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Title: Whom do you admire most? In what way does that person inspire you?
Upvote: | 56 |
Title: [NOTE: This post is both personal and medical in nature and only about hacking in the sense that it is about searching for a solution to a complex problem. Some of the “HN is for hacking only”–types may not want to waste their time reading it. It’s also <i>extremely</i> long, but I don’t have or want a blog right now. You’ve been warned.]<p>This is my answer to apu's question to me on another thread about ALS (and, specifically, my misdiagnosis with ALS and other illnesses):<p>Q: "If you don't mind me asking, what was the final diagnosis? How was it discovered? And how are you coping?"<p>A: Basically I had multiple infections (both viral and bacterial) that were slowly eating me alive.<p>I started having migratory shooting pains, chronic joint pain, extreme fatigue, and rapid weight gain years ago. (I gained 100 pounds in about 4 months, with absolutely no change in my diet or exercise program. I went from somewhat athletic to fatigued fat-ass that slept 20 hours a day after a brief flu-like period.) They initially tested me for thyroid and pituitary tumors. That first MRI is how they found the first spots on my brain - before they were full-fledged lesions. They were just hyper-intensive spots and 'plaques.' It's more common, by the way, to <i>lose</i> tons of weight with infections, but the infections affected my hormones in a way that made me balloon up.<p>I kept getting new symptoms over the years. Sleep disorders, aphasia, tremors, severe chest pains, left arm paralysis, left side of body paralysis, neck-down paralysis, memory loss, tinnitus, passing out, chemical sensitivity, etc. etc. In the end, I probably could have been Stephen Hawking's stunt double appearance-wise. As I said in the other thread, I was (mis)diagnosed with Parkinsons, Alzheimers, MS, CFS/FM, and ALS along the way - each time based on my symptom progression and test results. Technically, I <i>still</i> have many of the other things I was diagnosed with based on symptoms and test results - by clinical definition - but they were not the underlying, causative issues. They were just the icing on the cake.<p>I saw <i>at least</i> 22 doctors over the years, including some at top hospitals (Mayo,etc.) A few of the doctors thought I was nuts, because of the sheer number of symptoms. One doctor didn't even finish the exam and commented that it was either <i>all</i> psychosomatic or else I was the unluckiest bastard ever and I had 25+ <i>different</i> diseases. Most doctors would just space out at some point and start treating whatever their specialty (or first thought) was. I had enough symptoms and bad test results to keep them all busy. If I was seeing an endocrinologist, for example, she would try to treat just the endocrine issues (the infections affected my endocrine system, so my hormones were waaaaaay out of whack. One endocrinologist said I should be in medical textbooks because of my crazy high/low hormone levels.) I tested positive for some autoimmune disorders, so the rheumatologist kept busy. I have sleep disorders (again because of the infections), so I was given a CPAP and sleep meds by a sleep specialist. I have severe migraines (lesions!), so migraine specialists put me on migraine meds. Etc. etc. Not all these meds at once, of course. The infections were playing havoc with my brain, heart, and nervous system...and my endocrine and immune system were along for the ride. I had a 2-3 year period where it felt like I was having multiple heart attacks every day. I’m amazed my wife didn’t leave me.<p>The multi-systemic nature and the fact that certain symptoms tends to reinforce or mask each other made it very difficult to figure anything out. When you have certain infections, for example, your body will naturally retain heavy metals and toxins from the environment - all on its own - in a self-protective attempt to kill off the invaders. So I tested off the charts for toxic metals and the ‘environmental specialist’ thought that was the underlying problem. But, of course, it wasn't. They cleared most of the metals and I still had all the symptoms. I had all of these heart symptoms, but most of my tests came back normal. Normal stress test, normal basic EKG, etc. They didn’t find any heart issues until they did less-common tests (tilt-table testing, etc.) I had enormous trouble finding a physician who was willing to really try to figure out the underlying cause of everything instead of just treating individual symptoms. I didn’t want to be on 80+ meds for the rest of my (possibly short) life and not even know what the hell was wrong with me.