An attempt at a rough diagram. Common area is to the left of this image.

   .___________window____________.
   /                             |
  /                              |
   |                reading     b|
   |                 chair      o|
   |c                           o|_________
   |o                           k| b       |
   |u                           c|  a      |
   |c         deskdeskdesk      a|   t     |
   |h         deskdeskdesk      s|    h    |
   |          deskdeskdesk      e|     r   |
   |              chair          \      o  |
   |                              \      o |
   |_____________________________|________m|
   |      |
   |wiring|
   |_clos.|

Spammers hit News.YC the day we launched. There is spam more days than not. Usually the editors catch these before anyone sees them.

We consciously try to operate as much like a startup as we can. Except for Jessica, it's the side of the business world we have the most experience in anyway.

The simplest technique would be for the YC News gods to grant us a "report SPAM" button. The site would then be self moderating.

I would also suggest something like granting karma points for sniffing out SPAM in case the YC News gods agree that a reported link does indeed turn out to be spam.

Alternatively, a system of "open moderation" would be good as well (to lessen PG's load). In this case, moderation of the site would fall upon a rotating schedule between users that have reached a certain level of karma points. Like jury duty, you have a queue of sites that have been flagged for review, and the member's job is to merely approve of something as spam or not and have it dealt with. A link would have to be scrutinized by the random "committee" (which ideally should be a random percentage of YC News members on a regular schedule) and a majority vote would determine collectively if a link is spam or not.

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Apologies for making this post so long....

1) have a "report" button

2) who ever is on "spam patrol" would see a reported link highlighted

3) "spam patrol" would have their "report" button substituted by a "confirm" button

4) after enough of the "spam patrol" confirms a link as spam, then the link is automatically marked for deletion

The advantage of such a system is that there would be some filtration of the links and spammers would (hopefully) be discouraged.

An "emergent" advantage would be to uncover spam sites. I can even imagine a number of social sites adopting a scheme creating a collaborative spam filter (ok, yes I'm spinning this out of control, but what the hell, I'm sure everybody here thinks like this!). This would be a social solution to a technical problem.

If reddit had such a system, then a collaboration between YC News and reddit would pre-emptively eliminate confirmed spam sites from one another. Using this example, a number of social sites could immediately benefit from an open database of spam filtering (akin to the use of OpenID). So a confirmed spam site on reddit would automatically translate into a confirmed spam site on YC News, or whoever else subscribes to such an open database.

Is this too complex of an idea???

What, no girls fanning you with palm fronds and a little chamber music quartet? :)

Please forward that question to the Department of Questions, where it will be reviewed by the Answer Board as part of the Quarterly Question/Answer Reconciliation Meeting. Your question record # is 176849847

My ideal office would have an ocean view, be close to everything geographically but never have any traffic congestion. Preferably the top floor (or at least a corner) of a large building with everything I need located inside of it (bathroom, shower, couch, kitchen). There would be two desks. One would be facing away from the large glass window (where the ocean is visible from) so that I can interact with the people who come to visit. The other desk would be against a wall (maybe a corner, or even a small hallway shape) where the real work gets done. In there I would have my computers, printers, and the other essentials. The couch would face the ocean, but rotate to face the flat screen TV. Scratch that. The Couch faces the ocean and when I want to watch TV the window is covered by a drop down wall with the TV inside of it. I'd also have a bed so I could stay the night comfortably when necessary.

As you can tell, I think it's healthy to dream big.

If they're accepted, Web 2.0 names are going to create some crazy scrabble high scores.

>He had a gym bag, $25, and little else.

>A former college athlete with a bachelor's degree, Mr. Shepard had left a comfortable life with supportive parents in Raleigh, N.C.

Sounds like he had quite a bit to me. Most homeless aren't lazy, as this would seem to suggest. Most have developmental or addition problems. The fact that a bright kid can make it doesn't prove anything, really.

For someone who funds a couple Flash-based startups, that's a little surprising...

I spent a full week evaluating Amazon, PayPal, Authorize.net and a couple of smaller players (don't remember their names). I even posted a detailed report here somewhere in August.

Authorize.net is the big daddy of online payment processing. I found it to be most developer-oriented too. Amazon suffers from unnecessary complexity and tied to their own stuff too much, besides not a single support person (on the phone) knew anything about it. PayPal was not very "customer friendly", in fact their sales people sounded like typical scammers/car salesmen and overall PayPal not as developer-friendly as authorize.net

In the end I implemented everything (one-time payments, scheduled payments, etc) in just two evenings using a couple of PDF downloaded from authorize.net.

By the way, another reason to use them is the dev. community. Thousands of devs built stuff for authorize, i.e. there are libraries, code samples and docs on numerous blogs for every imaginable programming language/framework.

It's pretty easy to traipse through Europe and not learn jack shit if you're poorly read. I've met a lot of total ignoramus ex-pats who've been living overseas for years.

I don't even think spending time overseas in the industrialized west is much of an eye-opener. Appalachia would probably be just as much of an experience for a lot of people.

Of course I'd sit. I just convinced him the worthiness of my idea, and in dealing with someone so prideful, you have to show some face to get the business. When arguing with such stubborn and prideful people, the best conclusion that can happen is proving your point without humiliating that person (again, only if you want do business). That is, if you can swallow your own pride. I'd sit and say "I'm listening".

The idea here is clearly whooshing over my head. I don't get why this is worth making.