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Title: I've read and taken in swombats post to 'stop offering your services', and I think that he may have a point in the general sense, that some may abuse this format to gain a business advantage.<p>That said, I think it is much too early to make the call to stop doing this, let's fix problems if and when they appear.<p>The way to deal with that is to take any Offer HN at face value unless there is proof that it is not what it seems to be, and to indcate that if and when it appears.<p>From what I've seen so far all - or at the very least most - of the offers that have been made are both genuine and heartfelt, and at some personal expense in terms of time, effort or even goods to the person offering.<p>So please do keep them coming those 'Offer HN' postings and let's hope they will put HN on the map as a place where people do more than just talk.
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Title: I’ve only been active for about a month, but lurked for awhile. While my transition from physical products to digital has encountered a few difficulties the information here has been invaluable. With experience designing, prototyping, and manufacturing physical products I wanted to provide a guide for people that are going in the opposite direction. Saw a few questions on the subject so here’s a summary of what I use.<p>Best Cheap Design Package: Ailbre Design (as low as $50)
http://www.alibre.com/
I used this before Solidworks, if the design isn’t extremely complicated this is the software to use. Make sure to find a coupon, they offer 50% off about every other month. There are 3 different price points depending on what you are doing. Very active community that helps newcomers learn.<p>Enclosure Prototyping in the US:
http://www.protomold.com/ or http://www.quickparts.com/
I tend to use Quickparts more, but Protomold is also very good. All you do is upload the design and they price it. Also Quickparts offers samples that show you different finishes, materials, and designs problems to avoid. If new, definitely order one.<p>Design Guidelines:
http://www.protomold.com/Resources.aspx
Shows you the general rules on materials and design.<p>Outsourcing Design Work:
http://elance.com/ or http://guru.com/
Excellent locations to find extra help, only accept companies after you have talked to them (I suggest IM for overseas) and only if they have sample projects and references within the US. Place a keyword at the end which they must reference in the bid so you know they read your requirements.<p>Electronics Prototyping in US:
This really depends on the type of parts, the mount, and quantity. Generally though I use http://www.screamingcircuits.com/. For just a couple there are a few cheaper options.<p>Electronics Layout:
http://www.cadsoftusa.com/index.htm
It’s cheap and gets the job done for simple projects. They have a free version to test.<p>Parts Supplier:
Small scale: http://digikey.com/
Large scale: http://arrownac.com/
If you get in touch with a sale or tech rep at Arrow they can be a great help in putting you in touch with oversea producers. Arrow’s website sucks so just find your local rep and call them.<p>Producing in China:
There aren’t really any go to firms, it depends on what you are building. For rapid injection and electronic assembly I have used http://icomold.com, they even do design and prototyping. The design work is done in the US while the manufacturing is completed in China. They sell steel injection molds for the same price as a lower quality aluminum mold in the US.<p>The general rule when producing in China is to NEVER have a product completely assembled in 1 factory unless you want copies going out the back door.<p>How to do it:
1) Have the device produced in 1-2 locations without the software
2) Have the boxes produced
3) Ship the unboxed products to the US, (LA)
4) Hire a firm to box the product and flash the hardware<p>If there are more questions I would be happy to try and answer them.
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Title: I am 20, in college, and majoring is mechanical engineering. I (used to) do some hacking (building web sites, wordpress themes, html, css, js) on the side. Started as a hobby that could help me make money in HS, and it picked up from there. I made some money, and I guess got high headed. This is a throwaway account, but I have been on HN for a while (1.5 yr+). Its a great community and a lot of what I have learned here has proven really helpful. I have read a fair share of posts from people that are in situations not as great as mine who have asked for help, advice, about life/depression/suicide, to whatnot. I have benefited a lot from some of the advice that has been doled out to introverts.<p>Back in school I thought I knew what I wanted to do, but now I am utterly clueless. I interned for a big company last summer, and utterly hated the experience, so much that I quit 5 weeks into the 10 week program. I was just uncomfortable with the whole experience, and I was very self conscious all the time, even though, I was working more efficiently, and delivering better work than my co-interns. (not to sound cocky, but true).<p>Here is my problem. I am a junior in college now, and I have no idea with regards to what I want to do. I have lost interest in classes (this actually happened a while back), but I do not want to/ cannot drop out, because I have no clue as to what I would do, so basically I am just dragging through school, and it all seems kinda pointless. I am Indian (expected to take care of my parents, sister, and be a responsible son) so a lot is expected of me, another reason that I cannot quit school. I haven't really been able to talk to my parents, and such about all of this, and other than that I am an introvert, and don't have much friends that I can talk to. I have a few friends in college from clubs, etc. but that is it, and I liked spending time alone, but now every-time I am by myself, I keep thinking about all of this ^^. that I have no freaking clue as to what I am doing with my life, and am essentially bleeding time. I do not enjoy my major, and my self esteem / self worth is at an all time low. I guess I could say that I am even losing all motivation to go to classes, and that isn't helping either. I run / workout for 45-60 minutes everyday, and that is the highlight of my day, because for a while I am able to feel good, but then this whole viscous cycle kicks in.<p>I have been to the college counseling center and that wasn't much help either because the lady I talked to the first time was just either stupid or trying to just waste my time. It wasn't beneficial, so I did repeat this process again with some other counselor, and though he was better, his suggestions still didn't help much. He suggested that I join the group counseling for international students, which was an utter waste of time.<p>Thing is that I am in control of most of my actions, just that my motivation is not there to kick in when I start to lose the grip on the situation, and start reassessing myself, and start the process of re-evaluating what I need to do. I don't know whether something is wrong with me, or whether this is something that is part of the process of entering adulthood, but life is in utter chaos, and I could use some advice/help. If you have been in a similar situation, or could help me figure out a process to get my life back on track, I would really appreciate it.<p>Thanks in anticipation.<p>*throwaway account<p>EDIT: US College
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Title: I've been doing Python professionally for 4 years now, including Django (sys admin to front end), GIS, and some basic machine learning.<p>Some pre-reading would be most effective so you'll have specific questions. If you already know how to code and are picking up Python, I recommend http://diveintopython.org/ . If you are new to programming, I recommend http://learnpythonthehardway.org/index<p>Email me to agree on a schedule; I'd prefer Freenode IRC if you want to chat.
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Title: I can offer some place to stay in Vienna, Austria.<p>My girlfriend and I live pretty close to the city center,
have a really nice and big apartment and can offer you
a place to stay if you plan to explore Europe and want
a good basecamp to get into east-europe:<p>* 40 minutes to Bratislavs
* 3 hours to Prague, Budapest..
