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Title: Analyzing logs is huge part of a software problem solver's job. What kind of tools and techniques do you use to be more effective in your job?
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Title: I am a web developer freelancer and just got my first client, and I feel very in the dark about a lot of things. Does anyone have advice or links to resources that would help me? Some of my main questions are:
- How does a copyright work? I have heard that I should copyright my work and only transfer the copyright upon completion of payment, but I don't know anything about how to do register the copyright myself OR transfer one.
- How should I value my time? This is my first time so I'm inclined to start lower than others, but I don't really have any idea how to do that. Is my time worth $20 an hour? $40? Less? More?
- I know I should write a contract between my client and me, and I've found several examples online, but how can I make it officially binding? Anyone can forge a signature so how can I make it so the contract would hold up in a court, if, for example, they refused me payment?
- Is there anything else I should know?<p>I'm sure many of you have been in my same situation, so any advice would be wonderful!! Thank you!
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Title: Please lead with either SEEKING WORK or SEEKING FREELANCER, your location and whether remote work is a possibility.
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Title: Share your information if you are looking for work. Please use this format<p><pre><code> Location:
Remote:
Willing to relocate:
Technologies:
Résumé/CV:
Email:</code></pre>
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Title: Please lead with the location of the position and include the keywords INTERN, REMOTE, or VISA 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 do not post recruiting firms or job boards.
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Title: Microsoft Clip Art Gallery was completely closed back in December (http://gizmodo.com/microsoft-is-killing-clip-art-because-nobody-uses-it-an-1665634402) and replaced by Bing Images. As a teacher, this is turning out to be a huge problem when trying to make worksheets. The old clip art gallery was immensely useful because:<p><pre><code> 1. Filtering by image type worked perfectly.
2. I knew there would be no license issues.
3. Although content may not have been perfect, the quality was uniform and good enough for handouts.
4. I wouldn't run into NSFW images (I have seen NSFW images even with strict search on before).
5. No watermarks.
6. Predictable uniform dimensions.
</code></pre>
I understand that for the majority of people the Clip Art Gallery was useless. But for us educators, it was invaluable. Can anyone suggest an alternative with similar quality & functionality to the old Clip Art Search?<p>Granted that it's legal, I'm even willing to replicate the old Clip Art Search site & host it if an archive of all the clip art images is available for download.<p>In case anyone is curious, here are the main problems with generic image search engines (Bing, Google):<p><pre><code> - Strict search is not full proof. With Google, turning it on breaks half of YouTube as well (blocks an insane amount of content so good luck looking for music/videos to use in the classroom without resorting to downloading it).
- It's annoying to find clip art because most of the clip art on the web is watermarked.
- Licensing (Bing is support to have an option for this but I don't see it when I use Bing Images!)
- It's also annoying to have to deal with images of varying dimensions and quality (takes longer to adjust sizes in docs). Picking Square on Bing Images doesn't actually give you 1:1 ratio images.</code></pre>
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Title: I'm thinking of replacing my current XPS 13 running Debian with a FreeBSD laptop. I'm looking for something with a nice screen (preferably better than 1080), and reasonable spec (the usual i5, 8GB+ Ram & SSD etc.). Is anyone currently using a FreeBSD laptop, or recommending one?
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Title: I'll start with me:
* Started keto - 2 weeks now and counting, lost almost 7 pounds.
* Started the Ruby on Rails tutorial by Michael Hartl - I finally want to get serious about it (failed completing it a couple of times).
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Title: I am getting confirmation day by day that people dont want to spend with me. Usually I do small talk, initiate conversation but it seems many people I come across do talk only because I initiated conversation.<p>I also feel resistance when I ask someone to go out on outings, trip or to bar/club.<p>Without saying it goes that I still don't have GF or wife. I am 29 and getting near 30 is a bit scary.<p>What is wrong with me, seriously ?
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Title: Product Hunt for Github
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Title: Before becoming a team lead, I was the type of developer who, when given a task, would dig into the application api's, the database schema, the configuration, whatever it took to fill in the gaps to accomplish the task. Sure I'd get stumped sometimes, but I'd always try to ask for help sooner rather than later.<p>Now, I'm a lead of 4 developers. Two are like I was, I can give them a task, they'll go do it with minimal guidance. The other two will spend hugely more time on tasks. I've notice they tend to go off on tangents, spending time things that aren't relevant, like setting up vm envirnoments they don't need when they can develop and test locally. There have been occassions when they have asked me for help, and then a week later come back with the same question as though we had never talked about it.<p>It's baffling to me, it's like they're "scatterbrained", ie not focused or concentrated. How does one manage people like this?
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Title: I might be switching teams at the company where I work at. The new team seems quite interesting to be part of, but they have pager duty (they cycle and each developer is on pager duty for a week). I was hoping to get some input from folks here who have worked on that sort of team, to get an idea of what it's like to work in a team like this. Does it impact overall health too much? Would you say it's an interesting experience to go through?
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Title: I've been programming for nearly 40 years and it is still my favorite thing to do. A while back I was reorganized out of the job I had been in for the previous eight years and found myself, for the first time in my career, without a job.<p>After taking a break and working on a non-technology passion project for several months I am now starting to get back into software development. I have read a bit here and there about alleged age discrimination and wonder if a) that's a real thing and b) if it is a real thing what can I do to minimize the adverse effect on my job search.<p>So, assuming the truth, more or less, of (b) I am trying to figure out how to present myself during the initial contact with potential employers. One one hand (hand one!) I'm tempted to try to avoid clues in my resume as to my age, but on the other hand I think that the right employer will see my age and experience as an asset.<p>Hand One might have the advantage of getting me in to a face-to-face interview where I believe I can show that I have desirable traits. But on the other hand I'm not sure I would want to work at a company where ageism is an issue.<p>Comments?<p>ps. I had more than one recruiter ask me for my birthdate: "Just Month and Day". I suppose they don't know that I know that it's obvious that my age could be easily determined (+- a bit) if armed with my Birthdate Month and Day, Name, and Location.
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Title: Previous posts<p>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6661536<p>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4639271<p>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7094402<p>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107588<p>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8246255
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Title: I'm a freelance software developer and I've just had my first real experience getting paid by a client to work on an open-source project (some library we use heavily in our app that is lacking a few feature we need).<p>I know there are companies out there that pay employee to do a % of their time or sometimes even work exclusively on open-source projects.<p>I'm wondering how I could go about doing more of that type of work as a freelancer and if others have done the same.<p>I contribute as much as I can to open-source off-the-clock but I'm curious if there are people out there getting paid regularly to what I'm only just having an experience of.<p>Thanks for any thoughts, suggestions or leads!
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Title: We got a call this morning from a client that couldn't access his website from his home broadband (Sky UK). After an hour of investigation it turned out that one of the IPs that CloudFlare returns for the DNS query for the site is on an "Adult Content" blocklist.<p>Moving off CloudFlare is difficult now as Google has identified the clients site as SSL and the client doesn't have the budget for the $20 a month it costs to add SSL to Heroku.<p>I have contacted CloudFlare about this, but thought I'd mention to HN that some of the CloudFlare IPs are blocked in the UK on certain ISPs.