<p>I eventually narrowed down what I personally thought I had, based on my own research and background. Neuroborreliosis (neurologic Lyme disease) was one of my guesses, because I had done an extensive forestry research project at one point before my illness and I knew I had been bitten by ticks that may have been infected. I had never had a rash, though. And I didn't think any of my ‘guesses’, individually, could explain my vast array of symptoms.<p>I finally went to this doctor that was supposed to be an amazing diagnostician - “Dr. House without the 'tude”, I was told . I started reading him my list of symptoms - in chronological order. (It was one of the ways I had learned to cope with the discouraging doctor visits...if I was staring at a sheet of my notes, I couldn't get pissed because the doctors were rolling their eyes at me. I also needed the notes because my memories, and sometimes my speech, were completely shot.) Usually, the doctors would stop me fairly quickly when I started listing symptoms. This guy listened intently, and then started accurately guessing the next symptom on the list before I could even say it. He did that for about 7-8 symptoms. He gave me the most accurate description of some of my symptoms...more accurate than I could even muster. ["Does it feel like someone is squeezing your heart with their hands and won't let it expand?" "Does it feel like you're being stabbed with a cattle prod right here?" etc.] I often had trouble choosing the proper words to convey certain symptoms, in part because I knew it sounded crazy. But he was nodding the whole time and seemed sincere. He said he thought I had a major environmental toxin problem (heavy metals, chemical sensitivity, etc.) <i>OR</i> I had one or more vector-borne infectious diseases. He said either thing could potentially explain all of my symptoms, and that he leaned toward the latter because of the migratory nature of some of the symptoms. He was amazed I had never been tested for some infections, despite having been to some of the top hospitals in the country. The fact that my shooting pains were often migratory was one of the main things that had made some of the doctors think I was a loon. This doctor says, “Uh, <i>DUH</i>, it usually feels like the pains are moving around because they <i>are</i> - the things that are causing them are moving around, both in your body and in your brain!”<p>I had already been down the toxin path, so I was tested for a range of vector-borne diseases. I had almost all of them that I was tested for. Lyme, Babesia, Ehrlichiosis, etc. etc. Plus a liberal dose of virii at very high levels. I had had some of them so long that I was no longer showing a normal antibody response, but I had other telltale markers (specific cell parts on tests, etc.). [The accuracy, availability, and expense of these tests is another tangent I’ll avoid right now.]<p>Oddly enough, once this doctor correctly diagnosed me he refused to treat me. The insurance companies really give doctors who treat chronic infections a hard time, because the long-term treatment of certain infections is more expensive that treating a late-stage AIDs or brain cancer patient. Some doctors - including at least one Nobel laureate nominee - have lost their medical licenses or been forced to stop treating infected patients because of insurance company influence. It's a very complicated, political issue. Very frustrating. Too complicated to get into here. Anyway, this doctor said he wanted to treat me, but was literally scared to do so for fear of losing his medical license or his ability to offer insurance plans. [There is an award-winning documentary called UnderOurSkin (http://underourskin.com/) that explores "chronic Lyme", and it gets into the insurance, political, and patent issues, etc. It also explores a theoretical link between Lyme and other diseases. It's very good. It doesn't go into the co-infection issue much, because it is Lyme-specific - but it gives a great overview. The documentary trailer is at: http://underourskin.com/watch.html One of the guys in it is a physician that was also misdiagnosed with ALS, and there’s a baseball player that was misdiagnosed, Amy Tan (Joy Luck Club author) is also in it.