing service qwixster. That name change is arguably a colossally bad move. I'm not saying your design has to be perfect, you can always update the image like Howard Johnson did for their motel chain. I tend to think that small businesses make a huge mistake when they gloss over the branding/marketing work. I am not advocating the necessity of bringing in a huge ad agency and market research just to get a logo. Just put in a little effort, use the same ingenuity you use when you started your company and come up with a brand identity that ties into what you do. At the very least you can go to logo tournament and get a custom built logo starting at 250. It's the same amount as this service plus you have are reasonably high degree of customization. Your name and your logo will be the most visible part of your company. You want it to instantly signify all the best traits and qualities you have, even if it is just subliminally. Some of the best brands out there who do this well, can just with their logo conjure up a long list of attributes/adjectives in a potential consumer's mind. A super simple one is Rolex… It's just their name with a crown over it. Even if you did not know that they were a watchmaker, by looking at their logo you would assume that whatever they do it's of high quality befitting of royalty or at least made the connection with royalty in your mind. I just think there are many more options that for the same amount of money and minimal effort you can put together something that is closely related and much more beneficial than an off the rack name and logo solution.

On June 6, 2015 at 3:23 PM Google became self-aware and immediately destroyed Skynet. Very interesting to see how Google works. They could very easily become evil. Here's hoping they stay on the straight and narrow. Its strength lies in its multipronged positive feedback loop. But while it may be easier to thwart incremental advances from competing companies as was the case in the GPS kerfuffle, unlike with most industries a giant leap forward overnight can happen in the Internet age. That would easily put them in a negative feedback loop which they may not be able to recover from. That's what's best about the Internet, there is very little distance between a good idea and implementation to consumption by the masses. The roadside is littered with previously high-value tech companies who were devalued overnight by a competing idea.

If this is true, I was wondering when this was going to happen. US companies have long since outsourced their technology to be built. In a lot of these Third World countries production materials and labor are extremely cheap. It will only be a matter of time before these companies began manufacturing their own products to sell to us therefore cutting out the middleman. Although I'm not a fan of huge multinational corporations, this could be detrimental to them thereby being detrimental to us. And we can easily see the economies of the world shift.

with almost anything it's how you handle it that determines if it's good or bad. I think any business strategy to visit include social media marketing effort is cutting off for their legs. Really small businesses are having excellent success taking advantage of social media. This is a perfect example of how the Internet has democratized communications. Everyone who's interested can have a voice online. At least until someone tries to squash net neutrality, but that's an issue for another day.

I am a longtime proponent of PC gaming, although I do own a PS3 and Xbox 360. But the cost of getting a top-notch gaming rig is high. I've been building my computers from scratch since 1998, the last rig I built was just this past December and ingest parts alone a cost approximately $4000. If you were to buy what I built retail you can easily spend $7-$8000. However there are less expensive options out there. I think it's an indisputable fact that PCs outperform their console counterparts in just about every area. One area consoles excel in is the social experience. You do have a lot of options and PCs but the experience is not as streamlined as the Xbox 360. However from what Microsoft has been saying Windows 8 will blend the Xbox 360s and PCs social experience seamlessly. Love the wait-and-see. Interesting article though.

while I am sure that someone out there can use the service, taking the time to come up with your own name and design should not be given up lightly. I do take issue with the "branding" implication that these domains purportedly have. Before starting my own company I spent years in an ad agency, and I can tell you that unless there is an unusual amount of serendipity involved you probably won't find a name and image that fits perfectly with your company goals and vision. A brand is a promise to the public which conveys your intent your services and your commitment to your product. Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Disney all do this very well for example. If you're not a designer I can see gaining design inspiration from this site. But in my opinion, take a little time try to come up with your own ideas to implement.

interesting take on the entrepreneurial spirit. Most call it a bug, but he's named it. But my entrepreneurial spirit has been different. I would say I discovered my entrepreneurial spirit. For me, it was always there I didn't have a name for it I just knew I like doing things differently. My very first summer job at 13 give me a strong dislike for working for other people. The next summer I realized I could make more money working less hours if I was my own boss. A few years later in a corporate setting, finding out the disparity between what I was paid vs what I was bringing in for the company was like adding insult to injury. My point being, I was an entrepreneur before I knew what an entrepreneur was. I think most of us, it's something that has always been inside of us pushing us to branch out and do things on her own.

I'm not going to go in on the pool but I think that's an inevitability. The amount of mobile devices is growing be it on netbooks, tablets or mobile phones. It stands to reason that with more access on the go sites such as Wikipedia, search engines, maps or other information portals will get more hits from mobile devices.

I have to say I agree with most of what he said. These are really basic tenets of design. The only thing I take exception to is number 6...the source code beautification. I don't necessarily agree with his logic here. "Ugly source" is not necessarily buggy. I know you can take "ugly source" a number of different ways, but let's assume that you are good at writing software and check for bugs. Some projects have over 1 million lines of code it may not always be pretty, but it can work bug free. The only exception, I believe is open source. If you're creating something explicitly to be used in the wild, you should try to make that as clean as possible.

