I live in a small industrial northern English city, about 10,000 miles from the buzz of Silicon Valley both physically and metaphorically.

I don't know how to code except a bit of really basic stuff, I don't have an education from a top university, I don't own a laptop or an iPhone or even my own home PC.

I don't work at a company that makes mashups out of widgets using the Google and Twitter APIs then turns them into Facebook apps.

But I still work in a startup, even though it's not in the web field. We're a new regional digital radio station on a platform called DAB. I love the startup atmosphere; it's so much more rewarding to come in every day and get stuck into building this thing up. It's not a web app, but it is a blank canvas for ideas and development-- we really want to do things differently to any radio station that's gone before and put to death the adage that "there are no new ideas in radio".

Personally, I take an interest in the way in which radio's using new web technologies like Twitter to have a two-way conversation with listeners and turn them into participants. I'm interested in the social news model and how it could be adapted for our medium. I want to give new life to a medium that's condemned as dying on a regular basis. We're really not "big bad old media", you know.

Some of the technical stuff on here goes way over my head, but the quality of submissions and discourse is far better than other social-news sites I could mention. I'd rather have a site that's a bit above my technical level than one that's full of conjecture about Apple laptops or pictures of cats.

Welcome, you seem like a nice guy. Say what you think and I'm sure you'll be fine. The closest thing to guidelines are at: http://ycombinator.com/hackernews.html

To quote PG: "The focus of Hacker News is going to be anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes a lot more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

It may be easier to say what that doesn't include. It doesn't include most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. It doesn't include videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. Basically, if they'd cover it on TV news, it's off-topic."

This is why HN is the best news site for tech news anywhere. I'm like Furqan (the author), a bit of a mutt, and have enjoyed reading and participating here.

As far as I'm concerned, you've built stuff and want to build more stuff; you're polite and thoughtful. Enough for me. Welcome. :)

Whatever the mixture is, it's a good one. I've always thought YC was impressive for it's ability to have spirited discussion without the constant holy wars that tend to erupt when you get a lot of smart people in a room.

The YC application even explicitly asks for evidence of non-computer hacking abilities.

Your bio, and the fact that you enjoy posting here means that you have the hacker spirit, in all likelihood. You're more than welcome.

Netiquette isn't so much different than etiquette. Treat people with respect, which you do. Add something of value, which you do. Listen to and learn from what others provide, which you are doing.

Remember, above all, this is a community (I just created an account today) like all others and I too am wondering what to say and not say.

I think the very fact that you asked the question shows that you are interested in this community remaining strong. That's what any community needs.

You should give it a whirl again, you might be surprised.

My undergrad is in Electrical Engineering. I designed industrial data monitoring & control equipment for a few years, then started doing embedded software. Got an MS in software engineering. Did more embedded, did some MFC stuff, dabbled in cgi scripts and Zope for a while. Somewhere in there had a small 2-person side business building temperature monitoring equipment for a few years. Now working on movie camera motion control. I'm about as far from Web 2.0 as you're going to get :-)

I like it here and I also hang out on Spolsky's Business of Software forum. In both cases I get more out of the business discussion than the software discussion.

I for one welcome someone with wider scope of experience who can bring something new to the discussions.

You build stuff, you can code, and you want to talk about tech stuff. I'm not sure there's much else to a hacker's definition than that.

Then what label can you give me? I'm not an aerospace engineer, I'm not a serial entrepreneur, and I'm sure as hell that I would never build an electronic passenger car.

Everyone is welcome here. We humans are extraordinarily curious beings, curiosity & willingness to explore is the main reason why we kept visiting this site.

Just kidding. I think the only requirement is to be interesting, but judging by some of my posts, perhaps even that is not required.

Welcome aboard!

But I think you are welcome here. HN started out as startup news, so someone with you interests would fit in.