Ask HN Archive

A few years ago, Gabriel Weinberg put together an excellent archive of the best Ask HN posts on Hacker News. Unfortunately, his list hasn't been updated in close to two years, and many things have changed during that time (and the number of posts on HN has increased sixfold!), so it seemed like an updated list was in order. I've looked at every Ask HN post since Gabriel's list was created, and selected those that I think are worth reading. I've tried to choose those that are interesting, contain good discussion, and whose information is still relevant today. The links in each subsection are listed in reverse chronological order, so the most recent discussions will be at the top.

YCombinator

• What percentage of YC startups make it?
• Who got rejected in earlier cycles of YC application and made it anyway?
• Will Y Combinator taking Sequoia investment hurt the YC companies?
• Any plans to make the YC talks public?
• YC Founders over 30 yrs old
• YC Rejected: Please read.

Hacker News

• What is HN made of?
• How do you consume Hacker News?
• Post your HN tricks.
• Does anyone else get strange looks from people who see you reading "Hacker News"?
• Cost and effort of running Hacker News?
• How old are you?

Startups

• Did you ever do anything unethical to get your startup off the ground?
• What do you wish you had known before starting up ?
• Startup founders, would you walk us through a day in the life?
• What do founders do for health insurance?
• How do you explain what you do to your relatives?

Cofounders

• How do you find a Business Partner?
• Is it possible to "find" a cofounder?
• How do you motivate a lazy co-founder?
• How to evaluate potential non-technical co-founders ?
• My co-founder sux. What can I do ?
• How did you and your cofounder meet?

Single Founders

• How to be a responsible single founder?
• Are you a single founder ?

Finances and Accounting

• What's your burn rate? What do you do to reduce it?
• What's your churn rate?
• Dealing with tax and accounting
• accounting resources for startups?
• Do we need to file/pay US taxes (Canadian corporation)?
• Good bank account for a startup?
• Payroll for bootstrapped startups?

Formation

• Cost of 1 Person LLC

Fundraising

• I am a junior angel in Silicon Valley. AMA
• Raising a friends And family round?
• Dealing with VCs, my experience
• What do these startups need so much money for?

Market Research/Customer Development

• How do you determine potential market size for a web app?

Making Money

• Surprised by your revenue? Easier than you thought?
• How did you 'accidentally' make money?

Hiring

• Stop complaining and pay programmers more
• "Rockstar" job listings, yay or nay?
• Why won't start-ups hire older, experienced programmers?
• As an employer, what do you wish applicants did more often?
• How do I find a marketing person for my startup?
• Does interviewing developers leave you depressed?
• How to Hire Hackers

Working at

• Should I be told a startup's present valuation when given stock options?
• Equity for a first employee

Advisors

• How to find advisers

Previous Startups

• Do you have any startup related regrets? Epic failures?

International

• What is the best city to start a start-up in Europe?
• Is there a Y Combinator equivalent in Australia?
• Best Startup City - Outside the USA?
• Limited Liability Company while operating in another country
• Cloning a US startup for a european country ?

Immigration

• How to get a U.S. Visa (and work on your own startup)?
• How can I move to USA?
• Should I get U.S. citizenship?
• legally start a Bay Area startup without being American?

Acquisition

• Selling my first company - need help with the process
• What is a talent acquisition like?
• I'm very tired.... how do I sell my company?

Who's Hiring? (September 3, 2010)

Life

• Daily schedule
• What's your most interesting life goal currently?
• What's your morning routine?
• I'm way too shy, please help
• How do you fight procrastination?
• What are your productivity hacks?
• How to make smalltalk?
• Any tips for living cheaply in SF?

Marriage/Dating

• Do you have a startup spouse?
• Has your startup affects your relationship with your wife or girlfriend?
• cofounders as couples ?
• Startup vs Girlfriend
• Marriage
• I have a serious GF, but still want to apply. Good Idea?

Kids

• Tips for Hackers having Kids?
• How many kids do you have?

