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Title: I've been working on and off on a Chrome Extension for Hacker News, the extension focusses on improved usability rather than design. I can almost guarantee that after a day you won't want to go back to regular Hacker News. Give it a try, features include:<p>- Improved readability - Quick inline replies from comments page - Quick profiles with social network info when hovering over usernames - Filtering of stories based on terms and phrases / domain or user - Endless scrolling - Collapsible comment threads - Social sharing for Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Buffer<p>Forks, improvements and comments welcome: https://github.com/tommoor/HackerNew Upvote:
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Title: (been on HN for half a decade, but posting anonymously because I could be perceived as damaged goods and hence unemployable)<p>The story is a familiar one to readers here, so I'll spare the details. Abusive management, perpetual "crisis mode," promises repeatedly broken, entrenched technical incompetence, smothering bureaucracy, vomit-inducing organizational politics -- the whole nine yards.<p>I started as a wide-eyed youngster desiring to prove myself, went through the denial phase, and ultimately suffered a total loss of motivation. Since then I've left the job to spend some time recovering, soul-searching, and gathering what I can as lessons learned.<p>Right now I'd say that I have the (financial) risk tolerance to work at a startup, as well as the desire to work on challenging and meaningful tasks, especially with growth and learning opportunities and a level of ownership such that I can take pride in my work. But I doubt I have the dedication or interest in the business aspects necessary to start a company of my own, hence my willingness to give the startup employee route a shot.<p>However, given my experience with burnout, I feel that I may be excessively skeptical of what any employer would have to offer. Of the problems I mentioned before, everything other than the red tape could just as well happen in a startup. The obsession with "rockstars" and "ninjas" who have unwavering "passion" just smells like a search for naïve, exploitable labor willing to give up evenings and weekends for foosball games and beer. The prevalence of social bubble-worthy companies whose value propositions are little more than "cat pictures" suggests an inflated sense of self-importance among the founders, and I can't expect to keep my level of enthusiasm in line with their irrational exuberance. And while I don't need much job security, having the specter of financial instability looming over the office tends to be at minimum somewhat distracting and most likely quite demotivating.<p>Perhaps a startup that has gone through the vetting process with YC would have less of these issues, but even then I have some doubts. I'm not in any position to question PG's judgment, but after seeing some of the announcements of companies funded and the infamous "YC company seeks brogrammer" job post, I have a feeling that his evaluation metrics for founders may significantly diverge from mine.<p>I recently passed up an opportunity at a very high-profile technology company mainly because everyone on the team was required to carry pagers. It just didn't feel right, especially for an established business that claimed it was being run like a lean startup. But it did get me thinking -- why would an actual startup not require the same?<p>tl,dr: Can I expect to find a position with the potential professional rewards of working at a startup, while still setting strict boundaries on work to preserve my sanity? Or am I trying to have my cake and eat it too? Upvote:
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Title: I like Ruby and the way it is easy to work with. I personally use ruby in many projects, mostly on the server side. I am not a lover of Xcode. Yet, RubyMotion is not for me. Upvote:
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Title: I ran a little statistics experiment over my Gmail inbox and here are the results:<p>Mails that I haven't gotten replies to and mails I did have, are in ratio ~1/13. In those mails not replied to, mails WITH someone in Cc and mails WITHOUT anyone in Cc are in ratio of ~2/11.<p>Now, this sounded all obvious - the more recipients you address your e-mail, the higher are the chances you will get a reply, right? Right, but not quite. :)<p>For the last 2 months, I've created a imaginary CEO assistant e-mail account named Alex. I've Cc-ed Alex to all my mails and Alex has not directed any mails to anyone, nor received any as To recepient. Select few contacts were exempt from the experiment, but that's taken into statistical account. So, Alex has basically been completely non-interactive in all this, besides being in Cc.<p>After two months, mails that I haven't gotten replies to and mails I did have, are now in ratio ~1/22.<p>I have my own explanation of the phenomena, but I'd like to hear yours.<p>:{- Upvote:
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Title: Bitcoinia's officially statement: http://bitcoinica.blogspot.com Upvote:
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Title: I'm in a rough spot and I'd like to ask for advice from my fellow HNers. I was employee #1 at my startup and was fired 11 months in - 1 month from my cliff. I'm not necessarily bummed I was let go, things changed with the company and my role so I guess I just wasn't a good fit anymore. I get that. I'm sad because I'm out of money and and have no stock. I spent so much $$ commuting (SF to Palo Alto), eating out in Palo Alto, courting clients etc. I hardly have 2 months of personal runway saved up. And of course I worked my ass off. I never even expensed any travel expenses because I figured it was best to keep the money with the company. All the while I was getting paid a startup salary to begin with.<p>But now I don't have anything to show for it and am going broke. They are offering me a tiny equity package which is approximately equal to 3.5 months of work but it seems like an insult. In exchange they are asking me to sign a document which basically says I can never take any action against them, ever. So should I ask or demand more? Do I have any other options here? I would like to stay on good terms with the 3 founders because I really do respect them professionally but I'm not sure what to do. Another potentially interesting detail: I'm in my 20s and they are all 10-18 years older than me.<p>Onward and upward,<p>-grumpymarketer<p>[This is a throw away account obviously because I want to protect the identity of my former employer for the time being.] Upvote:
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Title: I'm very new to the startup world. A year ago, I left academia to join a startup as the first engineer employee. The skies were bright, we were going to change the world and become rich and all be happy together.<p>Now a year later, things are way more gloom. We haven't raised any money, as of today we have effectively 0 active users, and our total revenue over the past year has been ~$100.<p>Out of 3 founders, none is technical (the CTO is a very, very well connected industry veteran though), and they are all very unfocused and out of touch with certain realities (for example, they filed a patent for a silly tech idea right after incorporation and keep trying to implement that technology in products although it doesn't really solve anything).<p>During meetings, I always feel like a killjoy by attempting to be realistic and focused and reserved about the brand new idea they come up with every other week and that I need to get started on right when the meeting ends.<p>I don't feel like it'll get better, and although it was a great opportunity I think it's time for me to move on to brighter horizons.<p>The main problem is that I've grown to really like the founders on a personal level, they are really well connected so I wouldn't want them to tarnish my reputation as a young engineer completely new to the valley/startup world, and if I leave, the company will probably die off as I'm the only one writing code and making products exist (they'd probably end up paying contractors/freelancers as they can't afford to be competitive on salary or benefits).<p>I think these last few points might be the result of my inexperience with startups and that I dug myself into that hole— but any insight or advice would be very, very much appreciated.&#60;p&#62;Thanks! Upvote:
137
Title: In the past three years I've had to ship items nationally or receive shipped items in the UK on a few occasions. The experience has been universally terrible.<p>1. Sign-up process is convoluted. This should be so simple. Are you a business or a person? What are your billing details and contact details? Done. Don't give me a Merchant ID or make me telephone you. Don't make me put in address information: you can have that when I send something.<p>2. Believe it or not, I do not know how heavy my item is or its exact dimensions. I threw away the packaging. I don't have a set of bathroom scales because I'm not a teenage girl. Charge me a premium for not knowing. I don't give a shit. Just don't force me to enter the dimensions of something which I might not have in front of me or schlep it to the scales at my friends' house so that you can calculate how much diesel you need to be putting in your vans. You're coming to my place to pick it up. Why the fuck can't you just do this yourself? Or how about you plug into a product database that knows how heavy stuff is? While we're on the subject: do you have any idea how offensive the idea of printing something is to me? An actual, honest to god physical piece of paper? Why? And then what do I do? Attach it to the box with glue? String? Tape? Fucking hell, you guys go around picking up parcels all day, can't you just do this yourself with special stickers? Charge me a few bucks for it.<p>3. Don't give me a 25-digit code to track my parcel. That's what, a hundred quadrillion potential shipments? Enough for every single person in the world to send 14 million parcels each with significant room to breathe. Make it very simple for me to get to the parcel I want to track. I can track by consignment or reference number with TNT, but it's not clear which one is provided by a shipper in some cases. Don't you dare fucking say "Consignment number not recognised" when I put the reference number into the consignment number box. Do it for me. You know TNT recycle these numbers? If you log in to their odious website with a tracking number you had to decipher from the wall of text they send you, you sometimes see that your package has been delivered! To someone called Ben! Who lives in Scotland! Oh, no, wait, their crummy service has 25 digit non-unique tracking numbers. Makes perfect sense.<p>4. Make it useful for me to track my parcel. "Your package is being processed in our network" is a message I've seen a few times. Tip: any time you put a code or a status number into the human-facing message for parcel tracking, you've fucked up. If something is going to DELAY or SPEED UP the arrival of my parcel, that's all I care about. If you're not going to provide me with a useful window to receive my parcel or send it (i.e. a one hour window) then you should tell me where your van is with GPS. Fuck the security concerns; put RFID on your parcels and secure your vans with that futuristic stuff banks use (I think it's a combination of paint, sensors and BIG SCARY WARNING SIGNS). Just don't treat me, the guy who pays for your courier service, like a criminal who can't be trusted to know where his parcel is, just because someone might take a chance that someone is using the same van to ship Faberge eggs in my area and roll it.<p>5. Don't make me sit at home for an entire day waiting for my parcel. Give me a specific window when you're going to deliver it and try to be there on time. If you're late leaving or there's a mechanical problem or traffic or roadworks or inclement weather, update me. Estimating time is hard. I get that. It's not so hard that you have to identify "Between 9am - 1pm" as your four hour window. Today (May 14) I tried to use Parcel Force for the first time, having exhausted all other options in previous attempts to ship things. They said they'd pick up my parcel betwen 14:00 and 16:30. I arrived home from work at 13:40 to find that they'd been and dropped a note through the door saying "Sorry we missed you." The note was labeled to say that he'd tried to collect the parcel at 14:00, twenty minutes into the future. I called the depot straight away. "What time is it right now?" "13:50." HOW ARE YOU GUYS STILL IN BUSINESS?<p>6. Find a way or make away, or: I don't care about your difficulty in getting my package to me, it's your job. I don't care that my house is hard to find. It's your job. I don't care that you ran out of vans at the depot. It's your job. I don't care that the handwriting your driver put on the form was inscrutable. It's your job. Get my package to me on time, or find another business to run.<p>7. If you're going to have a local depot, make it one I can pick up from. "I'm afraid your package is being held in our depot," said the email from TNT. Oh, no problem, I happen to live 45 minutes away from it and since I've been waiting for this oft-delayed package for A FUCKING WEEK WHILST IT SAT IN YOUR FUCKING DEPOT, I'd rather eat the time up and go get it myself. "Sorry, you can't collect from our depots! We're a courier service! We bring them to you!" No, you don't. GNRRGRGHRHGHG.<p>8. Never, ever make me phone you to find out anything at all, ever. If I have to phone you, I'm automatically pissed. You should phone me to beg forgiveness when my package is delayed. You should email me and text me when you leave a note saying you missed me. You should never call me to say that you're going to miss your six hour window of delivery without saying "but we're going to refund the full price of shipping to you" or "but if you like we'll get another, more reliable courier who understands how to get a box from A to B, to bring it to you today", or "but if you like, we'll get our intern to take a series of taxis across the country, at our expense, to get it to you on time." Because you fucked up when you promised me you'd get it somewhere on time and didn't.<p>9. Simplify your pricing. Don't make me pay extra to get my package to me by a certain time. Offer me two options: any time the next day, or on a set time on a set day. Make this relative to your load, the schedule of your vans and the scheduled of postal trains/flights/bikes. Show me how, if I can wait an extra two hours, I can save a bunch of money on my parcel because it means it will get onto a super cheap freight train rather than necessitating you chartering a helicopter to bring it to me.<p>Someone please, for the love of all that is holy, fix this broken experience. Upvote:
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Title: I'm a developer who writes prototype apps for various clients in various languages. While there are some great PaaS hosts around, I find that the best option for me is usually self hosting. So that's fine I know how to configure and setup a VPS on rackspace or whatever, but what I really need is something that I can type the domain I want to setup, chose the type of app I want to deploy (djano, RoR, Scala, PHP, whatever) and have it take care of all the web app boilerplate stuff for me (creating nginx reverse proxy configs, DNS setup, installation of language libraries and requirements etc)<p>Does something like this exist? Upvote:
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Title: Have any Hacker News threads ever truly changed your perspective on life, or technology? Post them please. Upvote:
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Title: Create a chat, copy the URL, paste it wherever you want. Perfect for those that would like to continue a discussion on a social network without having to sign up for anything.<p>http://beta.mss.gs/#!/page/home Upvote:
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Title: This is just a simple node app on a small Joyent server! Upvote:
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Title: What are the posts that have inspired you the most? Upvote:
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Title: Open source rich text editor based on HTML5 and the progressive-enhancement approach. Uses a sophisticated security concept and aims to generate fully valid HTML5 markup by preventing unmaintainable tag soups and inline styles.<p>Twitter Bootstrap Plugin: http://jhollingworth.github.com/bootstrap-wysihtml5/ Upvote:
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Title: Introduction to the idea of dark patterns in design. Upvote:
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Title: Server died...here's a repost:<p>Over this past weekend a good friend and coworker passed away. He always had a good heart and would do anything he could to help you out. It was certainly a shock.<p>Monday morning he didn't show up to work. He always calls or sends an email if he won't be in but nobody could get a hold of him. I got a bit worried since I knew he was playing Diablo 3 since it came out on Tuesday and I've heard of people dying from exhaustion and what not from playing video games so much. I didn't want to think that but it had occurred to me. Especially since nobody has heard from him since late Saturday. I had called his landlord and asked about him. (The landlord, Russ and I are all good friends and we've known each other for a while) I was heading over and she was going to let me in but apparently she got too worried and went in anyway. She found him at his computer. He apparently had a heart attack. Poor gal shouldn't have had to do that. I kick myself for not going there immediately. I had gone in anyway at the request of the Fire Department to find his identification and cellphone. Not a minute goes by that I wish my memory of him had not been sullied in that manner.<p>I sincerely hope that he went quickly and didn't suffer, unable to contact anyone for help.<p>He was only 32 years old.<p>Please, if only for yourselves, take time out of your day to get some exercise. Go outside and enjoy the sun. Ride a bike. Do something active. Video games are great fun when played in moderation. This may be an extreme example but take it as advice to not go overboard. Or at least don't do it alone. He took 3 days off and played Diablo 3 pretty much the whole time. He called in and asked to take Friday off as well. We are placing the blame on ourselves at work wondering if we made him come in on Friday would he still be with us today?<p>It saddens me that we tried to get him to be healthy. Work offered to pay for a gym membership. Friends coaxed him to exercise and eat better. He took us up on our offers, if only for a short while.<p>We should have tried harder.<p>He will be missed greatly by all who knew him.<p>&#60;img src='http://aws.buildstarted.com/russell.png' Title='Russell Shirley' /&#62;&#60;h1&#62;Russell Shirley 1979-2012&#60;/h1&#62; Upvote:
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Title: I don’t use Google+ much. It’s not that Google plus is a ghost town. No. There’s a flurry of activity from the people I follow - Zimbabweans, Kenyans, Googlers in Africa, and Robert Scoble. The decision for me boils down to one practical thing; page load speed. Upvote:
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Title: ...is apparently posting to Hacker News.<p>My GMail account has been disabled.<p>"Unusual Usage - Account Temporarily Locked Down"<p>"To keep our systems healthy, Google has temporarily disabled your account. This primarily occurs when we detect unusually high levels of activity on your account. In most cases, it should take one hour to regain access. In rare cases, it can take up to 24 hours for access to be reinstated."<p>It's been at least 10 hours (Gmail app on my iPhone shows "last updated: 5/22"), and going "welp, you're fucked, wait a day to get your email" is not an acceptable answer. All of the "help" forms have no contact information and no other way to get in touch with someone, so I'm putting out the "hey, Google employees who read HN, tell me who I can talk to about this" bat signal.<p>I haven't changed my email use patterns at all in months; the message occurs on a browser in incognito mode, I don't use any extensions, etc.<p>On a more general note, on what planet is "you don't get any email for a day and have no recourse, and we won't tell you why, or let you do anything to fix that" an acceptable action?<p>UPDATE<p>At 10:20, my account magically unlocked itself (I did nothing between posting this thread - my iPhone started dinging like crazy and then I could log back in) and is now working again, without anyone waving the magic wand. So, if you run into this, just know you only have to go 10 hours without email, instead of a whole day. I have been using my personal domain for most mail for a while, and this has just prompted me to accelerate that process to at least be able to maintain backup ways to send/receive mail.<p>I do still hope this thread stays up for a while, primarily so that the workflow around these account lockout messages gets better. It's fine to lock accounts out for security reasons, and I understand that algorithms have problems. That said, there should be more details of <i>what</i> they think triggered the algorithm, and a way to remediate it. If they think it is unauthorized access, try to auth with n+1 factors instead of the n normally required, etc. Upvote:
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Title: Why not take Y Combinator public like Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway? If you did, everybody could invest in the next big tech hits indirectly. Also, by investing in YC everybody could enjoy the diversified risk versus investing in much more volatile individual companies.<p>Have you considered taking Y Combinator public? If not, what are the compelling reasons to avoid that course of action? Upvote:
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Title: We are longtime members of HN and this is our only submission requesting feedback from the HN community on our product, Clipboard which we have been developing for the past year. Clipboard is a service to save anything online using a bookmarklet or browser extension (think Dropbox for content on the web). Clipboard is built using open source technologies, including Riak, Redis, NGINX, Node.js, and jQuery. One of our core differentiators is how we preserve the visual look and functionality of the original source, which is evident in the sample clips from github here: clipboard.com/site/github.com and hacker news here: clipboard.com/site/news.ycombinator.com<p>We are still in private beta but we'd love your feedback. Visitors from HN can access and register on our site directly at clipboard.com/register?token=hn. You can also reach us via email at [email protected]. Upvote:
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Title: Interactive tool to see what GCC is up to. Upvote:
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Title: Here is my little back story:<p>I work from 8-5(or 6), during work I will take a break and scan for a couple good articles on business, technology, etc. I put the web address in an email to myself to read for later (even if I want to read it all now). At the end of work I send myself the email in hopes that when I get home I continue my enthusiasm to read those articles. Sadly my trend hasn't been what I would like it to be, that of staying motivated, reading articles, and writing down my thoughts or ideas. I am productive in a sense that I go workout to stay in shape and cook dinner, but I would like to keep my head down and work on my own ideas.<p>So I ask, What do you do when you come back from work to keep being productive on personal improvement or projects? Upvote:
150
Title: For the best and craziest sci-fi book I ever read Upvote:
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Title: I read a lot about Google Go on Hacker News. Is it as good as we read here? What are its benefits?<p>Is anyone using Go language in real world projects? Upvote:
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Title: A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. Upvote:
45
Title: This is a question that has been plaguing me since I started web development and consulting. The more I reach out into the world, the more I see companies with absolutely horrid website designs and yet the companies are doing extremely well. Maybe I'm missing something? So: while I understand a company isn't it's website, but I believe a website helps define a companies image. So why do companies stick with, pardon my language, P.O.S. websites? Upvote:
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Title: Afternoon guys, I know this recurs biannually, but some users forget (or are unaware):<p>The email address in your profile's 'email' field is not publicly viewable. If you welcome contact, add an email address to your profile's 'About' field.<p>I've had a lot of valuable contact through HN, and not having the ability to contact users who want/need feedback is detrimental to both correspondents.<p>For example, I was scrolling through a user's submissions today, and found an old request to review his writing style. Unfortunately, the submission made little traction at the time. Nonetheless, I wanted to dole out some quick grammar and style advice, but couldn't. In particular, adding a new comment to the old thread would have gone ignored, and there was little in the way of information on his profile.<p>Also, people are always free to contact me. Upvote:
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Title: I fear that someday soon, native programs that I have written and rely on won't run on my own computers because I won't have the money to buy a vendor specific compiler tool chain or a vendor provided signing certificate. Because of this, I'm going to make an effort to port all of my applications to generic JavaScript and hope that the vendors won't try to devise ways in which to stop that from running.<p>Here's a demo of SHA1_Pass in generic JavaScript http://16s.us/sha1_pass/why. It's not as functional as the native, desktop application, but it's works for my needs. Edit: This demo only works with Chrome and FireFox.<p>As a kid who began writing code on a C64, it's really sad to see the move to app stores, signed code, approval processes and vendor required dev tools. What do others on HN think? Is there a future for independent developers who write native code? Will our native apps stop running on our own computers? Upvote:
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Title: Wonderfully nostalgic. I had that Nokia phone until about 2009, and taught myself to read on the Speak'n'Spell. Upvote:
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Title: I'm curious to see what interesting projects/startups HNers are working on. Upvote:
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Title: A buddy of mine took it upon himself to redo the UI. Looks pretty slick. Upvote:
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Title: see all the courses here -- http://www.udacity.com/courses Upvote:
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Title: Please lead with either SEEKING WORK or SEEKING FREELANCER, your location and whether remote work is a possibility. Upvote:
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Title: Please lead with the location of the position and include the keywords INTERN, REMOTE, or H1B if the corresponding sort of candidate is welcome. Feel free to post any job that may interest HN readers from executive assistant to machine learning expert to CTO.<p>Please also see: "Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4053078 Upvote:
294
Title: I will be interested to know what kind of movies will you recommend to hackers. Upvote:
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Title: A sight that probably no one currently alive will see again, the next is 2117. Upvote:
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Title: Jessica and I had dinner recently with a prominent investor. He seemed sure the bad performance of the Facebook IPO will hurt the funding market for earlier stage startups. But no one knows yet how much. Possibly only a little. Possibly a lot, if it becomes a vicious circle.<p>What does this mean for you? If it means new startups raise their first money on worse terms than they would have a few months ago, that's not the end of the world, because by historical standards valuations had been high. Airbnb and Dropbox prove you can raise money at a fraction of recent valuations and do just fine. What I do worry about is (a) it may be harder to raise money at all, regardless of price and (b) that companies that previously raised money at high valuations will now face "down rounds," which can be damaging.<p>What to do?<p>If you haven't raised money yet, lower your expectations for fundraising. How much should you lower them? We don't know yet how hard it will be to raise money or what will happen to valuations for those who do. Which means it's more important than ever to be flexible about the valuation you expect and the amount you want to raise (which, odd as it may seem, are connected). First talk to investors about whether they want to invest at all, then negotiate price.<p>If you raised money on a convertible note with a high cap, you may be about to get an illustration of the difference between a valuation cap on a note and an actual valuation. I.e. when you do raise an equity round, the valuation may be below the cap. I don't think this is a problem, except for the possibility that your previous high cap will cause the round to seem to potential investors like a down one. If that's a problem, the solution is not to emphasize that number in conversations with potential investors in an equity round.<p>If you raised money in an equity round at a high valuation, you may find that if you need money you can only get it at a lower one. Which is bad, because "down rounds" not only dilute you horribly, but make you seem and perhaps even feel like damaged goods.<p>The best solution is not to need money. The less you need investor money, (a) the more investors like you, in all markets, and (b) the less you're harmed by bad markets.<p>I often tell startups after raising money that they should act as if it's the last they're ever going to get. In the past that has been a useful heuristic, because doing that is the best way to ensure it's easy to raise more. But if the funding market tanks, it's going to be more than a heuristic.<p>The startups that really get hosed are going to be the ones that have easy money built into the structure of their company: the ones that raise a lot on easy terms, and are then led thereby to spend a lot, and to pay little attention to profitability. That kind of startup gets destroyed when markets tighten up. So don't be that startup. If you've raised a lot, don't spend it; not merely for the obvious reason that you'll run out faster, but because it will turn you into the wrong sort of company to thrive in bad times.<p>--pg Upvote:
645
Title: Just Landed is a new iPhone app that makes it easy to pick someone up at the airport on time - just enter their flight number and we'll alert you when you need to leave for the airport. We take into consideration your location, current traffic conditions, and real-time flight data to remind you to leave at just the right time. Upvote:
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Title: Class 18 of Stanford CS183:Startup Upvote:
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Title: Hi there, I'm Aviral Dasgupta (http://www.aviraldg.com), a sixteen-year-old with a interest in web development (in Python) and a passion for solving problems.<p>I'm not looking for something big (I already do some open source stuff); just something that can either give me practical experience or the kind of cash required to fund my own projects. So, do you have a project you need done? Please tell me about it here.<p>Also, what should I do next? What should I learn?<p>Thanks.<p>More about me:<p>- Started developing when I was 11 or 12, with PHP and created a (rather simple) Twitter clone.<p>- I was a Grand Prize Winner in Google Code-in 2010 for my work with open source software. (http://google-opensource.blogspot.in/2011/02/google-code-in-grand-prize-winners.html)<p>- Involved with quite a few open source projects like Django (Python), Tux4Kids (C/SDL), OpenIntents (Android/Java)<p>- Here's my SO profile: http://stackoverflow.com/users/152873/aviraldg<p>- I've got quite some experience developing in Python (and Django), I've also done some front-end stuff with JavaScript.<p>- I'm currently dabbling with Flask, SQLAlchemy and data visualization and working on a top-secret project (which requires aforementioned funding.) Upvote:
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Title: I just sent out my 100th issue of Hacker Newsletter and announced my newest newsletter: Wayback Letter - http://www.waybackletter.com/<p>In either a daily or weekly version, you'll get links to great HN articles from the past five years. A great way to see how HN has grown and changed, plus see what was going on at different times. Lastly, there are a <i>ton</i> of great reads to learn from that I never saw the first go around. Would love to get feedback and my goal is to expand this past HN in the future. Upvote:
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Title: I think we are all interested in reading some inspirational success stories for summer 2012! I would really appreciate your responses, HN! Upvote:
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Title: Third installment in the series of articles that ask if intelligence is self-limiting because motivation ultimately undermines survival. Upvote:
43
Title: Successors to the Verix 2.5 and the almost-a-desktop Chimera laptop: the Mir 730 and Verix 530.<p>Both available with up to i7-3920XM and 32GB RAM, and a price tag well under the new MBPs. Upvote:
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Title: Anybody can explain this strange policy followed by Apple in their stores? Upvote:
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Title: I would ask that the unknown mysterious moderators of this site stop changing post titles long after they hit the front page.<p>The guidelines at http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html state: "You can make up a new title if you want, but if you put gratuitous editorial spin on it, the editors may rewrite it." but this should not apply just because the title submitted does not match the article. When the actual article's title makes no sense or provides no context, it should be allowed to stay changed.<p>A story is currently on the front page with a title of "Where the Heat and the Thunder Hit Their Shots" which was just changed from its previously edited title of something about visualization.<p>"Where the Heat and Thunder Hit Their Shots", while actually the title of the article, says absolutely nothing about the content of the article. Is this an article about weather? Photography? Nope, it's about basketball. Why is it on Hacker News? Oh, the submitter liked the visualizations, which is exactly what the previously edited title said before it was changed.<p>Another example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3875857 was a story about Light Table and the title was edited to reflect that until it had at least 100 points. Then a moderator changed it to the story's actual title of "On concepts and realities" which said absolutely nothing about it and probably caused lots of people that had already visited the link once to read it and think it was something else.<p>Moderators, please stop doing this. Upvote:
572
Title: Apologies for the "editorialized" title. It was a sort of (admittedly biased) off-the-cuff comment. Upvote:
53
Title: The recent article, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108008 (mirror of content here: https://gist.github.com/2926119) attempted to discuss the hellbanning of a HackerNews veteran for talking about moderators changing submission titles.<p>The submission itself is now dead, after rocketing to the #1 spot of the front page.<p>How can we be a community if we aren't allowed to discuss ourselves? The lack of maturity by moderators who kill articles that offer criticisms to HN is astounding. What are they so afraid of? That if they allow discussions of criticisms to develop, the community might start to ask for changes? Upvote:
53
Title: "Note: In the hours before our presentation/release, Google pushed a new version of reCAPTCHA which fully nerfs our attack." Upvote:
224
Title: Hi guys, I built a site to solve a couple of my problems regarding sleep, and thought you guys might like it too. It's called WakeMyself, and here's the URL: http://www.wakemyself.com<p>Have you ever overslept despite the alarm and wished "Damn, I wish I could go back in time and tell my stupid sleeping self to snap out of it." That's the basic idea behind WakeMyself. It lets you receive a wakeup call from your yesterday's self. Just leave a message, set an alarm, and you get a call from yesterday's self.<p>Another problem I had: I really wanted to remember my dreams but always forget to remember. So I added a recording feature to WakeMyself. You just say something after the beep and it will record your voice, and the recording is available on the website when you come back. This way you can capture all your dreams while you still have them in your memory.<p>Hope you guys like it. I would love lots of feedback. Thanks! Upvote:
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Title: Our RDS instance is in "failure" state after 8 hours of downtime. Have to restore from point in time backup which does not have actual data.<p>Amazon says:<p>Jun 15, 4:03 AM PDT The RDS service is now operating normally. All affected Multi-AZ RDS instances operated normally throughout the power event after failing over. We were able to recover many Single AZ instances successfully, but storage volumes attached to some Single-AZ instances could not be restored, resulting in those instances being placed in Storage failure mode. Customers with automated backups turned on for an affected database instance have the option of initiating a Point-in-Time Restore operation. This will launch a new database instance using a backup of the affected database instance from before the event. To do this, follow these steps: 1) Log into the AWS Management console 2) Access the RDS tab, and select DB Instances on the left-side navigation 3) Select the affected database instance 4) Click on the "Restore to Point in Time" button 5) Select "Use Latest Restorable Time 6) Select a DB instance class that is at least the same size as the original DB instance 7) Make sure No Preference is selected for Availability Zone 8) Launch DB Instance and connect your application We will be following up here with the root cause of this event. Upvote:
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Title: Just stumbled across some TOS craziness on Saygent's website. Can't link to it directly because according to their TOS I would be liable to pay them $100.000 in damages.<p>Here is a workaround: - google Saygent (hope that Google got their permission) - visit their site and click on Legal at the bottom to open the TOS - check out the "HYPERLINKING TO SITE, CO-BRANDING, "FRAMING" AND REFERENCING SITE PROHIBITED" paragraph<p>C'mon guys, you're a SV startup, not Associated Press!!! Upvote:
43
Title: Really informative and interesting 26 page PDF. Upvote:
122
Title: Too few people in the world understand technology. Of those, the vast majority don't do anything creative with it. I would put myself in this category. A few people are extraordinarily creative and come up with the exploits we read about in the news.<p>Let's say you're a competent programmer with minimal prior exposure to security. What should you read/do to learn how to see and engineer these kinds of exploits? I don't want to be Picasso, I just want to learn how to paint so I understand how he does it.<p>For the record, I'd say a working hands-on knowledge of this should inform the design of any system.<p>Is it a person-to-person oral tradition? Is it on some private message boards somewhere? Text files? There used to be 2600 Magazine, does anyone still read that?<p>Maybe it's all of the above. Where is the best place for somebody smart to start reading/inspecting/programming and quickly learn what matters? Upvote:
166
Title: You have to love Linus for not being afraid to speak his mind. Upvote:
370
Title: Hi guys, I am working on a startup, and I will need to charge users for my services.<p>I am in Egypt, and its not possible to have an international merchant account, or in other words, its very expensive..<p>So I would like to know, how can I setup a tax ID and EIN or whatever, so I can make a merchant account based in U.S.?<p>Is it possible to do that without having to be physically in the U.S.? Are there any companies that help do that?<p>Thanks so much in advance. Upvote:
189
Title: I'm attempting to implement a Splunk-like setup with open source components. This blog entry is the first in many to be a brain dump of how I'm using this setup, what I get from it, and why I've arrived at each of these components. Upvote:
79
Title: I recently wanted to test how a part of a web app responded to a 502 HTTP status code from a remote site from which it was pulling data. When I came to test it, the remote site was working fine, but I still wanted the 502. So I created statuscoder, just append your desired status code to the URL and it'll respond with that code.<p>http://statuscoder.com<p>It's my first single-use project and I like its simplicity - it does one job and (hopefully) does it well. Is there anything else that you'd want to see it do? Upvote:
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Title: Getting my new Macbook Air on Wednesday. I'll be using it for RoR and front end coding (not a dev but trying to move away from/add to the "Product Guy" label), VM (will run Ubuntu in a VM).<p>So far these are the apps I know about:<p>-Adium to combine all my chat accounts<p>-Growl for notifications<p>-iTerm2 seems to be an interesting terminal emulator<p>-Any Notepad++ equivalents on OSx? (I'll end up using Vim and some Notepad++ equivalent)<p>-Recommended email clients?<p>-Recommended media players? (I use VLC on Windows)<p>-Recommended calendar apps to sync with Google and Exchange calendars?<p>-CSS editors?<p>-Anything else that a Mac newbie should be told about?<p>Thanks. Upvote:
42
Title: How to build yourself a cheap Ikea standing desk on top of your current desk. Upvote:
412
Title: Hi all, HN newbie here :). I was invited as a YC finalist back in April for our business which revolves around measuring shareholder control. Some of you told me you thought the community would find the link interesting, so I’m happy to oblige:<p>http://www.rotarygallop.com/2/post/2012/06/ownership-and-control-at-square.html<p>While the headline is Control at Square, I hope as fellow entrepreneur’s you’ll takeaway a few more broad points:<p>-Unless it is zero or greater than 50% , your percentage ownership reveals exactly nothing about your control.<p>-Sophisticated entrepreneurs and venture capitalists know this much, which is why they often advise letting control take care of itself. What they don't know is that the story doesn’t end there. (Almost no one knows this including activist’s investors I've worked with who take over companies for a living.)<p>-Control is not soft and fuzzy. It is definable, measurable, and manageable. Just like all the other metrics that drive your business, you can measure it, make decisions and move on.<p>Talk to me in the comments! Upvote:
65
Title: Yaron Minsky lectures on Effective ML at Harvard. Slightly old 2010. Thanks! Upvote:
96
Title: Project Maya has started! For those who haven't read about Maya, please look here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4103344<p>Our goal is to build an open source application that can run in your browser and on iOS/Android without being dependent on app stores.<p>We currently have a working "sneak preview" version viewable over here: http://frontend2.com<p>Want to dig into the source? https://github.com/SchizoDuckie/project-maya<p>We recommend you to check it out in Google Chrome/iOS/Android.<p>Our team currently consists of 5 people. If you think you'd be a good addition, please shoot me an email, [email protected]<p>Feedback so far is more than welcome! Upvote:
88
Title: So I'm making the jump from a 150K employee company to being employee #18 at a web design agency. Part of my role, will be: -Defining/Documenting how designs should work (aka setting up Requirements Managment) -Process and Development definition(SDLC definition, refinement, deployment) -Setting up and running QA (essentially, from what I know it's tested by the Dev team)<p>What I'd like to know, is how is everyone testing there webapps. Most things are built with Drupal or Sitecore (.NET). Upvote:
63
Title: I've decided that I want to start freelancing doing web design for local businesses/organizations. It seems that established freelancers or people with extremely good portfolios don't have much problems finding work due to the amount of referrals they get. But for someone starting from scratch, is there a secret sauce to getting your first few customers? Currently I'm just introducing myself and handing out cards to office managers of businesses. Upvote:
105
Title: I think that customers/users are the key for making a successful startup. But firstly, you have to provide a way to let them reach you and figure about it.<p>What are the solutions, tricks, and methods you are using to generate a high traffic to your startup? Upvote:
145
Title: Cloud9 IDE, the most beautiful editor, now lets you code together in the Cloud. And offline. And in any other language runtime in your own system. Upvote:
84
Title: A tale of faculty-search woe :). Upvote:
123
Title: (The following is parody of recent posts, it is not meant as criticism of any individual but as commentary on what I see as an unhealthy obsession with the habits of others and of people taking themselves and others in the 'startup community' a bit too seriously)<p>0523 Alarm sounds on my iPhone 4GS. I don't use just any alarm program: I use Biorythym Alarm System+ which monitors my internal body clock and starts ringing at the appropriate time before 0523 to begin an in tune start to the day. It uses Gregorian chants, nature sounds and recordings from inside the womb to ease me into the day.<p>0530 I'm in front of my MacBook Air (with 256GB SSD) at my desk made from recycled lumber from South African railway tracks. Why did I get up 7 minutes earlier? Because, as Manic Minute Minder Pro reminds me 7 minutes wasted per day 1.7 extra days of productive time per year. 1.7 days when the competition is literally sleeping!<p>I drink a large bowl of Jing Tea Matcha Supreme Green and a glass of organic milk. At 0533 every day I'm hacking through my email, TODOs, tweets and catching up on Hacker News. Every 20 minutes Time Out reminds me to stop, meditate and focus.<p>0645 I walk into my bedroom with a green tea for my wife Cassiopeia who is waking up. We smile at each other and spend the next 15 minutes on One on One Time. At 0700 it's time to wake our two boys: Dagwood and Spaniel.<p>0800 The house is quiet but Skype isn't. I stay in contact with my teams in Costa Rica, Montreal and Goa via Skype throughout the day. This morning check in with the teams gives me a good view of where the business is. Currently we're in double stealth mode (the public doesn't know what we're building and neither do we).<p>0830 I jog down to the ground floor of our New York brownstone and get on my Trek Madone 4 series bike for a 30 mile ride out into New Jersey and back. My iPhone 4GS is cued up with a set of daily business podcasts set to run at double speed so I can get through all of them in the hour's ride.<p>0930 Shower and then spiritual time. I have a small shrine set up that allows me to focus on the important. I light an incense and gaze up at posters of Tim Ferriss, Kevin Rose and Warren Buffet.<p>0945 The day really begins. For here on in it's meetings, hirings, firings, networking with the New York VC and angel crowd until 1900 when C, D &#38; S (or cease and desist as I call them) come back home. We eat together and at 2200 I'm in bed with a light cucumber mask and the alarm set for another day.<p>Tonight's a little special because I've been invited to give a one hour keynote on being a startup CEO at Velocipede Ventures weekly Pumped and Primed meetup for other successful entrepreneurs like me. Upvote:
633
Title: A new simple to do list that instantly pushes changes to all of your devices. Cheddar supports Markdown and has tags. A free universal iPhone/iPad app and web app were just released. Upvote:
125
Title: My first real blog post... I hope you like it! Upvote:
46
Title: multi-az deployments affected too. Upvote:
90
Title: Using only AWS services, what do you put in place to help prevent disruptions when a single availability zone goes down?<p>The most simple would be to set up your instances in a multiple AZ's and then configure the ELB to round robin requests until the health of one of the instances is poor.<p>Any other thoughts? Upvote:
128
Title: I was talking to a few people who worked for a big company. The software they use are some of the worst software I've ever seen. The workers there hate it and it makes them unproductive. Sounds like a good place to make a start-up, right?<p>That is until I found out the people who use the software have virtually no input in purchasing it. Not even the IT people who have to maintain it has any input in it. All purchasing decisions are made three states away in a purchasing department that buys stuff by list of features - whether or not those features work efficiently or even correctly for that matter.<p>How is this maze navigated? Is it worth the hassle if you don't have deep contacts and relationships inside every big company? Upvote:
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Title: Please lead with the location of the position and include the keywords INTERN, REMOTE, or H1B if the corresponding sort of candidate is welcome. Feel free to post any job that may interest HN readers from executive assistant to machine learning expert to CTO.<p>Please also see: "Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4184757 Upvote:
181
