arpanetus/hackernews_title_upvote · Datasets at Hugging Face

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Title: Hey HN,<p>I'm trying to figure out how a better way to stay on track with my long term (1 year) goals.<p>Currently I have a list of measurable 1 year goals (eg: Explore and work out of at least 3 cities this year)<p>I also write daily work/life todo lists in a moleskine notebook to keep myself on track during the day.<p>Does anyone have any recommendations/tools for keeping these daily goals todo list goals in alignment with the big picture? Upvote:	379
Title: I would like to buy a cheap e-reader where I can replace the software with my own (or at least be able to write my own software that I can launch and stay in, with minimal UI chrome around it). Preferably about $50 or under. I would like to have a touch screen or to be able to use most of the buttons.<p>What are some good options for this? Upvote:	161
Title: I'm a CS student looking to get into Quantative Finance, and would appreciate if anyone could point me in the right direction. Upvote:	104
Title: Tomorrow UC Berkeley is removing all of their lecture videos from Youtube. Thousands of hours of content will be lost to the public. (This has already been discussed at length on HN.)<p>I'm in the process of archiving some of the most important Computer Science courses, mainly for my own benefit, but I intend to make them publically available. (This is a throwaway account b/c I don't want to run afoul of any legal issues.)<p>What I have so far:<p>- CS61 Series (61A, 61B, and 61C)<p>- CS162 Operating Systems (Kubiatowicz)<p>- CS164 Programming Languages & Compilers (Hillfinger)<p>- CS186 Intro to Database Systems (Hellerstein) Upvote:	512
Title: Hi HN,<p>Every person I've come across always has one book that sits at the top of their book list that they would recommend to everyone. For me, it's "How to win friends & influence people" by Dale Carnegie. What's your book? Upvote:	55
Title: I'm a software engineer at Uber. I've been there for under a year. I left my previous job because an Uber recruiter offered a large pay increase. I had been there for under a year as well.<p>Is it worse to have the job hopping on my resume or a very unpopular company on there?<p>Staying for a while wouldn't be hard on me. My team and the ones around me aren't toxic (yet). I'm strictly concerned with the impact on my career. Upvote:	122
Title: Wifi Dabba provides super cheap, super fast internet at tea-stalls and bakeries in Bangalore, India. We built Wifi Dabba because mobile data is still expensive and also because getting wifi at the local bakery is just downright cool. We focussed on chai wallahs and bakeries because they're everywhere and practically everyone in India gets chai at least once a day from these stalls. We have 3 plans, Rs.2 for 100mb, Rs.10 for 500mb & Rs.20 for 20GB (edit: whoops, that should say 1GB. Someday we'll hit that low of a rate!). We don't have any free trials or ads because we think the Rs.2 price point is something that everyone can afford. We've got 100 locations so far, if you're reading this from Bangalore, check out our coverage map on <a href="http://www.wifidabba.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.wifidabba.com</a> to try us out at a bakery near you. Our grand plan is to have Bangalore totally covered by the end of this year.<p>I'm Karam and my co-founder is Shubhendu, Wifi Dabba is actually the result of 6 painful years of building 32 different apps and watching them fail before we found something that had product/market fit. I've lurked on HN for years now and its a mini-daydream come true to be part of YC. We're both happy to answer any questions about Wifi Dabba or even just to commiserate with you on just how hard building products is. Upvote:	188
Title: A thread like this was posted 2 years ago. Maybe those problems have been solved or new problems have appeared. So what problem currently exists in your industry that can be taken up by a startup? Upvote:	40
Title: After a brief career in publicity, I decided to make the switch into engineering. I enrolled in a bootcamp—knowing full well the laudations and condemnations of the bootcamp model—and graduated in November.<p>This maybe isn't the place for a full postmortem; suffice it to say that I came out of the program confident in my own enthusiasm for programming, and less confident in how hiring companies may interpret the presence of a bootcamp on my resumé.<p>In the months since, every day, I have: —Applied to two jobs here in NY, taking my time with cover letters, following up where appropriate, researching the companies, etc. These are overwhelmingly junior front-end or full stack positions. —Studied compsci and new technologies so I'm a stronger candidate —Practiced whiteboarding-style questions so that I'm prepared for interviews —Freelanced so that I can pay rent and continue surviving —In my spare time, worked on solo projects<p>I have gotten very little traction. I receive form rejections in response to almost every application. I've gotten far along in the process at a few places, but repeatedly hear some version of "You seem great...for a junior! Be in touch when you're mid-level." It feels like, as months go by and the hole on my resumé grows, my chances are only worsening.<p>I get it. I'm an unknown quantity, and the bootcamp on my resumé isn't a strong guarantor of quality. Still, I feel like I'm scrabbling for purchase. I had entertained fantasies of someday moving into games/simulation space, and that feels further and further away.<p>How do I get out of this hole? Do I drop the immense time suck of actively looking for work, live off my meager freelance work, and put my time into a project that makes employers take me a little more serious? Do I keep throwing good time after bad, keep my head down, keep applying to junior positions, and not ask any more questions? Do I need to go back to school? Upvote:	59
Title: Hi HN! We’re the founders of the Centre for Effective Altruism, a nonprofit from Oxford, UK in the YC W17 batch. We’re the creators of Effective Altruism (EA) Funds, (<a href="https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/" rel="nofollow">https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/</a>) high-impact, individual giving portfolios, managed by expert researchers. It's like Vanguard for charity.<p>We created EA Funds because we became frustrated with how difficult it was to find the best giving opportunities as an individual donor. Using EA Funds, you choose a problem area, and our fund managers find the best giving opportunities. Our initial funds are all managed by Program Officers at the Open Philanthropy Project, a $10B private foundation. In the future, we hope to expand the number of funds, building a competitive marketplace for giving, where the amount of funding a charity receives is directly correlated with the amount of good they do.<p>We started out 7 years ago, when 23 of our friends pledged to give 10% of their income to the most effective charities they could find. Since then, 2700 people have joined us, donating $33M, including $17M last year. We’ve found that some of the most cost-effective charities can buy one year of perfect health (a DALY) for as little as $80, while others have no effect. A study in the US found that $10B was spent each year on social programs that had been proven to have no effect on outcomes, and a further $1B was spent on programs that were actively harmful. We built EA Funds to replicate the success of groups like the Gates Foundation and GiveWell. By pooling our resources and utilising the expertise of our research community, we can give individual donors the same impact per dollar as billion dollar foundations.<p>We’d love to hear your feedback and answer questions about effective altruism, donating effectively or hear your stories about the charity sector!<p>(Edit: originally said QALY instead of DALY, but that was a typo, as commenters pointed out.) Upvote:	178
Title: I'm currently working on an application as a sort of showcase of my skillset. SPA frontend in Vue.js with a REST API in Scala using Spring. Although, it is a struggle to put what little time I have left after work into this. I'd also like to go on to turn it into a couple short blog posts where I can comment on what I've done and show I know what I'm talking about. It's also worth noting that I crash and burn at whiteboard problem solving and would far prefer takehome exercises so this is another thing to make my CV stand out.<p>Those of you who were in a position of no work experience and a graduate degree (still working on mine) - just how significant of a role did your personal projects play in getting you hired somewhere you actually wanted to work? What kind of company was it? Was it ultimately worth pushing yourself towards doing it? Upvote:	43
Title: Users cannot visit google.com or google.nl in The Netherlands on Mac OSX & Chrome in the latest update, our whole company is experiencing this issue since this morning.<p>For those experiencing this issue, disable the following setting in chrome://flags/ :<p>Experimental QUIC protocol Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS, Android Enable experimental QUIC protocol support. #enable-quic Upvote:	155
Title: YC applications for the Summer 2017 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. I'll start answering questions at 10am. Upvote:	243
Title: I've been using Medium for almost 2-3 years now to host my personal site and blog (https://tigran.nyc). I've started to feel I want something more customizable. Any suggestions will be appreciated. Upvote:	61
Title: Some claim Silicon Valley is full of psychopathic CEOs who are 'charming and manipulative' but have no empathy: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4317484/Silicon-Valley-psychopathic-CEOs-experts-claim.html<p>Have you ever met a CEO like this? If so, did they come from marketing or sales? Upvote:	50
Title: Which are the best books on AI, for somoone who doesnt have much knowledge on the topic. Mostly practical, and not academic. Upvote:	375
Title: Why did you do so? What do you do for a living now? Do you regret it? And why do you still read HN? Upvote:	191
Title: Hey guys - I've been an Android developer myself for over 4 year now. One of the biggest pain points has always been the monetisation part - which I've always felt is out of my control.<p>I've been focused mostly on free apps with ads - mostly Admob - but the little control over what ads are displayed, their format, etc always seemed to bother me. That's why I've started working on an ad network for mobile apps - where the advertisers buys directly from the app publisher the ad spot - and the publisher has full control over which ad is displayed and when.<p>I wanted to ask you what monetisation strategies to you have for your apps and if you've ever felt the same way when you added ads in your app. Upvote:	242
Title: I recently moved cross country to work on what was supposed to be a fairly nice, new stack. I love my new city but the job is killing me.<p>Its legacy code dating back more than 20 years. I'm afraid that my skills will rot if I stay too long. The code quality is also horrible and its making me hate coding.<p>The company talks about how we're just around the corner transitioning to newer stuff. After talking to some veterans, apparently it's been "right around the corner" for years.<p>I was hired for my React and Typescript skills/interest and it's been months with no signs of being able to use them. I'm not good with their current stack but I have no interest in learning it because its so obsolete. I'm beginning to think that they mislead new employees because otherwise they would ask for a lot more money or walk away.<p>I'm torn about my best course of action. I'm not good at my job because I don't know their tech. I'm not good with their tech because I hate it and I'm bitter that I was lied to. I can't mentally force myself to learn this ancient shit. On the other hand, they're paying me, so I owe them something right?<p>The best solution for me is definitely to just get a job somewhere else, but I've only been at my current job for a few months. Should I just stick it out and hope I don't get fired for underperforming? Upvote:	62
Title: Hey guys - for some time our startup did organic link building and technical seo. We ranked for a year approximately as our closest competitor. Since the end of 2016 he is increasing the number of incoming links massively by adding bridge sites. These have keyword heavy domains and keyword heavy content with all links pointing to their site.<p>Contrary to seo consultants opinions we've ask ("don't worry") this (for all I know) works for them. They have now left us quite behind in rankings. As we are still not a known b2b marketplace brand and depend on seo this is hurting.<p>Ahrefs/Semrush does not report other large changes in their technical seo or link structure beside this massive buildup of bridge sites.<p>What would you do? We don't want to engage in the same tactics, should we? Upvote:	255
Title: I'm no finance person but I have an idea what stocks & shares are. Upvote:	40
Title: In a nutshell, I'm wondering if the market has shifted in the past 10-15 months or so, and how we can measure it.<p>I get the sense that, socially, we're not supposed to talk about these things. To acknowledge that I've had trouble finding work makes me seem weak or less valuable. To discuss money at all is a social taboo.<p>I don't know about y'all, but for my part, I had absolutely no trouble finding work - usually without even really trying - from mid-2011 to mid-2016.<p>I have no doubt that I'm valuable in the right contexts, and that hasn't changed in the timeframe I'm talking about. I'm neither "junior grade" nor out of date. I feel totally in my prime.<p>Nor have the technologies on which I'm most often contracted to work (python, usually web stuff, usually django) lost enough market share to explain it.<p>My rate ($6k / week) is not, in my estimation, too high for the value I provide.<p>So my question: is anyone else having a similar experience? Is there a way that we can gauge changes in the market?<p>And then also: whether or not my experience is unique, what's the best thing to do when you have long stretches without solid work? Learn a new skill?<p>I've been working a lot lately on Raspberry Pi, off-grid tech, power monitoring, etc. I live on a school bus (http://thisisthebus.com/) and I've developed a lot of interesting tech for that purpose. But then once you start to feel comfortable with new skills, how do you develop a new client base? Upvote:	41
Title: Hi HN! We're Luke and Heather, founders of boxouse: <a href="https://boxouse.com" rel="nofollow">https://boxouse.com</a>. We build portable, beautiful(ish), affordable smart homes out of used shipping containers in our West Oakland factory. This began out of our frustration with paying high rent for crappy apartments: we started thinking about our monthly rent in terms of how many shipping containers we could buy (2 per month!). We're particularly interested in using containers as a tool to increase density and affordability; among other things, we're going to deploy containers to people's yards for free, sharing the rent revenue with them. We do all the construction ourselves; more than happy to dig into technical details! Upvote:	142
Title: If you have any side projects that you've built and that you no longer have time for, list them here and let's see if others want to buy it from you. Upvote:	98