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Title: Just something I put together quickly:<p>https://webcast.browserprotect.me/<p>I made this in one day, now I'm wondering if It's interesting enough to make it a real product (Add new features like setting the size, zoom, annotations, fix bugs, export, voice-over, etc..)<p>Here is an example screencast I just did: https://webcast.browserprotect.me/view/2764aa94dcd855959819fd91881f0882baa61a0e-44646<p>Do you consider this a viable product? I'm thinking about offering it for free and then add some premium features.
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Title: When I try to open play.google.com from Firefox on my Android device I get:<p><pre><code> This browser is no longer supported.
Please use the Google Play Store app to access Google Play.
</code></pre>
My Firefox version is 35.0, which is the latest version for Android. So it looks like the walls are going up around that particular garden as well.
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448
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Title: Stripe is refusing to transfer credit cards to another merchant per their policy, anyone have a contact there before we post publicly about this?
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Title: I have offers from 2 distinct companies, A and B, in the United States. I recently became aware that it is perfectly legal for different employers to each file an H-1B petition for me. Both A and B are aware of the whole situation and are willing to go ahead with the visa process, so I'll only have to make a decision between the two if both petitions get through. So far so good.<p>However, based on an article on murthy.com [1] (quoted below), it doesn't seem like a very good idea to file multiple petitions, even via separate employers, this year.<p>> For the fiscal year 2015 (FY15) H1B lottery, the USCIS has been issuing notices of intent to deny (NOIDs) when virtually identical petitions have been filed for the same beneficiary by two or more potentially related companies.<p>> The USCIS is suspicious of cases in which filings for the same person share key details. Commonly identified factors typically include end-clients with the same identity, and location and job descriptions that are identical or virtually identical. The USCIS also points to similarities in supporting documents.<p>> The NOIDs request proof that the petitioning companies are not related. This can be evidenced by various documents that demonstrate corporate existence, structure, and ownership. There must be more than one distinct job opportunity, rather than simply an effort to have a backup plan in the event that one employer's H1B petition is not selected in the lottery.<p>(continued in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9032082)<p>[1]: http://www.murthy.com/2014/09/25/noids-for-virtually-identical-cap-subject-h1b-petitions/
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Title: I am not posting looking for a job offer, but just curious if I would be hire-able with my resume as it is. I own a house in a somewhat rural area so would likely need a remote position.<p>Here is my resume. I coded it by hand. Personal info scrubbed.<p>http://codepen.io/anon/pen/RNxJWp
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Title: I wish things were always busy. By busy I mean, I'm getting inbound leads, I'm having conversations via email or phone, I'm selling, I'm quoting, I'm fixing stuff on the product.<p>Then it goes from crazy busy to suddenly quiet.<p>I just don't know what to do with the down time. I get super uneasy and anxious. I try to do some content marketing but I make so little progress, it's hard to see any result very quickly, so I switch to optimizing the web or landing page and then get see how my PPC campaigns are doing and then reading HN or listening to podcast on bootstrapping etc. I feel inefficient and spread thin.<p>I feel terrible when things are quiet. I have an urge to start cranking out updates and new features on the product but I stop myself, as I only decided to create features that enough paying users request.<p>I have a terrible habit of playing counterstrike and checking HN and reddit obsessively until I get a phone call or an email and then I have to do some work. I'm on the computer almost 15 hours a day. Basically, I have no life except on weekends I go out with friends but I'm always ready to answer email or live chat on my phone. Some days I just wait around and end up playing games all day.<p>When I was developing the product it wasn't like this. Nose down, cranking out code, testing, but I'm doing much much less of that now and trying to meet my personal sales target, marketing (based on what little I know), fixing websites, talking to people.<p>If you are boostrapping your biz full time what are you doing when you are not talking with leads or busy? Is there anything else I should be doing? Am I going about this the wrong way? Really would love your inputs, especially if you are unemployed and you rely on your bootstrap business.
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Title: I'm a recent CS graduate from a decent university in the US. It's no CS powerhouse but it's well respected and decently known. I won't name which because I don't want my co-workers to accidentally see this and identify me.<p>During my last semester we had a guest lecturer in my parallel programming class. He came from a local startup which supposedly created advanced systems to assist the work of other statups.<p>The engineer from the startup went on and on about how each day there is a challenge and you learn so much. I decided to apply and see what would come out of it.<p>I went through a very tough series a interviews complete with Python puzzles and whiteboard problems. During these interviews I was reassured the job there was challenging and rewarding. I got a (generous) offer and accepted.<p>Fast forward to my first day and I ask my team lead what's the project I'll work on and I quickly learn that the challenging work is done in a sister office. I get told that this location mostly does very simple client facing Java Swing applications. I was devastated and almost quit on the spot. I would have if not for the fact that I have very large student debts and can't afford to not work.<p>Now I've been working there for a month and I've tried everything to get assigned interesting work. It's pretty much impossible since no such work is even done at my location.<p>How do I get myself out of this? I'm looking for other jobs already. I could omit my current position from my resume but then I'll be forced to reveal it if I get an interviews during regular office hours.<p>I have a friend who wants to personally refer me to work on his team at Amazon but I don't want to blow the interview. I would practice but at the end of the day I'm so burnt out from boredom and repetitive work that I can barely stay awake.<p>I know there are no clear cut solutions but I'm interested in hearing from people who had similar experiences.
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Title: Hey guys,<p>Since iTunes is the only option Apple gives us for loading media onto our iPhone, iPad or iPod touch from our Macs, and it limits the audio and video file formats we can upload – I can honestly say that I hate iTunes.<p>If only Apple made it a bit smoother, and not as big. Right not it's super uncomfortable having a Music store, a music player and iOS device manager all in one app.<p>Now, I was always wondering if this was just me or do many others hate it as well?
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Title: I've had a problem for more than a year now and I seem to be coming to grips with it as of late.<p>As a CS student / junior engineer there is an absolute abundance of subjects that I either a) need to cover or b) want to cover. Ranging from the theoretical, say discrete mathematics, to the practical, starting a business.<p>All of these different topics, when made accessible immediately and in most cases for free or at a little cost (libraries, MOOCs, youtube videos, books, etc), result in a sort of "information paralysis". There's too much to do, too easily, and I end up doing nothing.<p>This really got my attention yesterday morning when I was watching an Algorithms lecture, and my girlfriend pointed out that the lecturer looked familiar. That's because I had watched the same lecture 12 months ago and she caught a glimpse then also.<p>I could have done the course twice over, if I had stuck with it and not gotten distracted. But I didn't, and 12 months later I know nothing more than I did back then about this subject. This scares me.<p>This scares me especially because I'm at the start of a 4-5 month stretch where I absolutely need to cover 4 highly technical subjects, on my own and unguided, to continue my studies. (Details omitted for brevity)<p>I've faced this dilemma before and tried to tackle it on my own, and failed. So I'm posting here in the hops that some other students / professionals have encountered a similar problem and found a solution. It may not be perfect, but it might give me a step in the right direction.<p>Thanks in advance for any comments.<p>Michael
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Title: I'm about to get a new Mac and will be starting fresh on a new drive. I would like to know if there are any best practices in regards to creating multiple user accounts, with different permissions for my scattered development work.<p>I spend time with node, python, and RoR. I like cloning projects from github and taking them for a spin. I test out bitcoin projects, and send GPG emails, and ssh into multiple servers. And I do all of this on my main user account that has sudo.<p>Is there some best practice that I should be aware of that would have me use multiple unix users on my new Mac?