Title: Please lead with either SEEKING WORK or SEEKING FREELANCER, your location and whether remote work is a possibility. Upvote:
101
Title: If you need a simpler solution like call_user_func_array you can use this gist. Upvote:
49
Title: Bassel Bassel Khartabil - an open source software contributor to projects such as Creative Commons &#38; Mozilla has been unjustly detained for nearly four months without trial or any legal charges being brought against him.<p>Read more &#38; sign the support letter: http://freebassel.org/<p>ps: Help get this on the frontpage of HackerNews Upvote:
184
Title: (Was Google translate, now from the comment of imaginator below, thanks)<p>Better translation of their message to English speaking customers:<p>During the night of 30.06.2012 to 01.07.2012 our internal monitoring systems registered an increase in the level of IT power usage by approximately one megawatt.<p>The reason for this huge surge is the additional switched leap second which can lead to permanent CPU load on Linux servers.<p>According to heise.de, various Linux distributions are affected by this. Further information can be found at: http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Leap-second-Linux-can...<p>In order to reduce CPU load to a normal level again, a restart of the whole system is necessary in many cases. First, a soft reboot via the command line should be attempted. Failing that, you have the option of performing a hardware reset via the Robot administration interface. For this, select menu item "Server" and the "Reset" tab for the respective server in the administration interface. Please do not hesitate to contact us, should you have any queries.<p>Kind regards,<p>Hetzner Online AG Stuttgarter Str. 1 91710 Gunzenhausen / Germany [email protected] http://www.hetzner.com Upvote:
82
Title: This is a great example of a disruptive technology startup. SignNow has created NotaryNow and helped lead the charge to get the online notarization bill passed in Virginia, which came into effect on July 1st so now people can notarize documents from anywhere in just minutes. Upvote:
40
Title: An in-browser github tutorial powered by codeschool Upvote:
510
Title: KeepSafe lets you take control of who sees what on your phone. Privacy is our main feature so we're an inherently non-social service. 12 months ago, we started at 0, today we have more than a million daily active users.<p>This is how we did it: * Start with something the user cares about. Instead of solving a big thing like "Privacy", we decided to start close to a specific user problem: keeping pictures private on the phone. By reducing it, we quickly realized that this was a crowded space with tons of apps that simply hide pictures. Bad, because of competition but a good indicator for what users care about.<p>* Throw out features The fewer things your app can do, the more you can focus on making the user flows for the remaining features simple and easy to understand.<p>* Focus on retention Growth is nice but we want users to come back. We were slow to build new features but always fast to release bug fixes and improvements to the core experience. In our case it was improving the speed for adding pictures to KeepSafe and the user flows for doing it. If you continuously improve, your userbase will notice and keep using your app.<p>* Speak a language your users understand We have a large userbase in the US and other English speaking countries. But we invested in translating the app from the get-go. The smartphone penetration in countries like South Korea is really high and we see lots of users from Europe too. It's easy and it's fast if you use services like MyGengo.<p>* Ask your users for their opinion When someone started to be a frequent user we simply asked them to rate us in the Android market. It has helped our ranking.<p>What is your experience and insights on growing your app?<p>KeepSafe has a fun and ambitious roadmap. If you want to join a mobile startup and have huge impact, take a look http://www.getkeepsafe.com/about.php#jobs Upvote:
109
Title: I am looking to teach myself Mathematics, mainly to improve my thinking processes and learn more about the basis for CS based topics like algorithms and proofs, and other practical applications.<p>Suggestions for resources? (textbooks, videos, etc) Upvote:
171
Title: I'm about to start on a cross-platform desktop app, and I'm trying to choose a GUI toolkit. I was originally planning to use Qt, because it looks great right out of the box, and the API is nice and simple.<p>With Nokia kicking Qt to the curb, should we all be moving to wxWidgets? Something else? GTK+ still doesn't look very native on Windows or OS X, so for many cross-platform apps it's not a viable option. Upvote:
75
Title: Entrepreneurship the Illness - A day in the life<p>Inspired by Dave Mcclure's honest piece a few days ago...<p>It's 2am… I've spent the last 5 hours working on my personal projects. I shut my laptop and take a moment to think. All I can think about is the fact that I have 4 hours until I awake to start a new day. I make my way to bed and I can hear my daughter crying… Tomorrow is going to be a long and challenging day.<p>6am rolls around and my alarm wakes me up to groundhog day. I feel very low… I question if I'm wasting my time on this earth, I question my ability, I question my life. I admit to myself that this can't go on, but it occurs to me that I have reached this same conclusion many many times before….and I'm still standing in the same place. A place which is probably not too dissimilar to the place an alcoholic spends their waking moments.<p>6-30am and the coffee is brewing. My wife and the youngest of my two children wakes and I spend some time playing and talking to them. When my oldest child awakes breakfast is well under way and I'm helping dress my youngest before shooting out the door for a day of work.<p>8-30am I arrive at work ready for the unchallenging, un-motivating, uncreative 8 hours which pays for my families life. It has been "beaten" into me from a young age that this is unavoidable - while you live you will work, and while you work you will hate it. I then try to convince myself that I am lucky to live in a developed country and have a well paid job which most people would die for.<p>12-30pm - Off to lunch I go. I am a free man for 30 minutes. Although I still have to wear this ridiculous clothing which most people call a suit and tie. I have to remind myself that this clothing is necessary to prove that I am a trustworthy, honest, powerful, intelligent person. And without it I would just be another broken loser.<p>13-00 - I start to fall asleep as we discuss the new functionality we are going to add to the app of which I am lead developer. I lose focus as we discuss a form for users to add blah to the blah so they can visualise the blah. This app is used by all 80 users in the organisation, not exactly the size of audience that I had always dreamed of showcasing my talent to.<p>15-00 I am now in some sort of semi conscious dream/brainstorming session… the plans I have to make the world a better place - Ideas, functionality, marketing… round and round I go.<p>17-00 - Small talk - done. Read emails - done. Pretend to be motivated - done. Pretend to be a great employee - done.<p>17-01 (or somewhere close enough without giving the impression that I would rather die than stay another minute) I'm on my way home. Success! I have sold a portion of my day in exchange for enough money to make sure my family doesn't starve to death.<p>17-45 I arrive home to my family. This is without doubt the highlight of the day and easily the most fun. My wife has had a really challenging day (unlike myself), so I take the kids to the playground and we have some fun before dinner.<p>19-00 with dinner now eaten I get the kids ready for bed and sit with them until they fall asleep. While my wife takes care of ALL our household chores.<p>20-00 With the kids now asleep I have 4 hours (6 if I want to kill myself) free time to take care of any unfinished business before I make my dent on the world.<p>20-30 I'm showered changed and ready to create. My tool of choice for the last 15 years has been web programming.<p>2am - After going around in circles and questioning everything I do - I prepare myself for bed and groundhog day.<p>My name is Damian and I have an illness which I was born with, it's the illness to create things, some people call it entreprenuership. I've always been fascinated with the way that as a lone person you can create things that have an impact on many people. One idea can change the paths of many lives, and the internet has made it much easier to put those ideas into action.<p>Talking to people about this illness is not easy. They say things like "Just quit", "Do something else with your time", "Manage your time better", "You need balance in your life". I guess these are the same sort of responses alcoholics or drug addicts get when they try to explain their predicament to someone who clearly doesn't understand. I certainly never talk to my family about these feelings, it wouldn't be worthwhile.<p>Ok so there was a little tongue in cheek (in parts), but it isn't far off the truth.<p>I believe that everybody on this planet should have an inner drive to change the world and make it a better place. And you should never quit, otherwise you might as well die.<p>So I continue my life of solitude without the things I enjoy - socialising, working out, movies, books. I admit that it doesn't sound healthy when written down.<p>It's the self doubt which can kill you.<p>Please up vote if this story held your attention - Thanks.<p>Current project - www.commentary.io - sports commentary on live events<p>Follow - @dworrad<p>Email - same username @yahoo.co.uk Upvote:
53
Title: Read the whole article but note the closing - A careful reading of official Major League Baseball Rule 6.08(b) suggests that in this situation, the batter would be considered "hit by pitch", and would be eligible to advance to first base. Upvote:
62
Title: One of Paul Graham's frighteningly ambitious startup ideas (http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html) is "Replacing Email". He visualizes his inbox as a disastrously bad todo list and email as the way things get into it. He shared his thoughts on what may be a better solution that can eventually replace email. Here are some points from that :<p>1. Email has to be replaced with a new protocol. This new protocol should be a todo list protocol, not a messaging protocol.<p>2. The new protocol should give more power to the recipient than email like<p>a)more restrictions on what someone can put on my todo list.<p>b)Information about what action I need to take on a to-do list item. Like, do I need to read something or take any further action on it like replying, forwarding, viewing attachment, paying attached bill, watching video etc. ?<p>c)How important it is? There obviously has to be some mechanism to prevent people from saying everything is important.<p>d)When does it have to be done? Is it urgent? Do I need to do it before a given time?<p>----------------------------<p>I would like to ask some questions about it from both PG and HN community :<p>1. In an email there are only few actions one is supposed to take, like "Read", "Read &#38; Reply", "Read &#38; Forward", "View attachments". What other actions you think that should be incorporated in new to-do list based system?If not all, what are the important ones for you?<p>2. How would you like to prioritize to-do items by importance? What are the rules? Like, giving importance to to-do items from specific "circle" of peoples you know - Colleagues, family, etc.? or by type/content of to-do item? or anything else?<p>3. What kind of things one can put on your to-do list? What kind of things one shouldn't be allowed to put in your to-do list?<p>4. Do we really need a new protocol? Can't it be done by making a distributed client/server system where anyone can setup an open source to-do list server(if they need to own and control their information for privacy reasons) and clients can communicate through HTTP protocol (REST API)?<p>5. Is there any YC company or other startup that is working on this idea?<p>Please share your thoughts. Upvote:
49
Title: Tapfame is the easiest way to create a portfolio of all the mobile apps you've worked on. Once you create a portfolio you will start receiving freelance gigs that businesses and companies post. Upvote:
40
Title: Did you catch the part where it said the Census Bureau paid IBM $33.3 million for the poo bucket that is the American FactFinder? Ha ha. That was my favorite part, too. Upvote:
139
Title: This will make the upvote triangle look crisp on high-resolution displays. Thanks! Upvote:
830
Title: The link breaks down after few minutes and gives the message "Unknown or expired link." Upvote:
73
Title: Our story of why publishing on the Windows Phone Marketplace is horrible in many, many ways. How arbitrary and moralistic is the certification policy, the numbers are low, international developers ignored... The list goes on. We'd be happy to hear about your experiences. Upvote:
189
Title: Hi HN!<p>I'm working on a SaaS product and I wonder: is there anyone here with concrete feedback about how online demos that do not require sign-up (a bit like https://www.optimizely.com/ and stripe) actually increase sign-ups (or not)?<p>As a user, it would feel nice, but does it have any measured effect?<p>Any feedback is most welcome! Upvote:
52
Title: Apart from companies to try and create the internet, what offline businesses would you have started and why? Upvote:
47
Title: I've been a PHP developer for 4 years (not in the US), doing typically normal web development stuff. I was wondering if someone could give me advice on how to break out and start a consulting practice. I love working with people and another motivation for me is to stumble upon a problem that I can build a app for.<p>I'd really appreciate your advice and suggestions. I hope to be successful with this and forge my future. Thank you in advance. Upvote:
43
Title: We are building a service to help small business manage data they have in the cloud. We got to point that we are profitable but growth is anemic.<p>We have the problem that somehow majority of people signing up to our service are not at all potential customers.<p>Majority of blogs and advices we got are actually about how to acquire customers in consumer segment.<p>There is very little blogs on how to acquire customers which are small businesses (real estate, etc.) via internet.<p>Any ideas? Upvote:
59
Title: Sublime Text 2 is a text editor with great responsiveness, flexibility and accuracy for coding. After three months of using it, I discover many amazing features and ways to make it even better. Upvote:
50
Title: See http://i.imgur.com/cGtm5.png. I'm not the question's author; I recently searched for this question, specifically pros/cons. Seems nowadays that about 5% of the questions on SO I look up and are perfectly legitimate to me are found to be locked, with a warning to others to knock it off. This is up from ~0% when I started using the site. Every forum I've loved eventually gets lock-happy mods. What does HN think? Am <i>I</i> the unreasonable one? I don't see how this question is unworthy according to the FAQ that SO refers to. Upvote:
53
Title: Using a throwaway account, although I'm pretty active on HN.<p>I spent 6 years working in Silicon Valley where I worked many years for companies such as Yahoo! and Facebook.<p>My overall experience is probably around 10 years.<p>I specialize in Python/Django as well as pretty good in Obj-C/Cocoa/Cocoa Touch, and I've got many apps in App Store and few Mac OSX apps as well.<p>I know C, C++, and PHP pretty well. I also know some Perl, and can pickup any technology very quickly.<p>I can do development, server admin, IT work, etc.<p>I freelance and run my own small business specializing in web apps and ios/osx apps.<p>I'm from US, but now find myself in Copenhagen, Denmark where I met a nice girl and want to stay for foreseeable future.<p>My tourist visa is quickly expiring, and I need a work visa to stay longer than 3 months.<p>Anyone interested in hiring me and sponsoring my work visa? I promise I won't disappoint and can bring my tremendous experience to any tasks you have.<p>Send me an email at [email protected] and we'll talk more.<p>EDIT: Thanks for all the advice and suggestions. I'm floored at all of the help. If someone is in CPH, and wants to grab coffee, and talk about tech, travel, or whatever, let me know as well. Upvote:
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Title: We spent a lot of time working on this, including the demo, and we'd love some feedback.<p>It might take a little bit of time to load if lots of people are trying the demo, so please try to be patient. We spent a lot of time to ensure you'll be impressed.<p>Feel free to email us at tony or chuck @graphmuse.com if you'd like to discuss further! Upvote:
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