<p>Anyway, I tested positive for at least a dozen viral and bacterial infections, but they could have potentially all come from one tick bite. I think the estimate is that 30% of all infected ticks carry at least one other co-infection. So, theoretically, I could have been bitten by just one really 'sick tick.' Or I could have picked up other infections once my immune system was compromised by an initial infection. No way to know for sure. [Oh, and the fact that I never had a rash didn’t mean anything because 50% or more of infected ticks don’t cause a rash at all.] Only a certain percentage of people that are infected with some of these diseases develop chronic issues, so I may have had a weak spot in my immune system due to genetics or something. That’s one area of research they’re exploring. I know they’ve found at lease one statistically significant genetic anomaly that predisposes you to getting sicker with at least one of the viruses.<p>Some people - even lauded medical professionals - think that most infections can be killed off fairly easily with short-term antibiotics or antivirals (which is part of the debate in that documentary I mention.) That’s one of the arguments the insurance companies use. There are many mitigating factors, though, and most animal studies/vivisections say something else entirely. Some infections have biofilms that protect them. Some form cysts that protect them. Some infections grow drug-resistant. Some meds don't cross the blood-brain barrier. Different people have different immune responses. Etc. etc. The medicines themselves are very dangerous long-term, and you also have the serious problem that the infections release toxins as they die off...so by killing them you usually get <i>worse</i> in the short-term. The toxins released can kill additional tissue or trigger a stroke or heart attack because of the other symptoms. It's a weird balancing act between getting a medicine to work without making the infections resistant or triggering too much of a toxin/autoimmune response. It’s drug hacking, in a way. I’ve had two strokes. One because of a misdiagnosis when they put me on steroids and I had a major inflammatory response and once <i>after</i> I was properly diagnosed because I wasn't fast enough on the trigger to recognize a change in symptoms when I was pulsing between two antibiotics.<p>By the time I was properly diagnosed, I had permanent damage to my brain (lesions, some may heal), heart (cardiomyopathy,etc.), mitochondria (extrinsic mitochondrial disease - the infections ate the lipids from cells, among other things), and central nervous system (advanced neuropathy, etc.) I also have the hormone, sleep, and autoimmune issues. I've been on various antibiotics, antifungals, and antivirals for about 15 months. And pain meds. I only decided I had my final, correct diagnosis because this was the first logical answer that explained literally everything, had confirming test results, and allowed me to actually start getting better over time once I started treatment, toxin setbacks aside. Some of my symptoms have completely disappeared, but some remain. Mobility-wise, I've went from a wheelchair to a walker to now only needing a cane <i>sometimes</i>. I still have some memory loss, some aphasia, some numbness, some shooting pains, etc. - but I'm 80-90% better than when I started treatment. Not only in frequency of symptoms that remain, but in their actual intensity. I mainly see an infectious diseases specialist now, and he keeps warning me that I will not <i>continuously</i> get better but will instead have a rollercoaster ride until I level off at my final “condition” – because of the toxins, immune response, and residual damage.<p>They're not sure <i>exactly</i> how much of the damage is permanent. Some of the lesions are, for sure, and the mitochondrial damage is fairly severe (I technically have a small fraction of the energy, <i>literally</i>, of a normal person.) I'm amazed by the improvements already, so I'm still hopeful. My wife is pregnant with out first child, and everyone is scared/nervous how I will handle it. I still pass out occasionally, so some family members don't want me to hold my own kid. (Admittedly, I've fallen down stairs a few times after passing out.) Insurance has already stopped paying on certain meds and will most likely eventually stop on others. One of my antibiotics is $2500 a week, because the stent goes directly by the heart and you have to have a home health nurse change it to (ironically) reduce the risk of infection. I’m relatively fortunate that I’ve been able to get and afford my treatments thus far. I’m <i>very</i> fortunate that I didn’t have a completely untreatable disease. I also think this post should win an award for biggest “TMI” (Too Much Information) <i>ever</i> in the history of HN.
Upvote: | 324 |
Title: Recently, I've found my concentration is becoming increasingly bad. I blame this mainly on co-workers and the internet keeping me from things that I need to get done (it's hard to program when I can only keep focus for about 10 minutes at a time).<p>What are tips/tricks you use to help "build" your concentration?