* 5 hours to Krakau
* 7 hours to Warschau<p>* 20 minutes to the Metalab Hackerspace with Lasercutter and RepRaps!<p>Oh.. and of course Vienna is awesome, too.<p>Go see the world, you Americans! ;p
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Title: It's a commonly heard phrase in my office.<p>I'm the only developer where I work, based in a [car] dealership, which is one of the franchise locations of a car dealer group which owns [more than a few] (or so) other dealerships in quite a large area of the United Kingdom. For the record, I am not writing this on company time [half an hour lunch break, although he still does this even if I AM on my lunch break]<p>I build websites, web apps, microsites, soon to be Android Apps and iPhone apps. I am in charge of slicing and dicing photoshop templates which we get from our designer (Who sits behind me in the same office) into HTML templates to use with Drupal, CakePHP et al. I am in charge of inputting the copy for said microsites and websites from MS Word documents, this copy is written by the "Marketing Manager", who currently sits behind and to the right of me. To the right of where I sit, is my boss, the son of one of the Managing Directors of this company.<p>Do not get the tone of this post wrong, I love my job. I love the people, I love the fact that it's only twenty minutes down the road from my house, I love that parking is provided (although, not on site, about a quarter of a mile down the road). I even love my boss, he's a good, capable man and just wants to get things done and do what's best for this company.<p>However, as my work load has increased over the last two years, and things have gotten more difficult for me (harder problems, taking longer to solve and a lot more thinking) my brain has gotten tired. I've become burnt out maybe three times in the last two years, and have had to take a week off in some cases just to recover from the last project. (Considering we get 20 days holiday and zero sick pay, whenever I AM actually sick, I need to take holiday or I don't get paid for those days).<p>Sometimes, when I have really lost focus, or a problem has just circled in my head for too long to be solved without taking a break from thinking about it, I'll browse HN or reddit, not for very long, just for about 5 or 10 minutes until my head clears. More often than not, I'll be searching for the problem I have and reading articles about it.<p>My boss has the tremendous habit (when he is actually in the dealership), of coming into the office and looking straight at my screen, with the now dreaded words, "Is that work?", usually followed by "Come on [throwaway_burn]! Focus! Get some fucking work done!".<p>Now, my boss is a very visual person. If he can't instantly see results, he assumed I'm not doing any work. I've just spend four or five weeks creating a completely bespoke front end for building car quotes based on a completely experimental Web Service API built by a car valuation service. They usually make you host an MSSQL server, and they push or replicate their data to your server so you always have an up to date set of data to build cars with. My boss decided that this wasn't the way to go, because it's quite expensive so usually a single dealer group couldn't afford it, hence why you have aggregation systems, and people have it built into their customer management systems. [The web service company] probably lets us use this system for cheap as it is so undocumented when I first started using it, and it very slow, which means I have to pull down the data and store it on a MySQL database anyway, which basically means I had to code a script to automatically get the data from their web services and store it in our database every night. There is a huge amount of data in their systems and I only pull the data for four manufacturers.<p>So I built the scripts. I built the front end, even though certain things weren't documented, I managed to get them to finally send me some documentation on how to use their data effectively, and as of yesterday, the site is finally complete and finished.<p>Needless to say, it doesn't really look like it should have taken four or five weeks of work to produce the site, considering some other sites I've done, excluding the bespoke car price quoting system have taken two days at most. In fact, the actual site only took two days to build around the drupal module I made to interface with my back end data. As far as my boss is concerned, I've been sitting on my ass browsing HN and reddit for four weeks, and then took a week and a half to complete the site once I was bored with not working.<p>It has come to the point where whenever he starts his rant, I put my headphones on, or I shout at him, or I get very angry and walk off for a while. I really cannot work under these conditions for very much longer, and to be honest I am really ashamed with how I am handling his rants and outbursts.<p>I have built so many sites, systems for publishing stock to stock aggregates, systems for publishing stock to our own websites using different data we get back from the other dealerships, loyalty systems, niche seo websites, you name it, I've done it. I have made this man and this company a lot of money, and it's cost them a little over two years of my salary, which is paltry to say the least with how much I've worked.<p>They even outsourced me to develop a ticketing system for a [potentially recognisable car service] company, to the tune of more than half my annual salary for four weeks work.<p>It's an abusive environment, regardless of the fact that it's overlooked if I come in 20 minutes late in the morning, so long as I make it up at the end.<p>I'm in horrible position though, I really do like my boss in every other capacity other than a boss. His lack of understanding of what it is I do, and the fact that he can't seem to a) estimate how long a project will take me, and b) realise that not all programming work is instantly visible makes me think that I am going to quit in an epic fashion of diving off the balcony head first into an R8 Spyder and break my neck on the fucking windscreen.<p>Therein lies the problem. Where I live, there are no jobs. Some statistics recently suggested that a snowball had a better chance of opening an ice cream shop in the deepest layer of hell than I have of getting another job.<p>Although I have two years experience (more than double that if you count the freelancing I have done in a non salaried position) in PHP, MySQL, HTML, Javascript, LAMP Server administration, networking, etc, there aren't enough jobs to go around the unemployed in this city, let alone some guy with no degree.<p>Trying to discuss this with him really isn't working. Any advice?<p>TL;DR: Does anyone else browse the net in work when they are having a hard time focusing, but not blatantly trying to hide it and yet get rebuked even when the only other option is to sit, knuckles dragging drooling on the keyboard whilst staring at the screen because your brain no longer works?
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Title: inspired by yesterday's thread of babies, i posted this to my email list.
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Title: On Monday night I couldn't sleep. I had a domain name that I'd bought (http://fstr.net) that wasn't getting approved by the parking provider.<p>It was just sitting there, doing nothing and I couldn't stand it. So I thought why not put some web games on it?<p>So I coded... and coded ... and coded ... and by 3AM I had a page, with a database that linked up a bunch of games that were declared "embeddable" by their owner (addictinggames.com).<p>Tuesday, it made $0.50 on Adsense. Yesterday $1.01.<p>Now if only I were able to scale that up by about 80 times (using only part time labor) and I'd be able to 'take the pay cut' so I could switch into scaling it up by about 200 times for a great big raise!<p>Reading HN has really opened my eyes to the fact that the internet is made by people. It doesn't have to be created by corporations - but it's something that anyone can do. Holy Crap! Even me.<p>I just checked my profile and I've been a Hacker News reader for 94 days. With the income I've earned from this project, that's an income of over a penny a day so far... Let's see if I can ramp that up?<p>I want to put some time into improving the technology. Initially I was loading a random list of about 1000 games - but I've changed that to show the games sorted by order or user rank.<p>I've also got game tag and category data - so I can add navigation, maybe a fun, self updating 'active search' type of thing (I'm already loading the games via ajax)<p>I'd like to pull from other games sources - many of the big games sites allow you to host their games (since they get the linkback on the flash load screen)<p>Some even have revenue sharing on the ads inside the game as well.<p>The page desperately needs to be optimized in terms of adsense placement. I'm getting a 1.5% CTR and I've got friends who have shown me placements that they earn 30% off of. He tells me he's got optimizations that earn him 70% CTR.<p>I'd also like to redesign (again) so it looks a little more polished and professional. So far it's really just a ~8 hour hack job and ugly.<p>But earning a dollar on the first day? That's a bit encouraging. I'd love to make a real, sustainable 'gig' out of running a games site (or any site for that matter) ...<p>I really think HackerNews might be the type of place that has the advice I need (and might be able to warn me off of some of the pitfalls I might run into).<p>Anything you can tell me would be greatly appreciated (a hell of a lot cheaper than an MBA program ;).
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Title: We're a design and development team with a company registered in Europe (Portugal). We have a product we've been selling worldwide (mainly to the US) for quite a while. We've had our problems with being non-US in the past, the main one being not having a merchant account and thus being impossible to signup for Authorize.net (or a similar service).<p>For the last couple of weeks we've been thinking about incorporating for different reasons: taxes and paperwork. We've been hearing about taxes and incorporating on Delaware, Texas, Nevada and the likes but we'd love to know what you guys on HN would suggest.<p>Where are your startups based? If in the US, what State? Where would you suggest us to register the company and where should I look into? We're looking for low taxes and almost no red tape, paperwork, invoice requirements, etc... We're developers and designers, we like to build awesome products ;)<p>We'd love to hear about not only taxing but also about monthly/quarterly/yearly paperwork one needs to fill in and submit on each example you guys know about.<p>Thanks for sharing. Feel free to link to any resources you know about.
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Title: I've been meaning to do this for a while, and offer HN seems like the right venue. I'd love to connect the Facebook photos team with the HN community in an authentic way. It seems like a laid-back lunch is a good way to start.<p>Interested? Email me: [email protected] and mention whether Nov 15th works for you. We probably have capacity for 6-10 people.<p>Photos team members that will likely attend:
- Justin Mitchell (hn: justinmitchell; tech lead)
- Tom Watson (designer)
- Paul Carduner (hn: pcardune; engineer)
- Nathaniel Roman (hn: nroman; engineer)
- Makinde Adeagbo (hn makinde; engineer)
- Stefan Parker (user interface engineer)<p>What this is not:
- This is not a "ploy" by the recruiting or PR departments (neither of those teams are involved)
- This is not an interview or a chance to get hired (though we'll tell you what it's like to work here)
- This is not a way to "advertise" our brand (we leave that to marketing).
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Title: I make vinyl decals. It's not a business - I do it for fun. It's extremely satisfying to see an idea come to life so quickly, and the labor itself is somewhat therapeutic. I genuinely enjoy the creative process involved with making vinyl decals, and I sure could use a break from these brain-busting college courses. If there could only be one community I would give back to, this would definitely be the one.<p>So here's my offer: You have a startup. I make decals. I will make a vinyl decal for your startup - for free. You can stick it on your office window to appear more legitimate or slap it on the back of your car for advertising. I really don't care what you do with it, as long as it is your company's logo and/or website. These decals will be "die-cut" style, meaning there is no background or border. Here are some examples for clarification:<p>http://www.lorenburton.com/decals.jpg<p>No trademarked logos (unless you own the trademark). To keep things simple, let's do matte black or matte white only, maximum size 5"x8", and no crazy intricate designs. Single color logo/text (see examples).<p>Final thought: not sure how to handle shipping. Obviously there would be shipping costs incurred, but I don't feel comfortable charing HN for shipping. Any thoughts on how to handle this?<p>If your interested in a decal for your startup, send me an email at lorendburton (at) gmail.com, with .ai or .eps file attached. Please specify size and color.<p>Let's have fun with this! I'm interested to see how this idea is received, considering most "Offer HN" threads have been in regards to services. I am not looking for any personal gain here, unless you consider having fun and bringing ideas to life to be personal gain.
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Title: I'm going to be in Portland, OR for about 10 days or so, starting on 11/3.<p>I'd love to meet up with any hackers in the area. If you're thinking about applying (or have applied) to YC, I'm also happy to answer any questions / share my experience. (I'll buy the beer.)<p>Also looking for recommendations of things to do, groups to check out, etc.