Title: Hey HN! I’m Kalle, one of the founders at Sudden Coffee (<a href="https://www.suddencoffee.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.suddencoffee.com</a>). We make instant coffee and sell it through our website as a subscription.<p>I started working on this almost two years ago after my cafe business failed. I was frustrated by how unscalable and inconsistent selling good coffee is.<p>In 2015 I placed 9th in the World Barista Champs in Seattle. On the flight back to Helsinki I was desperate for caffeine and ordered a coffee which was horrendous. I started wondering what would be a better way than Aeropress + hand grinder combo to have great coffee on the go.<p>Instant coffee is liquid coffee that’s been dehydrated. It’s normally made with the worst beans that are roasted really dark and extracted up to 6 times at temperatures up to 180C and 15 bar pressure. As a result, they can reach 60% extraction yield. Next, the liquid is boiled down and finally dehydrated by spray drying it with hot air. This process results in the gnarly bitter, woody, rubbery instant we all know.<p>We start with good beans: currently from a co-op called Biftu Gudina in Ethiopia, roasted by 49th Parallel in Vancouver, BC. In the beginning we brewed the coffee by hand as espresso — I would literally spend 12 hours per day pulling shots. At one point we had a full-time person doing this.<p>Eventually, we developed our own fully-closed centrifugal brewing system that doesn’t allow for any aroma to escape. We extract the coffee at low temperatures (85-90C) to 21-23% extraction yield. As a result, we only get the good stuff — sweetness, fruitiness, acidity — and none of the bad stuff.<p>Also, we’ve developed our own freeze-drying technique that’s kind of equivalent to a server farm. Instead of having one enormous machine we have a bunch of small freeze dryers. This allows for greater control and shorter iteration cycle.<p>This might be too long already so I'll stop here. Looking forward to discussing the coffee business and great coffee in the thread! Upvote:	301
Title: Hi HN! I'm Ben, the solo founder of Calibre Analytics: <a href="https://calibreapp.com" rel="nofollow">https://calibreapp.com</a>. Calibre monitors websites and applications in a clean-room testing environment from all over the world. Up until January Calibre has been an "inbetween other things" / evenings / holidays kind of project. (Only, oops—I did that for four years.). Last year I knuckled down to get into the position where I could work on it full time.<p>I've spent the last 8 weeks working on "Test profiles" (The launch post is here: <a href="https://medium.com/get-calibre/announcing-test-profiles-and-budgets-2-0-84667a4e4749" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/get-calibre/announcing-test-profiles-and-...</a>) — It allows you to emulate hardware devices (cpu speed, user-agents and screen dimensions), as well as limit the bandwidth (latency, download and upload speeds), and set cookies (you could use this to log into your app, test a staff-shipped feature, or maybe turn off advertising and see the performance impact.) I think I've finally got the basis of a really powerful tool, and I'm keen to share it with… everyone! I do everything myself, so if you've any questions, I'm here to answer them! Upvote:	57
Title: I have noticed a steady rise in embedded systems using BSD based operating systems and i was just wondering why its being chosen over linux for example. Both Sony and Nintendo are using BSD based guts in their consoles and im also seeing it used fairly regularly in EPOS systems and a fair few other things. Upvote:	60
Title: Hi HN,<p>I’m Pauline, the co-founder of Hivy (<a href="https://hivyapp.com" rel="nofollow">https://hivyapp.com</a>). We're part of the YC Winter 2017 batch.<p>Hivy is an office management platform that makes it easy for employees to tell their office managers what they need to be comfortable at the office.<p>I started Hivy after working in big companies where it was always complicated to get what I needed to work efficiently. I once spent 6 months with the slowest computer, and gave up trying to change because there was no clear way for me to request a repair / new one.<p>We've developed a Slack app, an iPad app and a web app to make the request process for employees easy and fast.<p>You can use Hivy to make orders (snacks, supplies, perks, business travel) and suggestions to improve your life at the office. Office management teams review these orders, manage them and collaborate on Hivy to keep employees happy and productive.<p>We're really excited about what we are building and would love you and your Office Manager to try it out. If your team is on Slack, I’m sure you’ll love our Slack integration :)<p>You can try Hivy for free here: <a href="https://app.hivyapp.com/signup" rel="nofollow">https://app.hivyapp.com/signup</a>. Just don’t forget to invite your Office Manager!<p>Happy to answer questions about Hivy, our users, and our plans for the future.<p>Edit: replaced 'desktop' with 'web' above. Upvote:	56
Title: YC applications for the Summer 2017 batch are due tonight. Here's the link to apply - http://www.ycombinator.com/apply/ Upvote:	44
Title: Hey AWS team,<p>If you are reading this, please please make CTRL-click to open a new page. It's really frustrating to try to open a link in a new page just to see that the page navigated, and then if you click the back button, you end up nowhere near where you were before.<p>I really love the new UI, it's really good! and with this feature we could be more productive and use AWS even more!! Upvote:	144
Title: For example, I think I have a good product, but I want to hire some help to get it launched, acquire initial customers, and hopefully build momentum. This would include social media, promos, press, etc. Upvote:	82
Title: I've recently been involved with a few line-of-business projects recently that have been fairly successful. They all use well-honed agile principles, and they met the requirements that their Product Owners had of them, and by all measures were successful.<p>However, simultaneously, I'm seeing a great deal of technical complexity being introduced to systems: microservices and SPAs (with all the attendant web stack complexity) being the most common. A lot of it seems to be driven by a need for developers to keep their CVs shiny, or because smart developers want cool things to play with, or because of "Google envy". There seems to be very little engineering justification for these approaches in most cases, and technically simpler approaches would work better.<p>I've been thinking about Fred Brooke's Mythical Man Month, in which he described 2 forms of complexity: Accidental Complexity as being technical in nature, while Essential complexity relating to the problem domain, and being more intractable.<p>Although Essential complexity remains stubborn in business systems, I believe we are slowly getting to the point where it is being tamed through more responsive (agile) dev practices, leading to happier customers who get software that does what they expect. On the other hand, I feel that accidental complexity is exploding, and for the first time in my career, it is growing at a faster rate than essential complexity, and masking a lot of the gains we are getting from improved processes. Is this a fair observation, or am I just jaded? Upvote:	147
Title: Hello, I've started to work with scala and I think it's a beautiful language. that said, I'd like to be better at it. What are some good books to get thst teach about the nitty gritty details of the language and it's use in production? Upvote:	143
Title: I used to blog for several years, several years ago, and was able to build up a "large" following, for a small-timer at least (over 10K visitors/mo). In recent years, I've made two slightly niche-subject blogs but find it nearly impossible to get a following, even though I'm dealing in the same general subject matter, quality of posts, research, and media integration.<p>As of a few years ago it seems like to have a successful blog one must be cross-posting to 6-7 social networks at the same time (ie, for sharing to be frictionless). When I post my newer blog posts in relevant places online, people actually say they like the content, yet visitor numbers don't reflect such sentiment in a sustained manner. I have hundreds of posts, but retention is very low (1 visitor = 1 view, then they leave).<p>Is the only option these days to be cross-posting? It seems share buttons on each blog post aren't frictionless enough. Either I'm a bit delusional about the quality/interest level or blogging has become a lot harder in terms of audience capture. Upvote:	276
Title: Rules: 1. Only one book. 2. Can't be a technical book e.g. 'Programming C' doesn't count. Upvote:	375
Title: I've noticed many of my friends have become less active on Facebook over the past year, and my newsfeed is becoming less personal (random news articles and ads being more than half of what I see). I've also noticed myself logging into Facebook less often and when I do, it's usually for specific groups. Quite frankly, Facebook is boring and very different than when I first joined. I've checked with some other people and they all share a similar experience.<p>I wonder if this is a universal thing -- who else feels the same? Upvote:	60
Title: What do you personally look for in an offer and company to help you decide whether or not to take a job that you've been offered? Upvote:	84
Title: On one hand I fully understand there are differences in language and specific features available depending on framework out there.<p>On the other hand, if a framework "correctly" implements the underlying statistical theory/principals of deep learning, shouldn't I get the same results regardless of whichever framework I use?<p>If not, how would I know which framework produces "more correct" interpretations of the underlying data? Upvote:	84
Title: Sure enough, not all side projects are meant to make money. But among those that do, what is your business model? Upvote:	149
Title: I think it would be interesting to talk about our reading habits, so here there are some questions related with this topic: - How many articles do you read each day? - They're usually related to your job or to some side projects? - Do you usually read about a variety of topics or it's focused in 2 or 3 topics only? - Do you usually read during some time of the day or it's usually random? Upvote:	94
Title: I've been writing software for quite some time, and one piece of advice I hear a lot for improving is "read lots of code, write lots of code, repeat".<p>I get writing lots of code-- but reading lots of code? I'm not so sure.<p>What are your thoughts? Upvote:	57
Title: I happened to watch the video on Productivity by Robert C Martin (author of Clean Code). He recommends following Pomodoro technique everyday to estimate our avareage number of tomatoes/day on the long run and also achieve the benefits of high productivity. Has anyone followed this? If yes, what are your estimates and have you reaped the benefits? Upvote:	44
Title: I am looking for a simple solution for recurring billing. My requirements are:<p>- Per user per month. New users can be added or removed any time. Support for initial 14 day trial.<p>- Per user billing for annual subscription. New users can be added during the year.<p>I am looking for something that supports True Up accounting model. I have looked into Braintree and Stripe api. None of them seem to support anything beyond simple recurring billing.<p>What have you used for this type of common billing patterns in SAAS apps? Upvote:	65
Title: Our company was accepted by YC's Startup School. What to expect from the program? Upvote:	49
Title: Howdy HackerNews!<p>Dustin Kirkland here, Product Manager for Ubuntu as an OS platform (long time listener, first time caller).<p>I'm interested in HackerNews feedback and feature requests for the Ubuntu 17.10 development cycle, which opens up at the end of April, and culminates in the 17.10 release in October 2017. This is the first time we've ever posed this question to the garrulous HN crowd, so I'm excited about it, and I'm sure this will be interesting!<p>Please include in your replies the following bullets:<p>- FLAVOR: [Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Core]<p>- HEADLINE: 1-line description of the request<p>- DESCRIPTION: A lengthier description of the feature. Bonus points for constructive criticism ;-)<p>- ROLE/AFFILIATION: (Optional, your job role and affiliation)<p>We're super interested in your feedback! Everything is fair game -- Kernel, Security, Desktop apps, Unity/Mir/Wayland/Gnome, Snap packages, Kubernetes, Docker, OpenStack, Juju, MAAS, Landscape, default installed packages (add or remove), cloud images, and many more I'm sure I've forgotten...<p>17.10 will be our 3rd and final "developer" release, before we open the 18.04 LTS (long term support, enterprise release) after October 2017 (and release in April 2018), so this is our last chance to pull in any big, substantive changes.<p>Thanks, HN!<p>:-Dustin<p>https://twitter.com/dustinkirkland Upvote:	1374
Title: Its that time of year again. When everyone starts releasing their fake product announcements a day (or two) early to try and fool us.<p>Instead of cluttering up the front page, let's just post them in here instead. One thread where each top-level comment is just a title and a link. Upvote:	69
Title: Tress (<a href="https://www.tressapp.co" rel="nofollow">https://www.tressapp.co</a>) is an online community for black women to discover and share hairstyle inspiration, information and tips. Women upload photos of their hairstyles and share information about their style. Users can discuss how to replicate the look, which products were used and where to get similar hairstyles.<p>We are 3 software engineers who have built health social networks, mobile apps for farmers in Africa, and worked on marketing consumer brands like Nike. We started Tress because this is a challenge that personally affects us and because it's a big market that is still relatively untapped by technology.<p>Hair is a big deal for black women. We are constantly changing our hairstyles and spend 9 times more on our hair than any other demographic. We don't just get a regular cut or color our hair. We get drastic! We go from braids to weaves to cornrows and then to our own hair and then back again. Size, length, style, color, volume of hair, weaves and extensions all differ each time we change our hairstyle. And we do that often because of the nature of our hair. To give you an idea, these photos are all of the same woman - <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/52ew0d8hsxwx0k4/JodianHairstyles.png?dl=0" rel="nofollow">https://www.dropbox.com/s/52ew0d8hsxwx0k4/JodianHairstyles.p...</a> - It's an image from our YC demo day slides.<p>The process of figuring all this out to actually getting a style done is long and broken. Many women spend a ton of time searching for their next hairstyle, then more time figuring out how to replicate the style via tutorial articles/videos or search for a stylist and so on. Tress aims to be the dedicated platform to fix all of this and connect a community of women who often socialize around their unique hair needs.<p>One thing that excites us as software engineers is exploring how to use computer vision to tell if a user has 4a, 4b or 4c natural hair curl pattern or if a hairstyle is a Senegalese twists or Havana mambo twists. We are equally excited to be gathering hair products data and usage patterns around our hairstyles in such an informal sector that technology has barely gotten started in yet. We dream of things like an API that has all the data about the hair products black women have used in the past 5 years.<p>We're looking forward to answering your questions about Tress and discussing startups, software, and of course hair! Upvote:	171
