2007-09-25 front | Hacker News

Stories from September 25, 2007

Go back a day or month. Go forward a day, month, or year.

1.		Serious bug found in Excel 2007 ::: 850*77.1 = 100,000 and not 65535 (groups.google.com)
		39 points by nickb on Sept 25, 2007 \| 27 comments
2.		Your Man in India - Outsourcing Your Errands (smartmoney.com)
		31 points by mhb on Sept 25, 2007 \| 17 comments
3.		Why Your Start-up Will Fail (forbes.com)
		30 points by drm237 on Sept 25, 2007 \| 15 comments
4.		Missing from PG's startup essays: acquisition negotiations strategy/advice?
		27 points by os111 on Sept 25, 2007 \| 13 comments
5.		Vitamin: Getting a startup right the second time (imthere) (thinkvitamin.com)
		26 points by luccastera on Sept 25, 2007 \| 2 comments
6.		Parakey: Did Investors Get Left Out In The Cold? (techcrunch.com)
		20 points by luccastera on Sept 25, 2007 \| 6 comments
7.		What do you think of my startup idea?
		19 points by steffon on Sept 25, 2007 \| 43 comments
8.		Fire your best people... reward the lazy ones (testearly.com)
		19 points by nickb on Sept 25, 2007 \| 4 comments
9.		$200M market for a product catering to prejudice. If you had a similar product idea or implementation that could make you rich; would you still execute? (bbc.co.uk)
		19 points by juwo on Sept 25, 2007 \| 56 comments
10.		"How many of the top 20 visited Web sites of August 2003 are still in that ranking? Nine" (wsj.com)
		16 points by jkopelman on Sept 25, 2007 \| 8 comments
11.		Another reason many startup founders are young - salary
		17 points by johnrob on Sept 25, 2007 \| 23 comments
12.		Man Has Memory Span of a Few Seconds - Terrifying/Fascinating (newyorker.com)
		15 points by mhb on Sept 25, 2007 \| 6 comments
		mojuba on Sept 25, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: Serious bug found in Excel 2007 ::: 850*77.1 = 100... I guess Microsoft's valuation of Facebook was done in Excel. Can anybody check if 6,553,500,000 gives 10,000,000,000 ?
		menloparkbum on Sept 25, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: How do you attract smart people to work at your st... "We're getting ready to hire our first employee. We've decided to go with an intern, because they are cheap, and if they turn out to be an idiot it's easy enough to get rid of them." How do you attract smart people to work at your startup? Not like that, I'm afraid.
15.		Feedback on my new project, ShelfMade.net (shelfmade.net)
		12 points by mikesabat on Sept 25, 2007 \| 26 comments
		Shooter on Sept 25, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: How do you attract smart people to work at your st... RE: [I didn't really understand where you were coming from in that "how do I spend my money" thread...] At the risk of hijacking this thread, I made that "Are you going to change the world" post after being up for 28 hours. I rambled too much and I see how easy it was to lose the trail. I actually only had a very brief, passing thought about going to medical school which I quickly discounted, for example, yet some people thought that was the core issue of my post. I also have zero interest in DONATING my money to charity at this point, yet some people thought that was a core issue of my post. Medical research and charity were red herrings for some people who read the post. I'm interested in social entrepreneurship, not charity. I also have tons of my own ideas and have no trouble spending my money (on business or pleasure)...but I'm always open to new ideas and opportunities, because I can only implement so many ideas myself. Interestingly, some people also thought I was having a huge identity crisis based on my post, which is not the case. I apparently injected too many specifics in the post... Some people that commented on that thread actually helped me crystallize my thoughts better, though: 1. "Software is powerful. Engineers are powerful." (via falsestprophet) To this I would add that youth and inexperience are also powerful. And they are also the people most likely to underestimate their power and their ability to change the world for the better. 2. There are people changing the world with your skillset RIGHT NOW. To think that you can't do anything is a cop-out. (via altay, falsestprophet, Hexayurt, and others) 3. "If you are not working on the most pressing issues in your field...why not?" "If you are not tacking the biggest problem you can tackle with your skillset, why not?" As someone pointed out, everything has an opportunity cost. The true CORE idea of my post was to prompt people to examine those opportunity costs and weigh whether they are working on something that will have the biggest positive impact, versus just working in a hot field (or on pedestrian ideas that they think they can flip for cash.) In sum, don't settle. 4. Changing the world for the better doesn't have to involve curing cancer or saving the lives of African children. Again, I may have thrown out a red herring with the medical stuff. If you are saving people time and money, then that's great. But, even then, is it THE optimal solution? Etc. Etc.