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Title: In November Google completely removed whocalled.us from their search results.<p>It was the first site of its kind, created in 2005 for crowdsourced info about telemarketing numbers. There were scripts for people to utilize in their VoIP boxes, and it was a good honest site.<p>Google has been trying to weed out telephone spam in their results, and for some reason they deleted the original instead of the useless empty shell sites that spam every possible telephone number combination.<p>If I search "whocalled.us" on Google now I see #1 the Google+ page for the site, and #2 a WordPress spam page. They deleted whocalled.us with a "Pure Spam" manual action, and literally replaced it with <i>pure spam</i>.<p>whocalled.us has never used spam tactics. That is why copycats quickly beat it in terms of traffic. The first competitor used spammy SEO techniques, and is often the #1 result now for telephone number searches.<p>I've been making websites since before Google existed, and it feels like my ways are going extinct. Prior to this "Pure Spam" removal, there was a partial action for unnatural links. I was shocked that a search engine sent me a notice that my website would be penalized unless I contacted other websites to have them remove links to my site. Remove links? That is the whole point of the web!<p>It included some suggestions of "spam" sites with links to mine, and when I clicked one I saw someone's personal blog with some links to their favorite sites. I don't know what world this is, where a search engine tells a webmaster they need to contact a small-time blog owner to have them remove a link recommending your site, but it's not mine.<p>To me this is still the World Wide Web, where little guys like me can play on the same field as global giants. But in reality, this is Google's game now, and when they kick you off their field, there's not much to do but sulk and go home.
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Title: Experimenting with some code this evening and got so into it, I didn't notice that I broke story submission for two hours. Argh!<p>Sorry everyone.<p>Edit: While you're here... you can now view the comments you've upvoted by clicking on "saved comments" in your profile. It works like "saved stories". Thanks to porker for the suggestion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9050374.
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Title: I would have commented directly on the posts, but the YC startup job postings don't allow comments.<p>I see job postings for a couple of startups here and they are offering approximately between $60k and $110k and 0.5-1% equity for what appear to be significant positions - mobile or full stack developers, director of marketing, etc.<p>Is this really the going rate? If so, my mind is boggled. I was under the impression there is competition for great employees in Silicon Valley.<p>Here in NYC, if I wanted to be very competitive to hire into any vital position with rare skills, I would anticipate a floor on pay of $125k. I don't care if that's a designer or a developer or a marketer or what ... I just mean anyone working full time who has a good head on their shoulders and some rare skills.<p>And 0.5-1% equity wouldn't move the needle much. I mean, if you have a 5 person company and you bring someone in and give them 1% equity, what is their equity relative to the person sitting next to them? IMHO It's a joke. Their ownership is purely symbolic, in a relative sense, and it's a symbol of how little they own relative to a founder.<p>Am I completely insane? I would love to understand the logic here, I am not so much criticizing as trying to know more about the dynamic and the industry culture/standards.
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Title: With any program that uses readline, including psql, python and ipython, you can switch between vi and emacs editing by typing:<p>ctrl - alt - j<p>( C-M-j in emacs lingo)
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Title: Based on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9052727 (What up with these startup salaries?) I tried to do a rough calculation of whether it makes more economic sense to work for a large tech. company (apple, google, etc...) or startups. Modulo other factors, it seems that working for a large tech. company pays more on average. Here are the calculations: https://gist.github.com/MichaelGLarson/d916a6984271ea136e3f<p>Am I missing something here?
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Title: I started learning web development at an early age, and a few years back i started freelancing using the freelancer.com platform. But it's no secret that freelancer.com has bad business values and is basically ripping off all developers, not to mention it's low prices and bad clients. So i'm wandering how can i launch a successful freelancing business while being a college student, without being tide to a platform, since i don't have any experience in doing so, and don't know where to get the clients.
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Title: Hi HN,<p>Very recently I stumbled onto a comment by Rich Hickey which I've reformatted in a gist[0] (unfortunately, the source is no longer available). Honestly, Rich Hickey is one of my programming heros and I'm a big fan of his ideas about programming. However, reading the response below, I couldn't help but feel disheartened.<p>Rich Hickey says - <i>You don't level up by switching games all the time, but by sticking with one long enough to gain advanced skills. And, you need to be careful to recognize the actual game involved. Programming mastery has little to do with languages, paradigms, platforms, building blocks, open source, conferences etc</i>.<p>Quite seriously, this is more or less opposite of what I've lived by in my career till now. As a backend engineer I can't help not getting excited by React or not spending a month learning OCaml or building side-projects tangential to my 9-5 line of work. The worst part is, that till now I always felt that it is a sure fire way to level up as a developer.<p>The confusing part is that Peter Norvig, another great programmer has quite the opposite to say[1] (although one can argue that overall they mean the same) - <i>Learn at least a half dozen programming languages. Include one language that emphasizes class abstractions (like Java or C++), one that emphasizes functional abstraction (like Lisp or ML or Haskell), one that supports declarative specifications (like Prolog or C++ templates), and one that emphasizes parallelism (like Clojure or Go).</i><p>At this point, I'm really confused and I spent better part of the day mulling over whether I should go through the lectures of a recent Coursera course that I'm doing or should I dive deeper in my current stack e.g. Python / Django.<p>What are your thoughts? Is there one school of thought that you agree to?<p>[0] - https://gist.github.com/prakhar1989/1b0a2c9849b2e1e912fb
[1] - http://norvig.com/21-days.html
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Title: Hi HN,<p>Suppose you had to understand a large distributed system. The modules which interact together can be written in different programming languages and all expose a REST endpoint along with a documentation of what each endpoint can do.<p>For the simplicity of discussion lets consider these languages(Java, C++, Scala, Python and PHP). They could use a distributed database like solr, couchbase<p>Some of these modules can be 12factored and some with pretty bad code practices. There is no existing mechanism for monitoring but logging.<p>How would go into analyzing this vast system ? (Not just one at a time, elaborate your techniques)<p>To what degree would you trust the documentation, infrastructure, existing testing tools, environment setup tools in the process of understanding a module ?<p>What would you make sure you definately do NOT do?<p>What language specific strategy would you suggest ? (Entrypoints, configs, static analysis etc.)<p>Would you think of creating a mechanism for cloud debugging ?<p>How do you keep track of the knowledge you learn from one module and apply that as you go along ?<p>How do you keep your life together and still swim in so much complexity ?<p>Share your stack! http://stackshare.io/<p>How do you apply these techniques to learn, update and maintain this system?<p>PS: I am asking this question in general and not for an existing system. But if you would like to give an answer with some open-source project as example, that would be great.
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Title: This is a follow up for "What up with these startup salaries?"(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9052727)
If salaries are much low in startups comparing to Big Co.s why don't startup owners outsource the development in cheaper labor countries and work on marketing, selling of their startups.<p>I am from Central Asia, here you can easily hire really good developers for 2K$, avg 1K$ and beginners are ready to work for <500$.<p>Most of the companies are already outsorcing their development here and selling in Europe, US.<p>Most of us may think developers aren't good enough. To some extent you maybe right, but in general thats not true. Avg. developers maybe haven'n worked with AWS so far, because mostly no demand for AWS in local IT companies, catching up is no problem. Instagram owners also haven't worked with highload before gaining success.<p><i>Update: </i> Please consider offshoring also, not only outsourcing.<p><i>Update: Reasons so far(ordered by priority, opinionated):</i><p>0. Mindset, (founders love vs contractors need) to make product<p>1. Not comfortable with remote workers or difficult to manage<p>2. High gaps in skillset<p>3. Time/Cultural/Language barriers<p>4. Low quality implementation (docs, tests, code)<p>5. Retained value
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Title: I know, I know, the solution to burnout is to slow down and take some time off.<p>What do you do when you're exhausted, your brain is fuzzy, and you just plain have to meet a hard deadline in a few days? You have obligations to your team and your company and yourself that just can't put off.<p>It's all well and good to say you'll take a week off once the deadline is met, but how do you keep your brain operative and your mind focused enough to read and write code for those intervening 3 days when you can barely read a sentence of plain English text without having to go back over it 3 times to extract any meaning?