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Title: A few of us are catching up to shoot the breeze arising from this HN Offer<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1837408<p>Where: Match Bar and Grill, 279 Little Lonsdale St, corner of Swanston, Melbourne<p>When: 3 November, 5:30pm onwards<p>It's short notice, but hope to see you there. Should be a great chance to meet like-minded
people and get feedback on ideas and startups. I'm on 0433 507 750 if you need to track us down.<p>Please upvote to bring this to people's attention.
[edit: thanks guys, hitting the front page should be sufficient]
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Title: Howdy, HN'ers;
A few weeks ago, we had an idea for a fun side project: a sorta-Memcache-like data storage system that could be trivially used for building simple web apps. After a few evenings of hacking, @dustball and I are pleased to present OpenKeyval.<p>OpenKeyval is a completely open key-value data store, exposed as a drop-dead simple web service. The goal is to make this a very easy way to persist data in web applications.<p>http://openkeyval.org/<p>As a data storage system, it's pretty basic: you can store any data you want under a particular key, and then fetch it later. You can also serve it back with a particular MIME type, so it can be used to serve small resources. The keyword small is operative here: the data is limited to 64 KiB, which is plenty of space for storing interesting data, but not really big enough for storing images or any other sort of media.<p>As a social experiment, I think it's sort of fun: there's no authentication of any kind -- just come up with sufficiently unique keys to make it unlikely that anyone else will stumble upon them. Scouts honour that anything you put here is safe in our hands.<p>I'm curious as to what people think this might be useful for, and if you have any feature requests. I'd love to see people try to build something with it -- but go easy on us, since it's just an experiment. :)
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Title: Hi all,<p>I am from a third world country and my fomer co-founder is a u.s citizen.<p>We have been working since last 3 years on a ad network start-up which closed earlier this year.<p>I started a part-time project and i need some money to sustain myself so i decided to ask for 500 USD for
6 months and also 2 - 4 hrs commitment everyday from my former co-founder the project kicked off really well and
we generated about 6K income in 1 week after the expenses our total profit was about 4K.<p>My co-founder paid for 2 months thats 500x2 after that the venture was profitable so he never paid and he didnt commit any
time in 6 months he only spend 10-15 days avg 1-2 hrs on advicing and i myself spend 18 hrs a day in coding and business
development.<p>After repeatly warning him i dedicided yesterday asked to not to do any futher business with him and pay him for the
expenses and he got mad hearing this he threatened to sue in U.S court and file a grandtheft against me he says i will never be
able to step in US or do business with a US company if i dont give him 2000 USD right now plus 50% of the company.<p>I feel cheated to work with someone who cannot commit time and effort as much i do in the venture.<p>All agreements we had were via chat and voice and not in legal sheet.<p>The company is a not us company but must of our customers are from u.s.<p>Please advice<p>Thank you !
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Title: I originally posted this list 3 months ago (July 2010). I've since improved upon it.<p>Now the list has been expanded to 200 people (previously 100).<p>Hacker News usernames are shown wherever possible.<p>I've also posted a link to a CSV file which contains the full list up to 1,000 people.<p>And a cron job will automatically regenerate the list once a week.
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Title: Hello, HN!<p>Appleseed is an open source distributed social networking framework I've been developing for the past few years, and I've been making rapid progress in the past few months.<p>I'm giving out invites to the test site, and I wanted to personally ask HN users to check out this work in progress and if you could give me feedback or suggestions, that would be fantastic.<p>Post your email here, or send an email to [email protected] if you don't want it to be public, and I'll send you an invite. Once you sign up, you'll get 5 invites of your own.<p>Project's Website: http://opensource.appleseedproject.org<p>Github: http://github.com/appleseedproj/appleseed<p>Twitter Announcement: http://twitter.com/appleseedproj/status/29017132391<p>Thanks again for being a great community, and feel free to ask any questions and I'll do my best to respond.
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Title: I'm building a Django app and I'd like to use a javascript library for the charts, is it the best way to put graphics in django aplications?. I need simple types of charts: pie and bar(with negatives).<p>I began to use jqplot but I'm having some problems with some options.<p>I'd like to find a library with pretty nice and colorful charts and compatible with the majority of the principal browsers(ie,firefox,chrome).
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Title: Has anyone here been acquired by google who can talk about their experiences after it was all said and done?<p>I am curious and I'm sure a lot of others are as to the experiences to a company merging into google's current work force vs joining as a single employee.
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Title: I am a student in an undergraduate programme from India just turned 21. I dont have many friends and mostly a loner in college who always feel shy to talk and kind of introvert. I was a good student till first year and then things started to fall apart from second year. I always felt that I was not guided properly and even the professors themselves dont know anything in India.<p>My grades were horrible for two years and that was
like so demoralising that I lost my self confidence even nore. Being shy at college also did not help and even some good for nothing teachers gave me a hard time; I fell completely lonely, even the motivation which was from visiting HN and other sites is fading. Not even remember any single piece of achievement and appreciation in these two years and always feel like dropping out of college.
I now think I am going on right path but still college and the people phobia keeps haunting me.
Never have I had a clear mind; the minute I start studying I get emotionally down by remembering any fscking embarrasing situation I had. I have never consulted my problem this deeply to anyone in college. The fact that I let go couple of years that could had made me more confident in python programming is making me feel worse. Need some good advice that will not let me look back on my shitty past?
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Title: Most startup success stories I read about involve seemingly Hollywood scripted stories about how the founders ended up where they are today.<p>I wonder though, do I only read stories like that because people only write about the interesting startup stories, or is there some merit to the fact that you really have to go against the grain and shake up the world to do something big?<p>I am curious to hear your story if you have started a successful company that had a seemingly boring road to success.<p>Edit: successful means the founders got rich enough to not have to work anymore and live an upper class American lifestyle. Although if you have a startup and are not quite at this point, I would still love to hear it.
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Title: I've been visiting Hacker News for just under two years, and recently I've noticed a significant uptick in mean-spirited comments. This echos a recent comment by PG, "There are more dumb and/or mean comments than there used to be..."<p>As you are commenting, or up-voting and down-voting comments, please be conscious of how comments might affect others. This is a fantastic community of incredibly bright people. We should be able to engage in thoughtful debate and discussion, while remaining friendly and polite.<p>Thank you everyone!
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Title: In PG's essay about "what happend to yahoo":<p>> By 1998, Yahoo was the beneficiary of a de facto Ponzi scheme. Investors were excited about the Internet. One reason they were excited was Yahoo's revenue growth. So they invested in new Internet startups. The startups then used the money to buy ads on Yahoo to get traffic. Which caused yet more revenue growth for Yahoo, and further convinced investors the Internet was worth investing in.<p>Is Facebook in a similar situation today? They're not profitable, but investors are investing in them. They even acquire startups!!<p>As far as I can tell, all of Facebook's money comes from investments. They're getting bigger, but not because of any revenue they're actually making.<p>The founders got rich.<p>So economically, how does this work?<p>It seems to me like a bubble phenomenon:<p>Investment money => grow bigger => more investments.<p>The guys at the top of the pyramid benefit the most.<p>No actual revenue is being made.<p>I don't even know if they have a viable business model. I don't know the details of whether or not they're profitable yet, or how much they're making, but from what I'm reading around, they're either not profitable or the revenue they're actually making is very small. (Please do correct me).
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Title: Is this a bug or feature? Am I the only one getting this?
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Title: "What people want" is a common definition. Are there qualifiers to that we could flesh out? For example should we exclude things that people want simply because they believe others will want them more later (speculation)?
