bcrawford

I'll bite: I did.

My logic: almost everyone who succeeds did so with a trail of 'no' behind them and the only way to get those is to put yourself out there. YC's application was something I labored over for a couple weeks and feel I got a great deal of value from that process alone... this is no different and I would have hoped that everyone applied.

Where is here? Legos rule... Mindstorm?

Congratulations, man! I'm transitioning to this sort of thing myself (going from 6 figures to a pt gig, 2 days a week).

My suggestion: get a whiteboard, now. Don't do anything but decompress for the next few days (i.e.. fuck off) and write anything that comes to mind about your startup.

One of the most important processes for the human brain is externalization: it's why talking about problems helps as you can't think feelings... but you can write them down and later think about them.

I'd wager you're quite emotionally charged right now, hence the paralysis, so just start writing (don't erase anything) and sort it out next week. Things will be much clearer then.

Best of luck to you!

I'd get Rachel Sequoia to design mine.

I've had the opportunity to meet with and talk with Woz before. The man really can't be anything but honest and he just loves talking - to anyone - about technology. He's almost the anti-Apple in that respect.

Going through their application... I think their Challenge should be to really revamp it. I feel like I have to click Save after ever field or I'll be redirected to some random page when I click "Next."

"If You’re Not Paying for It; You’re the Product" source: http://lifehacker.com/#!5697167/if-youre-not-paying-for-it-y... (ok, actually from MetaFilter user blue_beetle)

I can't help myself http://cheks.in/eRFqrz

For me, I am not motivated by money but rather motivated by the things I can continue to create with larger sums of it. I am a creator, inventor by nature... I've done it all my life.

Having the money to sort out the pithy details of day-to-day life like food, shelter, etc. and simultaneously funding my insane garage projects I embark upon constantly is a nice-to-have but not an expectation.

Really, in the end, I just want to build a legion of robotic minions.

I can understand your disappointment but at the time of your posting it was barely the 7th. It seems you have already discounted yourself long before today happened... which is a shame.

It IS Mac vs PC all over again. The main reason PC "won" initially was because it got the consumer mindshare first and became more rapidly adopted by the masses.

As for the specs you're throwing out: my mom doesn't care about specs, cores, or whatever a GPU-whatsitdoozy is. Android will win with the hardcore nerd/tech-enthusiast like the 360/PS3 won with the hardcore gamer... Apple/Nintendo is for everyone else.

Talkatone still exists to this day allowing for Google Talk functionality up to, and including, Google Voice calls over 3G.

Isn't that just the same as "entrepreneur?" I kid, I kid.

Usually I come here for the intellectual discourse on a variety of technology and business topics. All that went through my head, line after line, was "oh no he di-ent!"

Yes it is. Amazon beta tested it for years in the enterprise and is now releasing it as a consumer service.

Closing down? I'd say significantly rebranding. We'll see, most likely, the week of June 6th.

I submitted early Feb and I feel the same way. I actually resubmitted once or twice to change how far we had gotten (lines of code) and new competitors that cropped up (note: more than you'd think in such a short period of time).

Oddly, what is keeping me awake isn't the application so much. I've kind of resigned myself that it would be a nice-to-have but not a requirement. What keeps me awake now is things like reducing my monthly expenses more and more so I can work less and less for the man and more and more for myself.

I do 24 hours 1-3x a week but with a twist. Most people think "24 hours" and think "in the same day." I will eat breakfast and lunch one day and then nothing until dinner time the following evening. It still accomplishes the 24 hours (more like 27-29).

I also generally exercise at the start of the fast to burn off my glycogen stores so my body relies on stored fat for energy the next day.

I am not saying that I judge a book by its cover, but I won't put an ugly icon on my home screen. I might bury it in the one folder I have if I like it enough (I'm looking at you, Evernote, iTap RDP). Just sayin'

Pardon the n00b question, but: what's the general vibe? any agenda? RSVP'd and excited to check it out Friday. :)

Being on myspace hardly qualifies one as "alive" ... it may even indicate the contrary.

The guy in the video is dancing. Dancing is art.

Settled.

Even silly things like the mail client Sparrow. I had to use gfxCardStatus to get anything more than 2-3hrs of battery life because my mail client is trying to get "fancy" on me.

It is possible for them to detect this if they are doing Layer 7 inspection. All it would take is parsing the user agent to see that you're not on Mobile Safari. On the iPhone side, it just does a NAT and theoretically passes all information as the public IP of the phone itself.

Honestly, any respectable nerd is going to have either a) a box to SSH to or b) a VPN endpoint... if you encrypt/encapsulate all traffic originating from your tethered machine there's very little chance they'd be able to catch you.

I wonder: is it something like how Time Machine works? In that each file is mirrored and unmodified ones are hard linked through editions? I can't imagine that being space efficient but I wouldn't put it past them. AFAIK OSX doesn't have an LVM equivalent in terms of snapshotting live file systems.

On a semi-related note: apparently simply refreshing your browser increases the view count. I had gotten excited for a minute!

"I can't see many of these selling <i>to tech-savvy people like me</i>" -- there. I fixed that for you.

Chrome OS isn't trying to tackle an existing market any more than Nintendo's Wii was trying to target the hardcore gamer. There are far more people interested in doing LESS with their computer as it's less daunting and intimidating that way. Combine that with the severely lessened threat of viruses and a near one-click full system restore feature that, due to cloud storage, poses absolutely no threat to any data less and you have a #winning level of simplicity that no Windows-based netbook can offer.

The truth is: most companies have no interest in providing you a big bump as their additional input will not dramatically improve your output, if at all. If you want to market yourself better - then do it where it counts: get out there and interview.

At my last job, I was being paid at a mid-level admin rate but was expected to do senior-level engineering and even architectural work (I had proven that I could). The best they could do is 3-10% (and even that was pulling teeth) per year. I had already been there several years and it would have taken me several more to finally make what I should have been making all along... minus the opportunity for raises based on that income.

In the end: I went out, interviewed, and negotiated a salary elsewhere at such an insanely high increase (just under 40%) that I figured my then-current employer would just show me the door and say thanks for my time. Much to my surprise, despite having a hard time squeaking out a few extra K before, they were not only offering to match my offer but exceed it by an appreciable margin.

The moral of the story: a lot of employers will aim to profit on your complacency. Period. It is more profitable to pay you the least as possible as long as possible. They got damn good (if I do say so myself) engineer at a steep discount. Even if I had taken their offer (which I didn't), it would have taken me a couple more years just for my pay to normalize to what it should have been all along.

BeOS/Haiku (http://haiku-os.org/ - not a dead link, surprisingly)

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=lab...

Unless I'm reading this wrong: if you work on it solely on your time, with your equipment, it's yours (in California, anyway).

UPDATE: Oh, also it can't compete with their business.