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Title: I'm the author of this blog post. We are very excited about this API and think it will be the common interchange format for data in Spark. It has also some neat features (such as code generation, predicate push down, etc) that make it very useful for Big Data.<p>Feel free to ask me anything.
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Title: After raising over $70,000 from the community in October 2013, progress on the TrueCrypt audit has been fitful at best. The last update on http://istruecryptauditedyet.com was April 14, 2014.<p>Two key contributors, Matthew Green (https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green) and Kenn White (https://twitter.com/kennwhite) remain active on Twitter.<p>I am aware of VeraCrypt and CipherShed but these appear orthogonal to the original audit.<p>Does anyone know what the heck is going on?
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Title: I'm switching from OS X to Linux because I'm tired of having to have a kernel extension to remap keys and a stupid "window manager" just so I can hit Caps Lock+Up to make a window fill the screen. But more importantly, I'm tired of every feature and option being taken away from me. OS X is just going downhill, so it's probably a good idea to switch as soon as possible.<p>There are a few things that I'd want in my new Linux distro:<p>- I'd <i>really</i> love to keep my OS X-style keybindings. It's really frustrating for me to be on Windows and try to paste the system clipboard into a command line. What is it again? Shift-Insert or Control-Insert? And how do I open a new terminal window? Alt-F2?<p>- The above also goes for Emacs text editing bindings (OS X comes with C-p, C-n, C-k, C-o, C-v, etc.). I want them around too.<p>So being able to rebind keys is really important to me.<p>I'm also looking to replace a couple apps:<p>- iTerm2. I was sure this wouldn't be a problem, but after looking more into it, apparently ... it is. I've heard that some emulators can't even wrap text properly. I'd also like if it could support profile switching via escape code and other nice things like that.<p>- Alfred. Not so much for searching for applications, more for having a mini-"command line" that I can use from anywhere.<p>Another thing is compatibility. Of course if that was my highest priority, I'd go with Ubuntu and Unity. It seems like more and more things are starting to say "Linux" when they mean "stock Ubuntu". I cannot stand Unity, so I'm thinking Linux Mint. I'm also giving Elementary OS a try in a VM right now, so we'll see how that goes.
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Title: If you are a SaaS company, how do your customers pay you? Credit, ACH, etc, monthly vs. annual contract. Any good resources on the subject?
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184
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Title: I've tried posting this on Stack Exchange but no luck so figured I might have more luck here:<p>I'm implementing a simple sentiment analysis algorithm where the authors of the paper have a word list for positive and negative words and simply count the number of occurrences of each in the analysed document and give it a sentiment score the document with:<p>sentiment = (#positive_matches - #negative_matches) / (document_word_count)<p>This is normalising the sentiment score by document length BUT the corpus of negative words is 6 times larger than the positive word corpus (around 300 positive words and 1800 negative words) so by the measure above, the sentiment score will likely be negatively biased since there are more negative words to match than positive words.<p>How can I correct for the imbalance in the length of the positive vs. negative corpuses?<p>When I run calculate the above sentiment score, I get around 70% of my 2000 document set with negative sentiment scores BUT there is no a priori reason that my document set should be biased towards the negative and I would expect the true 'unobserved' sentiment of the documents to be approximately symmetrical with around half the documents positive and half negative.<p>I need to somehow come up with a methodology that results in representative sentiment scores to remove the bias introduced by asymmetrical word lists.<p>Any thoughts / ideas much appreciated :)
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51
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Title: Since I'm the kind of person that likes Stripe's take on email transparency[1], I might just be over-opinionated on the matter when I think that the YC job posts would be better if conversation was able to occur within them.<p>Some examples:<p>* Clever - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9082693 - what does code refactoring have to do with that position?<p>* LivBlends - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9047329 - any YouTube videos of your product in action?<p>* Mailgun - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7681316 - is there any correlation between the positions and the locations?<p>Sometimes the conversation is going to be asking for more details. Sometimes making suggestions. Sometimes OT. But I can't think of many situations where inspired conversations would detract from the quality of the posting...<p>[1] https://stripe.com/blog/email-transparency
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59
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Title: I'm a student developer, @pravj on GitHub.
I try to follow the best possible development practice when I'm working like documentation, respecting language's style guide etc.<p>But one thing I don't like with me is that I never write tests.<p>Why I never followed that aspect is because I always felt that the thing that I'm writing, sounds totally OK.<p>One another negative point is that I don't actually get it that How to do/start this and what type of tests I should write for any given project. Maybe this is because I have never done this before.<p>For example recently I wrote a identicons library, Penticons[1]. It generates GitHub contribution flavored identicons. You can read the development story here[2].<p>Now, the thing that stopped me from writing tests was, I thought that ultimately it's a image generation library, why this thing needs any tests.<p>I don't want to lost my 1 point in the Joel score. Whenever I see a <i>build passing</i> label on a GitHub repository, It makes me crazy.<p>I'm asking here because I just love HN, I know people will suggest some awesome things here.<p>1. https://github.com/penticons/penticons.go<p>2. http://pravj.github.io/blog/penticons-the-hash-game/
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136
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Title: Last week I posted on HN that 'Google deleted whocalled.us for “Pure Spam” and replaced it with spam' (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9050343).<p>I appreciated reading your thoughts, and it made me feel better because the worst part of it all was feeling like nobody could hear my protests that they made a mistake.<p>I made 8 reconsideration requests, which are messages you send Google to ask for a human to manually review the penalty. All of them were denied with the same automated response.<p>It did not feel like any humans actually read or thought about the situation, so I felt voiceless.<p>As usual, if you make a public scene, a large corporation will often notice, and look closer at that individual's issue. I think that's what happened in this case.<p>I happened to notice today that whocalled.us was back in Google, and the "Pure Spam" manual action had disappeared. There was no notice or explanation, and it feels like someone at Google saw my post, and quietly fixed it.<p>I thought it was important to notify HN about this.<p>I don't know how to feel about this. I already removed AdSense from the site, and gave up on it. From a shortsighted view, I should be happy, and thank Google.<p>But this experience showed me that Google has more power over my website than I do.
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125
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Title: Sometimes I see pieces of software that are so brilliant that they evoke emotions in me. e.g. when google maps came out, or when the first iphone came out. Do you consider any software to be art? If so, which one?