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Title: A friend wrote me on the subject of nude scans taken by backscatter x-ray machines: "No worse than a doctor seeing it."<p>After reading several comments on a Hacker News thread, I decided to write a note expressing the implications of the machine and pat-downs. I would appreciate reading your thoughts and ways to improve the content. The original thread:<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1848622<p>--<p>"No worse than a doctor seeing it."<p>Respectfully, I disagree.<p>* You can screen your doctor for trustworthiness.<p>* You can choose to visit a doctor of a gender you prefer.<p>* Doctors are bound by the Hippocratic Oath: "I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know."<p>* Doctors rarely take, much less retain, nude photographs of your body.<p>Collection and use of personal information, including digital photographs, paves a road for government with inscrutable purposes: using information about people while denying them the ability to choose how that information is used. This is a severe tilt in balance between the power of the people and the power of the state. A tilt, to emphasize, that is unfavourable to the people.<p>In Smith v. City of Artesia, 1989, the court said, "Privacy is inherently personal. The right to privacy recognises the sovereignty of the individual." What is more private than our private parts? What can the general public be subjected to, en masse, that is more personally invasive than a pat-down or nude photo?<p>Bluntly, the choice is: allow an anonymous agent to take nude photographs of your child, or let strangers grope your child until their hands meet "resistance": a euphemistic way to say, "touch their testicles, penis, or vulva."<p>Any security measure that forces someone to feel a child's crotch so as to encourage parents to usher their children through a machine that takes nude photographs--without probable cause of having committed a crime--is a measure that aught not to exist.<p>Violations of our private areas must be countered with outrage and utmost resistance against corporations and governments alike. The TSA are not police and North America has no Police States, yet.<p>Add to this the uncertain health risks. Terahertz waves have resonant effects that can unzip double-stranded DNA, which could significantly interfere with gene expression and DNA replication. Think children, pregnant women, or sperm. And guess what wave frequency x-ray backscatter machines use? Hint: THz. http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.5294<p>My emotions surge at the thought of people speaking or acting out against tyranny. People must express themselves vehemently and eloquently against the infractions that governments permit to be made on our freedoms. Sometimes one voice, or one brave action, is enough to inspire a nation. http://i.imgur.com/cfifB.jpg<p>Martin Niemöller foretells of what happens when people--even those who prefer to drive than fly--keep quiet: They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up.<p>John Dewey stated, "We cannot separate the idea of ourselves and our own good from our idea of others and of their good." When we protect the rights of individuals by forcing Corporations and Governments to sit at the same table as Respect, Dignity, and Decency, we protect all of our society.<p>--<p>More reading material: http://davidjarvis.ca/dave/letters/nothing-to-hide.pdf<p>Thank you for reading, and thank you for the original thread--it is inspiring. I look forward to your feedback.<p>Suggestions for spreading the word are also welcome.
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52
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Title: Please lead with the positions' locations.<p>--edit--
And make it clear if working remotely is a possibility! (thanks cperciva)
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157
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Title: Will you be porting your apps? I am wondering how this will affect developer friendly hosts like Linode.
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50
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Title: Why the Semantic Web didn't work, won't work, and what we can do about it.
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43
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Title: Similar to the "Who is Hiring" thread but, please, <i>remote</i> positions only.<p>Remote and co-lo'd work posts should be kept separate. Many of us who work remotely tend to work exclusively remotely.
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213
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Title: As discussed previously on HN(http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1773398) a bunch of us are going to commit to actually launching an MVP by the end of November.<p>We're gathering in the Facebook group here:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_141079939271952<p>What are you going to be launching in November?
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78
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Title: For those of us living in the states who need to vote, I know it can be easy to get your head in the code and forget a lot of things, but today is election day. You're not asked to do a lot of things, but voting is one of them. Please try to find some time to get out and cast your ballot, no matter what your party or preferences. Remember that you don't vote to make a difference, you vote because it's your obligation to do so.
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454
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Title: There are few careers around today that wouldn't benefit from the employee having a better understanding of programming and just IT in general.<p>As well as the fundamentals such as reading, writing & mathematics, I fully intend to introduce my son to computing from a very early age.<p>I was thinking that I could introduce him to things like BASIC not long after he masters the art of counting to ten but I would love to hear from you guys.<p>How would you suggest I give my son a head-start in an IT orientated world?
He's 6 months old currently so I have plenty of time!
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Title: Check it out at http://www.voicendo.com/<p>In short, Voicendo is a virtual phone system for small businesses and independent professionals. We support all the stuff like call forwarding, menus, conference calling - even SMS. You can use local or toll free numbers, each at $5/month. All usage (incoming/outgoing minutes both local and toll free, and SMS) is billed pay-as-you-go at $0.03.<p>It's all drag and drop, I feel anyone could use it.<p>Would love your feedback on the idea and its direction!
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Title: "Rate My Startup" posts have increased dramatically in the
last couple months, to the point where spammers started to
post links with "Rate My Startup" prepended. Obviously we
can't just allow any newly-created account to post a link
to any site, no matter how offtopic it would otherwise be,
with the claim that it's their startup (or weekend project,
or whatever). And yet I would not want to ban RMS
posts entirely. We need some way to separate legit ones,
and it seems like the simplest policy is to allow them
from established accounts but not newly created ones.<p>I'd been planning to consider ways to embody this in the software, maybe with a new type of item that (like polls) had a karma threshold, but I've been postponing dealing
with it till I was done reading YC applications. In the meantime
for the past several weeks I've been killing RMS posts that
weren't from established accounts.<p>I really need to get back to reviewing applications, since today
is the last day. In a couple days I'll revisit the matter.
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224
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Title: Today, the dev community in Minneapolis got word that the wreckage of the private plane piloted by the CEO of The Nerdery, Luke Bucklin, was found in the mountains east of Jackson Hole Wyoming. The plane had been missing for more than a week. Luke, and his three sons, were returning home from a family vacation. There were no survivors.<p>Most of you probably don't know of the organization called The Nerdery (http://www.nerdery.com). They're a group of 120 nerds in Minneapolis who are technological wizards - building mobile apps, web apps, legacy apps - any app you can imagine - they've probably built it. And you've probably also seen their work out there in the interwebs, too.<p>They're also the creators and sponsors of The Overnight Website Challenge (http://overnightwebsitechallenge.com/), where once a year 10-15 development teams of 10 people each gather together to donate 24 hours of their time to build websites for local non profits. That's well over 2500 hours of hard core hacking, donated for FREE, to groups in need, every year. This organization has done good - a lot of it.<p>Most of you didn't know Luke. Some of you did. Some of you might know someone who worked at or works at The Nerdery. Some of you might actually still work at The Nerdery. Either way, Luke was a guiding force that made, makes, and will continue to make The Nerdery an awesome place to work for people who love code, technology, and all things nerdy.<p>To quote my friend and former colleague @malbiniak: "He proved that you can build a successful business, based on passion, and maintain decency in the process. The more sincere the effort, the more genuine the return. Best. ROI. Lesson. Ever." That defines Luke, and the team at The Nerdery.<p>I'm a relative newbie here, and realize I run the risk of getting flamed for this post. There are other tragedies in the world, all deserving of our attention - not just this one. But the dev community in Minneapolis is mourning right now, and so are members of this (Hacker News) community, and I don't really give a shit if posting here pisses someone off.<p>If it's your thing, head over to http://blog.nerdery.com or http://www.lukeandginger.com/, or follow the conversation on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23LukeComeHome.<p>Also, please take a moment to read the thank you messages for the search and rescue teams involved in this effort: http://thanks.lukeandginger.com/
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213
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Title: to Enter your Info: https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dFZkT2QxZXFFRWlYUWoyUG4zRVBIZGc6MQ<p>View the Results: https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0Ataf_IejHzNydFZkT2QxZXFFRWlYUWoyUG4zRVBIZGc&output=html<p>Thanks @kellyreid for the updated links
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78
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Title: A significant number of applicants seem to have overlooked this part of the application instructions:<p><pre><code> 1. Please put your email address in the email field of your profile.
</code></pre>
If you applied this cycle, please do that, or we'll have no way to notify you later today.
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221
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Title: I've started the process of looking for work (mainly Javascript, PHP, MySQL, and willing and able to learn anything), and I have to say it really sucks.<p>The problems are:<p><pre><code> * Same listings across hundreds of websites.
* Aggregation of aggregation of aggregation.
* Sometimes applying forces me to create an account on some site I don't care about
* If I apply to each posting I see that is interesting, I'll likely apply for the same job 5 times.
* URLs that expire in short amount of time
</code></pre>
As a result, I'm finding it impossible to keep myself organized. Have I already applied for this listing? Is it a place I've disqualified for some reason [eg: pay is too low, looks like an HTML chop-shop, etc]? What company is it for? I end up doing the same sleuthing over and over again to find out it's either a job I've applied for, or a job I don't want to apply for.<p>Throughout this process, I've learned I <i>much</i> prefer responding to jobs that are listed on the company's own website. And, I've also learned to copy and past parts of job descriptions into Google to find those original postings.<p>Anyway, HN, what's the best way to go about finding a job (besides direct referrals)? And, why is this such a pain in the ass?
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50
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Title: We're sorry to say we couldn't accept your proposal for funding.
Please don't take it personally. The applications we receive get
better every funding cycle, and since there's a limit on the number
of startups we can interview in person, we had to turn away a lot
of genuinely promising groups.<p>Another reason you shouldn't take this personally is that we know
we make lots of mistakes. It's alarming how often the last group
to make it over the threshold for interviews ends up being one that
we fund. That means there are surely other good groups that fall
just below the threshold and that we miss even interviewing.<p>http://ycombinator.com/whynot.html<p>We're trying to get better at this, but it's practically certain
that groups we rejected will go on to create successful startups.
