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tim2 | 18 years ago | on: Why Student Programmers Rant about Business Students with “Ideas”

If this is the case for hackers then I can at least see a very good reason for it. The _only_ reason I learned to program was for the power it gives me to create new things and explore whatever I want.

Take that away from me? Forget it, I'll do any number of occupations where I can earn more.

tim2 | 18 years ago | on: So you "just need a hacker", huh?

My strategy has always entertained me because the guys I've known were so thrilled about their rediculous "world changing" idea that they were crushed to find that hardly any outsourcers were even interested:)

Yours will work well enough, but I also like to test to see if anyone is actually determined enough to go through all this trouble and carry out their plan anyway. Serious entrepreneurs are very few in this part of the country...

tim2 | 18 years ago | on: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

Two things: 1) It would be great to have more reasonably good people here. 2) But I just don't want the scoring to be screwed up. If the voting keeps stuff that's only of interest to people who are into hacking and startups on the front page then other people will simply not stick around.

PG, please consider action for #2. Don't go with the "show everyone different rankings" approach of reddit though.

tim2 | 18 years ago | on: So you "just need a hacker", huh?

In theory, but we're talking about guys who think that you love programming so much that you'll just work for some of their worthless equity.

tim2 | 18 years ago | on: So you "just need a hacker", huh?

Send them to an outsourcing site. Tell them you'll offer a competitive rate. Most of these guys won't think of spending a dollar.

tim2 | 18 years ago | on: An open-source filter software that can detect rampant stupidity in written English

Even the least skillful trolls mask their ill intent by blending in and maintaining a non-descript tone. This is done in order to get past the "human spam filter." If you run stupidity detection based purely on the contents of their comments then you run the risk of simply banning controversial topics or people with bad spelling instead of controversial (trolling, roughly) behavior.

To better detect trolling behavior, I'd focus on responses:

- Content of the responses. Lots of shouting? Length.

- Number of responders. 50x more replies than you would otherwise expect from the thread?

- Depth of thread. Conversation still dragging on after all sane people have left?

- Timing of responses. Heated arguments leave no time for cooling off.

So measure effect of the troll, and your system won't have to try to understand what he's saying.

+ But you were referring to "stupid" measuring based on the submitters data may work just fine.

tim2 | 18 years ago | on: Ask YC: Looking for a co-founder

[nevermind] ---Untrue. Unless your product has already shown considerable traction or you're a startup legend, it is 100% percent certain that they will not accept you as a single founder.

Not making a judgement on this policy, it just seems fair for people to know before they take the time to apply as a single founder.

tim2 | 18 years ago | on: How I Blew My Google Interview

You do realize that this is the antithesis of the core reason of why startups work, yes?

What's fundamental is that it is those few abnormal people who change the world 1000x more than the regular person. When you have near infinite money like Google, I'd be very afraid of missing out on those few people who are going to carry the company.

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