Upvote: | 91 |
Title: We just sent out the responses to startup school applications. If you didn't get one, check your spam folder. Or check here:<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/susrsvp<p>Unfortunately even though we have a bigger auditorium this time, we got even more applications, so once again we had to reject lots of people we would have liked to accept.
Upvote: | 47 |
Title: Where: Wheeler Auditorium, UC Berkeley.
When: 24 October 2009, 9:00 am.
Upvote: | 48 |
Title: U.S. President Barack Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009. The motivation mentions "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples". Congratulations.
Upvote: | 91 |
Title: What is the worst bug (the software kind) that you've encountered in your hacking career ?
Upvote: | 76 |
Title: Is seems that most of the people talking about startups imply a web app. Which makes me wonder if anyone is considering an embedded or more traditional desktop/server software product?
Upvote: | 46 |
Title: http://wizbang.sourceforge.net<p>I've been building an app that started as a college project. Its purpose is to let people build programs visually and learn programming without worrying about missing a semi-colon.<p>The program supports loops, conditional branches, number operations (add, subtract, etc.), input and output. The programs can be run immediately from inside WizBang.<p>BUT, the #1 feature is that after a program is built and the user has verified that it behaves how they want, they can click one button and compile their program down to working and valid code in C++, Python, and Java.<p>This allows the user to learn programming in the opposite way that is usually taught in universities. In WizBang, the user learns programming behavior before language syntax. Which, I hope, will allow more students to get excited about programming, instead of being scared away by compiler errors.<p>Any feedback is appreciated!
Upvote: | 49 |
Title: I found that sometimes the little tiny changes have the biggest improvement in your work or life. For example yesterday I installed "Tab Mix" which forces FF to open external links in a new tab and take you there. +3 for me.<p>What tiny tools, hacks, changes do you know off that improved your work or life significantly?
Upvote: | 75 |
Title: Background:- I am a hacker/developer with over 10 years of experience working with cutting-edge software consulting company. Clients list includes fortune 500 companies many of them banks and some product companies. Skill set includes technology and project execution but not marketing and people management.I am married with kids.<p>Problem:- Always wanted to be an entrepreneur, right from the college days but never got myself to do anything about it. Now it seems time is running out.<p>Is it too late to get into startup mode?
Upvote: | 40 |
Title: Background: I'm 18 years old, American, and attend an Ivy League college. It seems that I've tried to do a very long list of things, but that none of them ever actually succeed. Some of the things I've tried:<p>- Wrote a program to model the stock market. (The capital I needed evaporated during the credit crunch).<p>- Worked on a paper with a professor. (The professor bailed and they had access to lots of equipment I would have needed to finish it myself).<p>- Worked on a second paper with a second professor in another department. (Same story).<p>- Applied to Harvard, MIT and Stanford, the three big startup schools, twice, got rejected by all both times. (The school I'm going to is good academically but produces zero startups).<p>- Tried to start a company over the summer. (The other two people working with me bailed in August and are refusing to acknowledge that I own the rights to the portions of the code I wrote. Don't know what I'll do since I can't afford to sue them.)<p>- Tried to start a second company the previous summer. (Found out that that particular business had much larger capital requirements than I had thought.)<p>- Submitted my own paper to a conference, gave a talk there, but the paper was never published. (The special issue of the journal they were going to publish it in was canceled, and I haven't found another journal that would accept it.)<p>- Submitted second paper to second conference in different field. (Same story.)<p>- Applied for research internships last summer. (Rejected by all).<p>- Applied for finance internships this summer. (Rejected by all so far, not heard back from some yet, would appreciate suggestions if anyone has any).<p>- Helped to write a web application last summer. (No one uses it, and the other people working on it, who have a great deal of needed expertise, have moved onto more interesting projects).<p>- Did another webapp for one of the student clubs. (Someone else also wrote one and theirs was better, so everyone (including me) just used that instead.)<p>- Half a dozen math/science contests which I've entered. I recruited some fellow students to help practice and then we met weekly to work on our strategies. (Did badly in all of them.)<p>- Tried to start a blog, worked on it for two years. (Pretty much nobody read it.)<p>Am I doing anything wrong, just in general?<p>(Formatting fixed, sorry).