Education

• How long did it take you to pay off your student loans?
• Is a PhD a good way to focus & motivate you?
• Should I get my degree or not?
• So What Universities Are Good?
• What's missing in a CS degree?
• At 34, do I go back to college or not?
• Is there a point to school?
• Advice for freshmen entering college
• Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college?
• What is your highest educational qualification?

Money

• Who is currently broke due to being in a startup?
• How did your life change after FU money?
• Tips and Tricks to Save Money While Running a Startup

Food

• What should we eat?
• Food hacks for eating well?
• got any food hacks?
• What do you drink?
• What do you eat?

Health

• List everything you know that is good/bad for our brains.
• Which vitamin supplements do you take?
• Any health tips?
• If you didn't have to worry about healthcare, would you start a company?
• Wrist Pain
• How do you stay (somewhat) healthy?
• Back problems
• How much do you exercise a day/week?
• Health Insurance?

Investing and Finance

• How would you make $25,000 if you had $25,000?
• What's been your best investment?
• Is it feasible to do high-frequency trading as an individual?
• How do you pick stocks?
• How do I turn 100K into 1 million?
• Good resources for learning+getting into Finance / Trading?
• Please explain short selling?
• How come so many of you know about stocks/finance ?
• How to become a millionaire in 3 years?
• I sold my company last month for $5m. What do I do with the money?
• How did you learn about stock market/trading investing ?
• How would you invest $50,000?
• Steady 4-5% on $5 million?
• Where to invest $300-600k in Silicon Valley?

Jobs

• I'm an 18 year old programmer; How do I get a job?
• How do I ask for a salary increase?
• Is the "adult space" a career-killer?
• anyone ever drop everything and leave software dev behind?
• Well paid jobs that require you to be physically active?
• What's the worst job you've had outside technology?
• Has anyone ended up regretting quitting a good job for their own business?
• Need advice for starting freelance biz and eventual startup life.
• What to do about a boring job ?
• How do I get out of my unhappy coding job?
• How valuable to my resume is 5 years at Microsoft?
• Non-programming, 'thinking' jobs?
• Non-programming part time jobs?
• Fastest way to make $300-400 a month online?
• Other careers for a hacker?
• What are your best resume tips?
• What would you do if you had to switch to a "manual" job?
• What was your first job?
• Outdoor jobs for geeks?
• Worst working conditions you have written code in?

Freelancing/Consulting

• How do you control consulting work and concentrate on startup work?
• What proficiency does one need to start freelancing?
• How do I become a consultant?
• consultancy, how to?
• How do you get new freelance jobs/contracts?

Tools

• What paid services do you use now for your startup?
• Google Analytics Charts
• What tool makes you most productitive?
• Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
• How do you record your thoughts?
• What Web apps increase your productivity?
• What apps are essential for mac?
• What Paid Services Do You Use For Your Startup?

Computers

• What's your computer setup?
• How viable is it for a programmer to switch to a DVORAK keyboard layout?
• MAC vs PC for a developer?

Editors

• What code editor do you use?
• Best code editor?
• What editor do you use?

Emacs

• What's in your .emacs file?

Vim

• What Vim Plugins do you use?
• Suggestions for mastering vim?
• What's the best way to get started with Vi(m)
• What's in your .vimrc file?

Operating Systems

• I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs
• Do you understand your operating system?
• Linux on the desktop 2010, your honest thoughts?
• What is your primary *nix distro on your home machine?
• Best Unix Tricks?
• What OS do you use everyday, or most often?

Outsourcing

• What do you know about virtual assistants?
• Does anybody know any outsourcing success stories?
• How to hire a good virtual assistant for a startup?
• How to outsource?
• Where do you find freelance developers

Office

• Good Aeron knock-off/alternative?
• Your Hacker Workspace
• Cheap alternatives to Aeron chairs?

Running a website

• Dealing with abusive users
• How do big web sites roll out new versions?