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49
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Title: I'm at the end of my rope and this is my first post. Please be gentle. (deep breath)<p>I started in IT 15 years ago as a help desk jockey for a small ISP back in the dial-up days. Since then I have done everything from low level hardware support to leading a large government project installing a new telephony/messaging solution for a school system.<p>Here's the thing: I dropped out of high school and got a G.E.D. my Junior year. I have always had a weird knack for learning on the fly (are the rest of you like this too?). I always bluffed my way in to jobs I was completely unqualified for and pulled it off quite well.<p>Then the recession hit my area particularly hard so I tried the local technical college but decided it wasn't worth the debt or time learning stuff I already knew.. Lately, I have been wasting my time trying to break into IT Security (always my primary interest), with no luck because my security experience isn't professional. I was able to self-study for both my Network+ and Security+ (gotta start somewhere) and did surprisingly well. I'm proud that I was able to score 895/900 on the Security+ exam after just reading for two weeks but these certifications didn't seem to make a difference.<p>I'll get to the point. I can't seem to get my foot in the door anywhere to do anything from level one help desk work to anything else. Add a new family to the picture and you can see why I need to make a move now. What's someone like me to do? I am talented (some past coworkers and managers actually called it freakish), but you cant put talent on your resume. I'd relocate anywhere on earth for a stable job. I pull a deer-in-the-headlights every time I try to find a new skill to learn. Too many options. I don't know what's in demand. What can people still turn in to a long-term career? What area or "discipline" in IT shows promise for a career?
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102
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Title: I've been in a corporate for many years after grad school. Climbing endless corporate ladder. I want to feel the excitement of a start-up. Should I quit my job and do my own gig full time? Or is this age already too old to compete with the 20s?
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57
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Title: It may be because I live in a country without great access to mental health care (America, in case it wasn't obvious), but I went through a very long period of my life where I was horrendously depressed. Suicidal depressed.<p>I won't go into the details that led up to this event (I'm using a throwaway account for a reason!), but basically I had all of my dreams in life shattered and then I dealt with the Department of Justice for a year. The long-term stress robbed me of any self-confidence.<p>I finally got over it last year when I started doing small kind gestures for the people I care about. Volunteering to run errands. Cleaning the dishes. Anything to convince myself with concrete examples that people are happier that I'm around. Anything to justify not committing suicide.<p>And it worked, until last week when I suddenly started feeling anxious and depressed for no discernible reason. Being kind to others doesn't seem to have the same effect this time around, so before my condition gets any worse, I'd like to ask the community what reasons they have for continuing to live. Maybe I can figure out why I feel so crappy and pre-emptively stave off those inner demons.
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62
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Title: GNU Groff (which is probably doing the behind-the-scenes formatting work when you use man pages on GNU/Linux) currently has no maintainer, and the most recent stable release was in 2013. Who would like to step up and help?
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67
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Title: At least allow people to replace it with something like [deleted] or [deleted-account] text instead of the user-name after a user has decided to delete the account, if you would want some kind of indication to remain, or sth random, whatever pleases or suits you.<p>Or at least give an option to disable/lock the account. I mean it should be like a basic right on the Net to have your account deleted.
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110
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Title: So I've noticed a few posts over time where users have asked similiar questions but at younger age brackets (18, 20, 25 mainly).<p>I'm slightly more interested in further down the road. I know HNs user base might be skewed to the younger crowd but I'm sure there are a number of 40+ year olds who can impart their wisdom.<p>Thanks.
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186
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Title: Looks like someone has compromised Google's Vietnam site.<p>A cursory DNS query for google.com.vn against 8.8.8.8 returns a Cloudflare IP. I'm not a security expert, but seems like something decidedly strange is going on.<p>As of the posting of this message, this is what is found when accessing the home page: http://imgur.com/wMScgY6
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89
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Title: https://twitter.com/Cryptomeorg/status/566616227582582785
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74
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Title: I am 19, student and javascript developer, I am currently the only one working on a small developer tool that has become quite popular but I am getting overwhelmed and having hard time managing everything.
All the bug reports, support tickets, continuing my bachelors, managing sales and all has become a chore, I am currently not sure about solid business strategy and I am only earning around 4-5K per month so I can not hire anyone to work with me. Any advice would be helpful.<p>Sorry for my terrible english.
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63
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Title: The ORG is the UK's EFF equivalent and needs your help, today the open rights group is half way to their goal of 300 new members:<p>https://www.openrightsgroup.org/join/<p>With the election coming up we need to get them to their goal!<p>Funding is to:<p>- Build a tool together which tells you where your local candidates stand on privacy and surveillance.<p>- Run local hustings across Britain, together with other NGOs and charities to make sure you can ask your candidates tough questions on civil liberties.<p>- Take part in a Don’t Spy on Us bus tour around the country to engage voters on surveillance.<p>- Hold meetings with candidates to put digital rights in the minds of new MPs.<p>- Create question guides so that you feel confident talking to your candidates about these issues.
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66
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Title: You can post with a throw-away account.<p>How did the decision to include Superfish materialize and what was the behind the scenes drama while this was added to the build?
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70
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Title: There is a PATENTS file in almost all Facebook's open source projects with statements on "Additional Grant of Patent Rights".<p>E.g., React (https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/master/PATENTS)<p>Why Facebook adds this declaration on top of the BSD license of the software? Is it safe to use those projects in my commercial project?
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160
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Title: Article based on paper:
http://research.cs.wisc.edu/adsl/Publications/yiying-thesis13.pdf
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163
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Title: As a digital vendor who lives outside the US, I don't want to be at the mercy of PayPal's psychotic mood swings. What alternatives are out there to process payments and accept payouts from gumroad, paddle, Leanpub etc?
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113
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Title: Yes.
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43
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Title: Ask HN: Since watching CitizenFour, or previously reading about the widespread surveillance conducted by governments - what changes have you made to how you conduct your life online? Have you adopted any new practices, or stopped or started using any new services?<p>It would be interesting to see what effect this has had on how people, especially technically included people behave and conduct themselves online. This could include technical solutions you have adopted or might include how you use, or view services which you previously trusted with your data.<p>Myself, I have switched my email provider away from one of the 'big three'. I have started taking an interest in more 'usable' applications of encryption and have started talking to people about the ramifications of the information brought to light by Snowden and others.
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43
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Title: Please lead with the location of the position and include the keywords INTERN, REMOTE, or VISA 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 do not post recruiting firms or job boards.
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413
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Title: Share your information if you are looking for work. Please use this format<p><pre><code> Location:
Remote:
Willing to relocate:
Technologies:
Résumé/CV:
Email:</code></pre>
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110
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Title: Please lead with either SEEKING WORK or SEEKING FREELANCER, your location and whether remote work is a possibility.
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131
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Title: I created an app last year that gained some popularity on Hacker News thankfully. I'm in a transition phase. I work full-time and I have a side job I'm finishing up for a client. Soon I can concentrate on building my next version.<p>My problem is it's shared on Twitter, but it has bugs and it's not good enough to begin marketing yet. I'm learning Swift to build the 2nd version, but I'm not an iOS coder, so the build is slow going. I've had a ton of feedback and I have the design and features of the next version planned.<p>Should I pursue seed funding? Should I apply to an accelerator? Should I look for a partner to help with coding? I don't have much money, but should I hire someone? I've looked at the analytics and the market segment is pretty clear. It makes me a little nervous to see the social sharing without much real ability to capitalize on it. I'm not sure how long Buffer will keep it in the suggested articles rotation (although it seems like it's been 6 months now). It's shared on Twitter and LinkedIn almost everyday for at least 3 months. I feel like the opportunity is slipping away.<p>I may be overreacting, but hopefully you can understand my anxiety. You can see the shares by searching Twitter for "rememberwinapp.com".