Title: I realize calendars are not a simple tool to build well, but for such a basic standby of time management, I strive for a better, developer friendly, open source calendar system. Like what Atom did for text editors, to bring a powerful, well built basic toolset ready for modular extensibility and can run anywhere Node can.<p>(I use emacs, but you get my drift).<p>I would love to work on a project like this, if anyone is hiring or already pushing code to an open source repo I haven't found.<p>I have a 98% coverage of my time for the past two years and it's all in Google Calendar. I suspect there are many out there with dense calendars that would love to hack around in a friendlier environment.<p>Please advise.<p>Peace love and prosperity to the world. Upvote:	219
Title: I'm trying to find out what can go wrong while hiring a developer. What might cause that? Lack of technical skills? Or attitude problems? Upvote:	84
Title: Hi,<p>Last year I began a book for learning tmux called <i>The Tao of tmux</i>. It is based off a free resource originally part of the documentation [1] of tmuxp, a tmux session manager [2].<p>I made it available for free online at <a href="https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-tmux/read" rel="nofollow">https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-tmux/read</a>.<p>Since February of this year, I have incorporated suggestions and feedback from readers on quality and completeness of the book. For one, I have passed the book through a professional editor, as well as rounded out chapters with summaries and even added 3 new sections, including:<p>- Sending keys to tmux, aka `send-keys`<p>- Copying pane contents to the paste buffer programmatically, aka `capture-pane`<p>- Building and using tmux-mem-cpu-load [3]<p>Countless areas of the book have been rewritten for clarity. The process of editing alone fielded <i>over 650</i> tweaks. New graphics have been added. The configuration chapter has been overhauled, and various new examples of usage for targets (`-t`) [4] and formats (`-F`) [5] have been added.<p>The book is available for purchase on Leanpub, in DRM-free epub, mobi and pdf format at <a href="https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-tmux" rel="nofollow">https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-tmux</a>.<p>In addition, the book is available on Amazon Kindle at <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MG342KU" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MG342KU</a>.<p>The book will always be available for free on the web.<p>P.S. If you found this book helpful, please review on Goodreads [6] and Amazon [7].<p>[1] <a href="https://tmuxp.git-pull.com/en/latest/about_tmux.html" rel="nofollow">https://tmuxp.git-pull.com/en/latest/about_tmux.html</a><p>[2] <a href="https://tmuxp.git-pull.com" rel="nofollow">https://tmuxp.git-pull.com</a><p>[3] <a href="https://github.com/thewtex/tmux-mem-cpu-load" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/thewtex/tmux-mem-cpu-load</a><p>[4] <a href="http://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.9/man1/tmux.1#COMMANDS" rel="nofollow">http://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.9/man1/tmux.1#COMMANDS</a><p>[5] <a href="http://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.9/man1/tmux.1#FORMATS" rel="nofollow">http://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.9/man1/tmux.1#FORMATS</a><p>[6] <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33246223-the-tao-of-tmux" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33246223-the-tao-of-tmux</a><p>[7] <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MG342KU" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MG342KU</a> Upvote:	48
Title: Some, outright demand it. This would be considered unacceptable just 2 years ago. They don't even pretend it's for 2FA now. Upvote:	41
Title: I made an in-browser game called Meatshields (<a href="https://meatshields.com" rel="nofollow">https://meatshields.com</a>) which allows players to play a turn-based strategy game against many different players simultaneously.<p>The game is heavily inspired by Advance Wars and I wanted to give people the multiplayer experience I loved from my childhood. I couldn't find an online version of the gameplay that I really loved (Advance Wars By Web (AWBW) is FANTASTIC, but there are actually a few gameplay mechanics in Advance Wars that I take issue with that I wanted to try to balance myself), so I decided to make my own.<p>It's still pretty rough around the edges in some aspects but the game is fully playable and has a tutorial and optional AI opponents if you don't want to fight real humans.<p>Right now it's just the ground units that have been slightly rebalanced, but a lot of the other great features of those games have been included. Upvote:	42
Title: I am always impressed by the quality and depth of the commentary on HN. After having read the articles posted, I gain a lot of value by having my perspective challenged many times over in the comments.<p>As HN is focused on tech only, do you guys know of similar communities (quality of commentary/discussion) around the web that focuses on other niches? Upvote:	100
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> Readers: please only email these addresses to discuss work opportunities. Upvote:	79
Title: Please lead with the location of the position and include the keywords REMOTE, INTERNS and/or VISA when the corresponding sort of candidate is welcome. When remote work is not an option, please include ONSITE. A one-sentence summary of your interview process would also be helpful.<p>Submitters: please only post if you personally are part of the hiring company—no recruiting firms or job boards.<p>Readers: please only email submitters if you personally are interested in the job—no recruiters or sales calls.<p>You can also use kristopolous' console script to search the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10313519. Upvote:	513
Title: I've been building a CRM/accounting system for my personal small company. It's still in an early stage and is lacking a few features. But it is finally usable.<p><a href="https://asciinema.org/a/0g9f8c00mrkm018p10r8p8km3" rel="nofollow">https://asciinema.org/a/0g9f8c00mrkm018p10r8p8km3</a><p>Please share your thoughts Upvote:	95
Title: I thought it would be interesting to see what are other people working on. Those projects of course might not be ready to be shown you can only describe them and the main problem though.<p>Project: I am building a neural network which should be able to generate few frames of the video given the preceding and following frames. Currently I am feeding the network with simple videos I have created where is only a single moving pixel. Since I do not have much experience with neural networks I thought this could be good start.<p>Problem: Up until now I have not realised how hard is to find simple video datasets. Upvote:	374
Title: Have you applied to S2017 batch to YC ? Tell us about your company and why should be selected to the rest of us. Upvote:	70
Title: We recently announced YC AI (https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-ai/). This is only the first step. Our long term goal is to democratize AI development. We want to make it easier for startups to compete with the big companies.<p>One thing large companies have is data. We're experimenting with ways to allow startups to get similar assets, and we're starting with medical data.<p>If you're working on AI and need medical data, please help us by filling out this form: https://goo.gl/Dr9FzB. Upvote:	223
Title: I work for a tech company. The fallacy is that I have so much information about day to day job in my head that I have lost all creative juice. I can code in python with some help but my skills are more towards management and backend data processing.<p>I want to build a side project. Especially, one that makes money. Even if it brings in $100, I feel that it will provide more satisfaction than my current job.<p>I don't have any frontend dev skills. Where should I start?<p>Should I outsource the website development part? I am 31. I am pretty sure learning FE development is not going to be useful anytime soon. With tech stacks, if you don't practise you tend to forget things eventually.<p>Can you provide some ideas on where to start? What are some simple things I can build by myself? Any ideas? Upvote:	602
Title: For a run-of-the-mill programmer, where are some places that I can look for crypto best practices? Eg. For storing passwords, Coda Hale's https://codahale.com/how-to-safely-store-a-password/ looks like it is still relevant, but how do I know that? I know that cperciva and tptacek are some go-to people on HN, but where can I point other non-HN readers? Upvote:	198
Title: For some time I've wondered what makes a place of employment more than just a sweat-to-cash conversion machine, something you can enjoy. As a developer, I know I have my preferences, and I know my current colleagues more-or-less share them. But do others? Are there any universal developer-values that make one place more attractive than another? Besides fat stacks of cash of course.<p>Couple years ago on a whim I started studying for MBA, and now that it's drawing to a close, the school is asking me to do some research. I've decided to tackle this question - what makes a good place to work, for a software developer?<p>So I'd like to ask you to take five minutes of your time and help me - would you please fill out https://survey.mikoss.lv/ ? The diversity of HN crowd should make for some interesting data. Thank you in advance! Upvote:	90
Title: Every time I go looking for a new development machine it's a huge research project.<p>What's your laptop/hardware of choice and why? Upvote:	54
Title: Hello, I do not own GPU hardware and am trying to understand if public amis on AWS are worth the fuss at professional level or at least good enough for the likes of course.fast.ai moocs. Newest here https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B06VSPXKDX for Ubuntu. Any experience? Thanks! Upvote:	68
Title: I'm currently re-reading Neuromancer by William Gibson. I Love how he describes the different cities in the book and I was wondering which city in our current time best fits the archetype. (Shanghai comes to mind but I'm curious to know your opinion) Upvote:	70
Title: Is it any different from the normal SE interview ? Also how is that role different from normal SE, if at all ? Upvote:	159
Title: Got a lot to learn, unlearn, relearn. No time to waste. Upvote:	43
Title: Hi, We've all heard the stories of whatsapp founders. I wanted to know if it's more of an exception than a rule. Assume you have a brilliant idea and you have the capability to execute it, would you risk your day job to start your company ? Are there any examples here , above 35, who've started a company successfully ?<p>By successful, I mean, you earn decent enough income to live just as good or better than what you did on a day job. Upvote:	53
Title: The other day I talked with a friend who is searching for a new job. His expenses got higher when he got a second child. He went to some interviews and he got an impression that he wouldn't handle new job, because he doesn't have free time like he used to for studying new frameworks and languages and work hours were from 9 to 6 (or 7). And he would love to spend some time with his family. Is your company family friendly? If it is, please help me build a list of companies who offer family friendly jobs.<p>https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WcwFlqppHmLZ1kIqinqPedYjQpsfcGjCXTDF_4tuQEE/edit?usp=sharing Upvote:	61
Title: How do you still use bookmarks? How do you organize them? Why are they useful to you? Upvote:	441
Title: Seeing Electron as an unpopular choice here for making Desktop applications (size-heavy, and slow), I am interested what all options exist to make cross platform apps. Upvote:	44
Title: I have worked at the same startup for 4 years now. During a meeting last week I realized: I don't care about our product or it's mission anymore. I would rather be watching TV with my girlfriend or literally doing anything else.<p>I think I lost my faith. It's not burnout, I work 40hr weeks. But lately I just don't give a shit about bugs or features we're building.<p>What do I do? How do you deal with this? Upvote:	49
Title: I searched the web but most of the articles are written several years before. Many cons have been fixed. Upvote:	186
Title: Other than HN. technical or not but you feel you need to visit it once a day at least. Upvote:	78
Title: Hi guys, I'm a pathological hoarder. Be it karma points to books, I have a serious issue where if I'm not allowed to hoard digitally, it makes me uneasy.<p>However, the bigger problem is trying to consume what I've hoarded. I know there are urgent topics that I discovered on HN that I've raised multiple flags for me to spend time reading (because of it's potential ROI) but failed to because<p><i>If it doesn't seem like work it seems like a waste of time and if it seems like work it seems like I should be resting</i>.<p>Meaning, there is a real anxiety around doing anything but work. When I try to get into a good book or an article, the panic starts to set in and I get an overwhelming urge to stop and do something that I perceive to be work related. Upvote:	50
Title: Let's include meetings/email as job related. Upvote:	200
Title: I subscribe to a variety of information feeds through email mailing list subscription. There's at least one mailing list that seems to get my attention on a regular basis, namely that produced by KurzweilAI: http://www.kurzweilai.net<p>The mailing list seems to touch on cutting edge news across AI research and business.<p>What do you subscribe to that you think others would benefit by if they were to as well? Upvote:	320
Title: I am looking for a laptop to use for Linux development. There have been a number of "Ask HN" topics about this, but this one is a little different - I am not looking for a brand-new, top-end machine, but rather something to use alongside my MacBook Pro (which runs macOS and Windows via Boot Camp). My budget for this machine is only around $300.<p>If I spend the money on another MacBook (Air or 13" Pro) I am probably looking at a machine of 2011/2012 vintage. Unfortunately I'm not sure the Air machines will be sufficiently powerful for my needs (low-voltage CPUs, only 4GB non-upgradable RAM). Also, all of the the pre-retina MacBooks seem to be let down by their screens: glossy, TN panels with (except for the 13" Air) at most 800 vertical pixels.<p>Another option is a Lenovo ThinkPad, again probably from around 2012 (with the traditional 7-row ThinkPad keyboard). The ThinkPad X220 seems good, but is let down by its poor quality "clickpad" and, again, poor screen resolution (but at least IPS is an option). The T420s has a more traditional ThinkPad trackpad and better screen resolution, but no IPS and inferior battery life.<p>So, all of these machines have downsides. For my needs, I think the T420s is probably the best compromise.<p>Would you recommend (for or against) a ThinkPad T420s for use with Linux?<p>Is there another machine available for around $300 that I should consider? Upvote:	84