Hosting

• Anyone hosting their site on servers in their garage?
• Where do you host your webapp?
• VPS management for the absolute beginner
• Managing my own server.
• Managed dedicated hosting recommendations
• Which CDN do you use?
• Small, cheap server?
• Prgmr is unreliable. Please advise on VPS hosting.
• Who's using Google App Engine?
• What hosting do you use for personal projects?
• Dreamhost VPS
• How do you handle server security/intrusion monitoring?
• Anyone used Amazon EC2 with a database or other high IO operation?
• Is it necessary to backup S3?
• Which cloud host do you use?
• AWS or dedicated server?
• slicehost-like providers outside the US?

Server software

• I really don't understand node.js, could someone explain it to me?
• What web server do you use?

Databases

• What database does your startup use?
• I want to start learning about databases, where should I start?
• Anyone used XtraDB from Percona (instead of InnoDB)?
• Which persistent in-memory database to use?
• Use MySQL as a non-relational database
• What database would you use to store (min) 10 billion objects?

Domain names

• Should I try to get squatted domain or use domain hack?
• How should I approach buying my ideal domain name?
• Is a .net domain good enough?
• Is it worth buying misspellings around your domain name?
• Do you buy related domains early on (.net, .org, similar spellings)?
• how to buy a domain name from a squatter?
• Where do you buy domain names?

Payments

• How to do payments between users on my site?
• As a non-US resident, how do I accept CC payments on my website?
• What's the most simple way to accept monthly subscription fees?
• What payment gateways do you use for your app?
• I've built a product - how do I take payments in the UK?
• Is there a cheap way to get money from customers (Not PayPal etc)
• A subscription/recurring billing service that just works. Any ideas?
• Alternative to Authorize.net?
• how do you process payments?
• Best Micro Payment provider?

Analytics

• Google Analytics for Startups?
• How accurate are Alexa/Compete/Quantcast for your website(s)?
• Any alternatives to Mixpanel ?
• What do you use for tracking your users?
• Please Suggest a Real Time Web Analytics Tool
• What do you do for analytics?
• What do you wish Google Analytics would do?

SSL

• where do you get your SSL certificates?
• Which SSL Cert to Buy?
• Why are SSL certificates so expensive?
• Where should I buy an SSL certificate for my site?

SEO

• do you use a SERP ranking service ? Which one ?
• Overcoming engineer/developer bias against SEO
• "Basic SEO"?

Building Traffic

• How to get the first 10 users?
• Jump starting techniques for a new site?
• How to get major bloggers write about my bootstrapped startup?
• How long after launch did you get your first customer?
• How do you go about spreading the word about your product or service?
• Which blogs did you contact to get coverage when you launched?
• Getting users
• How do I get to that next level of traffic?

Reliability

• keeping services up and running?
• Patterns for deploying webapp updates with no downtime
• How do you test your web applications?
• What do you use to monitor your web application?
• Best practices for server redundancy?
• Which server monitoring tool do you use?

Data

• List of open/public databases
• What data set would you like to see/use, but doesn't exist?
• Best Text Mining Resources
• I want to learn statistics and data mining
• How or Where can I get data sets?

Programming

• How to be a better programmer?
• How much do you program?
• How obsessive are you with your code?
• Where's the fun in programming?
• Is 36 too late to start into programming?
• Things you wish you'd learned about programming in college?
• What source code is worth studying?
• What was the worst bug you've ever solved ?
• How do you explain how programming works to complete non-techies?
• Share your Immoral Hacks, Codes or Tweaks
• Ridiculous Coding Practices by companies you have worked for

Languages

Language Choice

• Why choose a dynamically typed language?
• (No) Microsoft based start-ups?
• What startups here are focusing on developing on top of .NET?
• How to choose the right language
• In which modern language/environment/framework is programming a joy?

Assembly

• What is hand-coded assembly language used for these days?
• Learning C and ASM, what's the way to go?
• Should programmers learn machine code?