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60
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Title: Last year I gave in to the temptation of doing my own startup and quit my job, just like many others have done on this site. Since then, I’ve severely changed my lifestyle and reduced my living costs to a crazy low figure and worked my ass off for the last 8 months to achieve this:<p>www.openloopz.com<p>I have written more about it on Medium here: http://goo.gl/JN03yf<p>I knew from the start the odds were stacked against me. I’m almost 36, I have a family and I live in the North East of England where - without wanting to sound negative - the opportunities are few and far between compared to what I see on here. When I made the BETA announcement, I knew no-one would just magically sign-up, but I watched and waited anyway and became extremely pissed off when it didn’t happen. “It’s been 2 hours - why haven’t I got 100 sign-ups already?”. Silly really.<p>I used up all my savings to get this far and I don’t regret any of it (except maybe the weight gain, lack of a social life, and development of bad sleeping habits!). I wanted to prove to myself I can build a production quality app that I honestly believe in without bias, and I can truly say I have achieved that now.<p>But now comes the hard part. I need to force myself to stop coding and start actually talking about OpenLoopz and trying to spread the word. I am the first to admit I am not very good at this. I am struggling to even write this post because I already know that probably no-one will read it. But I just have to learn to get over that and keep going. Any feedback - good or bad - will be greatly appreciated, thanks.
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373
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Title: A friend of mine just got offered a top executive position at a tech startup and is in culture shock. In his own words "there are these rooms full of kids and I can't understand what they're saying, and the valuations - they don't add up...", etc. etc. "What am I missing here?"<p>This guy needs to get up to speed fast on startups, product management, engineering, hacker culture and so on after a lifetime of hierarchical command and control in the financial services industry. What are the most concise and illuminating introductory texts I can refer him to?<p>Thanks!
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43
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Title: Dear mobile payment pitchers of HN,<p>Why would I want to pay for anything with my phone, rather than a card or cash? Please enlighten me.<p>Specifically,<p>(1) How is this more convenient than using my card or cash? I don't buy the argument that carrying a wallet is an inconvenience. A card takes virtually no space.<p>(2) Why would I want to trust my smartphone, which has a battery life of about a day, with the ability to pay for something in a critical situation. My card and cash does not run out of battery. Furthermore, I have had three different smart phones die on me permanently in the last two years. I don't want to be stuck somewhere and not be able to afford a taxi because my phone is dead.<p>(3) Why would I trust information about my purchases with a company like Google. They already know most things about me, but how does it benefit me to also give my purchase data over to them? So they can ad retarget me more easily? Fuck that. What's next, my vital signs uploaded to Facebook in real time?<p>Thanks.
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63
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Title: I've been a freelance web developer for a while now, just something i do alongside college to help myself out. I've been getting work through freelancer all this time which i noticed is way too cheap comparing to the real thing. I was getting ready for a while now to start an online portfolio and start getting work through it, but i have no idea how much web developers usually charge, and no idea either where to get clients. So any help is appreciated
I create:<p>-Website templates<p>-E-commerce websites<p>-Wordpress/Joomla themes<p>-Some SEO from time to time<p>-Adding responsiveness to websites<p>-Website designs<p>-Dynamic websites<p>If any experienced web developer could tell me how much they usually charge for any of those services i'd be very grateful
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49
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Title: Be it for beauty,or for reference, elegance, whatever... what is a piece of code that you find yourself returning to frequently
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64
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Title: I'm a founding engineer at a startup and just found out that the founders have concealed an investment from me leaving me with a potential tax bill on $10,000s of income that I had not received.<p>I did my best to keep my story within 2000 words but I couldn't shorten it anymore without leaving off important details so I posted the full text here: http://pastebin.com/xLLNUF0H<p>I feel so disgusted and cheated right now. I had worked for this company for almost 3 years doing everything possible to maximize its chance of success: from working overtime to meet deadlines to answering support emails on weekends, and now I find out that they've kept this investment (and the tax implications that go along with it) hidden from me for over a year. I'm left thinking that they concealed it so they wouldn't have to give me a raise, but I am more concerned about the tax implications of these shares. I had to leave work early yesterday when I found out about this and I don't think I'll be able to come in to work today. What should I do? Should I confront the founders about this? Is there any use in contacting a lawyer?
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193
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Title: Hey HN,<p>Here's the thing: I'm incredibly lucky. I'm working in a field I absolutely love (the intersection of technology and medicine), with a brilliant and compassionate group of people who I respect greatly, in an environment flowing in autonomy, doing work I find unbelievably interesting and impactful. There is nothing I would rather be doing, and (for the most part) no group of people I'd rather be doing it with. As someone who sought such a situation for a long time, that's not a statement I take lightly.<p>So what's the problem? Anxiety. So much anxiety. An onslaught of worry and fear, (quite literally) every minute of every day, all self-imposed and mostly centered on a fear of embarrassment. Do I know enough? Am I doing enough? What if I don't know the answer to that extremely basic question? How do I make sure that no one "finds me out"? Many imposter syndrome concerns: some of which are grounded in reality but none of which are helpful to me.<p>These thoughts fill up my mind in such a way that I don't have many brain cycles left for learning new ideas, solving problems or remembering details. (I have OCD, and these thoughts become obsessions that don't let up.) This creates a negative feedback loop: anxiety leads to decreased performance (in terms of learning/solving/remembering/accomplishing), which leads to anxiety about my performance, which further decreases my performance. As a result, I find myself becoming the imposter I'm trying to conceal, and am often unhappy.<p>Why am I writing this post? I'm seeking understanding, support, and related stories/situations. I'm not seeking a cure-all. I'm not seeking a pharmaceutical or therapeutic recommendation. Just support.<p>I'd love to hear from you all!
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178
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Title: In other words, what are your favorite Chrome extensions and why?<p>My top 3 most used Chrome extensions to help with productivity and stay focused while coding.<p>Tabs Outliner | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-outliner/eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl<p>Papaly - Bookmarker | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/new-tab-bookmark-speed-di/pdcohkhhjbifkmpakaiopnllnddofbbn<p>Limitless - Productivity Manager | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/be-limitless/jdpnljppdhjpafeaokemhcggofohekbp
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82
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Title: Hello HN, Are there any treatments of the topic of web front-end software design? I'm looking for something similar to "Design Patterns" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns) but for web front-end HTML/CSS.<p>I've read Duckett's book (Amazon bestseller) and its just syntax. Also, I've read the Atomic CSS design and BEM methodologies, and while those come close to what I want, I'm looking for a more detailed treatment.
To give an obvious example of what I'm looking for- I would say, use margins to separate multiple instances of same components (among other uses). I wonder if there are books that deal with similar, but non-obvious topics.
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144
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Title: Like tech museums, startup office tours e.t.c ?
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60
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Title: I think we should resume this Idea Sunday threads. And this first edition of March, 2015.<p>A small HN experiment. Every Sunday, a thread will be started to share product ideas. Why? Because many people have ideas they will simply not have the time to implement, and many need product ideas to work on.
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121
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Title: What should I make of this? A complicit culture of silence? I feel sick, uneasy, and confused.
