ld50

"You can win 6, 12 or 24 months of membership to AiGameDev.com PREMIUM if you place third, second and first in the contest respectively. We'll also provide any single person team that ranks higher than our official bot three months of AiGameDev.com PLUS — our brand-new part of the site that launched last week."

he must be excited. until google puts out non-trivial problem sets and offers non-trivial prizes i'll save my upvotes and cycles.

"I clicked 2,000 approve buttons on day one."

so that's a "no" on the coding?

also, do you code?

i'm still surprised you haven't ceded admin rights to the HN facebook group to PG. have you asked him about it? how is your facebook group squatting any different than prateek's hackernews.in (now hackerstreet.in) debacle? you're leveraging someone elses brand for your own personal gain ("look at me, i'm the hackernews group facebook admin. i approve or reject members to my group at my discretion.")

..and i get downvoted for bringing this up (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1766651)?

I think your argument about visibility is valid. Personally though I would rather see a /india added than a fork of the community here... and ultimately I think we would all benefit more from collective engagement (and perhaps some "technological adaptation"-- a la code pushes from pg/contribs) rather than divisive isolation (HN is niche enough already)

"However things like payment gateways, local events, feedback on startups focused on Indian markets are not very global and may not interest a large majority of hackers here."

I personally would love to read articles or posts on payment gateways, how they differ region by region, who controls what market, major players, how their systems work, how their businesses and pricing schemes work, highlights of their unique adaptations, or things certain providers are doing that set them apart or allow them to succeed in their particular market.

I think that's exactly the sort of discourse that should be taking place here; "what's hot in silicon valley" is great --and we get plenty of that-- but broader discussions on things like opportunities in emerging and rapidly growing markets should as well.

"I think there are genuine needs for something like HNI."

i agree, however would not a /r/india work as well?

what about your HN experience has made you feel that the community here would not welcome india-related discussions?

i would love to hear about the issues, projects, and things in general that startup founders, hackers, techies, and tinkerers around the world have to deal with.

why slice by region?

as i see it you're segmenting across the wrong vertical. look at the stackexchange model: are they spinning off "stack exchange: china"/"stack exchange: india"? -no, its stack exchange: physics, stack exchange: math, etc. they're differentiating based on general subject matter. is that model something that could be replicated in the context of "all things hacker"? sure (hardware, software, gadgets, networking, cracking, blackhat/whitehat, security, etc). would it succeed? who knows.

i've been working on an extended digital version of hackermonthly that i should mention here for all you HM subscribers.

it's a 100% digital interactive magazine (click through it!) that on a daily basis takes the 30 "most interesting" posts from hackernews and puts them all on a single "front page".

as a bonus i've included not just a few dozen comments but HUNDREDS of comments (for your reading pleasure). the "front page" subscription service costs only $.99 a month and gives you a daily "front page" in a digital, interactive, and browser-friendly format (ipad & kindle too!). i've also put together a "more page" subscription service that gives you access to not just the top 30 stories but ALL STORIES -- in 30 page increments.

if you act now, each additional 30-story "More" page can be accessed for the ridiculously low price of $.25/page.

but that's not all. if you're a student and respond to this post in the next 30 minutes, you'll get daily access to not just the "front page", not just a "more" page, but EVERY PAGE in the entire hackernoobs archive for just $1.99/month.

limited supply, so hurry! act now!

for me the key has been to develop a surgical/tactical approach to knowledge acquisition. whereas in school it's important to read the textbooks cover to cover, after having established a solid foundation in the fundamentals of computing and language my approach now is to read only exactly what it is i need to read to solve the problem at hand.

"Hipmunk fills a niche"

what niche? the niche for online ticket purchasers who prefer gantt-style interfaces? the niche describing the set of customers who rely on a single provider (orbitz.com) for their ticket-purchase decisioning data?

"in a highly monetizeable market"

i'd love see your CAC, CR/CRR, AMPU/AMPC, etc breakdown for the online air ticket space.

"Things are looking good for the team at Hipmunk."

when your only competitive advantage is a gantt-style interface, your outlook is not often described as "looking good".

i wouldn't consider a large base of online fanboys to be a significant competitive advantage in an industry where your competitors are 10 years established and have revenues in the billions of dollars.

"it's a great opportunity for Chris"

in the sense that it's probably better than staying at conde? --sure. in the sense that it will likely result in a significant payout down the road? --again, that's debatable.

what's to keep you from going live right now? credit's cheap. max out a credit card? trade on margin? you really have no access to capital? --or you do but you'd rather use someone elses? pivot?

i GUARANTEE you that people are already trading based on twitter data. i doubt you're really as bad off as you think.