Title: Dmitry Bogatov was arrested on the 6th of April: he became part of the big penal case initiated by Russia’s Investigation Committee on "incitations to mass riots" during the protest action that took place on the 2nd of April in Moscow. According to the Investigation Committee, Bogatov was publishing messages on the forum sysadmin.ru, inciting to violent actions, for example, "he" was suggesting to bring to the Red Square "bottles, fabric, gasoline, turpentine, foam plastic". According to the Investigation, the experts had analyzed the text of these messages and proved a "linguistic and psychological characteristics of incitations to terrorism". However, Dmitry claims that he has nothing to do with posting the incendiary messages.<p>Dmitry Bogatov, 25 years old, teaches maths in MFUA (Moscow Finance and Law University) was a free and open source software activist (https://sinsekvu.github.io/pages/about.html). Dmitry was administrating a Tor exit node (https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/2402CD5A0D848D1DCA61EB708CC1FBD4364AB8AE) from his house. In fact, the author of "incendiary messages" (called "Airat Bashirov") was using Tor, and, by lack of chance, he used the ip adress of Dmitry's exit node.<p>Dmitry's lawyer, Alexei Teptsov, presented videos from surveillance cameras, that proved that, during the moments when the "incendiary messages" were posted, Dmitry was away from his computer. He was coming back from a fitness center with his wife, Tatiana, a genetician, and then went to a supermarket, where cameras were also working. Moreover, "Airat Bashirov", the author of the provocative messages, continues to post on sysadmin.ru, while Dmitry is under arrest. The last post was seen on the forum on April 11.<p>Dmitry will stay in pre-trial detention center until June 8 at least. Now the Investigation is examining all his seized devices. Upvote:	305
Title: Apropos of the current discussion about dropping Google advertising [1], I'd appreciate HN's thoughts on how a very particular product was targeted at me yesterday: a semi-obscure muscial instrument (which I won't name, my paranoia is already piqued).<p>Yesterday morning at home I Googled the instrument, the name of which I didn't actually know but Google came to the rescue. I browsed Google Shopping [2] but didn't purchase one.<p>Later I went into work where Facebook displayed an ad for the instrument in its "sponsored" section and an inline "suggested post" for a manufacturer.<p>My home and work computers and networks are completely different. I typically use incognito mode and "do not track" in Firefox or Chrome. I sign out of all social media and Gmail. Yesterday I was working in a large building with tens of people all using wifi used by hundreds of people across several buildings.<p>I assume no outright nefarious activity, such as an illicit pipe of potential customer IDs between Fb and Google.<p>The best I can theorise is that I had an open Fb window at home, and one of the instrument manufacturers' websites had an embedded Facebook like button or similar tracker, and they are running targeted ads on Fb. But is this direct-to-an-individual targetting even possible on Fb? Perhaps the obscurity of the instrument meant that I was very likely to see an ad, and very likely to notice it.<p>I typically close Fb when I'm not using it, so this doesn't immediately feel like what happened. I'll be doubly-sure to close and log-out Fb now.<p>I can't think of other ways that my Google activity could get to Fb. Browser fingerprinting, cellphone location etc would allow Fb to understand my location, but I can't see how they'd match this against Google activity.<p>I'd be very interested to read how this is, or could be, achieved.<p>[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14094083<p>[2] https://www.google.com/shopping Upvote:	122
Title: More context:<p>- very small team (< 5 people)<p>- mostly used for online services (e.g., servers, SaaS, api ...)<p>- rarely travel<p>- in San Francisco Upvote:	136
Title: For example I'm looking at a developer / analyst job (entry level) that's rather niche. I fit many requirements, but the job posting asks for experience in super specific software (Rockwell Factory Talk Production Center to be specific). I'm not familiar with the software, but have no doubts that I can pick up anything quickly. Is it worth applying in positions like these? Upvote:	48
Title: Microsoft shipped out their HoloLens development kits within the past few weeks. If you happened to receive one: what has your experience with it been like? Information is relatively sparse online recently about the HoloLens, and I kind of expected more blogging to be done about user feedback and what kind of projects are being worked on, but for the most part there hasn't really been all that much posted.<p>I intend on doing a project with one in the next few months and I want to get other developers feedback on the device and kind of a general synopsis on the feelings regarding it, as the emulator can only give so much "immersion".<p>There also hasn't been much discussion about this device on HN (at least for a few months) and I'd like to know how developers feel about it: pros, cons, first impressions, etc. Upvote:	101
Title: I'm Daria, a co-founder and CEO of VoiceOps (<a href="https://voiceops.com/" rel="nofollow">https://voiceops.com/</a>). We built a product that analyzes sales calls and provides actionable tips to close more deals.<p>We transcribe, parse, then analyze calls for what behavior is most successful (e.g. how many probing questions to ask on a call, the value of describing benefits vs. features, when to time an upsell or close attempt, etc.). Once we understand what works, we help managers scale that out, improving performance across their entire team.<p>Currently, sales managers spend 10-20 hrs/week listening to the call recordings of their reps and then guessing at how to provide feedback. The process is slow, lacks consistency, isn’t based on data, and often fails to motivate or change behavior.<p>Every other part of the sales stack (email especially) is already data driven. With sales reps spending most of their time on the phone, it should be the most important activity to optimize.<p>The prototype was built and first clients closed while I was living in a van and Ethan was sleeping on a kitchen floor in the Mission. Between our three co-founders we’ve spent nearly a decade building sales and support tools for companies like LinkedIn, Gusto, Coinbase, and General Assembly. Even there we saw this lack of data become problematic and expensive.<p>Take a peek - we’d love to hear your feedback! Upvote:	54
Title: Would love to have your feedback on my startup named Sportal - it helps you find players in your locality for playing any sport you want.<p>Here's the link to the app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.getsportalapp.sportal&hl=en Upvote:	42
Title: I am full time developer so it is hard for me to keep learning everyday except weekend days. But, that does not mean I do not want to learn other things.<p>So, what are the topics that you suggest to learn in weekend ( Saturday and Sunday - Full day )? It would be also good if you suggest resources as well. Upvote:	64
Title: I never use Facebook on my phone so you can hopefully rule out contact list networks - not that I ever had their personal mobile on my list - and location tracking because I haven't attended my doctor's surgery in years. We have zero friends in common. Other than my doctor actively looking me up on Facebook - highly unlikely - how on earth is this possible? I'm willing to accept friends of friends suggestions but this is beyond spooky. Upvote:	76
Title: I'm building a SaaS product targeting the telephony sector. Finished my prototype (Spring Boot backend, basic jQuery/Bootstrap front end) and raised a little scratch so I'm planning on building a company website, careers page, etc. before I start hiring.<p>Whilst I know PHP well enough (to really dislike it) temptation is to avoid Wordpress for the company site and go for something else (Jekyll, Ghost etc). Problem is a lot of the company web pages being churned out by design studios are Wordpress and I want to outsource at least the company web pages.<p>Has anyone here tried eschewing the typical Wordpress company website and rolled their own or alternatively gone for a completely different CMS?<p>Any pros or cons you've encountered?<p>To keep things simple I'm trying to limit my language focus to just Java8/ECMAScript for now so keen to avoid throwing Ruby or Python based stacks into the mix. Upvote:	44
Title: I'm wondering if folks who have a SaaS can list a few things that they learned after running it for a while.<p>I'm trying to start one, and I realize that there are many things that I have to consider—like dealing with spammers, credit card fraud, common mistakes, etc.<p>I've read many, many articles, but I wonder if there are some important things that you only learn with experience that I should prepare for. Upvote:	49
Title: Has anyone received an invite/rejection email for the Summer 2017 batch yet? Upvote:	92
Title: First of all, sorry for the medium, but I think it is fair enough for YC community to take part in this conversation.<p>I've just packed the book to my upcoming 24 hours flights (2 connection stops) and looked at the list...<p>As we observed so many successful startups in the last 12 years or so, let alone YC companies, I wonder who are the founders you would have find inspiring to interview for the book.<p>Being at there, I wonder, is there a chance we will get a "second edition" in the foreseeable future?<p>And you guys and gals, HN readers, do you have your own list?<p><i>(The title was rephrased many times to fit into the 80 char. limit)</i> Upvote:	124
Title: Remember the scene from MIB where 'K' zooms in on his wife and watches her live. How close are we to that ?<p>After a quick search, I found a few videos which showed scenes of an area with some traffic activity but it wasn't that zoomed in. As far as images go, I haven't found any other image source providing a better definition image than what Google Maps provide.<p>The American government had used live satellite feed while carrying out the Bin Laden operation ( Source of Information: Documentary \| Correct me if wrong ).<p>Are there any images/videos publicly available which demonstrate the limits of cameras in space directed towards earth ?<p>If not publicly available, can you describe how a possible image/video might look like and what are the current limits for those cameras ? Upvote:	48
Title: For those of you who made the jump to entrepreneurship, what is the one thing you wish you knew before starting out ? Upvote:	847
Title: Carlos Icaza was my co-founder at Lanica (an Appcelerator backed company). He passed away this summer unexpectedly. I wasn’t able to find the right words to say at the time. But since we spent so much in code, I decided I should code something in his memory instead.<p>Carlos was also the co-founder of the Corona SDK, and was also a lead/manager for Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Flash before that. He also ran @codinginswift on Twitter with over 18,000 followers.<p>I finally finished my tribute and debuted it at the try! Swift conference in Tokyo last month at the end of my Swift on Android talk. That whole talk has just been publicly posted, but I wanted to make it more accessible so I’ve uploaded just the demo part to YouTube. (It also contains some fixes and improvements since the conference.)<p>Dance of the Fairies<p><a href="https://youtu.be/ciphph8R4sU" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/ciphph8R4sU</a><p>It’s also inspired by an old Sierra On-Line game series, Quest for Glory. I wrote more about both Carlos and the demo on my blog.<p><a href="http://playcontrol.net/ewing/jibberjabber/dance-of-the-fairies-quest.html" rel="nofollow">http://playcontrol.net/ewing/jibberjabber/dance-of-the-fairi...</a><p>Thank you for reading/watching Upvote:	261
Title: I'm a professional web developer of 7 years that, if taken at the superficial face value of how many years I've worked, is one that is expected to be mid-level or approaching senior-level.<p>The problem is, my career growth feels stunted.<p>All of this seems to be confirmed by interview feedback I've gathered recently from several companies. The gist of it is, I show knowledge in a couple of topics, but don't show a lot of depth in any of them. I've shown capability to perform my work as expected and told that I write clean code, but that I can't grasp the "big picture" ideas of software development better, or the minutiae of a given programming language.<p>So with this in mind, would it be possible to go back to a junior position?<p>I prefer to do so in a larger company, because I have never been actually mentored or have much guidance from a senior dev. In two places, I was the only programmer around.<p>The problem here is that at showing 7 years of experience, it sounds like a turn-off for many companies if I show that I'm only capable at a junior-level. Perhaps removing my oldest jobs might help. How would you approach this? Upvote:	51
Title: I find this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14146850 very insightful and stressing some important common points in comments.<p>The most precious advice as I see is to “talk to your customers”.<p>How do I practically turn this advice into action?<p>Say, I have:<p>- an office with a computer and internet<p>- a map of the town and its suburbs I located in<p>- search engine to my service<p>- some details about the domain I’d like to work for<p>- zero contacts<p>Now, how do I actually talk to my potential customers? I can knock at doors of every office I find online and with a broad smile say a pitch then attack them with my questions? I don’t think it will work as I would like it to. More likely they will think I am trying to sell some bs and thus be quite skeptical and cold to me.<p>Should I try to approach bosses or common workers of companies?<p>Should I phone them, ask for an appointment, explain my goals and if they let me in, do the talk?<p>What is the right approach to talk to my potential customers?<p>Can you please share your experience and maybe books about how to do it properly?<p>Thanks! Upvote:	291
Title: 1. Which industry do you work in?<p>2. What are the biggest problems stopping your industry from growing?<p>3. Can something be done about it? Upvote:	191
Title: A lot of sites have IP crawl restrictions, but add exceptions for Googlebot. Could Google or the crawled site legally do something when they find out? Upvote:	44
Title: It is surprising that lots of people(including me) learn about this book only now[1]. Have you read any other book like 'Calculus Made Easy'? Please mention in comments. Not only in maths. It could be in any subject or field. I think it will be helpful to many.<p>[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14161876 Upvote:	61
Title: Should I trademark prior to Y Combinator? In my research prior to applying all fingers point towards waiting until I get into YC to incorporate or create a legal entity. Is this the same thought on Trademarking. Should I wait to get into YC to trademark? Any thoughts would be appreciated. Upvote:	44