17.		Tufte inspired LaTeX classes for producing handouts and papers (code.google.com)
		9 points by nickb on Sept 25, 2007 \| 4 comments
		wschroter on Sept 25, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: Why Your Start-up Will Fail sanj - it's tricky to find a voice and message that resonates with a broader audience. in my book, for example, i explained a lot of stuff like "how to scale" which i thought was relatively pedestrian yet was really complicated for some people to understand. then when you take it a step further and publish it in mainstream media like forbes, you have to be careful of alienating a broader audience. what to you is a "flaccid truism" (great label btw) is a wildly powerful concept to others. i spend far more time trying to simplify concepts than trying to dig deeper into them. from what i've seen of most on-line startup pundits, a great deal of their audience is made up for the same people and becomes somewhat nepotistic.
		nickb on Sept 25, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: Serious bug found in Excel 2007 ::: 850*77.1 = 100... Well, how many have actually gone undetected? There are quite a few papers out there that show that Excel-induced accounting/financial errors are a lot more common than previously thought. Some financial services have gone as so far to prohibit the use of Excel in their financial planning and forecasting. Check out some of the papers on Google Scholar for bibliography: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&safe=off...
		dhouston on Sept 25, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: What do you think of my startup idea? what's a one or two sentence explanation that would get my little sister to use this? what value would she get within the first 2 minutes (assume early on, before you have a ton of people using it?) ideas like this are tough because they're only really useful once an incredible amount of content has been submitted. what tricks can you do to make the site be sticky to the first 100 users, when nothing yet is submitted? what are the first concrete things the user sees, or does, when they arrive at the site? i think that's why these recommendation sites are only successful in niches (e.g. travel (tripadvisor), food/entertainment (yelp), movies (netflix)).
21.		Why 'Total Geeks' Build Businesses Faster (businessweek.com)
		9 points by bootload on Sept 25, 2007 \| 1 comment
		zhyder on Sept 25, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: Facebook at $10 Billion Valuation, Microsoft to In... "Most of Myspace's user base (and thus value) was added since the acquisition." How many of those new users were because of News Corp's acquisition? If majority of those users would be added anyway (if it was just a matter of time), and an astute investor could predict that, its valuation of $580m or even more would be justified. Today most financial publications believe Murdoch got Myspace for a bargain.
		henning on Sept 25, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: Serious bug found in Excel 2007 ::: 850*77.1 = 100... New Arc suggestion: a Markdown/Textile implementation. :(
24.		The road to launch... (clutterme.com)
		9 points by blored on Sept 25, 2007 \| 8 comments
		nostrademons on Sept 25, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: $200M market for a product catering to prejudice. ... Yeah, like deodorant, diamonds, Armani, the Model T, cruise ships, tanning salons, makeup, corsets, diet pills, jumbo mortgages, health spas, and The Great Vowel Shift of the 1600s. Nearly everything is marketed by making you seem like a person of higher social status. If people were comfortable with who they were, we wouldn't need 90% of the goods on the market (and the remaining 10% would likely be much cheaper). It's not human nature to be content with your lot in life; if we made everyone equal, they'd find some new dimension to elevate. Bring on the Star-Bellied Sneetches!
26.		nobraces: Python-style indentation for C (micropledge.com)
		8 points by benhoyt on Sept 25, 2007 \| 4 comments
		oditogre on Sept 25, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: Serious bug found in Excel 2007 ::: 850*77.1 = 100... http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=307215&cid=207394... That seems like the most plausible theory I've seen so far.
28.		Flat Rate Considered Harmful: How to ignite innovation on the mobile web (tbray.org)
		8 points by raganwald on Sept 25, 2007 \| 2 comments
29.		Sketchcasting (sketchcast.com)
		8 points by jkush on Sept 25, 2007 \| 3 comments
		sanj on Sept 25, 2007 \| parent \| context \| on: Why Your Start-up Will Fail I read a lot of stuff by startup pundits. Obviously YC, but also rants by Joel Spolsky, Wil Shipley and others. Each offers something to the mix. Sadly, I've never found anything of note in the writings of Wil Schroter. It mostly seems like a list of flaccid truisms. Has anyone else found nuggets of wisdom in there? Read PG's stuff on Why Not Not to Start a Startup instead. Way more considered.
		More