..or maybe you are. yes. actually, your position is hopeless. might as well go open source with it now. sourceforge link pls?

having only myself to feed i'd be concerned about the quantities of food per container. being obliged to consume the 236 servings of eggs after opening one of the 6 cans in that set would be a tall order.

i've always understood "ramen profitable" to be a figure of speech. does anyone seriously eat that filth?

i think a real hacker would be aware of their body and its various biological processes ("know thyself" in a sense), and know that putting crap like that into your "human experience system" is foolishness regardless of your budget or time constraints. i work 12-14 hour a day 6 days (minimum) a week and still cook for myself.

when my budget was tight my crock pot was my best friend. dried beans, frozen veggies, minimal cheap starches, cheap fresh fruits, onions, garlic, canned tuna/cheap lean meat, a few cans of seasoning and some olive oil were still under $100/month.

nowadays i eat like a king for $400/month and i'm eating the sort of meals i'd have to pay $20+ a plate for at a restaurant. if you're looking to cut your budget learn to cook. it's easy. it's a process-- optimize it. takes me 10 minutes. dont eat filth. crap in -> crap out.. neglect your body and live with the consequences. until we can grow replacements or figure out how to preserve them indefinitely, it's foolishness.

you should cede group admin rights to pg

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1762521

any thoughts? covered this elsewhere? --link?

ok... i'll play along.

what revenue? where are the customers? how much are they paying to acquire them? how much affiliate revenue do they actually receive per transaction? how do they retain customers? how are they planning to overcome the non-existent barriers to entry in that space?

scorpion032's comment: "Steve has enough from the Reddit sale." is dead on. think about it.. these guys could self-fund the project without breaking a sweat and yet they still sold 20 point equity stake. why? --diversifying risk or pr, really.

either steve realizes hipmunk's a longshot and isn't quite sure that he and his co-founder's street cred will actually play out in terms of long-term customer acquisitions and retention so he's cashing out now while the handful of early adopters (their "e-following") will still look like an aggressive growth curve), or he's trying to get some free press. basically.

edit: i say "longshot" in the sense that i feel it's unlikely that their competitors will do nothing to adapt to any serious hipmunk rise... so unless their competitors are clueless-- which i doubt they are-- and unless they develop some sort of non-replicable competitive advantage-- which i dont see happening-- i think they'll have a hell of a time gaining any ground.

this is a pretty uninteresting problem in the grand scheme of things... it's a great one for first or second year CS undergrads, but front page of HN for the past week? ..the ACM archive has more interesting problems than this.. or check out a personal favorite-- http://mathpuzzle.com/

still prefer http://www.craiglook.com/

What's even funnier about it is that animals do indeed use sound to communicate and that this application is both theoretically and technically feasible.

Animals do not emit sounds for the sake of emitting sounds, they do so with specific intentions, desires, and goals, and as a result of specific systems that have developed towards the end of a complex system of communication involving vocal and auditory mechanisms, sound waves, and cognitive elements giving the capacity to process and generate these patterns of sound.

It's funny to me because I know that some people would look at this application and think of it as a hilarious joke: "Understand animal sounds? Ha Ha Ha good one Google! As if! Chinese Room! Hurf Durf! IMPOSSIBLE!"

It's also funny to me because I know that some hackers will look at this and be inspired to spend their spare cycles researching and developing this application, and wind up making a small fortune when they put it on the app store.

It's also funny to me because I suspect that some crafty googlers have already done this and are using the video and google's reputation for funny April Fools Day Jokes as a viral marketing tactic for their April Fool's Day Day-After joke, where they release the fully functional application, having developed it during their allocated "pet project" time.

Good one Google!

lawl. no design skills whatsoever. lawl. obvious statement is obvious.

why would you hope to save circuit city? that store's about as much of a scam as compUSA.

question: Is it time to Buy American yet? answer: nope. unless the question is "is it time to buy put options on american stock?" in that case the answer is yes.

"So far we've agreed that we should distribute 70% of the revenue generated from song sales to artists.

I don't think this is enough though -- I think we should distribute some specific percentage of our total revenue (including song sale revenues and advertising revenues)"

>not important

"Anyways, it's difficult to find a balance between how much revenue we're pulling in and how much we're willing to pay out."

>this is the real issue. forget your first question.

i think you should do a cost analysis from a user standpoint of competing services. once a "fair" or "market" rate has been established, i'd then adjust your price significantly below that (of course you can't forget to maintain sufficient cash flow to stay afloat). then market the hell out of your service (make sure your service is on par with that of your competition). once you've established yourself as a leading marketplace for online music, develop a significant competitive edge and you'll be free to adjust your pricing structures upwards, as long as you monitor your attrition rates to make sure the market believes your tax increases to be "reasonable". keep in mind your competitive edge could be something as simple as "well, we've made ourselves the largest marketplace for online music". etc, etc, hire me as a consultant and give me an equity stake. etc, etc.

downmodded for incorrect implementation.

Never sue a man who buys ink by the barrel. s/buys ink by the barrel/has a subscription count in the sextuple digits/

"we'll have a lot more talented people going into things like real engineering, as opposed to financial engineering."

o snap

MOAR JULIA!

wtf, no julia allison??1

a few thoughts:

this guy sounds like he comes from an english/journalism background.. heavy on the words, light on the substance.

there is virtue in brevity

tl;dr

yes, but it has also opened up a number of opportunities in other markets, so it can't be ALL bad, right? http://www.simplyhired.com/a/jobtrends/trend/q-prostitute --the times correlate.

that should be a no-brainer... shame on you flickr and your lazy product team