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42
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Title: On HN there is plenty of posts suggesting startuppers not to ask investors to sign NDAs...
but what to do when the other thing happens, when is actually the investor who is asking you to sign a "mutual" NDA?<p># background:
- We've previously developed a prototype of a web technology which has attracted the attention of an investor<p>- In a meeting with the investor they have informed us of a market opportunity, a specific niche, where our product could be adapted<p>- Parts of the conversation had sensible information and they anticipated that we would have to sign an NDA, however, once they told us the information, there wasn't (almost) anything that isn't already public information. What they are putting on the table is a good intro to the specific niche: basically they have the client whom would buy our product<p>- we've analysed the market and the requirements and presented them with the final ideas of the project to develop, some where based on our technology, some where other business opportunities that the investor hadn't thought of and that we could build.<p>- now, once the presentation is done, they are asking to sign a "mutual" NDA (which "seems" mild enough), in order to keep talking about the rest of the project.<p># My concerns:
1- there's many things about the investor that make it an undesirable partner (some parts are good, but most are bad)<p>2- Because the market opportunity is real, very very big, and largely untapped, we maybe still want to pursue it, and we still would like to honour the "introduction" to the opportunity done by the potential investor<p>3- We are afraid that this NDA could be wrongly leveraged in the future, if we end up pursuing and reaching this market.<p>Here's a pastebin of the generic mutual NDA
http://pastebin.com/e2ZUU5qj<p>Any suggestions? I'm only afraid that this could be a liability for future developments of our product if it somehow overlaps the market opportunity they introduced us to.
thanks
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42
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Title: Question related to the topic of multiple discussion threads about sexist behaviour in the tech industry...<p>There are many cases where it is clear ethically and legally what can be said/done with coworkers of any sex - this is one of the cases where the person's behaviour was clearly wrong: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9178681<p>However, there also some other situation in the modern workplaces where you can find yourself in the legal/ethical grey zone. For example: you gradually become friends with your coworkers, start spending time together doing things outside of your work context. You can end up hanging out privately with your superiors or subordinates and this can eventually lead to various personal and romantic entanglements.<p>The legal advice would be: don't. But, the modern workplace culture encourages being more then 'professional coworker' to your coworkers outside of the office. And I personally think it is a good thing because it makes workplaces more human. I certainly made some amazing friends (both male and female) at the places where I worked.<p>But, my question is: has anybody with legal and/or HR credentials and some ethical sense written any definitive guide what is OK and what is not specifically in the context of the modern office?
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40
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Title: I wanted to know if anyone here has success with "Canada Start-up visa" program:
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/business/start-up/index.asp<p>And if so can you share your experience here? they time it took or any info that you think it is useful for others interested in this program?<p>Thanks
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66
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Title: I work at one of the world's largest software companies. I feel like I am a code monkey with no future of promotion or compensation. Just churning code in and out. I have a family and the job pays the bills. Wife doesn't quite work yet. I can't quite quit or switch companies, as I am on an L1 visa.<p>I feel I am spinning wheels and feel low most days.
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78
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Title: A while back someone posted a link to qwertycards.com, a (low security) product that promised an easy way to keep track of all of your passwords whilst staying secure.<p>This got me thinking about what I should use - after a year of using Lastpass to store "super secure" passwords and then logging in repeatedly to it, i'm starting to get fed up.<p>What do you all use?
Do you spend a lot of time memorising them?
Do you use medium security passwords that are easier to remember?
Do you use Lastpass/ 1Password/ another service? If so what do you recommend?
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43
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Title: If an American lives in one country (e.g. Spain) while working for an American startup and being paid in US dollars, should he pay taxes in the US or Spain, or both?<p>In Europe the national health care systems are tied to paying taxes in a country. How are nomads dealing with health insurance?<p>I'd really love to be completely above board w/r/t taxes and have health insurance, but all the advice I find online either sounds made-up or is "consult with your accountant". If I had an accountant I wouldn't be searching for this info!
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55
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Title: I ordered an Amazon Echo as soon as it was announced. Privacy concerns aside, a device like this could be the perfect UI for a smart home. My main interest in the Echo was (and remains) developing for it. Could I ask it about the status of my backups? Turn on lights and air conditioning? Use it to verbally send email while cooking? The possibilities were enticing.<p>I signed up for the beta API here:<p>https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/echo<p>This week I got the below email. It promises access, but only if I agree to an NDA. I was planning to do all of my development on GitHub, permissively licensed (or public domain), and of course I'd want to get feedback and ideas from friends and other developers. It also makes me question how friendly the Echo will be to hackers and open development in the future — do I really want to invest my time in it?<p>I understand that NDAs have their place, but I don't think this is one. I have experience developing for Apple devices, where any information relating to prerelease OSs is covered by NDA, and it's easy to find questions on Stack Overflow where someone asks an innocent question and is immediately shot down by another developer: "This API is embargoed." I don't want to encourage that spirit in the developer community.<p>Have any other developers signed up and gotten this email? If you were in this situation, would you fight it?<p>The email and NDA: https://gist.github.com/Sidnicious/c0483c73653b3c2c619f
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85
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Title: I am an american CS student that goes to (a lot) of hackathons.
The purpose of this post is to get feedback/opinions from people that are outside the "Hackathon Hackers" bubble to determine whether or not my rant is founded and if the issues I am highlighting are characteristic of the tech industry.<p>It bothers me to see how obsessed with success this generation of "hackers" seems to be. I have met people who were justifying censorship, population control and unfair business practices because they could benefit from them someday. I was expecting a little more regard to civil liberties and ethics from students and so called "hackers".<p>People win by making "cool" apps (Uber for X) whereas technical hacks are totally ignored.<p>I am glad that people are motivated to succeed but this lead to some of them taking themselves very seriously. Often to the expense of ethics.<p>"There is such ignorance in this world about who we are. We are not criminals. We are innovators. We create things. We change the world.[...]"<p>And this is one example among many other from a guy who has never engineered anything. Weeks are spent planning for their new "great project" with at the end little to no execution.<p>Students who believe to be 1000x SE because they can stick two APIs together and use bootstrap end-up to be very condescending older engineers.<p>This "bro"/"my framework is the best"/"Make money fast" culture that stinks a little bit IMO.<p>Hackathons are great to try out new technologies, meet new people and outreach to demographics that are traditionally under-represented in CS but I don't like where this is headed.<p>Like HS there is "cool kids" who are "Student Entrepreneur" or "Innovator, UX Artist blah blah", "RoR Genius" etc... and the rest of the world.<p>My apologies if this post is a little bit ranty, I hope to get other perspectives on this.
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251
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Title: How do you keep communications and your devices safe when working in a distributed team? Maybe from a coffee shop or a coworking space.<p>I never worked for a company that does that so I was wondering what policies companies like Github & Co. have in place. What best practices beside 2 factor authentication, VPNs, keeping an eye on open ports etc. exist and are used in the real world.<p>I hope the answers will be useful for people who work remotely.