Title: Hey HN,I'm trying to figure out how a better way to stay on track with my long term (1 year) goals.Currently I have a list of measurable 1 year goals (eg: Explore and work out of at least 3 cities this year)I also write daily work/life todo lists in a moleskine notebook to keep myself on track during the day.Does anyone have any recommendations/tools for keeping these daily goals todo list goals in alignment with the big picture? Upvote:

379

Title: I would like to buy a cheap e-reader where I can replace the software with my own (or at least be able to write my own software that I can launch and stay in, with minimal UI chrome around it). Preferably about $50 or under. I would like to have a touch screen or to be able to use most of the buttons.What are some good options for this? Upvote:

161

Title: I'm a CS student looking to get into Quantative Finance, and would appreciate if anyone could point me in the right direction. Upvote:

104

Title: Tomorrow UC Berkeley is removing all of their lecture videos from Youtube. Thousands of hours of content will be lost to the public. (This has already been discussed at length on HN.)I'm in the process of archiving some of the most important Computer Science courses, mainly for my own benefit, but I intend to make them publically available. (This is a throwaway account b/c I don't want to run afoul of any legal issues.)What I have so far:- CS61 Series (61A, 61B, and 61C)- CS162 Operating Systems (Kubiatowicz)- CS164 Programming Languages & Compilers (Hillfinger)- CS186 Intro to Database Systems (Hellerstein) Upvote:

512

Title: Hi HN,Every person I've come across always has one book that sits at the top of their book list that they would recommend to everyone. For me, it's "How to win friends & influence people" by Dale Carnegie. What's your book? Upvote:

55

Title: I'm a software engineer at Uber. I've been there for under a year. I left my previous job because an Uber recruiter offered a large pay increase. I had been there for under a year as well.Is it worse to have the job hopping on my resume or a very unpopular company on there?Staying for a while wouldn't be hard on me. My team and the ones around me aren't toxic (yet). I'm strictly concerned with the impact on my career. Upvote:

122

Title: Wifi Dabba provides super cheap, super fast internet at tea-stalls and bakeries in Bangalore, India. We built Wifi Dabba because mobile data is still expensive and also because getting wifi at the local bakery is just downright cool. We focussed on chai wallahs and bakeries because they're everywhere and practically everyone in India gets chai at least once a day from these stalls. We have 3 plans, Rs.2 for 100mb, Rs.10 for 500mb & Rs.20 for 20GB (edit: whoops, that should say 1GB. Someday we'll hit that low of a rate!). We don't have any free trials or ads because we think the Rs.2 price point is something that everyone can afford. We've got 100 locations so far, if you're reading this from Bangalore, check out our coverage map on <a href="http://www.wifidabba.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.wifidabba.com</a> to try us out at a bakery near you. Our grand plan is to have Bangalore totally covered by the end of this year.I'm Karam and my co-founder is Shubhendu, Wifi Dabba is actually the result of 6 painful years of building 32 different apps and watching them fail before we found something that had product/market fit. I've lurked on HN for years now and its a mini-daydream come true to be part of YC. We're both happy to answer any questions about Wifi Dabba or even just to commiserate with you on just how hard building products is. Upvote:

188

Title: A thread like this was posted 2 years ago. Maybe those problems have been solved or new problems have appeared. So what problem currently exists in your industry that can be taken up by a startup? Upvote:

40

Title: After a brief career in publicity, I decided to make the switch into engineering. I enrolled in a bootcamp—knowing full well the laudations and condemnations of the bootcamp model—and graduated in November.This maybe isn't the place for a full postmortem; suffice it to say that I came out of the program confident in my own enthusiasm for programming, and less confident in how hiring companies may interpret the presence of a bootcamp on my resumé.In the months since, every day, I have: —Applied to two jobs here in NY, taking my time with cover letters, following up where appropriate, researching the companies, etc. These are overwhelmingly junior front-end or full stack positions. —Studied compsci and new technologies so I'm a stronger candidate —Practiced whiteboarding-style questions so that I'm prepared for interviews —Freelanced so that I can pay rent and continue surviving —In my spare time, worked on solo projectsI have gotten very little traction. I receive form rejections in response to almost every application. I've gotten far along in the process at a few places, but repeatedly hear some version of "You seem great...for a junior! Be in touch when you're mid-level." It feels like, as months go by and the hole on my resumé grows, my chances are only worsening.I get it. I'm an unknown quantity, and the bootcamp on my resumé isn't a strong guarantor of quality. Still, I feel like I'm scrabbling for purchase. I had entertained fantasies of someday moving into games/simulation space, and that feels further and further away.How do I get out of this hole? Do I drop the immense time suck of actively looking for work, live off my meager freelance work, and put my time into a project that makes employers take me a little more serious? Do I keep throwing good time after bad, keep my head down, keep applying to junior positions, and not ask any more questions? Do I need to go back to school? Upvote:

59

Title: Hi HN! We’re the founders of the Centre for Effective Altruism, a nonprofit from Oxford, UK in the YC W17 batch. We’re the creators of Effective Altruism (EA) Funds, (<a href="https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/" rel="nofollow">https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds/</a>) high-impact, individual giving portfolios, managed by expert researchers. It's like Vanguard for charity.We created EA Funds because we became frustrated with how difficult it was to find the best giving opportunities as an individual donor. Using EA Funds, you choose a problem area, and our fund managers find the best giving opportunities. Our initial funds are all managed by Program Officers at the Open Philanthropy Project, a $10B private foundation. In the future, we hope to expand the number of funds, building a competitive marketplace for giving, where the amount of funding a charity receives is directly correlated with the amount of good they do.We started out 7 years ago, when 23 of our friends pledged to give 10% of their income to the most effective charities they could find. Since then, 2700 people have joined us, donating $33M, including $17M last year. We’ve found that some of the most cost-effective charities can buy one year of perfect health (a DALY) for as little as $80, while others have no effect. A study in the US found that $10B was spent each year on social programs that had been proven to have no effect on outcomes, and a further $1B was spent on programs that were actively harmful. We built EA Funds to replicate the success of groups like the Gates Foundation and GiveWell. By pooling our resources and utilising the expertise of our research community, we can give individual donors the same impact per dollar as billion dollar foundations.We’d love to hear your feedback and answer questions about effective altruism, donating effectively or hear your stories about the charity sector!(Edit: originally said QALY instead of DALY, but that was a typo, as commenters pointed out.) Upvote:

178

Title: I'm currently working on an application as a sort of showcase of my skillset. SPA frontend in Vue.js with a REST API in Scala using Spring. Although, it is a struggle to put what little time I have left after work into this. I'd also like to go on to turn it into a couple short blog posts where I can comment on what I've done and show I know what I'm talking about. It's also worth noting that I crash and burn at whiteboard problem solving and would far prefer takehome exercises so this is another thing to make my CV stand out.Those of you who were in a position of no work experience and a graduate degree (still working on mine) - just how significant of a role did your personal projects play in getting you hired somewhere you actually wanted to work? What kind of company was it? Was it ultimately worth pushing yourself towards doing it? Upvote:

43

Title: Users cannot visit google.com or google.nl in The Netherlands on Mac OSX & Chrome in the latest update, our whole company is experiencing this issue since this morning.For those experiencing this issue, disable the following setting in chrome://flags/ :Experimental QUIC protocol Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS, Android Enable experimental QUIC protocol support. #enable-quic Upvote:

155

Title: YC applications for the Summer 2017 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. I'll start answering questions at 10am. Upvote:

243

Title: I've been using Medium for almost 2-3 years now to host my personal site and blog (https://tigran.nyc). I've started to feel I want something more customizable. Any suggestions will be appreciated. Upvote:

61

Title: Some claim Silicon Valley is full of psychopathic CEOs who are 'charming and manipulative' but have no empathy: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4317484/Silicon-Valley-psychopathic-CEOs-experts-claim.htmlHave you ever met a CEO like this? If so, did they come from marketing or sales? Upvote:

50

Title: Which are the best books on AI, for somoone who doesnt have much knowledge on the topic. Mostly practical, and not academic. Upvote:

375

Title: Why did you do so? What do you do for a living now? Do you regret it? And why do you still read HN? Upvote:

191

Title: Hey guys - I've been an Android developer myself for over 4 year now. One of the biggest pain points has always been the monetisation part - which I've always felt is out of my control.I've been focused mostly on free apps with ads - mostly Admob - but the little control over what ads are displayed, their format, etc always seemed to bother me. That's why I've started working on an ad network for mobile apps - where the advertisers buys directly from the app publisher the ad spot - and the publisher has full control over which ad is displayed and when.I wanted to ask you what monetisation strategies to you have for your apps and if you've ever felt the same way when you added ads in your app. Upvote:

242

Title: I recently moved cross country to work on what was supposed to be a fairly nice, new stack. I love my new city but the job is killing me.Its legacy code dating back more than 20 years. I'm afraid that my skills will rot if I stay too long. The code quality is also horrible and its making me hate coding.The company talks about how we're just around the corner transitioning to newer stuff. After talking to some veterans, apparently it's been "right around the corner" for years.I was hired for my React and Typescript skills/interest and it's been months with no signs of being able to use them. I'm not good with their current stack but I have no interest in learning it because its so obsolete. I'm beginning to think that they mislead new employees because otherwise they would ask for a lot more money or walk away.I'm torn about my best course of action. I'm not good at my job because I don't know their tech. I'm not good with their tech because I hate it and I'm bitter that I was lied to. I can't mentally force myself to learn this ancient shit. On the other hand, they're paying me, so I owe them something right?The best solution for me is definitely to just get a job somewhere else, but I've only been at my current job for a few months. Should I just stick it out and hope I don't get fired for underperforming? Upvote:

62

Title: Hey guys - for some time our startup did organic link building and technical seo. We ranked for a year approximately as our closest competitor. Since the end of 2016 he is increasing the number of incoming links massively by adding bridge sites. These have keyword heavy domains and keyword heavy content with all links pointing to their site.Contrary to seo consultants opinions we've ask ("don't worry") this (for all I know) works for them. They have now left us quite behind in rankings. As we are still not a known b2b marketplace brand and depend on seo this is hurting.Ahrefs/Semrush does not report other large changes in their technical seo or link structure beside this massive buildup of bridge sites.What would you do? We don't want to engage in the same tactics, should we? Upvote:

255

Title: I'm no finance person but I have an idea what stocks & shares are. Upvote:

40

Title: In a nutshell, I'm wondering if the market has shifted in the past 10-15 months or so, and how we can measure it.I get the sense that, socially, we're not supposed to talk about these things. To acknowledge that I've had trouble finding work makes me seem weak or less valuable. To discuss money at all is a social taboo.I don't know about y'all, but for my part, I had absolutely no trouble finding work - usually without even really trying - from mid-2011 to mid-2016.I have no doubt that I'm valuable in the right contexts, and that hasn't changed in the timeframe I'm talking about. I'm neither "junior grade" nor out of date. I feel totally in my prime.Nor have the technologies on which I'm most often contracted to work (python, usually web stuff, usually django) lost enough market share to explain it.My rate ($6k / week) is not, in my estimation, too high for the value I provide.So my question: is anyone else having a similar experience? Is there a way that we can gauge changes in the market?And then also: whether or not my experience is unique, what's the best thing to do when you have long stretches without solid work? Learn a new skill?I've been working a lot lately on Raspberry Pi, off-grid tech, power monitoring, etc. I live on a school bus (http://thisisthebus.com/) and I've developed a lot of interesting tech for that purpose. But then once you start to feel comfortable with new skills, how do you develop a new client base? Upvote:

41

Title: Hi HN! We're Luke and Heather, founders of boxouse: <a href="https://boxouse.com" rel="nofollow">https://boxouse.com</a>. We build portable, beautiful(ish), affordable smart homes out of used shipping containers in our West Oakland factory. This began out of our frustration with paying high rent for crappy apartments: we started thinking about our monthly rent in terms of how many shipping containers we could buy (2 per month!). We're particularly interested in using containers as a tool to increase density and affordability; among other things, we're going to deploy containers to people's yards for free, sharing the rent revenue with them. We do all the construction ourselves; more than happy to dig into technical details! Upvote:

142

Title: If you have any side projects that you've built and that you no longer have time for, list them here and let's see if others want to buy it from you. Upvote:

98

Title: Hey HN! I’m Kalle, one of the founders at Sudden Coffee (<a href="https://www.suddencoffee.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.suddencoffee.com</a>). We make instant coffee and sell it through our website as a subscription.I started working on this almost two years ago after my cafe business failed. I was frustrated by how unscalable and inconsistent selling good coffee is.In 2015 I placed 9th in the World Barista Champs in Seattle. On the flight back to Helsinki I was desperate for caffeine and ordered a coffee which was horrendous. I started wondering what would be a better way than Aeropress + hand grinder combo to have great coffee on the go.Instant coffee is liquid coffee that’s been dehydrated. It’s normally made with the worst beans that are roasted really dark and extracted up to 6 times at temperatures up to 180C and 15 bar pressure. As a result, they can reach 60% extraction yield. Next, the liquid is boiled down and finally dehydrated by spray drying it with hot air. This process results in the gnarly bitter, woody, rubbery instant we all know.We start with good beans: currently from a co-op called Biftu Gudina in Ethiopia, roasted by 49th Parallel in Vancouver, BC. In the beginning we brewed the coffee by hand as espresso — I would literally spend 12 hours per day pulling shots. At one point we had a full-time person doing this.Eventually, we developed our own fully-closed centrifugal brewing system that doesn’t allow for any aroma to escape. We extract the coffee at low temperatures (85-90C) to 21-23% extraction yield. As a result, we only get the good stuff — sweetness, fruitiness, acidity — and none of the bad stuff.Also, we’ve developed our own freeze-drying technique that’s kind of equivalent to a server farm. Instead of having one enormous machine we have a bunch of small freeze dryers. This allows for greater control and shorter iteration cycle.This might be too long already so I'll stop here. Looking forward to discussing the coffee business and great coffee in the thread! Upvote:

301

Title: Hi HN! I'm Ben, the solo founder of Calibre Analytics: <a href="https://calibreapp.com" rel="nofollow">https://calibreapp.com</a>. Calibre monitors websites and applications in a clean-room testing environment from all over the world. Up until January Calibre has been an "inbetween other things" / evenings / holidays kind of project. (Only, oops—I did that for four years.). Last year I knuckled down to get into the position where I could work on it full time.I've spent the last 8 weeks working on "Test profiles" (The launch post is here: <a href="https://medium.com/get-calibre/announcing-test-profiles-and-budgets-2-0-84667a4e4749" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/get-calibre/announcing-test-profiles-and-...</a>) — It allows you to emulate hardware devices (cpu speed, user-agents and screen dimensions), as well as limit the bandwidth (latency, download and upload speeds), and set cookies (you could use this to log into your app, test a staff-shipped feature, or maybe turn off advertising and see the performance impact.) I think I've finally got the basis of a really powerful tool, and I'm keen to share it with… everyone! I do everything myself, so if you've any questions, I'm here to answer them! Upvote:

57

Title: I have noticed a steady rise in embedded systems using BSD based operating systems and i was just wondering why its being chosen over linux for example. Both Sony and Nintendo are using BSD based guts in their consoles and im also seeing it used fairly regularly in EPOS systems and a fair few other things. Upvote:

60

Title: Hi HN,I’m Pauline, the co-founder of Hivy (<a href="https://hivyapp.com" rel="nofollow">https://hivyapp.com</a>). We're part of the YC Winter 2017 batch.Hivy is an office management platform that makes it easy for employees to tell their office managers what they need to be comfortable at the office.I started Hivy after working in big companies where it was always complicated to get what I needed to work efficiently. I once spent 6 months with the slowest computer, and gave up trying to change because there was no clear way for me to request a repair / new one.We've developed a Slack app, an iPad app and a web app to make the request process for employees easy and fast.You can use Hivy to make orders (snacks, supplies, perks, business travel) and suggestions to improve your life at the office. Office management teams review these orders, manage them and collaborate on Hivy to keep employees happy and productive.We're really excited about what we are building and would love you and your Office Manager to try it out. If your team is on Slack, I’m sure you’ll love our Slack integration :)You can try Hivy for free here: <a href="https://app.hivyapp.com/signup" rel="nofollow">https://app.hivyapp.com/signup</a>. Just don’t forget to invite your Office Manager!Happy to answer questions about Hivy, our users, and our plans for the future.Edit: replaced 'desktop' with 'web' above. Upvote:

56

Title: YC applications for the Summer 2017 batch are due tonight. Here's the link to apply - http://www.ycombinator.com/apply/ Upvote:

44

Title: Hey AWS team,If you are reading this, please please make CTRL-click to open a new page. It's really frustrating to try to open a link in a new page just to see that the page navigated, and then if you click the back button, you end up nowhere near where you were before.I really love the new UI, it's really good! and with this feature we could be more productive and use AWS even more!! Upvote:

144

Title: For example, I think I have a good product, but I want to hire some help to get it launched, acquire initial customers, and hopefully build momentum. This would include social media, promos, press, etc. Upvote:

82

Title: I've recently been involved with a few line-of-business projects recently that have been fairly successful. They all use well-honed agile principles, and they met the requirements that their Product Owners had of them, and by all measures were successful.However, simultaneously, I'm seeing a great deal of technical complexity being introduced to systems: microservices and SPAs (with all the attendant web stack complexity) being the most common. A lot of it seems to be driven by a need for developers to keep their CVs shiny, or because smart developers want cool things to play with, or because of "Google envy". There seems to be very little engineering justification for these approaches in most cases, and technically simpler approaches would work better.I've been thinking about Fred Brooke's Mythical Man Month, in which he described 2 forms of complexity: Accidental Complexity as being technical in nature, while Essential complexity relating to the problem domain, and being more intractable.Although Essential complexity remains stubborn in business systems, I believe we are slowly getting to the point where it is being tamed through more responsive (agile) dev practices, leading to happier customers who get software that does what they expect. On the other hand, I feel that accidental complexity is exploding, and for the first time in my career, it is growing at a faster rate than essential complexity, and masking a lot of the gains we are getting from improved processes. Is this a fair observation, or am I just jaded? Upvote:

147

Title: Hello, I've started to work with scala and I think it's a beautiful language. that said, I'd like to be better at it. What are some good books to get thst teach about the nitty gritty details of the language and it's use in production? Upvote:

143

Title: I used to blog for several years, several years ago, and was able to build up a "large" following, for a small-timer at least (over 10K visitors/mo). In recent years, I've made two slightly niche-subject blogs but find it nearly impossible to get a following, even though I'm dealing in the same general subject matter, quality of posts, research, and media integration.As of a few years ago it seems like to have a successful blog one must be cross-posting to 6-7 social networks at the same time (ie, for sharing to be frictionless). When I post my newer blog posts in relevant places online, people actually say they like the content, yet visitor numbers don't reflect such sentiment in a sustained manner. I have hundreds of posts, but retention is very low (1 visitor = 1 view, then they leave).Is the only option these days to be cross-posting? It seems share buttons on each blog post aren't frictionless enough. Either I'm a bit delusional about the quality/interest level or blogging has become a lot harder in terms of audience capture. Upvote:

276

Title: Rules: 1. Only one book. 2. Can't be a technical book e.g. 'Programming C' doesn't count. Upvote:

375

Title: I've noticed many of my friends have become less active on Facebook over the past year, and my newsfeed is becoming less personal (random news articles and ads being more than half of what I see). I've also noticed myself logging into Facebook less often and when I do, it's usually for specific groups. Quite frankly, Facebook is boring and very different than when I first joined. I've checked with some other people and they all share a similar experience.I wonder if this is a universal thing -- who else feels the same? Upvote:

60

Title: What do you personally look for in an offer and company to help you decide whether or not to take a job that you've been offered? Upvote:

84

Title: On one hand I fully understand there are differences in language and specific features available depending on framework out there.On the other hand, if a framework "correctly" implements the underlying statistical theory/principals of deep learning, shouldn't I get the same results regardless of whichever framework I use?If not, how would I know which framework produces "more correct" interpretations of the underlying data? Upvote:

84

Title: Sure enough, not all side projects are meant to make money. But among those that do, what is your business model? Upvote:

149

Title: I think it would be interesting to talk about our reading habits, so here there are some questions related with this topic: - How many articles do you read each day? - They're usually related to your job or to some side projects? - Do you usually read about a variety of topics or it's focused in 2 or 3 topics only? - Do you usually read during some time of the day or it's usually random? Upvote:

94

Title: I've been writing software for quite some time, and one piece of advice I hear a lot for improving is "read lots of code, write lots of code, repeat".I get writing lots of code-- but reading lots of code? I'm not so sure.What are your thoughts? Upvote:

57

Title: I happened to watch the video on Productivity by Robert C Martin (author of Clean Code). He recommends following Pomodoro technique everyday to estimate our avareage number of tomatoes/day on the long run and also achieve the benefits of high productivity. Has anyone followed this? If yes, what are your estimates and have you reaped the benefits? Upvote:

44

Title: I am looking for a simple solution for recurring billing. My requirements are:- Per user per month. New users can be added or removed any time. Support for initial 14 day trial.- Per user billing for annual subscription. New users can be added during the year.I am looking for something that supports True Up accounting model. I have looked into Braintree and Stripe api. None of them seem to support anything beyond simple recurring billing.What have you used for this type of common billing patterns in SAAS apps? Upvote:

65

Title: Our company was accepted by YC's Startup School. What to expect from the program? Upvote:

49

Title: Howdy HackerNews!Dustin Kirkland here, Product Manager for Ubuntu as an OS platform (long time listener, first time caller).I'm interested in HackerNews feedback and feature requests for the Ubuntu 17.10 development cycle, which opens up at the end of April, and culminates in the 17.10 release in October 2017. This is the first time we've ever posed this question to the garrulous HN crowd, so I'm excited about it, and I'm sure this will be interesting!Please include in your replies the following bullets:- FLAVOR: [Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Core]- HEADLINE: 1-line description of the request- DESCRIPTION: A lengthier description of the feature. Bonus points for constructive criticism ;-)- ROLE/AFFILIATION: (Optional, your job role and affiliation)We're super interested in your feedback! Everything is fair game -- Kernel, Security, Desktop apps, Unity/Mir/Wayland/Gnome, Snap packages, Kubernetes, Docker, OpenStack, Juju, MAAS, Landscape, default installed packages (add or remove), cloud images, and many more I'm sure I've forgotten...17.10 will be our 3rd and final "developer" release, before we open the 18.04 LTS (long term support, enterprise release) after October 2017 (and release in April 2018), so this is our last chance to pull in any big, substantive changes.Thanks, HN!:-Dustinhttps://twitter.com/dustinkirkland Upvote:

1374

Title: Its that time of year again. When everyone starts releasing their fake product announcements a day (or two) early to try and fool us.Instead of cluttering up the front page, let's just post them in here instead. One thread where each top-level comment is just a title and a link. Upvote:

69

Title: Tress (<a href="https://www.tressapp.co" rel="nofollow">https://www.tressapp.co</a>) is an online community for black women to discover and share hairstyle inspiration, information and tips. Women upload photos of their hairstyles and share information about their style. Users can discuss how to replicate the look, which products were used and where to get similar hairstyles.We are 3 software engineers who have built health social networks, mobile apps for farmers in Africa, and worked on marketing consumer brands like Nike. We started Tress because this is a challenge that personally affects us and because it's a big market that is still relatively untapped by technology.Hair is a big deal for black women. We are constantly changing our hairstyles and spend 9 times more on our hair than any other demographic. We don't just get a regular cut or color our hair. We get drastic! We go from braids to weaves to cornrows and then to our own hair and then back again. Size, length, style, color, volume of hair, weaves and extensions all differ each time we change our hairstyle. And we do that often because of the nature of our hair. To give you an idea, these photos are all of the same woman - <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/52ew0d8hsxwx0k4/JodianHairstyles.png?dl=0" rel="nofollow">https://www.dropbox.com/s/52ew0d8hsxwx0k4/JodianHairstyles.p...</a> - It's an image from our YC demo day slides.The process of figuring all this out to actually getting a style done is long and broken. Many women spend a ton of time searching for their next hairstyle, then more time figuring out how to replicate the style via tutorial articles/videos or search for a stylist and so on. Tress aims to be the dedicated platform to fix all of this and connect a community of women who often socialize around their unique hair needs.One thing that excites us as software engineers is exploring how to use computer vision to tell if a user has 4a, 4b or 4c natural hair curl pattern or if a hairstyle is a Senegalese twists or Havana mambo twists. We are equally excited to be gathering hair products data and usage patterns around our hairstyles in such an informal sector that technology has barely gotten started in yet. We dream of things like an API that has all the data about the hair products black women have used in the past 5 years.We're looking forward to answering your questions about Tress and discussing startups, software, and of course hair! Upvote:

171

Title: I realize calendars are not a simple tool to build well, but for such a basic standby of time management, I strive for a better, developer friendly, open source calendar system. Like what Atom did for text editors, to bring a powerful, well built basic toolset ready for modular extensibility and can run anywhere Node can.(I use emacs, but you get my drift).I would love to work on a project like this, if anyone is hiring or already pushing code to an open source repo I haven't found.I have a 98% coverage of my time for the past two years and it's all in Google Calendar. I suspect there are many out there with dense calendars that would love to hack around in a friendlier environment.Please advise.Peace love and prosperity to the world. Upvote:

219

Title: I'm trying to find out what can go wrong while hiring a developer. What might cause that? Lack of technical skills? Or attitude problems? Upvote:

84

Title: Hi,Last year I began a book for learning tmux called The Tao of tmux. It is based off a free resource originally part of the documentation [1] of tmuxp, a tmux session manager [2].I made it available for free online at <a href="https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-tmux/read" rel="nofollow">https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-tmux/read</a>.Since February of this year, I have incorporated suggestions and feedback from readers on quality and completeness of the book. For one, I have passed the book through a professional editor, as well as rounded out chapters with summaries and even added 3 new sections, including:- Sending keys to tmux, aka `send-keys`- Copying pane contents to the paste buffer programmatically, aka `capture-pane`- Building and using tmux-mem-cpu-load [3]Countless areas of the book have been rewritten for clarity. The process of editing alone fielded over 650 tweaks. New graphics have been added. The configuration chapter has been overhauled, and various new examples of usage for targets (`-t`) [4] and formats (`-F`) [5] have been added.The book is available for purchase on Leanpub, in DRM-free epub, mobi and pdf format at <a href="https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-tmux" rel="nofollow">https://leanpub.com/the-tao-of-tmux</a>.In addition, the book is available on Amazon Kindle at <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MG342KU" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MG342KU</a>.The book will always be available for free on the web.P.S. If you found this book helpful, please review on Goodreads [6] and Amazon [7].[1] <a href="https://tmuxp.git-pull.com/en/latest/about_tmux.html" rel="nofollow">https://tmuxp.git-pull.com/en/latest/about_tmux.html</a>[2] <a href="https://tmuxp.git-pull.com" rel="nofollow">https://tmuxp.git-pull.com</a>[3] <a href="https://github.com/thewtex/tmux-mem-cpu-load" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/thewtex/tmux-mem-cpu-load</a>[4] <a href="http://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.9/man1/tmux.1#COMMANDS" rel="nofollow">http://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.9/man1/tmux.1#COMMANDS</a>[5] <a href="http://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.9/man1/tmux.1#FORMATS" rel="nofollow">http://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.9/man1/tmux.1#FORMATS</a>[6] <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33246223-the-tao-of-tmux" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33246223-the-tao-of-tmux</a>[7] <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MG342KU" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MG342KU</a> Upvote:

48

Title: Some, outright demand it. This would be considered unacceptable just 2 years ago. They don't even pretend it's for 2FA now. Upvote:

41

Title: I made an in-browser game called Meatshields (<a href="https://meatshields.com" rel="nofollow">https://meatshields.com</a>) which allows players to play a turn-based strategy game against many different players simultaneously.The game is heavily inspired by Advance Wars and I wanted to give people the multiplayer experience I loved from my childhood. I couldn't find an online version of the gameplay that I really loved (Advance Wars By Web (AWBW) is FANTASTIC, but there are actually a few gameplay mechanics in Advance Wars that I take issue with that I wanted to try to balance myself), so I decided to make my own.It's still pretty rough around the edges in some aspects but the game is fully playable and has a tutorial and optional AI opponents if you don't want to fight real humans.Right now it's just the ground units that have been slightly rebalanced, but a lot of the other great features of those games have been included. Upvote:

42

Title: I am always impressed by the quality and depth of the commentary on HN. After having read the articles posted, I gain a lot of value by having my perspective challenged many times over in the comments.As HN is focused on tech only, do you guys know of similar communities (quality of commentary/discussion) around the web that focuses on other niches? Upvote:

100

Title: Share your information if you are looking for work. Please use this format:<pre><code> Location: Remote: Willing to relocate: Technologies: Résumé/CV: Email: </code></pre> Readers: please only email these addresses to discuss work opportunities. Upvote:

79

Title: Please lead with the location of the position and include the keywords REMOTE, INTERNS and/or VISA when the corresponding sort of candidate is welcome. When remote work is not an option, please include ONSITE. A one-sentence summary of your interview process would also be helpful.Submitters: please only post if you personally are part of the hiring company—no recruiting firms or job boards.Readers: please only email submitters if you personally are interested in the job—no recruiters or sales calls.You can also use kristopolous' console script to search the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10313519. Upvote:

513

Title: I've been building a CRM/accounting system for my personal small company. It's still in an early stage and is lacking a few features. But it is finally usable.<a href="https://asciinema.org/a/0g9f8c00mrkm018p10r8p8km3" rel="nofollow">https://asciinema.org/a/0g9f8c00mrkm018p10r8p8km3</a>Please share your thoughts Upvote:

95

Title: I thought it would be interesting to see what are other people working on. Those projects of course might not be ready to be shown you can only describe them and the main problem though.Project: I am building a neural network which should be able to generate few frames of the video given the preceding and following frames. Currently I am feeding the network with simple videos I have created where is only a single moving pixel. Since I do not have much experience with neural networks I thought this could be good start.Problem: Up until now I have not realised how hard is to find simple video datasets. Upvote:

374

Title: Have you applied to S2017 batch to YC ? Tell us about your company and why should be selected to the rest of us. Upvote:

70

Title: We recently announced YC AI (https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-ai/). This is only the first step. Our long term goal is to democratize AI development. We want to make it easier for startups to compete with the big companies.One thing large companies have is data. We're experimenting with ways to allow startups to get similar assets, and we're starting with medical data.If you're working on AI and need medical data, please help us by filling out this form: https://goo.gl/Dr9FzB. Upvote:

223

Title: I work for a tech company. The fallacy is that I have so much information about day to day job in my head that I have lost all creative juice. I can code in python with some help but my skills are more towards management and backend data processing.I want to build a side project. Especially, one that makes money. Even if it brings in $100, I feel that it will provide more satisfaction than my current job.I don't have any frontend dev skills. Where should I start?Should I outsource the website development part? I am 31. I am pretty sure learning FE development is not going to be useful anytime soon. With tech stacks, if you don't practise you tend to forget things eventually.Can you provide some ideas on where to start? What are some simple things I can build by myself? Any ideas? Upvote:

602

Title: For a run-of-the-mill programmer, where are some places that I can look for crypto best practices? Eg. For storing passwords, Coda Hale's https://codahale.com/how-to-safely-store-a-password/ looks like it is still relevant, but how do I know that? I know that cperciva and tptacek are some go-to people on HN, but where can I point other non-HN readers? Upvote:

198

Title: For some time I've wondered what makes a place of employment more than just a sweat-to-cash conversion machine, something you can enjoy. As a developer, I know I have my preferences, and I know my current colleagues more-or-less share them. But do others? Are there any universal developer-values that make one place more attractive than another? Besides fat stacks of cash of course.Couple years ago on a whim I started studying for MBA, and now that it's drawing to a close, the school is asking me to do some research. I've decided to tackle this question - what makes a good place to work, for a software developer?So I'd like to ask you to take five minutes of your time and help me - would you please fill out https://survey.mikoss.lv/ ? The diversity of HN crowd should make for some interesting data. Thank you in advance! Upvote:

90

Title: Every time I go looking for a new development machine it's a huge research project.What's your laptop/hardware of choice and why? Upvote:

54

Title: Hello, I do not own GPU hardware and am trying to understand if public amis on AWS are worth the fuss at professional level or at least good enough for the likes of course.fast.ai moocs. Newest here https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B06VSPXKDX for Ubuntu. Any experience? Thanks! Upvote:

68

Title: I'm currently re-reading Neuromancer by William Gibson. I Love how he describes the different cities in the book and I was wondering which city in our current time best fits the archetype. (Shanghai comes to mind but I'm curious to know your opinion) Upvote:

70

Title: Is it any different from the normal SE interview ? Also how is that role different from normal SE, if at all ? Upvote:

159

Title: Got a lot to learn, unlearn, relearn. No time to waste. Upvote:

43

Title: Hi, We've all heard the stories of whatsapp founders. I wanted to know if it's more of an exception than a rule. Assume you have a brilliant idea and you have the capability to execute it, would you risk your day job to start your company ? Are there any examples here , above 35, who've started a company successfully ?By successful, I mean, you earn decent enough income to live just as good or better than what you did on a day job. Upvote:

53

Title: The other day I talked with a friend who is searching for a new job. His expenses got higher when he got a second child. He went to some interviews and he got an impression that he wouldn't handle new job, because he doesn't have free time like he used to for studying new frameworks and languages and work hours were from 9 to 6 (or 7). And he would love to spend some time with his family. Is your company family friendly? If it is, please help me build a list of companies who offer family friendly jobs.https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WcwFlqppHmLZ1kIqinqPedYjQpsfcGjCXTDF_4tuQEE/edit?usp=sharing Upvote:

61

Title: How do you still use bookmarks? How do you organize them? Why are they useful to you? Upvote:

441

Title: Seeing Electron as an unpopular choice here for making Desktop applications (size-heavy, and slow), I am interested what all options exist to make cross platform apps. Upvote:

44

Title: I have worked at the same startup for 4 years now. During a meeting last week I realized: I don't care about our product or it's mission anymore. I would rather be watching TV with my girlfriend or literally doing anything else.I think I lost my faith. It's not burnout, I work 40hr weeks. But lately I just don't give a shit about bugs or features we're building.What do I do? How do you deal with this? Upvote:

49

Title: I searched the web but most of the articles are written several years before. Many cons have been fixed. Upvote:

186

Title: Other than HN. technical or not but you feel you need to visit it once a day at least. Upvote:

78

Title: Hi guys, I'm a pathological hoarder. Be it karma points to books, I have a serious issue where if I'm not allowed to hoard digitally, it makes me uneasy.However, the bigger problem is trying to consume what I've hoarded. I know there are urgent topics that I discovered on HN that I've raised multiple flags for me to spend time reading (because of it's potential ROI) but failed to becauseIf it doesn't seem like work it seems like a waste of time and if it seems like work it seems like I should be resting.Meaning, there is a real anxiety around doing anything but work. When I try to get into a good book or an article, the panic starts to set in and I get an overwhelming urge to stop and do something that I perceive to be work related. Upvote:

50

Title: Let's include meetings/email as job related. Upvote:

200

Title: I subscribe to a variety of information feeds through email mailing list subscription. There's at least one mailing list that seems to get my attention on a regular basis, namely that produced by KurzweilAI: http://www.kurzweilai.netThe mailing list seems to touch on cutting edge news across AI research and business.What do you subscribe to that you think others would benefit by if they were to as well? Upvote:

320

Title: I am looking for a laptop to use for Linux development. There have been a number of "Ask HN" topics about this, but this one is a little different - I am not looking for a brand-new, top-end machine, but rather something to use alongside my MacBook Pro (which runs macOS and Windows via Boot Camp). My budget for this machine is only around $300.If I spend the money on another MacBook (Air or 13" Pro) I am probably looking at a machine of 2011/2012 vintage. Unfortunately I'm not sure the Air machines will be sufficiently powerful for my needs (low-voltage CPUs, only 4GB non-upgradable RAM). Also, all of the the pre-retina MacBooks seem to be let down by their screens: glossy, TN panels with (except for the 13" Air) at most 800 vertical pixels.Another option is a Lenovo ThinkPad, again probably from around 2012 (with the traditional 7-row ThinkPad keyboard). The ThinkPad X220 seems good, but is let down by its poor quality "clickpad" and, again, poor screen resolution (but at least IPS is an option). The T420s has a more traditional ThinkPad trackpad and better screen resolution, but no IPS and inferior battery life.So, all of these machines have downsides. For my needs, I think the T420s is probably the best compromise.Would you recommend (for or against) a ThinkPad T420s for use with Linux?Is there another machine available for around $300 that I should consider? Upvote:

84

Title: Dmitry Bogatov was arrested on the 6th of April: he became part of the big penal case initiated by Russia’s Investigation Committee on "incitations to mass riots" during the protest action that took place on the 2nd of April in Moscow. According to the Investigation Committee, Bogatov was publishing messages on the forum sysadmin.ru, inciting to violent actions, for example, "he" was suggesting to bring to the Red Square "bottles, fabric, gasoline, turpentine, foam plastic". According to the Investigation, the experts had analyzed the text of these messages and proved a "linguistic and psychological characteristics of incitations to terrorism". However, Dmitry claims that he has nothing to do with posting the incendiary messages.Dmitry Bogatov, 25 years old, teaches maths in MFUA (Moscow Finance and Law University) was a free and open source software activist (https://sinsekvu.github.io/pages/about.html). Dmitry was administrating a Tor exit node (https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/2402CD5A0D848D1DCA61EB708CC1FBD4364AB8AE) from his house. In fact, the author of "incendiary messages" (called "Airat Bashirov") was using Tor, and, by lack of chance, he used the ip adress of Dmitry's exit node.Dmitry's lawyer, Alexei Teptsov, presented videos from surveillance cameras, that proved that, during the moments when the "incendiary messages" were posted, Dmitry was away from his computer. He was coming back from a fitness center with his wife, Tatiana, a genetician, and then went to a supermarket, where cameras were also working. Moreover, "Airat Bashirov", the author of the provocative messages, continues to post on sysadmin.ru, while Dmitry is under arrest. The last post was seen on the forum on April 11.Dmitry will stay in pre-trial detention center until June 8 at least. Now the Investigation is examining all his seized devices. Upvote:

305

Title: Apropos of the current discussion about dropping Google advertising [1], I'd appreciate HN's thoughts on how a very particular product was targeted at me yesterday: a semi-obscure muscial instrument (which I won't name, my paranoia is already piqued).Yesterday morning at home I Googled the instrument, the name of which I didn't actually know but Google came to the rescue. I browsed Google Shopping [2] but didn't purchase one.Later I went into work where Facebook displayed an ad for the instrument in its "sponsored" section and an inline "suggested post" for a manufacturer.My home and work computers and networks are completely different. I typically use incognito mode and "do not track" in Firefox or Chrome. I sign out of all social media and Gmail. Yesterday I was working in a large building with tens of people all using wifi used by hundreds of people across several buildings.I assume no outright nefarious activity, such as an illicit pipe of potential customer IDs between Fb and Google.The best I can theorise is that I had an open Fb window at home, and one of the instrument manufacturers' websites had an embedded Facebook like button or similar tracker, and they are running targeted ads on Fb. But is this direct-to-an-individual targetting even possible on Fb? Perhaps the obscurity of the instrument meant that I was very likely to see an ad, and very likely to notice it.I typically close Fb when I'm not using it, so this doesn't immediately feel like what happened. I'll be doubly-sure to close and log-out Fb now.I can't think of other ways that my Google activity could get to Fb. Browser fingerprinting, cellphone location etc would allow Fb to understand my location, but I can't see how they'd match this against Google activity.I'd be very interested to read how this is, or could be, achieved.[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14094083[2] https://www.google.com/shopping Upvote:

122

Title: More context:- very small team (< 5 people)- mostly used for online services (e.g., servers, SaaS, api ...)- rarely travel- in San Francisco Upvote:

136

Title: For example I'm looking at a developer / analyst job (entry level) that's rather niche. I fit many requirements, but the job posting asks for experience in super specific software (Rockwell Factory Talk Production Center to be specific). I'm not familiar with the software, but have no doubts that I can pick up anything quickly. Is it worth applying in positions like these? Upvote:

48

Title: Microsoft shipped out their HoloLens development kits within the past few weeks. If you happened to receive one: what has your experience with it been like? Information is relatively sparse online recently about the HoloLens, and I kind of expected more blogging to be done about user feedback and what kind of projects are being worked on, but for the most part there hasn't really been all that much posted.I intend on doing a project with one in the next few months and I want to get other developers feedback on the device and kind of a general synopsis on the feelings regarding it, as the emulator can only give so much "immersion".There also hasn't been much discussion about this device on HN (at least for a few months) and I'd like to know how developers feel about it: pros, cons, first impressions, etc. Upvote:

101

Title: I'm Daria, a co-founder and CEO of VoiceOps (<a href="https://voiceops.com/" rel="nofollow">https://voiceops.com/</a>). We built a product that analyzes sales calls and provides actionable tips to close more deals.We transcribe, parse, then analyze calls for what behavior is most successful (e.g. how many probing questions to ask on a call, the value of describing benefits vs. features, when to time an upsell or close attempt, etc.). Once we understand what works, we help managers scale that out, improving performance across their entire team.Currently, sales managers spend 10-20 hrs/week listening to the call recordings of their reps and then guessing at how to provide feedback. The process is slow, lacks consistency, isn’t based on data, and often fails to motivate or change behavior.Every other part of the sales stack (email especially) is already data driven. With sales reps spending most of their time on the phone, it should be the most important activity to optimize.The prototype was built and first clients closed while I was living in a van and Ethan was sleeping on a kitchen floor in the Mission. Between our three co-founders we’ve spent nearly a decade building sales and support tools for companies like LinkedIn, Gusto, Coinbase, and General Assembly. Even there we saw this lack of data become problematic and expensive.Take a peek - we’d love to hear your feedback! Upvote:

54

Title: Would love to have your feedback on my startup named Sportal - it helps you find players in your locality for playing any sport you want.Here's the link to the app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.getsportalapp.sportal&hl=en Upvote:

42

Title: I am full time developer so it is hard for me to keep learning everyday except weekend days. But, that does not mean I do not want to learn other things.So, what are the topics that you suggest to learn in weekend ( Saturday and Sunday - Full day )? It would be also good if you suggest resources as well. Upvote:

64

Title: I never use Facebook on my phone so you can hopefully rule out contact list networks - not that I ever had their personal mobile on my list - and location tracking because I haven't attended my doctor's surgery in years. We have zero friends in common. Other than my doctor actively looking me up on Facebook - highly unlikely - how on earth is this possible? I'm willing to accept friends of friends suggestions but this is beyond spooky. Upvote:

76

Title: I'm building a SaaS product targeting the telephony sector. Finished my prototype (Spring Boot backend, basic jQuery/Bootstrap front end) and raised a little scratch so I'm planning on building a company website, careers page, etc. before I start hiring.Whilst I know PHP well enough (to really dislike it) temptation is to avoid Wordpress for the company site and go for something else (Jekyll, Ghost etc). Problem is a lot of the company web pages being churned out by design studios are Wordpress and I want to outsource at least the company web pages.Has anyone here tried eschewing the typical Wordpress company website and rolled their own or alternatively gone for a completely different CMS?Any pros or cons you've encountered?To keep things simple I'm trying to limit my language focus to just Java8/ECMAScript for now so keen to avoid throwing Ruby or Python based stacks into the mix. Upvote:

44

Title: I'm wondering if folks who have a SaaS can list a few things that they learned after running it for a while.I'm trying to start one, and I realize that there are many things that I have to consider—like dealing with spammers, credit card fraud, common mistakes, etc.I've read many, many articles, but I wonder if there are some important things that you only learn with experience that I should prepare for. Upvote:

49

Title: Has anyone received an invite/rejection email for the Summer 2017 batch yet? Upvote:

92

Title: First of all, sorry for the medium, but I think it is fair enough for YC community to take part in this conversation.I've just packed the book to my upcoming 24 hours flights (2 connection stops) and looked at the list...As we observed so many successful startups in the last 12 years or so, let alone YC companies, I wonder who are the founders you would have find inspiring to interview for the book.Being at there, I wonder, is there a chance we will get a "second edition" in the foreseeable future?And you guys and gals, HN readers, do you have your own list?(The title was rephrased many times to fit into the 80 char. limit) Upvote:

124

Title: Remember the scene from MIB where 'K' zooms in on his wife and watches her live. How close are we to that ?After a quick search, I found a few videos which showed scenes of an area with some traffic activity but it wasn't that zoomed in. As far as images go, I haven't found any other image source providing a better definition image than what Google Maps provide.The American government had used live satellite feed while carrying out the Bin Laden operation ( Source of Information: Documentary | Correct me if wrong ).Are there any images/videos publicly available which demonstrate the limits of cameras in space directed towards earth ?If not publicly available, can you describe how a possible image/video might look like and what are the current limits for those cameras ? Upvote:

48

Title: For those of you who made the jump to entrepreneurship, what is the one thing you wish you knew before starting out ? Upvote:

847

Title: Carlos Icaza was my co-founder at Lanica (an Appcelerator backed company). He passed away this summer unexpectedly. I wasn’t able to find the right words to say at the time. But since we spent so much in code, I decided I should code something in his memory instead.Carlos was also the co-founder of the Corona SDK, and was also a lead/manager for Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Flash before that. He also ran @codinginswift on Twitter with over 18,000 followers.I finally finished my tribute and debuted it at the try! Swift conference in Tokyo last month at the end of my Swift on Android talk. That whole talk has just been publicly posted, but I wanted to make it more accessible so I’ve uploaded just the demo part to YouTube. (It also contains some fixes and improvements since the conference.)Dance of the Fairies<a href="https://youtu.be/ciphph8R4sU" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/ciphph8R4sU</a>It’s also inspired by an old Sierra On-Line game series, Quest for Glory. I wrote more about both Carlos and the demo on my blog.<a href="http://playcontrol.net/ewing/jibberjabber/dance-of-the-fairies-quest.html" rel="nofollow">http://playcontrol.net/ewing/jibberjabber/dance-of-the-fairi...</a>Thank you for reading/watching Upvote:

261

Title: I'm a professional web developer of 7 years that, if taken at the superficial face value of how many years I've worked, is one that is expected to be mid-level or approaching senior-level.The problem is, my career growth feels stunted.All of this seems to be confirmed by interview feedback I've gathered recently from several companies. The gist of it is, I show knowledge in a couple of topics, but don't show a lot of depth in any of them. I've shown capability to perform my work as expected and told that I write clean code, but that I can't grasp the "big picture" ideas of software development better, or the minutiae of a given programming language.So with this in mind, would it be possible to go back to a junior position?I prefer to do so in a larger company, because I have never been actually mentored or have much guidance from a senior dev. In two places, I was the only programmer around.The problem here is that at showing 7 years of experience, it sounds like a turn-off for many companies if I show that I'm only capable at a junior-level. Perhaps removing my oldest jobs might help. How would you approach this? Upvote:

51

Title: I find this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14146850 very insightful and stressing some important common points in comments.The most precious advice as I see is to “talk to your customers”.How do I practically turn this advice into action?Say, I have:- an office with a computer and internet- a map of the town and its suburbs I located in- search engine to my service- some details about the domain I’d like to work for- zero contactsNow, how do I actually talk to my potential customers? I can knock at doors of every office I find online and with a broad smile say a pitch then attack them with my questions? I don’t think it will work as I would like it to. More likely they will think I am trying to sell some bs and thus be quite skeptical and cold to me.Should I try to approach bosses or common workers of companies?Should I phone them, ask for an appointment, explain my goals and if they let me in, do the talk?What is the right approach to talk to my potential customers?Can you please share your experience and maybe books about how to do it properly?Thanks! Upvote:

291

Title: 1. Which industry do you work in?2. What are the biggest problems stopping your industry from growing?3. Can something be done about it? Upvote:

191

Title: A lot of sites have IP crawl restrictions, but add exceptions for Googlebot. Could Google or the crawled site legally do something when they find out? Upvote:

44

Title: It is surprising that lots of people(including me) learn about this book only now[1]. Have you read any other book like 'Calculus Made Easy'? Please mention in comments. Not only in maths. It could be in any subject or field. I think it will be helpful to many.[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14161876 Upvote:

61

Title: Should I trademark prior to Y Combinator? In my research prior to applying all fingers point towards waiting until I get into YC to incorporate or create a legal entity. Is this the same thought on Trademarking. Should I wait to get into YC to trademark? Any thoughts would be appreciated. Upvote:

44