If you do, we'd appreciate it if you'd send us an email telling us
about it; we want to learn from our mistakes.<p>Y Combinator team<p>-----------------------------------<p>My pitch was WikiTorrents.org, which is user-created lists of downloadable videos.<p>If you want to help me with some seed money, regardless of amount, maybe I can turn this whole thing into a positive. Email me at citizenkeys AT gmail DOT com .<p>Here is the WikiTorrents.org collection of YCombinator applicant videos: http://wikitorrents.org/wiki/ycombinator_applicants
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Title: " If you thought the rate of change was fast thanks to the garage innovators of Silicon Valley, wait until the garages of Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore get fully up to speed. I sure hope we’re ready. " -- Quote from the article.<p>I sure hope this turns to reality and the tide rises the rate of innovation that has meaningful social impacts on problems like poverty and disease plaguing the developing nations.
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75
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Title: If you're in the Bay Area, dying to sit down w/ Paul Graham, here's one quick and easy way to get what you want and help out a worthy cause at the same time.<p>Bing Nursery School, affiliated with Stanford University and 1 of the top ten nursery schools in the US, is holding its annual Autumn fundraising auction on Sat. Nov. 13, 6pm, to raise money for scholarship fund, helping poor families to send their kids to Bing. Item #406 on the silent auction block is "Talk About Your Start-up w/ Paul Graham"!, estimate value is $500. The starting bid however is around $10. The auction is open to public.<p>Here's a partial description of the item:
"In this amazing opportunity, Paul will take you to lunch and spend an hour talking with you about your startup idea, or help you come up with an idea that is suited to you. Don't miss this once in a lifetime chance to help make your dream a reality!"<p>http://www.stanford.edu/dept/bingschool/giving_harvestmoon.html<p>Please help this worthy cause. Bing is an awesome school and I wish every parent can send their kids to Bing. Every year Bing staffs and parents put in so much efforts to raise around $300,000 so Bing can offer more scholarship to deserving families. This is your chance to help and get some help for yourself.<p>http://www.stanford.edu/dept/bingschool/index.html<p>Disclaimer: I'm a Bing parent and volunteering on the Solicitation team for this Bing auction. If you need help in either attending or bidding, please contact the school or PM me directly. Thanks.<p>More disclaimer: Paul Graham has nothing to do with this submission.<p>Add: if you want to bid and can't be at the auction, please contact Bing Nursery, they'll be happy to make arrangements for your bid.
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84
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Title: PHP for Android project (PFA) aims to make PHP development in Android not only possible but also feasible providing tools and documentation.
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43
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Title: Yesterday, I submitted a post regarding the loss of Luke Bucklin and his sons in a plane crash last week. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1861964). The show of support for the Bucklin family and crew at The Nerdery is absolutely amazing.<p>To all of you in the HN community, thank you.
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190
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Title: At the end of my first (freshmen) year of engineering I realized I had totally trashed my reading habit (Maybe I because I had to study 8 subjects which were mostly irrelevant to my major i.e. ECE ). I used to read about 50-60 pages per day in my commute to high school (about half hour each way). Even though I commute more now (1&half hour each way) and that too in a much more comfortable bus, I had started reading less. So at the start of this semester(its mostly ended now) I (re)started reading.<p>I completed the Foundation series and the last two novels of Paulo Coelho. Other than that I completed Makers and FTW. Both were fun. Right now I am reading two books simultaneously (they both require different kind of attention so its no biggie), they are Godel Escher Bach (funny story how I got it, but that would be a big tangent here) and The Elements of Computing systems.<p>What are you reading right now?
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79
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Title: My highschool career could be summed up by one word - mediocre. I didn't do horrible, but I did minimal, except for being in the robotics club. I graduated with the minimal credits because I wanted to finish in 3 years. At the time the classroom environment felt toxic. I was 17 and landed a salaried position doing web development with a very cool company.
Fast forward and I'm almost 20, don't really know if I feel a passion for software - or at least professionally. I realized I only enjoy software if I'm building what I want to build or something that interests me. I'm wondering what HN would do in my shoes, should I just go to college, or is there a better option? I'm willing to put the work into school but I wonder if the cost is worth it. Please consider I would have to start at a community college of sorts because of my academic history. Anyways, please share thoughts and suggestions, thanks.<p>edit: spelling
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41
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Title: I ask because there are so many open source projects based on PHP code, but from what I've read RoR is faster and easier to work with. I'd like to get opinions on the matter to reference for future decisions in startup development
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82
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Title: Gents,<p>I thought it might be worthwhile and somewhat cathartic to ask this question here. I'm a long time, accomplished techie and a bit of a serial entrepreneur. I also wonder if I might be a bit of a functioning alcoholic.<p>I've been drinking regularly since my early teens. In the area of the country where I grew up it was about the only thing to do. I drank too much in high school, college, and grad school, and the initial stages of my PhD, all the while still managing to ace most of my coursework.<p>Fortunately, I married a very stubborn woman, and she's cut down my drinking substantially. However, I still drink at least 4 times a week, and each night on average 3-6 high alcohol beers.<p>Even still, I'm not a violent drunk or really a drunk in general. I have developed a pretty high tolerance, so the drinks I have just place me into a comfortable mood, not a stupor. I'm a loving, affectionate husband and father; I just find that alcohol takes the edge off my life. I've quit at times for periods of a month with no sort of withdrawal symptoms, so I don't believe I'm physically addicted. I've always had a bit of an addictive personality, so I think my dependence is largely psychological.<p>The problem is, my drinking is impulsive. I'm in a senior leadership role by day and I work on my entrepreneurial endeavors by night. I wake up most mornings telling myself it's going to be all work on my ideas when I get home that evening, but by 7 pm the stress of the day makes that beer (and couch time with the wife) so much more appealing.<p>I'm worried on too fronts: a., the things I'm not able to accomplish because I procrastinate through alcohol, and b., health problems.<p>Regaring a., how much could I have accomplished if I didn't impusively give in and drink a beer or six? I've had at least one project that's dragged on now for 3 months and I attribute at least some of that drag to beer. If I'm honest with myself, a number of my other projects have suffered because of this same drag on productivity. Hangovers and the general malaise the day after make it very difficult to keep up and focused at times.<p>Regarding b., my blood pressure has become borderline high over the last two years (I'm in my late 30s), and I am guessing that alcohol has a lot to do with it. If marijuana were to become legal, I'd definitely be open to switching to that, but as it is my wife is totally against it because of its legal status. I've used it in the past and found it to be a wonderful alternative to alcohol. Again, I'm not addicted to the feeling alcohol gives you, but to the edge it takes off my life.<p>Anyway, I'd love to hear from other HNers regarding insights or tips. I've read that substance abuse in general tends to be common in those with higher IQs, so I imagine there are at least a few of you who have been, or are here, with me.
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116
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Title: Given some of the recent discussions of fitness/exercise on HN, I've decided to try taking up a martial art. Aside from a couple of years fencing in my late teens, this will be a new experience.<p>What martial arts do you practice? Do you have any recommendations? Advice for beginners? How did you get started?<p>Thanks!
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56
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Title: I detest recruiters with the fiery incandescent white hot burning heat of a nova, but unfortunately I feel like i have to deal with them because I live in Edinburgh but work in London, i dont take part in the local community because i'm not there.<p>I applied for a 3 month contract position online. I have this recruiter call me and give me the usual bullshit and it gets to the usual "can i send over your CV to them?", I say sure as i always do after they've wasted 15 minutes of my time asking if i know PHP, if i then know LAMP, then asking my if i know Linux, apache and MySQL, then asking me if i know HTML, then CSS and you get the idea. They ask me all these questions even though 1) my CV they are looking at in front of them says so and 2) they got my CV by me sending it on an online ad asking for these specific skills.<p>So after i've given them permission to send my CV, the woman asks me for 2 technical references, i say to her that if the company likes the look of my CV then i'd be happy to provide references but i dont just hand out peoples details on a whim because i'd hate people to do that to me. She tells me that she cant send my CV without first getting the references. Normally i'd tell her to piss off politely at this point but the daily rate was going through the market rate ceiling and i'm a whore for money.<p>So i say sure, i'll give you references, i'll go and get permission from them and get back to you. I do this and email her the next day with contact details. She emails back and asks what companies they work for, i tell them they're freelancers that i've done work for. She says that colleagues arent good enough and will need managers i've worked under. I explain they're clients, not colleagues, and that i'm not an employee, i'm a self employed developer with my own company and clients, i dont and have never had a manager, i'm the guy people come to because they're not technical, i take care of everything for them. The position i'm looking for requires me to be the main technical guy there, surely she'd get where i'm coming from. She asked for technical references, thats what i gave her, people who understood and could articulate my technical ability.<p>But alas no, i've been penalised for not being a corporate drone, i avoid working for large corporations because its soul destroying and i hate bureaucracy. I like working for other freelancers and small agencies, its far more friendly and less political and i dont have to write screeds of bullshit documents when a quick email is good enough.<p>Anyway, sorry for the rant but this pissed me off today, i really wish i could totally avoid recruiters as when i have found work without them its been orders of magnitude easier and faster, but they know where the good paying gigs are. Someone please disrupt this industry.<p>tl;dr
Recruiters suck and only care about arbitrary bullshit.