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Title: This is a bit of rant but I'm also wondering if there is anything we (the Indian tech community) can do about it?<p>If you're an Indian startup, I'm sure you must know that the Reserve Bank of India has the worst policies when it comes to charging a credit card.<p>1) In India, you <i>cannot</i> create recurring subscriptions as the RBI prohibits charging the credit card automatically. Not one Indian payment processor (I've talked to a many) gives you the option to create recurring subscriptions. Can you imagine where half the SaaS startups will be without recurring credit card subscriptions?<p>2) Add to that, Paypal to Paypal transfer within India is prohibited by RBI. Why? Because certain people used to evade tax by purchasing goods directly with their Paypal balance. So, instead of catching the tax evaders the RBI found it easier to ban the whole thing. They could have made it mandatory for Paypal to report every transaction (as they require a a PAN card) but banning it altogether was easier, I guess?<p>3) Even big companies like Uber had to recently discontinue Credit card purchases because of these inane credit card policies of RBI [1]<p>4) I really don't think it's about customer security (since the rest of the world seems fine with it) but rather some "Babu" type mentality which is to ban the whole thing rather than make the efforts to make it work securely.<p>Anyway, enough about the problem. Now what can we do about it?<p>I know Modi really wants us to "make in India" and wants to promote the IT industry. Who are the right people to contact who can do something about this?<p>[1] http://qz.com/296483/indias-credit-card-rules-just-took-the-ease-out-of-uber/
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145
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Title: Hi, is there any good open source self-hosted evernote alternatives with sync and android support?
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103
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Title: HN looks a bit fuarked on my iPhone now. Could you please change it back to serving the desktop version?
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Title: Especially curious to hear about any programming or design related podcasts
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239
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Title: Free keyword suggestion tool with a unique "only question" feature to automatically generate topics for a content plan.<p>Useful for SEO and content writing folks.
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Title: I'll spend next week building an MVP together with a few fellow students at my coding bootcamp.<p>I understand that one week is far to little time to solve any problems at all. However, I'd rather spend this week trying to tackle an actual problem than prototyping an idea for yet another 'mobile/social/local app'..<p>I'd love to hear if people here know about problems they'd like to see solved.<p>Background info:<p>I'm currently attending a free coding bootcamp in London called Founders&Coders. I've been coding for about a year, mostly in Javascript&Node and Python&Django. I've also been running a kids app startup for a couple of years.<p>PS:<p>An area I'm quite interested in is the inequality in the real estate market. Both the issues of buying your own flat, (extremely expensive in London), and the issues of renting a flat/shared flat. So any problems in this sphere are highly welcome.<p>But so are all other problems!<p>Cheers,
Per<p>http://foundersandcoders.org/
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Title: omg guys front page
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Title: OK, I know this probably amounts to a (not-so-)humblebrag, but I've been paying close attention to my stats on Stackoverflow, I'm in the top 3% overall in terms of rep. And this weekend, I finally achieved the Python gold badge (my area of focus). It was hard to get, took a long time, and I benefited from strong English skills and research skills as well as my Python and programming skills.<p>I mentioned it to my boss this morning, also a technical type, he told me that and $3 would buy me a cup of coffee. (He's a good guy and I like him.) I nodded amiably, and as non-defensively as I could, said, "Well, some select for it." But who really does? It may get my foot in the door in some situations, and it might be considered a feather in the cap for my organization, but it's certainly not my key to the top tech job at a fortune 500. I have to earn that kind credibility in other ways.<p>But it's something, right? It's an achievement, and it signals that I have the ability to reach goals. That says I'm worth something, doesn't it? And it probably has some economic value too, doesn't it? How would I quantify that? That's my main question.<p>I'm probably asking to be smacked down here, but that's a risk I'm willing to take. I've seen a sort of anti-Stackoverflow current before, but you can't deny that it helps people, and (I'll hedge with "virtually") all of us technical types use it at least as a supplement to documentation and reading the source, and I'll brashly assert that many of us use it as a first resort thanks to Google. And if I've helped people, that makes me feel really good, so I do have a lot of respect for Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood, and I've wanted, for a while now, to make a meaningful contribution to a resource that has helped me so much. I'm now starting to feel like I really have. To me, the economic question is one way of measuring that contribution.<p>Evidence: http://stackoverflow.com/help/badges/51/python?userid=541136<p>Addendum, gaius said: "I'm afraid your boss was right. It may even be a negative, as it paints you as someone with a lot of free time."<p>My response (from below): Well it certainly could do that. If it does, I can always chalk it up to sour grapes. But I think I have a good answer to that, if I encounter it in question form.<p>I also go to a lot of tech meetups and give tech talks. I'm ten-years married with no kids. I can spend my time how I choose. Only I have something to show for all of my evenings over people who only play games or read click-bait. I want children, eventually, but I'm not ready yet. I'd also like another graduate degree, and I'd like even more experiences in finance, as now I've only been a financial advisor and worked in risk data and architecture.<p>I had over 150 answers on tax and retirement planning on all-experts.com with strong ratings, and they've deleted that material because it's out of date, and now I just have a line on my old resume (it's not even in my current one). I like that much of my material will not be dated as quickly on Stackoverflow.
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Title: Imagine you have a company with 50 people and several development teams. One of the best developers get bored and want to leave a company if there will be no interesting tasks. What you will do in this case? try to retain him somehow? let him go?
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Title: Equity for employees is commonly part of an employment package, but:<p>1. It's rare for startups to succeed
2. It's rare for non-owning employees to be able to exercise shares/receive money when the company sells due to the structure of VC-backing/ownership and the resulting order of who gets paid/when<p>We all hear stories about when employee equity does not work out. Are there any examples of when it DOES work out well for an employee with equity?
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Title: By big applications i mean applications with large code base that should be able to scale and with high performance on both client and server side .
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Title: Wasn't really sure how to make the title descriptive enough without putting the full question there.<p>Anyway, I have been toying with the idea of creating an open-source web application. Open-source in the way that I would host the product on my own servers but the full source code, except, of course, authentication info, tokens and things which shouldn't be under source control anyway, would be available on Github. Anyone would also be able to set up a self-hosted version of the product, and if anyone wanted to contribute, I would accept pull requests, etc.<p>The idea behind that was that, since it would be targeted mostly at a tech-savy crowd and deals with personal information, I would like to introduce some level of trust that I'm not doing anything sneaky or unexpected behind the scenes (like storing information I shouldn't be).<p>So basically I started wondering if it is possible to implement a way people could verify that the same code they see on the Github repo is the code that's also running on the live hosted site? I will be working with node.js, but I don't think the tech stack is too relevant here.<p>The client-side part, as I imagined it, would be relatively trivial to verify - run the build part locally, compare fingerprint of the live code and the local version.<p>But my idea got stuck on the server side. Since there, even if I would make a server side endpoint that returns the fingerprint of the live code, there is no way for someone to check what is actually going on, I could just as well return a static file with a hardcoded fingerprint.<p>I'm sure someone has dealt with or thought about similar problems before, and I would be happy to hear some insights. Feels like this might be a pipe dream, but at least some level of verification would be nice to achieve.
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Title: YC applications for the Summer 2015 batch are due in a week, so I thought I'd do an AMA to answer questions about applying to YC, how the program works, or anything else.<p>EDIT: 12:55 PM. This has been a really fun three hours, but now I have back to back meetings for the rest of the day. Sorry I couldn't answer everything--I typed as fast as I can :)<p>Special thanks to the YC software team for fixing an issue very quickly in the middle of this!
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634
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Title: In the article, "Silicon Valley's Youth Problem" [1] the author mentions Meraki (now Cisco-Meraki) as an example of a startup working on advances in technology rather than the latest web app.<p>Do you know of other companies that fit the description?<p>Follow up: Are they (you?) hiring?<p>[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/magazine/silicon-valleys-youth-problem.html
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