C

• Should I learn C?
• I use and love Python. What's the best book to learn C ?

C++

• Learning C++ in 2010
• If C++ is so bad, what should game developers use?

Clojure

• Why should I care about Clojure?
• Who's using Clojure, and to do what?
• How dangerous is Clojure's immutability assumption?
• Getting started with Clojure
• Clojure best practice for web applications?
• Common Lisp vs Clojure for web apps?
• Clojure as a first progamming language?

Haskell

• Career opportunities with Haskell?

Java

• Why are there so few apps being built with JSP?
• Is java dead for startups?
• Reasonable Java editor for heavily CLI-oriented UNIX types who hate bloat?

Javascript

• JavaScript dev environment ?
• Need best Javascript books suggestion
• What is your favorite Javascript UI framework out there ?
• Learning Javascript & AJAX
• Javascript best practices?

Objective-C

• Best short text to learn Objective-C
• What do you think of Objective-C?

PHP

• How do I go about PHP?

Python

• How will it impact my webapp if it is written in Python instead of PHP.
• Why are there 2 Pythons? (2.7 & 3.1.2)
• Anyone using Python 3 in production?
• I don't like Python. Does that make me a bad person?
• Why Python over Ruby?
• Pythonic startups: what web framework do you use?
• What did you use to teach yourself Python?

Ruby

• Suggestions for Starting with Ruby on Rails?
• Should I Learn Ruby?
• Can you recommend some good RoR books?

Mobile

iPhone

• Number of iPhone apps you published & income you get from them
• How much does it cost to outsource iPhone app development?
• What is the going rate for developing an iPhone app?

Android

• Care to share your average Android Market daily revenues?
• What would life be like as an Android Developer?

Design/UI/UX

• Learning Web Design
• All startup websites look the same
• Do you design your own website?
• Modern web design resources?
• Places to buy web application templates
• Web Designers - What elements make for great designs?
• What does $2000 in Web design/development buy you these days?
• How can I get better at design?
• How can I write an interface like Gmail?
• How do you go about finding designers?
• What SaaS apps have a great UI ?
• How can you make a user experience addictive?
• Improving your design skills?
• Who are the top UI designers on the web today?
• Can someone refer me to a designer that doesn't suck?
• Is there a designer-equivalent to HN?
• What's the best webapp UI you've seen and what was used to make it?
• Where do you go for adhoc/freelance design resource?
• How do you pick colors
• basic web design for small projects?

CSS

• How to keep my CSS clean?
• What is the best CSS book?
• CSS vs table based layouts

Graphics

• What to do for logos?
• Good web-based icon editor?

Marketing/Advertising

• Favorite startup demo videos
• What kind of advertising have you tried that worked?
• How do you advertise without spending money?
• Anyone advertised on the DECK, FusionAds, SO or Daring Fireball?
• What are your AdWords Ratios?
• How Can Ads Not Suck?
• How did you market your app when there were already a lot like yours?
• Are there any good Internet marketing books?
• What am I doing wrong here? (PR/Marketing an app)
• No-names, tell your story on how you got PR coverage
• Startup PR - How could they get so many coverages?
• How to spend a marketing budget of $US 2k per month?
• How do you get your press?
• $1000 to advertise my startup

Media

• What have you published that you are particularly proud of?

Academic Papers

• Publish in peer-review journal without affiliation?
• What's your favorite scientific paper?
• Where do you get your scientific papers from?
• Getting published in an academic journal without holding or seeking a PhD?

Books

• Summer Reading Recommendations?
• Best Philosophical Books?
• I want to start a web company what books should I read?
• How can I get the most out of SICP?
• Best book(s) to learn about the basics of economics?
• Free Programming eBooks
• Any good books on graphing/charting/visualization?
• Interesting (Non software) books?
• Any Books on Inspirational Computer Science Personalities ?
• What's your favorite scientific paper?
• Great books you read in 2009?
• What's the best first business book for a programmer?
• Please name two of your most favorite books.
• What are you reading?
• Fictional books related to startups?
• good books about military strategy?
• What's a good book to learn electronics?