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72
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Title: Hi Guys,
This is my third or forth try to address this community and ask advice w my startup (previously I got zero responses).<p>I am launching my project (as part of HN - November Launch pad initiative)
Ystd i got some 1k uniqs about 50 registrations (couple paid), few calls from potential customers, advisors, investors etc<p>My question is again the same. What now? What should i do now? I have solid roadmap on developing product, but feel like I am all over on business dev strategy: I was sure my initial market is education(screencasts, tutorial, etc) and got some good agreements there, but yest couple guys from Hollywood called and said that i should go to LA for big guys in Movies and entertainment industries... I feel like i am lost a need some good advices.<p>Thanks in advance. Hope this post will not get lost again, please consider upvoting, i really need some advice from respectful ppl here(not more traffic, thats why i am not posting link to my site here.)<p>Edit:
Based on feedback in comments here is the link: http://videolla.com
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89
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Title: I see lots of YC apps covered by TC, featured by few other popular media and wondering what percentage of the app make it big.
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40
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Title: I bought the domain to force myself to do something with the free time I'll soon have an abundance of.<p>I want to see more young programmers doing systems programming and making cool things with the language that forms the basis of almost everything we use.<p>What do <i>you</i> want to see covered in a 'book' that purports to teach C the hard way? :)<p>I will be following Zed's example, although I'll be influenced by my learning under K&R. I really do want to be demonstrating proper, modern C.
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53
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Title: So has anyone around here hacked their homes? I'm talking about any sort of thing like controlling all lights, air conditioners and other devices wirelessly from a central console ? Or just setting up your own custom anti-theft system.
Any hacks would be awesome to hear about.
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96
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Title: [This is the first thread I've started here on HN, so I apologize if I made some kind of obvious blunder.]<p>I was wondering what other hackers' opinions are regarding the value and importance of rational thinking versus intuitive thinking.<p>By intuitive thinking I mean "going with your gut," doing something because it "feels right," and pursuing something you feel inspired to pursue even though you don't have any rational explanation why at the time.<p>Rational thinking, on the other hand, would be having a fully realized logical plan and explanation for your actions and decisions.<p>In the past, I have met some hacker types who think that rationality is the be-all end-all of everything, and that if you can't explain or prove something rationally, then it's not of any value.<p>Personally, I think that intuition can be more powerful than rationality in some cases, and certainly equally important to train and be able to use. (In my experience, decisions and actions based on intuition usually end up having a rational explanation, I just don't fully understand until later.)<p>I also think that you can train your intuition, or at least train yourself to recognize when your intuition is good, and then follow it.<p>Since most people here are trying to think of something new and useful, I imagine that they understand the importance of creativity and imagination, and since intuition and inspiration are crucial for that, I would guess that most people here basically agree with me, but I was wondering what other hackers have to say about this.<p>What do you think?
Thanks.
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51
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Title: I'm curious if there are any good books or online resources or even coaches/tutors for etiquette and manners, particularly as it applies to academic and tech conferences...<p>I don't mean like where you put your fork and knife but more:<p>- how to get in and out of a conversation circle<p>- event invitations: when is it ok to go and not go<p>- what's the appropriate amount to talk about yourself and your idea<p>- how to identify this conversation is going nowhere<p>- how to approach FAMOUS GUY<p>- how to appropriately ask your friend to introduce you to his friend, FAMOUS GUY<p>- etc
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62
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Title: Would be really, really great to have you here and take a deeper look on the startup scene here. May be I am just being to ambitious.
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50
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Title: I'm trying to come up with a good math joke for our math team t-shirts. Last year we had "Know you limits, don't drink and derive." The shirt included a fuzzy graph.<p>I'm thinking about using an xkcd comic if the author gives me permission, but the images are somewhat small for t-shirts, so I might have to throw my own together anyways.<p>Got any good ideas?
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54
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Title: I've recently read stories of startups that became successful and were bought out for large sums, but the founders received little from the transaction.<p>How does this happen?<p>Also, how do cases like Steve Jobs and Harry Osborn occur where they are removed from their own company? Do VC's and Investors really take that much of the company? How much influence do they hold over a company they invest in?<p>Why would a founder continue if they lost their ownership? Why would a founder give up ownership of their company in the first place? Isn't one of the prominent appealing aspects of the start-up world to own your own company?<p>Yes, i know i used the green goblin as an example. On an unrelated sidethought, it would be fairly interesting to see the corporate dynamics of LexCorp and Wayne Enterprises interact with one another ... surely they would have corporate take-overs etc.<p>Sorry for all the questions ..... any thoughts would be great.
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58
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Title: I was asked the other day by a friend whether i regretted a few of the major decisions that I've made in life..
That got me wondering what kind of regrets people in a similar situation to me have.<p>So what are your regrets?
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49
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Title: Inspired by the usesthis.com link, I thought it would be fun to see what hardware/software/etc. HN uses.
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116
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Title: http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm
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73
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Title: Hi all,<p>I'd love to get some feedback from the HN community on a webapp side project I've been working on recently. In the spirit of November launch month, I'd like to offer up PCPartPicker:<p>http://pcpartpicker.com<p>PCPartPicker provides computer part selection, compatibility guidance, and multi-part pricing comparisons for DIY PC builders.<p>I originally created it to solve a problem I had at my day job: quickly pricing out cheap systems for a small cluster I was building. After talking with friends and colleagues it appeared there might be utility for the PC building community. I was encouraged by feedback to a HN comment regarding hard drive prices (here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1546145 ), so I decided to continue on with the concept.<p>My target audience is DIY PC builders who are building systems of moderate complexity. I think with some work I can target both novice builders as well as more serious builders/gamers. However, I'd like to validate the concept further before investing considerably more time.<p>Any feedback you have would be greatly appreciated.<p>Thanks!
Philip
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51
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Title: Was F# viewed by MSFT as a cheap way to capture more developer mindshare, by accident, harvesting efforts by the research group? Or did they deliberately try to fill a niche they identified beforehand from marketing feedback?<p>F# is cool, but C# 4.0 does not seem to lack much, feature-wise. If anything the MSFT ecosystem seems to lack supporting tools, not language features.
Why another language from scratch? Why not more effort porting an existing language to the CLR?<p>Also, IronPython and F# projects seem to demonstrate that it takes a long time to make a credible language for CLR/Visual Studio. A grammar for your language, a compiler, ok. How long did it take? But then you realize oh no, VS support will take many man-years. Whoops.
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Title: For a high school class.<p>He's a great teacher (from what I hear, and my conversations with him), though the current plan is to use VB.net, while me and a few others would much prefer Python. Key requirements/comparison points for him are that it should be easy to learn (17 year olds new to programming), and for me, I'd like to learn it as with LPTHW we can go along ahead of the class.
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Title: Minor issue but I was debugging something else with Fiddler and it kept telling me this about responses from HN:<p><i>Fiddler has detected a protocol violation in session #122.<p>The Server did not return properly formatted HTTP Headers. HTTP headers
should be terminated with CRLFCRLF. These were terminated with LFLF.</i><p>Presumably this is an issue in the Arc code outputting the headers. Also, is this where I should report this or is there a support email or something I can address?
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Title: There's a post over on Reddit about the large number of polite Indians who seem to pop up when interesting programs are posted asking for help (often, really basic or odd help).<p>http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/e39xr/the_posting_of_an_open_source_payroll_app_with_a/<p>I've experienced exactly this on my own blog (see, for example, comments on this post: http://blog.jgc.org/2008/02/tonight-im-going-to-write-myself-aston.html)<p>Does anyone have insight into who these folks are? Are they students? This seems like an interesting cultural phenomenon. These folks are universally polite, but seem to have little clue. Often asking the most basic questions which seem to indicate that they have little knowledge. Given their low level of knowledge it's striking that they are often trying to download and understand quite complex programs. Many times they seem to not even be able to locate the download link for source code.<p>In almost all cases it appears that these folks are from India.