On another note, in between what is a Microsoft user experience and an Apple user experience, there should be an open platform that gives me a streamlined, intuitive user interface as good as Apples. I'm by no means an Apple fan boy. Far from it actually. But I cannot deny the attention Apple gives to user experience. But in actuality they still use a one-size-fits-all approach. With the processing power we now have in our computers, we should be working on machines that conform to us the more we use them. We apply behavioral analysis to almost everything digital and online, let's translate that over to user interface. New operating systems be it from Apple, Microsoft or Google, should all start out with the widest possible options and conform to our behavior the more we use it. Personal computing should go way beyond the aesthetic of my desktop and start menu. I know you can make keyboard shortcuts, macros and favorites. But I'm talking about a deeply customizable interface as unique as me and my habits. My computer should be learning me instead of me learning it.

this is a perfect example of when checks and balances go wrong. While CEOs and boards may not see eye to eye on every decision they sometimes forget that they are not enemies. They should be working together toward common productive goals. Even though these are billion-dollar companies, they cannot afford to continue to destroy themselves from within, sooner or later profits will dwindle and they will be no more. Mistakes are bound to happen. But according to this article, HP doesn't seem to learn from theirs. They are thoroughly living the definition of insanity as if it were a religion!

I hate to bring politics into this, but regardless of whatever side you're on Congress and the president seem to be doing the same thing. Although they're supposed to watch each other. They forgotten that they're on the same side. It should be working together to get things done. Internal fighting and derision can kill governments, as well as companies.

this strategy is good for any place anywhere. I used this same method while i did my undergrad and grad work. I found a really nice place paid several months rent up front, pledged I'd be there until a graduated. ( not hard since this was my plan and i hate moving with a passion!) i then rented out the rooms to the best people i could find. i bundled utilities at a flat rate. i found people preferred to know what they would pay upfront. not only did i get what i wanted, but i also was able to pick the choice places in the apt for my stuff and reduce the amount of rent i paid.

This is the hacker hustle that extends way beyond coding and helps if you ever launch a startup.

this is by no means a new concept. Redistricting has always been a political exercise in circumventing the will of the people. what changes sometimes is whose hand ultimately redraws the districts.

the act of collecting information is not inherently bad. What is, though is the fact that no one knows exactly how companies treat your information now or in the future. Data collection has moved into a wild West phase. It is outpacing governmental regulation by leaps and bounds. What's even more harmful is the fact that most people do not know what they're giving up. The same information that a governmental agency would need a warrant to acquire the same information that people give up to social networks or other websites in general without a second thought.

I remember when Microsoft tried to acquire Yahoo sometime back and how difficult Yahoo played. The company is still profitable to the tune of about $1 billion a year. even with their different properties that are still popular I don't think it's unfair to say the M's future seems uncertain at best. Weighing their options while they're still attractive to potential acquirers is not a bad idea.

I don't think anyone thought that Putin was not the de facto president anyway. This just formalizes what we all knew. At least this way can be held accountable for this country does.

Link bait and sensationalism aside, there are definitely some good pointers in the article. Treat the article like an apple eat all the good parts and leave the core stems and seeds. The point is to motivate you to get started with your idea. Where they able to condense it into a weekend or week using the analytic tools that's mentioned in the article is never a bad idea.

It is a metaphorical comparison. I believe he is saying FB has become so ubiquitous and pervasive in our lives, that in the social media it dominates as a fundamental utility. It has become so important to 100's of millions of people and that there is little recourse if you did not want to use them. and yes there is Google plus, but there is not enough people on that service currently to rival the social interactions of Facebook. And regardless of how well a service is designed it is pointless if you can't have the same level of interaction with other people. I think a better comparison would be the monopoly AT&T had over long distance telephone service in the mid-20th century. It was not as essential to living as water or power was but still seen as a monopoly and was broken up into the Baby Bells. I think Facebook falls in that category while you can definitely live your life without it, it has become the de facto place for social interaction. That being the case, you should not have to worry about the integrity or perhaps the malicious behavior of said company.

This is it in a nut shell. While the ramifications are hard to predict at this moment, they are huge. E=mc^2 prob won't effect practical physics that we deal with on a daily basis. but as far theoretical physics the impact is enormous. time space fabric warping, wormholes (existence, creation and artificial stabilization), how fast the universe is speeding apart, our calculations for where things are in our solar system and beyond and a whole host of other things physics relies on the formula to calculate.

what i am most excited for is the possibility to travel faster than the speed of light. conventional theory dictated that the more mass you have the more fuel you would need to break the lightspeed barrier, however the closer you approach the speed of light the more fuel you would need therefore increasing your mass infinitely putting you in a perpetual null loop. but if that equation changes and we know that there are particles that travel faster than light speed limit we may have to re-examine this theorem. Especially with new power sources being discovered on the atomic and quantum levels. The splitting of those bonds if harnessed yield promising potential. Not to mention the existence of antimatter which releases catastrophic amounts of energy when in contact with matter. We can't seem to find any right now so were limited with how much we can make which is a miniscule amount. Limits the production seem to be on a physics level as opposed to a technological one. But who knows if the speed of light is up for discussion almost anything can be in a table.

both of you make excellent points, and either could be true. But the sad fact is, we've had so many examples of government and big corporations behaving so badly that distrust has become systemic in our society. If Yahoo's actions were intentional they were probably unsure of exact amount of protesters but were taking preventative measures. Could have been a tech mistake, possibly. But coupled with the fact that twitter was also actively blocking the same topic, it seems highly suspicious.

it goes to show you, if you create something people want it's usually not that hard to make money from it, regardless of the competition in that space. The amount may not always be that high, but you can do well.