News

• Where do you get your unbiased news?

Audio

• Recommend me a Podcast
• How can I keep learning on my 1.5 hr commute?
• Do you create music? Let's hear it!

Videos

• What's your favorite TED Talk?
• video/screencast sites for learning programming?
• Movies that motivate you?
• What are some (good) hacker movies?
• What is your favorite TED talk?

Web

• HN Alternatives?
• Best resources / websites in your opinion on the www?
• What HN-like sites do you visit?
• What are the best developer/hacker focused blogs?
• What's your favorite site for hacking on things other than computers?
• What other HN-like sites do you read?
• Favorite blogs?
• List of Hacker Blogs?
• The best sites for content

Writing

• How to write great headlines

Math

• Recommendation for (re)learning Math Skills
• How Do I Get Math?
• Help Me Learn Math (Please & Thank you)
• the road to learning useful math
• Statistics for hackers?
• Best Mathematics book for complete noobie?
• Do you read math & hard science books? How?
• good math books
• what linear algebra do you use most often for practical problems?

Rants

• Why do RSS Readers (mostly) suck?
• Why do no other laptop manufacturers get it?

Misc

• Share a gem. Teach me and you.
• What's the best feature you've built that no one uses?
• What were your naivetés in your twenties?
• "I'm sure that'll be really easy"
• What other low-probability high-impact events are we ignoring?
• How do I become smarter?
• What streetsmarts have you learnt?
• Hacker Hobbies?
• What advice would you give college students about starting a business?
• Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread)
• A martial art for a programmer
• How do I regain my attention span?
• How do you keep up with changing technologies?
• What have you changed your mind about recently?
• Your biggest non-technical hack/discovery
• What are your failures?
• Do you think machine consciousness is possible?
• How I Hacked Hacker News (with arc security advisory)
• Who is Tara Ploughman?
• What would you tell your younger self?

Ideas

• If ideas are worthless, why are some startups in stealth mode?
• Methods for finding niche business opportunities
• Let's Revive PG's /ideas.html discussion
• What are problems that need to be solved?
• Here is my current batch of ideas. In exchange, I ask for your feedback.
• Bad experiences after sharing your idea?
• What problem is REALLY bugging you?
• What's a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve?
• What industry needs technical innovation?
• Whom do you admire most?
• What's your best startup idea?
• ideas for little projects you have?
• Steal my Ideas (or help me)
• Outlandish Startup Ideas Pool
• What's a problem you'd like to see someone solve?

Review My Startup

• I know this isn't reddit, but please review my cannabis-related startup
• Review my status board startup
• Review my startup - Scribd (YC S06)
• Review my startup: Quora, a topic based question and answer site
• Rate my startup, Go Test It (cross-browser testing)

Stories and Advice

• I'm selling all my stuff and moving to SF to work on my startup. Advice?
• Should I stand tall in the face of negative feedback?
• I'm launching in 30 days. No matter what. Hold me to it
• Share some ideas.
• Please, help me understand what I am doing wrong.
• My brain refuses to think, what should I do?
• How do you deal with suicidal thoughts ?
• Does reading HN ever make you feel like shit?
• Does my company with $140,000 annual revenue have any value?
• log on, drop out?
• I really want to start a startup but I don't know what to do.
• Average coder at dead-end. What now?
• Typical Startup or Abuse?
• I feel my dream slipping away
• Why do I lose interest in every project after 6 months?
• Are you happy, well-rounded? (dealing w/ depression/lack of motivation)
• I need to find out how to finish anything I start. Help me. Please.
• I'm lost
• How have you dealt with corruption?
• So...what the hell's wrong with you, Shooter?
• Have you ever been successful in changing your personality?
• Where do I go from here?
• I'm Tired of Hacking. What Do I Do? Please Advise.

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