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Title: Site: http://startupmonth.org<p>When I asked people "who's with me?" on getting a startup out the door in the month of November (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1773398), I was blown away by the response. It seems I hit a common nerve. Amongst the many comments on that post, people suggested various ways of tracking the progress of their projects and keeping in touch with each another (spreadsheets, google docs, facebook groups, etc). I was personally not planning on anything other than an announcement on HN when I had completed my project, but by the end of that day it was clear there was something bigger going on, and that more would be needed to help track it.<p>So I started to think about what was /really/ going on. It seems that we all feel drawn to be our better selves when we have a common goal, even though we may be achieving it in different ways. What was needed was a site that could help people be accountable for their goal, and draw them together to finish them.<p>Thus, StartupMonth.org.<p>At this point though, it was still a pipe dream. I have my own full-time consulting gig, a new full-time job to transition into, a part-time startup, AND side projects that need to be completed (the entire goal for November for me is to finally finish as many of the side projects as possible). I had vague intentions of building a site for this, and even bought the domain startupmonth.org, but was not sure when I would be able to fit it in.<p>Thankfully, Jon Gilbraith (hn: inm) stepped up and volunteered to help develop the site, and Jake Stutzman of http://www.elevatevc.com volunteered to do the design. So, for the last 30 days, we've been building and designing the site in the very little bits of spare time we had, and today we'd like to show it to you. We were hoping to get this out before November 1st, but had too many things on our collective plates to be able to get it done.<p>Now that 30 days has passed, there is still plenty of work to do to the site, but in the spirit of StartupMonth we are launching anyways, and will tweak and fix the site as it is used. Shipping is a feature! So, <i></i>please<i></i> let us know your thoughts on the site, either here or as comments on http://startupmonth.org/apps/startupmonthorg. We're aware that there are some missing features but everything we need to showcase, post news on and discuss our apps is there.<p>Also, need to mention the awesome site that the 21times guys have done that can also help with getting your startups off the ground: http://hn.21times.org Ryan reached out to me via email when they were finishing it up - My apologies Ryan for not getting back to you. Would love to chat on how we could integrate and make these complimentary sites.<p>Cheers!
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Title: I've been thinking a lot about programming languages lately and I wonder what you guys think about what the future of programming will be.<p>Considering the amount of "new" languages(/dialects) popping up (Clojure) and some languages find new popularity (JS) I wonder how they'll be used.<p>It feels to me like languages are getting more problem specific, I.E. Haskell, Clojure and other functional languages get most attention for research and heavy calculation while some stuff get specialized for web-usage.<p>Will the future of programming be like science; where people get extremely specialized on a small set of problems, or will programmers learn multiple languages and use the best one for the problem at hand?<p>Will game development ever diversify or will it go from C++ to C# to ...<p>How do you view a future world filled with hundreds or thousands of fantastic programming languages?
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Title: Elevator Pitch: Hiring is a pain in the ass, juggling resumes and getting feedback from interviews, dealing with PDFs and Word Docs and keeping track of who interviewed for what. Dropjobs streamlines the entire process from posting jobs on your website to reviewing and managing the applicants who apply for your positions.<p>So, caveats right out of the door. Yes, of course someone "did it before". Applicant tracking systems have been around for quite a long time. However there are a few things that we're differentiating on:<p>1) Up front, easy, cheap pricing. No sales people. Most heavy ATS systems I looked at require you to call a phone number to find out how much it costs.
2) Simple. Does this one thing and thats it -- so we're targeting the people who don't want a taleo hire-to-fire HR enterprise solution.
3) Has an embedded widget for letting people apply for your jobs straight from your own website.
4) Uses scribd to display people's resumes directly in the Dropjobs website, so you aren't constantly downloading and opening adobe acrobat and crap like that.<p>I think the market is there. It's good enough that I've launched it as a 1.0, so... any advice on next steps? Should I just drop a few grand on advertising? Unfortunately the world of hiring and HR management isn't all "web2.0" and glitzy, so I feel it will be hard to build any buzz through traditional social media channels.
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Title: The R community seems to be growing rapidly, with many favorable reviews of the language/system. For instance --<p>Forbes Magazine, Names You Need to Know in 2011: R Data Analysis Software:
http://blogs.forbes.com/smcnally/2010/11/10/names-you-need-to-know-in-2011-r-data-analysis-software
(and links therein)<p>And some of its developers are suggesting that they scrap it and start over (don't know if the whole "Core Team"'s on board tho'):
http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~ihaka/downloads/Compstat-2008-Slides.pdf<p>Are there parallels like this in the development of other languages/environments/ecosystems (e.g., Python3, Perl6 "revisions")? How do these efforts usually end up (I guess we're still waiting to see about Python3 and Perl6...) -- and how would it affect your business's decision to develop a library in this environment?
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47
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Title: There's already 1001 (places to visit|books to read|movies to see|{insert other activities}) before you die. Why not 1001 to hack/make/develop/design/start/attempt before you die that's more HN friendly:
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105
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Title: ANI is a dataflow programming language, with strong typing, implicit parallelism, oop and the beggining of an implementation.<p>"Q: How does ANI resolve the fundamental issue of deadlock in parallel programming? How does the Dining Philosophers example on the main page work?<p>A: In ANI, under the hood, pipes implicitly enforce total resource orderings for acquiring data. Somewhat surprisingly, deadlock theory guarantees that there will be no deadlock if this condition is met."
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Title: I am posting this on behalf of another HN member with less karma.<p>Someone close to me operates a medical practice in a fairly densely populated area of a very large city. Over the last few months, very negative reviews started appearing on review sites (like Yelp and Yahoo reviews) from users with no review history. The negative reviews are interspersed with others, which are a mixed bag (but tend towards the very positive) and probably valid. Normally I'd assume she's just getting negative reviews and move on, but she's received a fax from someone saying they're aware of the problem and can help her fix it, with a return phone number and an address that's geographically on the other side of the country. I'm assuming as soon as she contacts them they'll ask for money (or worse) to take them down. In my opinion, this is a terrible precedent to set.<p>I remember hearing about Yelp doing this themselves, but never a third party. Googling for the problem also lead to few similar situations. Given that the practice has very few reviews as it is, it is tarnishing her image quite a bit and she has noticed a downturn in the number of patients she's been seeing.<p>So far, we've been advising, under no circumstances, to reach out to this person.<p>Does anyone have any experience with situations like this or can offer advice?
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Title: http://getsatisfaction.com/instagram/topics/password_is_not_encrypted<p>Makes you wonder how secure mobile apps are in general as the user can't determine the connection state, unlike a browser window by looking at the URL or seeing the padlock in the corner.
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Title: Does anyone know of any good open source web app html/css templates?<p>I've got a web app I want to put on GitHub but the template I'm currently using is free-as-in-beer, but not GPL/Creative-Commons licensed.<p>When I search Google, all I get is templates for business websites or blogs.<p>Something like http://www.gooeytemplates.com/templates/ would be great.<p>Thanks!
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46
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Title: Just curious how much the Lunch with Paul went for at the Harvest Moon Auction.<p>Thanks!
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63
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Title: Assuming a mobile service needs to be launched in 6 months time, does it make sense to go straight to HTML5? Will the market be ready?<p>The recent release of the first version of JQuery mobile looks promising, for example.<p>There is a huge temptation to bypass native apps altogether (even with tools like PhoneGap). Not only does one avoid the app approval process, but, just like having to download plugins causes friction for desktop websites, giving users the opportunity to directly interact with a mobile-specific site as if it were a native app sounds like a big win all round.
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42
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Title: I'm interested in getting a good solid basis for study of mathematics. Right now, I am interested in a broad and not necessarily too deep to start with; instead, I want to be acquainted with all of the different fields beyond what I've done in my mathematics classrooms.<p>What books and web pages do you recommend I read, as well as what blogs and podcasts are good to follow to learn more on a constant basis.<p>Thanks!
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Title: Recently, we have started developing web application with Django. Everything is wonderful, but Python is not Lisp and I feel uncomfortable with Python. In the sense that with Python & Django I am restricted. I can't build eDSL to describe application workflows, eDSL for DB access, etc.<p>I want to try rewrite it from scratch in Common Lisp. What web technologies stack to use?<p>SproutCore + Hunchentoot + MongoDB is it right choice?
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Title: This is a little bit of a follow-on from a recent post about hired writers for various educational essays. Link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1901152<p>So, does anyone have any tips on how to produce great quality academic writing?<p>And no, cheating is not an option.
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41
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Title: How do you (or do you) socialize? What do _most_ do?<p>Yes I realize that geeks are normal people too. But lets not kid ourselves... they aren't.
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65
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Title: I'm looking at starting an office for my startup in South Africa. Since I haven't seen how its done in the US does anyone have any suggestions of things that work well?<p>Productivity systems / white-boards / game consoles / nap couches (and dark rooms) / ...
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Title: Just curious. I noticed in the last 24 hours that stories with lots of up votes have been getting pushed down the page and off very quickly, way below stories with way lower votes and more time.<p>Note this is not a criticism if it is editorial judgement. I can see arguments either way for these stories being included on HN. But there are clearly reasonable arguments that this is an interesting issue with a strong technology angle that the community here is expressing interest in.<p>At the same time no one wants to see the site hijacked.<p>So my question is out of curiosity rather than complaint. If it is programmatic, it would be interesting to know if HN is modifying based on content topic profile or the karma of up voters or some other system.
