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Title: Writing advice often reiterates the same general rules: active voice, economy of expression, favour the concrete over the abstract.<p>These broad suggestions come at the expense of advice on micro- and macrostructure. We're missing a trick here. In particular, I believe great non-fiction writing out-punches the good because it manages not only to articulate ideas succinctly and clearly, but to show how they overlap and interconnect.<p>In business, while a good product is essential, it is almost always not enough. The product has to be presented to the consumer in an intuitive and sensible way. Often a product will have more than one USP, and its success hinges on which USP you chose to emphasise.<p>The same might be said of ideas. An argument---or point---will be convincing only insofar as it is presented to the reader in a coherent way.<p>To that end, do people have any tips, book suggestions, or exercises that will help writers improve their articles' unity, coherent, flow, logical structure, etc? Upvote:
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Title: Hi Everyone,<p>I'm organizing a SFHN meetup this Thursday, November 29th. It will be at the Coderwall offices on 480 2nd Street, Suite 302 from 6pm-8pm.<p>Refreshments will be provided!<p>-<p>Please RSVP at http://sfhn.eventbrite.com/ and join our FB group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/gosfhn Upvote:
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Title: Today we’re releasing a dev-preview of buddycloud and would love your feedback.<p>buddycloud is an extensible open source distributed social network. A user’s identity looks like [email protected] and users share content in "channels".<p>We started buddycloud because of the growing “closed-ness” of existing social networks. For example Twitter’s increasing API contortions about what one can and can’t do with their API or which quadrant one is supposed to operate in. We also think it’s important to build services against a known protocol that works against any buddycloud instance on any domain (not paid-for APIs). Naturally this called for a completely decentralised design built on open standards like Atom, Activitystrea.ms and XMPP.<p>Each buddycloud-enabled domain runs a suite of servers. Each buddycloud server uses DNS to find, connect, and sync content in realtime with other buddycloud servers. This content can be any kind of structured data or large files.<p>Today we are releasing open source implementations of the following buddycloud servers: the buddycloud-channel server (shares your channel / your activity stream with trusted followers), a media server (shares anything from a small avatar to a multi-TB file), a push-server (email and mobile updates), and a taste engine (“channels you might like”). Some of the team are working on more servers that will let you suck content in and out of existing social networks.<p>Our reference implementations are written in Java and node and use Postgres for storing data. The web-client is built on backbone.js. There’s also a console client written in Python.<p>Next tasks: client speedup using IndexedDB. Following permissions, Android, iOS and Firefox OS clients and release buddycloud.js.<p>We really hope that some of this could be useful for your project: - https://github.com/buddycloud - wiki https://buddycloud.org - demo instance at https://demo.buddycloud.org - channel https://demo.buddycloud.org/[email protected] Upvote:
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Title: I run Twicsy (twitter picture search) in my spare time by myself and receive over 5.5 million monthly unique visitors (current trailing month according to Google Analytics).<p>I am curious about what other large sites there are out there run by a single person? Is 4chan the biggest site run by one person? Upvote:
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Title: Hi HN, After watching a lot of Show HN's here, it's finally my turn to show something. This is the first real project I have shipped, so it is extra special to me.<p>For those who will inevitably ask why I made yet another mockup editor I covered it on our blog (http://blog.mocktailsapp.in/why-build-yet-another-mockup-editor-tm). Not all the features mentioned in that post have been implemented yet. As such Mocktails is pre-beta software and very minimal. It does not even have user accounts or any actual server side component at all for that matter (yet)!<p>Our intention is to build Mocktails into a first-rate mockup editor within the next six months. Please visit, provide your feedback and spread the word.<p>Thanks!<p>Links: Mocktails - http://www.mocktailsapp.in Blog - http://blog.mocktailsapp.in/ Upvote:
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Title: This will become a big trend in next 5-10 years amongst "Baby Boomers"&#60;p&#62;The growing interest in entrepreneurship and age is reflected in a study by the Kauffman Foundation that found that more people ages 55 to 64 are creating their own businesses than those ages 20 to 34.&#60;p&#62;As a percentage of total entrepreneurs, the 55 to 64 age group has grown the most. For example, in 1996 14.3 percent of all entrepreneurs were ages 55 to 64; in 2011, that grew to 20.9 percent. The percentage of entrepreneurs that declined most sharply were those in the 20 to 34 age range. Upvote:
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Title: Just like it happens like clockwork on any Microsoft article that is not negative on them, the Surface Pro pricing announcement just got flagged off the front page.http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4848998<p>If there's anything flag worthy there, can anyone please tell me what it is? From the HN guidelines "If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link."<p>As usual, I suspect it's the overzealous MS haters armed with the flag button. Simlar things happen to some anti-Google and anti-Apple stories.<p>I think the logic behind the flagging system was that someone good enough to get enough karma(now 500) would be objective enough not to flag anything legit that show their favorite company in bad light. Clearly that has failed. Paul Thurrott's Winsupersite is completely banned from HN because of this and any articles that reach front page that paint MS in good light are flagged to death. I have multiple screenshots of this happening if anyone cares to want them.<p>The flagging system is clearly outdated and broken and doesn't account for people with good karma trying to censor legitimate news articles they don't want others to see. Upvote:
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Title: I'm starting up a new blog about programming and productivity and the things that make my productivity better at my new job.<p>This particular post is about getting my terminal perfect for me. I've been using these settings for about a week and I can feel everything getting easier. Most of my work that isn't answering emails and going to meetings involves me using a terminal. Between vim and a set of zsh commands, my terminal becomes my best friend. 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>Also see:<p>"Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4857717<p>"Ask HN: Who is meeting up?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4857727 Upvote:
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Title: Please lead with either SEEKING WORK or SEEKING FREELANCER, your location and whether remote work is a possibility.<p>Also see: "Ask HN: Who is meeting up?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4857727 Upvote:
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Title: Let's try to build a list of all Hacker News meet up groups and organize new groups for cities that don't have one yet.<p>Please post the name of your city and a link to your group. Upvote:
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Title: When I used to play online poker, I had weekly coaching sessions over Skype with a pro who reviewed my play, or talked me through particularly difficult hands, and gave me things to work on. It was incredibly helpful.<p>I am wondering if any similar thing exists for programmers. I would love to have guidance to improve my programming by someone that is better at it than I am, and be able to get opinions and guidance on my thinking and decisions about particularly complex problems.<p>I do read a lot, and I have discussions with other programmers, but what I am looking for is something more in depth. I would like a situation where I can get regular, specific feedback.<p>I haven't heard of such a thing before, and would love to know if there are people out there doing this, or that would be interested in doing this. Upvote:
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Title: I'm a UI/UX designer interested in writing about design. I've written about the principles of iOS design, a case study on how I designed an iPhone app, etc., in my blog (http://radesign.in/blog/).<p>Instead of writing what I think is useful I want to write what the audience finds useful. So, what about UI/UX design you wish you knew? What would help you? What do you find interesting? What would you like to know? Upvote:
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Title: For me:<p>Life: deciding that I wanted to take care of my body.<p>Programming: deciding that I wanted to master 1 new tool and a language every year. Last year was Python/Emacs and this year it is Rust/DTrace. Upvote:
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Title: We're HireArt (YC W'12), a marketplace for jobs. We're doing a survey to assess how different companies hire (e.g., success rate per applicant, processes used, types of candidates hired etc). We hope the results of this survey will help companies figure out how they compare (e.g, perhaps you're getting way more/less applicants than the average start-up).<p>The survey is mostly focused on non-technical hiring as that's what our company primarily recruits for.<p>Please fill this out and we'll publish the results. Would really appreciate your help!<p>http://hireartsurvey.wufoo.com/forms/please-tell-us-how-you-hire/ Upvote:
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Title: What are the topics you and your cofounder should cover before you take the leap? Here is the complete and Master list. Upvote:
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Title: via Functionn - Open Source Resources For Web Developers &#38; Designers: http://functionn.blogspot.com/2012/12/ttfjs-javascript-truetype-font-engine.html<p>P.S. Functionn contains a whole lot more of awesome resources like ttf.js. There only a fraction of them I can post here at a time. Take a look if you're interested, and subscribe:<p>http://functionn.blogspot.com Upvote:
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Title: Sponsored by O'Reilly, build by CodeSchool (creators of Rails for Zombies), this is a free online course. Upvote:
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Title: ] Upvote:
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Title: Is there a website out there that's more technical than HN, has less negativity, and leaves out the "social" aspects of technology?<p>What I'm looking for is a site where I can discuss things like:<p>-Programming language design (functional languages, different type systems, point-free style, etc...)<p>-Interesting mathematics (deeper understanding of statistics, implications of Godel's incompleteness theorem)<p>-Interesting science (advances in quantum mechanics, optical gyroscopes, etc.)<p>-Other technical oddities (Turing complete systems, global illumination on GPUs, supercomputing)<p>-News on start-ups that solve technical rather than social problems (DE Shaw instead of Socialcam)<p>I'd like to avoid:<p>-Tech products<p>-Heated arguments that make me feel bad after reading the comments instead of enlightened Upvote:
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Title: Did he specify any reasons?<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4691994<p>Twitter http://twitter.com/ryah<p>Not on G+ http://plus.google.com/115094562986465477143<p>Not on reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/h1m2o/i_am_ryan_dahl_creator_of_nodejs_ama/<p>Livejournals are deleted http://four.livejournal.com/ http://ry-comic.livejournal.com<p>Github http://github.com/ry<p>Website is redesigned (it had a hand drawn sketch for a long time) http://tinyclouds.org/<p>Sorry Ryan! I am just curious. Upvote:
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Title: I want to build a cable company that centers around viewer types. Basically, it is my understanding that the majority of my cable costs centers around channels (like fox) that I just dont watch, if I wanted to build a system that let customers limit this, where would I get started? Upvote:
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Title: I am not sure if this is fits the HN community, but I am posting it here if people are interested.<p>This is the current iteration of the car: http://i.imgur.com/ko8YBh.jpg<p>Details:<p>I wrote a simple android app that streams the accelerometer data from the phone to the pi over a simple socket. The pi then uses this data to drive the DC motor and the servo motor. Tilting the phone to control the car feels very natural.<p>In this[0] pic you can see the wifi dongle I've used. I am using Adafruit Occidental v0.2[1] as my OS because it has support for my wifi dongle. It also makes some hardware interaction easier and comes pre-installed with some good python libraries.<p>Here[2] is a picture of the breadboard. I am using the L293DNE[3] hbridge chip for DC motor control. The two black wires you see coming off the board connect to the motor.<p>In this[4] pic is the battery pack I am using to power the pi. I purchased it on amazon here[5]. Here is a pic[6] of the battery pack I am using for the DC motor.<p>Here[7] is a closeup of the steering servo. It is an HS-55[8] and I power it directly from the pi's 5v rail. To control it I use the servoblaster kernal module[9].<p>My next plans are to add some sensors and make it autonomous. Let me know what you think.<p>[0] http://i.imgur.com/w0PIk.jpg<p>[1] http://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-raspberry-pi-educational-linux-distro/occidentalis-v0-dot-2<p>[2] http://i.imgur.com/hhogr.jpg<p>[3] http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Texas-Instruments/L293DNE/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMtYFXwiBRPs0wSafWlCmJbc<p>[4] http://i.imgur.com/3t6NG.jpg<p>[5] http://www.amazon.com/PowerGen-External-Blackberry-Sensation-Thunderbolt/dp/B005VBNYDS<p>[6] http://i.imgur.com/zpgyj.jpg<p>[7] http://i.imgur.com/b8Qnc.jpg<p>[8] http://www.servocity.com/html/hs-55_sub-micro.html<p>[9] https://github.com/richardghirst/PiBits Upvote:
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Title: a new serious proof claim on P!=NP has been put forward by a Phd mathematician/computer scientist Jun Fukuyama last July 1 and has received very little public attention since then.<p>http://www.linkedin.com/pub/junichiro-fukuyama/36/2b9/88b<p>rumor is that its been submitted to a journal. it uses a known plausible approach based on monotone circuit theory for which there are some long established existing proofs of circuit lower bounds (dating to a celebrated 1985 proof by Razborov). Fukuyama has published several papers in computer science. it would be great if the online community could give this some attention as with the Deolalikar proof from 2.5yrs ago. Upvote:
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Title: Has this prediction come true? What do you think? Upvote:
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Title: I've seen 3 different "Review my startup" posts on hacker news in the past week that was a startup whose sole focus is curating content for startups. I hate to sound like an ass, but it feels a bit like navel gazing or preaching to the choir. It would be one thing if those startups are doing something truly extraordinary, but so far I can't even say that.<p>I realize that hacker news is the ideal place for marketing to other startups, so kudos to you for knowing your market. But it feels a bit like when I played in a band and most of the audience watching were in other bands. If you are going play to a bunch of other musicians you better be amazing and blow people away or have something that will make jaded people remember you, i.e. amazing musicianship, great energy, brilliant songs or talent, even something unique like using different instruments like accordion or tuba. Otherwise you are wasting your time.<p>Similarly the expectations for building a startup for startups is very high, and these little projects for curating content for other startups when there are already some brilliant sites for startups does not bode well for your idea. Sorry to sound like ass, believe it or not I'm trying to help. Upvote:
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Title: I'm getting annoyed with the changes in the iOS App Store so I just finished porting several apps to Android and now I'm working on Windows 8. Just wondering if anyone has any experience good or bad with the new Windows platform. Upvote:
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Title: Coming from a Latino culture it is funny to see that Russians look a lot like Latinos. Upvote:
131
Title: I am doing some side projects at my "copious" spare time (getting up at 5am and work for 2 hours). I think it would be a shame if I end up wasting time. So, I wonder if any of you, in your one-man project, use any software development methodologies (scrum)? Any project management software (evernote)? Or do you relax and not keep track of it at all? Upvote:
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Title: We don’t need another Web site or service to see pictures of someone’s lunch or their soy latte, or another teenager making a duck face. Upvote:
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Title: Rapid7 researchers have recently unearthed an unusual piece of malware that turned out to be crucial to the formation of an elusive botnet - dubbed Skynet by the researchers - whose existence has been documented in a very popular Reddit "I Am A" thread. Upvote:
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Title: Simvla is an open source Publishing Platform and Blogging Network. Upvote:
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Title: For now, the original link is down, so check this out here http://tommy.authpad.com/don-t-copy-and-paste-other-people-s-code-write-it-out Upvote:
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Title: Two years ago, you referred to the question, "Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage" as "one of the questions we pay most attention to when judging applications."[1]<p>But, as recently as a few months ago you said, "How you hacked some real-world system to your advantage is not a super important question. Probably not even in the top 10."[2]<p>So, why is the question not as evocative as you once thought?<p>[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html [2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4693870 Upvote:
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Title: It appears that Tom Preston-Werner, current CEO of Github, is going to give Jekyll, his most popular open-source project, some love in the New Year. Upvote:
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Title: This is a throw away account. My real HN account is not blessed with a lot of karma but you could find out who I am by knowing by HN account name.<p>I need help. A few months ago I founded my first startup together with a friend of mine. We were #1 on HN for nearly a whole day. I could feel pretty good but I am very depressed from time to time. At the moment I am in a phase of depression again and I hate it.<p>I need someone to talk to. Either via audio or via Text. I could try to talk to my friend but I would prefer the advice from "a stranger".<p>I am in therapy for 7 years now and it is not going anywhere. As a child I have been abused over a long period of time. I am taking (subscribed) meds (about 10 pills every day) and I still feel terrible. There are a couple of similar stories on HN and I tried to read them all - but I feel that I need someone to talk to directly.<p>first contact via email: [email protected]<p>Thank you so much. Upvote:
281
Title: Your marking emails might not have a one-click unsubscribe link but Gmail certainly has a one click spam button.<p>Two ways you can keep me as a subscriber:<p>1. Remind me what the hell it is your company does/sells in the first sentence. Between my signup and now, chances are about 95% that I forgot what I even signed up for.<p>2. Make it easy to unsubscribe. That means a very visible one-click link. Unsubscribing doesn't mean I'm no longer interested in your product. But making it difficult to unsubscribe says a lot about how I will be treated as your customer.<p>&#60;extra&#62; Go easy on the HTML / CSS / Images. &#60;/credit&#62; Upvote:
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Title: Any app has full memory access via /dev/exynos-mem<p>Largest security hole ever? Upvote:
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Title: Source: http://www.forbes.com/special-report/2012/30-under-30/30-under-30_tech.html and http://yclist.com/<p>Companies:<p>Branch<p>eBay<p>Peek<p>x Airbnb<p>x Pathjoy<p>x Stripe<p>Revel<p>x Chart.io<p>x MemSQL<p>Kaggle<p>x Hipmunk<p>x Cue<p>x FiveStars<p>x Dropbox<p>Box<p>x Funders Club<p>Asana<p>x Reddit<p>Clever Sense<p>x Zenpayroll<p>Learnup<p>Facebook<p>x Weebly<p>Intern Sushi<p>Radius Intelligence<p>x Codecademy<p>x Optimizely<p>Google<p>Github<p>Facebook Upvote:
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Title: Had a chat today with Tom Preston-Werner about the future of Jekyll. Here's what is in the works. Upvote:
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Title: I'm curious about how pay for particular positions at particular companies trend over time. It seems a little tricky to find the data since glassdoor doesn't seem to offer additional breakdown by year. Other sites don't seem to have sufficient datapoints. What has your experience been with annual raises? And do you find salary-reporting sites to be accurate? Or possibly filled with outdated data? Upvote:
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Title: A week ago I’ve decided to learn VHDL and as an exercise, implement The game of life. VHDL is a hardware description language. Basically, it’s a programming language used by chip designers.&#60;p&#62;This post is an introduction to VHDL. Upvote:
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Title: Hello HN,<p>I was just informed that a key investor pulled support for a startup I am working fulltime for. Thus, people are being laid off 5 days before Christmas. Bummer.<p>I am reaching out to the community as I am on the hunt for Developer-related position.<p>About me: Berkeley Grad, 7 years of development exp, 4 years at startups. Held titles: Developer, Sr. Developer and Lead Developer. Great team-player, active communicator, can step into leadership as needed.<p>Skills: Ruby, Rails, Sinatra, MySQL, Postgres, SQLServer, API's, JS, HTML5, PHP, Python, Linux system admin (AWS, Linode etc), DBA, Product Development, Team leadership<p>Experienced in domains: Ecommerce, Saas, Social API's, Analytics, Finance, Health IT<p>Currently Learning: Objective C, Node.js<p>Seeking: Remote Fulltime opportunity, willing to travel occasionally. I am great as a technical co-founder in early stage scenarios, helping to define product and rapidly build it. Also great as part of a dev team. Open to possibilities.<p>Shoot me an email at: [email protected] if you have any leads or want to talk about opportunities.<p>Thanks and Happy Holidays!<p>EDIT: I am located in the Midwest about 2.5 hours from Chicago.<p>I greatly appreciate the heavy response to this. This is a great community to be a part of. Upvote:
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Title: With 250 million monthly connected users, Skype is one of the most popular services for making phone calls as well as chatting over the Internet. If you have friends, family or business contacts abroad, chances are you are using Skype to keep in contact. Having said that, you are probably not aware that all your phone calls and text chats can be monitored by the censorship authorities in China. And if you are aware, chances are that you do not consent to such surveillence. Microsoft, however, assumes that you do consent, as expressed in their Privacy Policy. Upvote:
199
Title: I've built a thing! A few months back someone (not me) posted my Mac app Droplings to HN. It was incredibly rough around the edges back then, and in alpha.<p>Well, it's finished now and sparkles like crazy. Please take a look! :) Upvote:
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Title: Hello HNers.<p>If any of you are alone this Christmas and would rather not be, I have a plan.<p>Me and my girlfriend are organizing a dinner meetup in the Cologne, Germany area. If you are in the area, email me ( kliment[at]0xfb.com ) or post here and we'll arrange things.<p>If you are anywhere else, post your location and whether you can arrange a meetup. Let's see how many meetups we can arrange.<p>If you have places to be, but know others that don't, point them this way. Upvote:
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Title: one of the greatest mathematicians human race has ever known Upvote:
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Title: It seems to be common belief in startup land, that if you're smart and lucky enough to build a wildly successful consumer product, by the time competitors (particularly the 800lb gorillas) copy you, your network effects, market ownership, and brand will help insulate you.<p>It's why, I imagine, Foursquare still exists after Facebook places, why Facebook bought Instagram, and honestly why Facebook even exists in a world of Google's and Microsofts.<p>But what if at the genesis of every single new product, startups began feeding real time access to their most important stats to those 800lb gorillas? What would happen? Well for a while the big guys might ignore the data and scoff at caring about some insignificant startup numbers.<p>But then one day one of those startups would probably become really successful. Billion dollar acquisition successful. And all of a sudden the minds that be at the 800lb gorilla would say to themselves - "Wait! Why are we waiting for companies to be big enough that we need to pay $1B dollars! Why don't we just start buying or copying products as soon as they have really high engagement and growth rates before they come close to owning the market?"<p>And this seems to be exactly what happened with Facebook and Poke. Facebook has acknowledged [http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/21/mark-zuckerberg-voice-of-poke/] they tried to buy Poke a little while back, and when they were rejected decided to build it. And it seems to be working - as of right now Facebook Poke is now holding the #2 spot in the app store, while snap chat is #5.<p>This is in no way saying Poke has won, but if i were the SnapChat team I would be concerned. In fact, I think anyone that uses the Facebook API should be. I am. The Facebook API is an amazingly useful and powerful tool, but this is an issue that needs to be discussed, and the ramifications need to be understood. Because right now Facebook clearly seems to understand them, even if we don't. Upvote:
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Title: GAE as a platform is really great (good scalability, no maintenance overhead, low latency in most cases) but the extremely slow pace (compared to Amazon Web Services) for introducing new APIs and maturing the existing (ex.: increasing quotas and charging for the Search API, Prospective Search) makes me wonder: is Google really investing enough engineers to mature its platform? Will it pull the plug and stop offering it? Is the Premier support option really helpful? What are it's long-term plans? Where's the roadmap? These are very important questions considering it's PaaS and you'll be deeply committed to it "by design" once you Go Google. Upvote:
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Title: I'm currently reading "The Art of Doing Science and Engineering" by Richard Hamming. The book is based off of lectures he gave in a course by the same name. Here are a few paragraphs that I found thought provoking:<p>"I made the comparison of writing software with the act of literary writing; both seem to depend fundamentally on clear thinking. Can good programming be taught? If we look at the corresponding teaching of "creative writing" courses we find that most students of such courses do not become great writers, and most great writers in the past did not take creative writing courses! Hence it is dubious that great programmers can be trained easily.<p>Does experience help? Do bureaucrats after years of writing reports and instructions get better? I have no real data but I suspect that with time they get worse! The habitual use of "governmentese" over the years probably seeps into their writing style and makes them worse. I suspect the same for programmers! Neither years of experience nor the number of languages used is any reason for thinking that the programmer is getting better from these experiences. An examination of books on programming suggests that most of the authors are not good programmers.<p>The results I picture are not nice, but all you have to oppose it is wishful thinking - I have evidence of years and years of programming on my side."<p>What do you guys think? I disagree with his creative writing analogy because I don't think creative writing courses were taught much in the past, but otherwise I feel it's spot on. Upvote:
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Title: Merry Christmas HN and all Hs Upvote:
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Title: I think this year was poorly in comparison with 2011, in regards of new releases. So, what were the best books you read this year? Upvote:
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Title: A new year is about to begin. What are you going to learn in this new year to improve yourself?<p>Here are few things I would like to learn in 2013 :<p>1. UI/UX Design : I'm a hacker who can make decent looking designs using css frameworks. I know I have a sense of design and I would like to take it to next level and become an expert designer.<p>2. A functional language : I don't know a single functional language. I would like to learn one. May be Haskell.<p>3. The art of selling : I am building a SAAS app for a niche and hopefully I will work hard this year to learn how to sell it to customers. Upvote:
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Title: Trying to make a list of all the good movies I missed. Upvote:
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Title: You know the drill. When you left college, you wanted to work for the big guys - Intel, Google, Apple, NASA - doing things which can change the world. You wanted to do stuff like create a compiler or figure out an algorithm.<p>Unfortunately, reality hit back hard and you got stuck at a typical company doing CRUD operations. Make reports here, manage documents here, upgrade calendar software here. It pays pretty good but it's not the dream you wanted. Irony then rings and the deeper you move in your career, the more CRUD experience you get and the less "let's design the next generation algorithm" experience you have. Thus causing those companies to pigeonhole your resume to pass you on for someone else.<p>How do you escape from this trap? Upvote:
171
Title: At Shine, we’ve been working on a large Backbone.js application recently and found that identity issues relating to long-lived objects caused a number of subtle and not-so-subtle bugs. For us the solution was to introduce an identity map. Upvote:
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Title: A freshman in college asked me what are the most useful and valuable classes that he can take that he will actually use. I told him its more about building a useful skill set. What skills have you acquired over the years that you deem most useful? Upvote:
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Title: I’m not a programmer. As in, I’m pretty certain this is the wrong career for me.<p>I’m in my early twenties. I'm a coder at a great software company. The company is successful, growing, and treats its staff well. They pay well. I have stock options. No pointy-haired bosses. Thing is, I don’t like it. I’m bored.<p>At school I was always good at math and science. And I loved computers; I loved building them from components, customising Linuxs, but never really programmed in my spare time. I got into a good school for college, found the programming course options pretty easy, and majored in Computer Science. So the default choice was a programmer, right? Well, one year out of College, I’ve realised; it's not what I want to do.<p>"If today was the last day of your life, would you want to do what you're about to do today?" -- Steve Jobs<p>I can’t help but think - is this it? I get up, and go to the same old desk, and write some stupid code. Whatever.<p>I love technology. But coding just doesn’t exite me. I could never get worked up about the subtle nuances of programming languages. I’m definitely not the sort to learn Haskell or Erlang in my spare time. Hell, or even code at all in my spare time. I just enjoy playing with the latest Apple product, watching TV, and reading Hacker News. What kind of life is that?<p>Should I quit? I make way more money than any of my non-coder friends, and that would be really hard to give up. I know there must be something more fulfilling out there. I have other, less geeky, hobbies and interests outside of tech, that I’ve let fall by the wayside. Perhaps I could combine the two into some sort of startup? I've also better social skills than the average coder (not bragging, just true, many coders can be quite socially inept), and I wouldn’t want this talent go to waste . Starting a company seems like the obvious answer, except, I’m scared, and I don’t have any good ideas.<p>So, HN, any suggestions? Upvote:
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Title: I read this comment regarding the post about being the doctor on board http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4974122<p>"I think it's awesome that you're a commercial pilot and participating in HN. It can sometimes get too insular with valley-type techies here. Thanks for participating."<p>We aren't just "Silicon Valley" after all, it seems like almost everyone I meet is from somewhere else. I love this community, and would love to hear where people came from and a bit about their identities that aren't particularly sexy or ready for reality TV. Here's an example the kind of answer I'm looking for, this is me:<p>I was living in Seattle, grew up riding horses and teaching tennis in the parks and rec and moved out my senior year. I was convinced that I should be a writer, but I knew there was no money in it and I started in the family business. I college I was playing in a (terrible) metal-core band and making coffees. I dropped out of community college after 1 year to work for a big global logistics company at 19. I was into coding on AS/400 systems and automating business processes with a combination of Delphi, Pascal, Excel spreadsheets, and Windows OS automation so no "real" developers wanted to talk to me. I joined a cover/jam band with a lower pressure schedule, got married young, and moved here with Twilio when I was 23. Upvote:
52
Title: Even though you are better than your peers in terms of $$, job and status. But deep inside you feel that you have not achieved much in life. BTW i'm 25 Upvote:
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Title: It turns out, Benjamin Franklin was extremely "Normal" and relate-able.<p>The very valuable lesson learned below applies equally to raising money from investors, crowds of investors, or finding your first customers.<p>In his Autobiography he talks about starting a Public Subscription Library in Philadelphia, going door to door trying to find people willing to pay 40 shillings and commit to a subscription fee of 10 shillings a year for 50 years.It's important to note that Ben was an avid reader, and tried a shared library prior to this which ended up flopping. He also believed he was doing a great service to all who would participate and to society at large. In other words, his startup was both doing social good and creating value...<p>Here are Ben's words from his AutoBiography about the experience. "The objections and reluctances I met with in soliciting the subscriptions, made me soon feel the improprietary of presenting one's self as the proposer of any useful project, that might be suppos'd to raise one's reputation in the smallest degree above that of one's neighbors, when one has need of their assistance to accomplish that project. I therefore put myself as much as I could out of sight, and stated it as a scheme of a number of friends, who had requested me to go about and propose it to such as they thought lovers of reading. In this way my affair went on more smoothly, and I ever after practis'd it on such occasions;and, from my frequent successes can heartily recommend it."<p>He continues, "The present little sacrifice of your vanity will afterwards be amply repaid."<p>This very much reminds me of the plaque sitting on Ronald Reagan's Desk that stated, "There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go If he doesn't mind who gets the credit." Upvote:
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Title: It's a bit far down the page. Not much info but is as follows...<p>Facebook's (FB) Instagram unit may have lost nearly aquarter of its users after a recent flap over its change in terms of service. That's according to the New York Post, quoting figures fromAppData. Instagram had 16.4 million active daily users the week it rolledout its policy change, but that number has now fallen to 12.4 million. Upvote:
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Title: Do you have experience selling your apps on Ubuntu Software Centre? Is it worth to develop software for Ubuntu/Linux(moneywise)?<p>I'm more interested to hear stories about non-game software, but game developers can also share their thoughts, Upvote:
112
Title: Looking for advice on getting the most out of the city from a startup perspective.<p>My co-founder and I are coming from London as part of http://www.ldn2sfo.com/ . That aims to give us a whirlwind lowdown on how SV and SF operate, and a very high-level view of where a few startups and VCs are located.<p>We'd love to get a somewhat deeper view and with a view to working our backsides off and growing our bootstrapped company into one that requires a US entity within a year, we want to get a good sense of how SF can be done bootstrapped or at least affordably (even from a London perspective the salaries, rent, etc look crazy high from here).<p>At the very basic end there are just trip logistics: Recommend an AirBNB to use as a base, or a garage to sleep in, ideally owned by someone on HN and with a good internet connection (we work when we have moments spare).<p>At the other end there's a more general: If you were coming to San Francisco and Silicon Valley for the first time and for a week or so and wanted to get the most out of it, what do you wish someone had told you?<p>Basic goal: Figure out how SF/SV works from a startup perspective, build a network of contacts that might grow into friendships that could offer support in the future, and on the dream list would be to also build a few connects with VCs who might later become investors.<p>So in the most vague Ask HN ever, what would you share with a UK startup coming to San Francisco? Upvote:
40
Title: I was just doing my 2013 and wanted to know how others manage (what software/notebook/) and what they put in their Yearly Plan or todo list. Upvote:
50
Title: Is it beneficial to do so or does it simply add too much overhead? Upvote:
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Title: As Hacker/Developer or designer interest, beside HN of course ;) Upvote:
70
Title: I'm curious to know what serious technological / IT problems you encountered in 2012. What things made you work late at night, scrambling for a solution? EC2 outages did it for some people. What else? What failed unexpectedly? For what problems do you still not have a solution, and just hope for the best? Upvote:
48
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>Also see:<p>"Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4992618 Upvote:
245
Title: A collection of Business, Fiction, Science and Philosophical diversions that made me ignore my wife this year. Upvote:
44
Title: I've started to build boilerplate to make writing books for different platforms easier. It sits on top of grunt.js and pandoc to make different file formats (.rtf, .mobi, .epub) possible. It also helps for the publishing process on leanpub.com. Upvote:
118
Title: Just what the world needs, another post explaining the y combinator! Hope someone can glean some information from this, I learned a fair bit in writing it :) Upvote:
74
Title: I hope it didn’t get asked before, I couldn’t find anything.<p>There was a question recently, about why you don’t improve the HTML of HN, where you said <i>"When the HTML is the most important thing to work on."</i>(http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4927231)<p>I agree that the markup is relatively unimportant compared to features that I think could really improve the functionality and quality of the site, and I bet you have a long wishlist of features yourself.<p>But between the lines I interpreted that that list might be way longer, than the time that is available to you, allows you to work on it.<p>So why don’t you open source HN? I get that with a project that is important to someone, it’s hard to give away control. But you can still be the project lead, you could still have the last call and I feel to open up the project will lead to great feature discussions and ultimately a better hn.<p>Have you ever considered open sourcing it? And what’s the thought process on your decision? Upvote:
114
Title: Hi, So hopefully someone who works at Facebook can actually follow up with this. She's not sure where to ask and neither am I.<p>Basically, due to unfamiliarity with how iPhoto works on her Mac she was having disk issues and wanted to try and tidy up her system. Knowing that her photos were also uploaded on Facebook she tried to delete her photos from her system. However, because the photos were uploaded from iPhoto to Facebook doing a delete on iPhoto[1] causes all the images to be deleted from Facebook, including all comments.<p>She's pretty devastated as she has now lost the last 5+ years of her digital life (university, travelling, wedding) memories and comments with friends. (An interesting aside, but I think she thought she had backups by using iPhoto and Facebook.)<p>I've suggested that she attempts to do a "Download" of her Facebook account but I doubt this will help.<p>Is there a magical switch at Facebook that might help recover these images? I assume since most operations are done under a soft delete for weeks+ that the photos must be to some extent recoverable.<p>If you are able to help, drop a comment or contact me in the email on my profile. Every little upvote helps.<p><pre><code> [1] : http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2432</code></pre> Upvote:
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Title: I am getting frustrated. I have a really good job at the moment. I am a software engineer for the new york stock exchange. I am seeking something in the USA which would allow me to relocate with a H1B to live and work in America. Finding potential employers isn't so hard. But finding something which actually fits under the topic of programming and not glorified web development is much, much harder. Every time I see a challenge these days as part of a job interview process, I end up having to go off and write something in rails, asp.net or even PHP. Where in the world are all the C / C++ and Java roles that used to be available in America? It has gotten so bad that there are literally thousands of employers moving to Europe to in order to get hold of programmers who develop code for these native languages. There has to still be some employers who wish to hire for these roles IN America, I just can't seem to find them anywhere is all. Does anybody know where I can find such employers? Upvote:
65
Title: I'm selling Cheddar. The whole kit and caboodle — API, web and native apps, acclaimed code base and documentation, and 33,000+ user community — is being sold, not necessarily to the highest bidder. Upvote:
66
Title: I am planning to launch a new blog about startups. So I am in hunt for some awesome tech startups that I could write about. I don't want to publish startups that have been on techcrunch, rww, tnw, I want to publish totally new ones and I know HN is the right place to find some. Upvote:
54
Title: Python is the language whose popularity is growing the fastest; it is already the second most popular in the US over decade. Upvote:
55
Title: As a developer I need to test code on multiple versions of Windows and for this I have 4 virtual machines running on a Lenovo W500/8GB/256GB laptop plugged into a 24" monitor. For convenience I often have all four running concurrently. However with 8GB ram I often run out of memory and I'm low on disk space, hence my motivation to upgrade. I'm just about to purchase the new retina Macbook pro/16GB/512GB as it would appear a perfect fit as I could easily run all the VM's concurrently with room to spare and being on an SSD they would also be super-fast.<p>However I really value mobility especially around the house and the Macbook Air 13"/8GB/256GB comes highly recommended by peers. I had an epiphany thinking that perhaps I could rent a dedicated server to relieve the memory and disk requirements. With an Intel i7-2600 Quad/16GB/6TB-raid1 from Hetzner.de (50 Euro p.m), I could host all my Windows desktop VM's and also a few Ubuntu server VM's and use remote desktop and SSH to access them respectively. I realize there will be some additional latency but that’s fine for what I need to use them for and I have a 60Mb/s fiber connection.<p>Has anyone else attempted something similar? Am I missing anything? My preliminary research points me to using Linux KVM as the host. Can I really forgo the weight/size of a Retina 15" (+- $3900 here in Europe) for the Macbook air ($2300) + a remote server. Obviously I would be sacrificing the Retina screen and the dedicated GPU but neither is important to me, especially as I spend half my time plugged into a 24" monitor + mechanical keyboard. Additionally I'm not concerned about the cost of a server as I already have many very underutilized servers at my disposal and so it wouldn't cost any extra. Any advice would extremely helpful. Cheers! Upvote:
69
Title: At Balanced Payments YC W2011, we've been working on simplifying ACH deposits and we've managed to boil it down to one curl command.<p>Tell us what you think! Ultimately, our goal with this is to provide ACH deposits for those who are already using existing processing solutions, but want to pay their users or vendors via ACH instead.<p>US only - we're cooking up something for international.<p>Without further ado:<p><pre><code> curl https://api.balancedpayments.com/v1/credits \ -d amount=10000 \ -d description="Math lesson" \ -d bank_account[name]="Johann Bernoulli" \ -d bank_account[account_number]=9900000001 \ -d bank_account[routing_number]=121000358 \ -d bank_account[type]=checking \ -u 7b7a51ccb10c11e19c0a026ba7e239a9: </code></pre> Try it out!<p>More about Balanced Payments here: https://balancedpayments.com Upvote:
91
Title: I have a day job, but try to work on side-projects time to time. I made 5 side projects last year. Forrst is an awesome community, but I get a feeling that most of the members are Designers. Kinda feel left out in there.<p>Also, I am a great fan of "Show HN" posts but a good feedback is always a matter of luck. Only posts reaching frontpage gets the exposure and rest dies out with 2-3 comments.<p>Is there a community/forum for people like me to show my side-projects, get feedback etc. Upvote:
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Title: <i>Premise 1:</i><p>Investors/Incubators over-estimate their ability to pick good ideas/startups.<p><i>Premise 2:</i><p>An MVP built by a lone, but talented techie is almost as likely to turn into something 'successful' as a startup on angellist that has: 4 founders, 9 advisors, 13 press releases, 600 followers, etc<p><i>Premise 3:</i><p>Most freelancers will not build and/or follow-through with their ideas, because they perceive their opportunity cost to be too high.<p><i>Premise 4:</i><p>HackerNews has a decent number of talented freelancers with good ideas.<p>Based on these premises, I present <i>The Proposition [Version 1.0]:</i><p>I'll pay you $5000 to build the MVP of that idea you've been kicking around in your head for the last year. Once you're done (ideally within 2 months), you can go back to earning your full potential. At this point, I'll take over and spend an additional $3000 to acquire enough users/customers for us to evaluate the project's likelihood of success. We split the resulting company 50-50, as equal co-founders. Upvote:
1088
Title: Last year I doubled the subscriber count for Hacker Newsletter[0] to 14,000 and my goal for 2013 is to double it again. To accomplish that, I have several ideas I'm working on, but thought I would check here as well since the newsletter exists because of this community.<p>If you already are a subscriber, I would love to know how I could make it better and if you're not, is there anything I could do that would make you sign-up and check it out?<p>Thanks!<p>[0]: http://hackernewsletter.com Upvote:
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Title: via https://twitter.com/photonstorm/status/289508176397746179 Upvote:
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Title: I'm taking a very interesting class this semester called Computational Physics. The goal in the course is to select a research project that requires the use of parallel computing. We can use our university cluster or, because of the close association of the university with Oak Ridge National Labs, we have the opportunity to use the world's fastest supercomputer, Titan (17-27 pFLOPS). The usage of the entire machine at once is reserved for very special projects, but I'm sure I'll still be able to use a large number of nodes because projects that can be done on smaller supercomputers aren't allowed on Titan.<p>The professor recommended choosing something that relates to published research in physics or our own research field (mine is chemical engineering -&#62; molecular dynamics). This freedom to choose whatever is really exciting, and I've got some interesting ideas, but I imagine there a lot of experts in their field who post on HN, and so someone may have a good idea for a new and exciting project.<p>My initial idea is to contribute to the effort of porting Quantum Monte Carlo code to GPUs. Titan's processing power is unique among supercomputers in that most of it comes entirely from nVidia Tesla K20X GPUs. QMC is among the most accurate methods that exist in predicting physical phenomena; the problem is that the methods are incredibly computationally demanding, something which highly parallelized GPUs are well-suited to handling. But I don't know. Maybe that's too much to do in a semester. Upvote:
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Title: Even though he may not be as notable as some of the others, Aaron Swartz's legacy is a very big part of HN in every way. Upvote:
483
Title: Hi,<p>TL;DR If Swartz's death is triggering suicidal thoughts, you must understand that this will pass, and life will be worth living.<p>After seeing the impact of Aaron Swartz's death on the Hacker News community, I am concerned about the Werther effect (the tendency of a prominent suicide to trigger other suicides). I hope I can help by sharing what I learnt through 10+ years of depression and recovery.<p>Depression robs you of the ability to: 1. remember happiness 2. feel happiness 3. anticipate happiness 4. make considered decisions<p>#1-#3 make you miserable, but #4 is the killer. Bits of your brain actually shut down, and you run on pure emotion. For example, when I was depressed, I was easy prey for offers like "4 for the price of 3 on this crappy overpriced chocolate" because I couldn't weigh it up. All I could think was "chocolate: good. 4 for 3: good. 4 for 3 chocolate: irresistible". But if you're running on pure emotion and your emotions tell you "everything sucks" well ... suicide looks like a good option.<p>So why didn't I kill myself? Somewhere in my guts, there was a stubborn belief that "this will pass". You might even call it a sense of entitlement: "come on world -- you can give me something better than this!" And you know what? It DID! Thanks to some wonderful people, and to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, I found a way to recover.<p>With the best 10+ years of my life lost to depression, starting from scratch in my 30s has been hard, but it's still a life, and I swear that life is worth more than you can possibly understand when you're depressed.<p>Stay strong,<p>Pitarou Upvote:
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Title: * http://www.reddit.com/user/AaronSw#c4e7n4h<p>* http://www.givewell.org/<p>In this age of famous tech names donating millions or billions to charity, it may surprise you to realize that many of us consider these donations to be missed opportunities in terms of how much good could have been accomplished for the same amount of money, given more quantitative ways of evaluating the good done by a charity. Givewell is the leader in this form of evaluation and makes an extremely credible claim to be able to identify charities that use well-analyzed methods to achieve literally <i>orders of magnitude</i> more good per dollar than the usual suspects. There is no efficient market in utilons, but Givewell is trying to create one.<p>By giving to Givewell itself, Aaron Swartz's final legacy may be expected to accomplish far more good in the world than less carefully chosen gifts involving hundreds of millions of dollars.<p>I am not myself employed by or otherwise involved with Givewell, and my opinions and phrasing of the above have not been seen or approved by Givewell. Upvote:
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Title: PHP was my first programming language, and my initial exposure to JavaScript was through libraries like jQuery. There were things about JavaScript that always seemed to trip me up in the beginning due to how they worked differently than PHP. Heck there are still some things today that are confusing. I want to share some of the things that I struggled when I started working with JavaScript. I am going to cover the global namespace, this, knowing the difference between ECMAScript 3 and ECMAScript 5, asynchronous operations, prototypes, and simple JavaScript inheritance. Upvote:
125
Title: Edit: removing Aaron's name from the title. In retrospect I don't feel it's respectful. Upvote:
275
Title: The petition to the President to remove Carmen Ortiz from the position of District Attorney for the state of Massachusetts has reached the number of signatures that is supposed to deserve a response from the Whitehouse.<p>This does not mean the campaign is over; but it does mean we are off to a good start. The next step is for you. Yes, you. To write or call your US Representative, and both of your Senators, ask them to help bring proportionality, reason and mercy back to our justice system; ask them to further the cause of open knowledge, and ask them to hold the president to account for the actions of Ms. Ortiz and Mr. Heymann.<p>Thank you for your help.<p>https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-states-district-attorney-carmen-ortiz-office-overreach-case-aaron-swartz/RQNrG1Ck Upvote:
104
Title: "Graph Search is designed to show you the answer and not links to answers." Upvote:
395
Title: We listened to the community and made our database available on AWS. We're currently working on making it available as standalone outside of AWS as well. Upvote:
115
Title: I am just curious who here is female. Past discussions have made it clear that some female members hide or downplay their gender. If you are fine with publicly admitting to being female, please answer here. If it isn't a Secret but you also don't care to call attention to it publicly, you can shoot me an email. (My gmail account is talithamichele.) If it is a Secret, please just keep your secrets.<p>Thanks in advance.<p>(I realize this can be a hot button question for the LGBT crowd. There is no intent to be insensitive but I also am hoping to not open up a huge can of worms. For many LGBT folks, discretion is the better part of valor.) Upvote:
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Title: Hi Everyone,<p>I'm organizing an SFHN meetup this coming Thursday, January 24th. It will be at Founders Den at 665 3rd Street #150, San Francisco, CA 94107 from 6pm-8:30pm.<p>Drinks and snacks will be provided!<p>Please RSVP at http://sfhn2.eventbrite.com/<p>Thanks!<p>-<p>Group Contact Info:<p>website : http://sfhackernews.com facebook : https://www.facebook.com/groups/gosfhn meetup : http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Hacker-News-Meetup/<p>-<p>HUGE thanks to our sponsors:<p>Founders Den : http://foundersden.com/ Twilio : http://twilio.com/ Nuzzel : http://beta.nuzzel.com/passion ValleyAnon : http://valleyanon.com/<p>-<p>If you need to contact me:<p>phone : 415.583.5403 email : [email protected] twitter : http://twitter.com/dpg facebook : http://facebook.com/ctwiz Upvote:
40
Title: As we know HN uses hell banning to deal with trolls.<p>As we also know, people are not perfect, both moderators and the general public, so for that reason sometimes people get hell banned that probably don't deserve it. Sometimes for a single bad post, sometimes for a post that isn't that bad but for some reason rubs a moderator the wrong way. Mostly however people that are hell banned, deserve it.<p>For various reasons (mostly related to the above) I like to have my "show dead" setting on so I can see dead posts. Now some people know they are hell banned but keep on posting as normal, probably because they know that quite a few people, like myself, will see their posts, but also because they are trying to prove a point. No problem here so far.<p>There are a very few idiots however who know that they are hell banned but post just to annoy people that have "show dead" on. They post huge walls of completely OT, and sometimes utter nonsense, text that take up a whole page and they do it often. I won't name names and give them any recognition but perhaps the time has come to implement total bans so that these trolls cannot post at all or limit post lengths for people with only 1 karma or negative karma.<p>I never cease to be amazed out how some people will go out of their way to be annoying and disruptive, fortunately they are a very small minority. Upvote:
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Title: Swiss scientists bend Caustic Effect to their will Upvote:
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Title: Hey HN,<p>I am looking to buy a new laptop. My primary OS will be ubuntu. Which laptop would you guys recommend? My main criteria is that it should be light and work without any hiccups with ubuntu.<p>I've been looking around and it seems a lot of developers prefer Lenovo X220. The new carbon X1 looks good too. Does anyone have any experience with them?<p>Has anyone tried running Ubuntu (dual boot or otherwise) on a Macbook Air? Does it work without any issues?<p>Any of the new touchscreen laptops worth checking out?<p>My budget is around a 1000$ but I wouldn't mind spending some more if it means getting the best machine.<p>Thanks for your suggestions! Upvote:
114
Title: Just something my friend and I did this weekend. A stupid idea, but has the elements of what a real site could consist of. Payments, Datastorage, a pretty decent design. Upvote:
45