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87
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Title: Hi HN<p>I'm from Warsaw and as Germany is opening market for Polish workers the upcoming year, I'm considering Berlin as a destination - been there, love the city, like German people.<p>Could you give me some info:<p>1. cost of life and earnings, basically the same as in this topic http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1778185 (no Berlin there)<p>2. a quick view at the scene - are there any interesting companies, startups, etc. doing python?<p>3. popular job boards, message boards, where to look at? see nothing at djangogigs<p>tx
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Title: Conrad Barski M.D., author of "Land of Lisp" (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1593272812) will be giving a talk entitled "Land of Lisp: The Clojure-ish Parts" at the National Capital Area Clojure Users Group (CAPCLUG) on November 18, 2010 at 6:15 pm. The meeting will be held at 12021 Sunset Hills Road Suite 400, Reston, VA. Pizza and drinks are provided as part of the admission cost of $0.00 USD (i.e. it's free of course).<p>The talk will be followed by mingle time whereby you can talk to programmers interested (and at times well versed in) Clojure, Common Lisp, Scheme, Ruby, Java, and the Kent Recursive Calculator. If we're lucky we'll see a live performance of the hit single, "Land of Lisp"! (music video at http://landoflisp.com)<p>Please consider signing up at the CAPCLUG meeting site (http://www.meetup.com/Cap-Clug/calendar/14802573) so that we know how much food and beverage to provide.<p>I will be watching this thread for the next 3 days to answer any questions.
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Title: I've been a software engineer for over a decade, and worked at huge companies and little startups. I know this probably sounds insane, but over that entire time, I only worked on <i>one</i> team/project where there was a notion of "tech lead", that is to say a technical individual contributor who was responsible for decomposing a project, overseeing the more junior engineers in its implementation, but was not a manager who managed those engineers. And that tech lead was me. Every other team/company I've ever worked at, I've basically been in a team scenario, where everyone worked in their own silos. I've always owned entire subsystems (even as a total newbie, painful as it was), never with another engineer over me, never with another engineer under me. I've had the words "Senior Developer" on my resume for almost 8 years now, over half my career.<p>I don't want to be a manager. But it seems like something's missing, that I don't have any "project leadership" experience on my resume (save that one time, which was a success I might add.) I'm confused about what the next step for me is supposed to be, and how to get there. It seems like the things above me on the career ladder (architect, principal, CTO, what have you) are not attainable because of this absence of leadership experience. I mean, is this something that even exists or am I just imagining it? I see peers (coworkers who eventually moved on to other places) who make these strange leaps from Sr. Engineer to Director or CTO and I don't understand how they did it. Should I just try applying to a higher-up position sometime?<p>I'm open to any and all career advice. This really isn't about money or responsibility, it's just about ensuring that I'm not stalling out somewhere in my professional growth. I guess I'm trying to say that I'm concerned about my long-term trajectory.
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Title: If so, what projects/products? I'm curious to know what jobs you found that Haskell was awesome for and other languages couldn't keep up.
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91
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Title: When feeling demotivated or simply in need of a gentle kick in the ass, watching a good inspirational/feel-good movie can never hurt. Which movies did you find inspirational? Bonus point for business related movies.
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105
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Title: It's great to see that the web at large is mostly past that 1990s phase of being obsessed with green text on black backgrounds and lists of copypasted and sometimes just made up 'information' on 'hacking'.<p>I know you didn't start the movement to reclaim the word (that credit probably goes to ESR[1]), but I think between HN and your essays, you've done a huge amount to reinvigorate the hacker scene.<p>It's now acceptable to ask what someone's hacking on without having to worry about strange looks or tirades about script kiddies. This is really good.<p>So thanks.<p>[1] http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
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93
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Title: I love HN. I love it that PG built it himself. It's not easy. I applaud him for it. This isn't a complaint but an inquiry.<p>The last couple days (especially around peak times) HN seems to have slowed dramatically. Pages take multiple seconds (think, 10 to 20) to get served and even the up/down vote images fail to load.<p>Is it just me?
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81
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Title: Examples help tremendously in learning any abstract subject. What are some famously well-written programs whose source is available to look at?
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Title: I mostly target web-related projects. But, with any project, how do you all come up with ideas for them?<p>Back when I mostly did desktop applications, I would write applications for simple things that I enjoyed - countless IRC clients, IM clients, etc. With my web projects I find it harder to do that because I always apply to "could this potentially become popular" or "this has been done before" mentalities to them. So, as a result I just find myself scouring the internet every day, reading as many blogs and staying as up to date on bleeding edge things as I can. I keep my eyes peeled for potential statements made in blogs or on websites that might make me think something could be a great idea. I feel like I do this because when I end up making things that solely benefit me, I just end up making countless pastebins or blogs or IRC channel loggers.<p>So, how do you all decide what your next project will be? Do you do what I do and read the <i>entire</i> internet looking for a sign? Do you just make things you truly enjoy and hope maybe one day if it gets exposure it can gain traction and grow?
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Title: I'm sure there are many of us out there. I have a good eye for usability, proficient enough with HTML5/CSS3+jquery, have TONS of ideas (some of which I'm pretty convinced are good, maybe even good enough for YC) but it seems like every day I just sit around and read HN. Something about reading other people's opinions, success stories and failures makes me sort of feel like I'm "in the game" even though I'm not actually DOING anything. It's terrible. I guess what I'm wondering is: has anyone else gone through this, did you eventually do something real, and how?
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389
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Title: Being that SSL has been getting a fair amount of attention lately do to the Instagram debacle (http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/18/yet-another-hot-startup-leaves-a-gaping-security-hole-in-its-iphone-app/) and Firesheep exploit (http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/24/firesheep-in-wolves-clothing-app-lets-you-hack-into-twitter-facebook-accounts-easily/) I thought it might be interesting to spawn a discussion on SSL providers out there.<p>I typically use GeoTrust quick SSL for most E-Commerce applications but I was wondering what were some of the pluses and minuses (cost, support, time to deployment, etc) users in the community had experienced.
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Title: Looking at job adverts for software engineers, it seems that life is rosy if you have a couple years J2EE and/or .NET under your belt. By rosy I mean you can be fairly confident of finding a steady job, and can start setting your sights on (<i>much</i>) more lucrative/interesting positions by expanding your knowledge.<p>But as someone still in the education process, a lot of job postings I glance at and find myself caught in two minds. One half says 'They're looking for a lot of skills. You can't honestly say you're adept at the majority of those requirements. You need to put in a lot more hard work before they'll take you seriously.' But the other half says 'Hell, you don't <i>know</i> TechnologyX <i>per se</i>, but you could pick it up no problem. You've worked on harder problems than they're likely to throw at you. You'd be doing them a favour by applying.'<p>So I'm wondering what the professional developers here found in their first jobs. Were you under-qualified? Overqualified? Lucky to find one? Blagged the interview? Winged it? Needn't have worried? I'd like to hear the story.
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Title: My Plea:
I submitted an app a couple weeks back which just recently got approved for a soft launch. After playing around with it on older devices we found a massive memory leak that severally effects stability and performance.<p>We quickly submitted a 1.1 version and contacted "[email protected]". They said not to worry, and that it would be ready by Sunday. Fast forward to Saturday and my 1.1 version says that it's still "Pending an Apple release". I've gotten nothing but radio silence after Apple said they would have it ready by Sunday. I show this puppy off in less then 24 hours in front of 3,000 people and I'm starting to sweat bullets.<p>I know that I'm grasping at straws here, but I don't know what else to do. If you guys could up vote this, maybe someone who knew what to do would see it, and be able to help me out of jam.<p>Thanks HN community! I really appreciate it!<p>My email address is in my profile.
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107
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Title: I'm curious who is currently living off their startup? Self-sustaining or through funding? Also, if you are a link?
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254
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Title: I work as a interface designer on a CMS, among other products. In doing some research for further developing our CMS I had a hard time finding systems that were easy to use for a non-techie.<p>Which CMS would you say is the most modern in terms of end user design? Not accounting for the technical setup of things, just user experience.<p>Thanks you :)<p>Edit: Some seems to think I'm looking for good CMSes for web designers, I'm not. I'm after systems that makes it easy for a non-tech crowd to run their - custom - web site.
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Title: Hey HN,<p>I'm teaching a class to a bunch of high school and middle school students tomorrow who've all had moderate experience with programming. I'm covering pointer basics in C as a light intro or refresher, then focusing on cool (but relatively simple / not too crazy) tricks/tips/etc (e.g. stack walking, function pointer arrays). Care to share any of your favorite small pointer tricks with me for the class?<p>Thanks :)<p>-Cam
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