Upvote: | 49 |
Title: Type in STARTUPSCHOOL09 in the coupon code section when booking to save $35. We now have 28 rooms just for Startup School, and 224 rooms total in the bay area. If you have already booked for startup school, email [email protected] and we will refund $35 from your reservation. -Brian (co-founder)
Upvote: | 42 |
Title: If you're anything like me you will have several, so maybe just list the one you were most enthusiastic about which didn't work out the way you thought, and what you see now that you didn't then. I'll start.<p>I had a site called becomeatypist.com which taught people to type. I started it because I saw that thousands of people monthly were searching for 'learn to type'. This was back in the day when I was pretty much in a minority (compared to now) who knew about this thing called a keyword search tool - the original one from Goto/Overture before even Google had theirs. This is almost too embarrasing to list, but a large portion of my homepage was an image. Go ahead, laugh. Ironically, I'm almost the polar opposite with my knowledge of seo now, but at the time I was only thinking of usability from a user's perspective, which I thought was the only thing I should worry about focusing on. Before you ridicule me too much the site was mildly successful, breaking even after accounting for PPC advertising, and some weeks making me a whole $5 to $15 profit. I had customers write to me saying they found my course helpful. Unfortunately, no one ever went past the first 2 lessons out of 10 which would have meant they learned all the keys, and probably given me a renewal or two at $4.99/mo.<p>Things I learned: I think I did a lot of things right such as a free lead in, but many wrong. I should have done more than just try to build a functional product and wait for cash to roll in. One competitor, an ad supported (and I think distractive) free course is still near the top of Google, I think my presentation could have been way better too, but I'm a programmer not a designer. I also overestimated user attention span/determination needed to learn something new.<p>(maybe next time I'll tell you about passflicks.com, my DVD trading by mail and how my hopes were shattered as thorougly as my test DVDs got when mailed at a single stamp packaging cost ;)
Upvote: | 46 |
Title: Mine are
Pixar Touch and
IWOZ
Upvote: | 105 |
Title: Try to stay away from coding hacks as much as you can, which is what I meant by technical. I'm talking about social, mechanical, etc. Should be interesting, entertaining, and enlightening to hear about all the clever real world hacks you guys have come up with.<p>Also, if you have several you'd like to share, go for it.
Upvote: | 48 |
Title: I've been having issues lately trying to motivate myself to do mundane, or at the very least "unappealing", work (namely, [high]school work). It's not that I'm lazy — actually I'm afraid I'm a workaholic sometimes — but that I always find myself giving priority to another project or hobby I enjoy doing and find more worthwhile.<p>I personally find I have one of two reactions to tasks I have to do: either I'm completely engrossed in my work and won't sleep, eat, etc. until it's finished, or it is the last thing I would ever possibly want to do with my time and I will do everything but that task, even if only to say that I was the one that wasted my time, not somebody else.<p>The main problem I have is the pervasive feeling in the back of my mind whenever I spend time doing something that I could be doing something else. But this other work still has to get done, so I procrastinate terribly, which accomplishes nothing but adding more stress to my life.<p>In accordance with one of pg's essays (http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html), I'm definitely a type "c" procrastinator, only I'm not sure it's a "good procrastination" because I'm afraid it's going to cause me to fail school.<p>I suppose what I'm really looking for is the answer to the question: How do I make otherwise un-motivating work intrinsically motivating?
The only two responses I've gotten to this question when I ask people this is either a.) you're always going to have to do work you don't want to do, or b.) you have to do it because you need to get good grades / graduate high-school / etc. Neither of these answers help motivate me in the slightest — they just imply I'm going to be unhappy for the rest of my life if I keep doing this.
Upvote: | 44 |
Title: So a little while back, I bought a big old brick house in Richmond, Indiana (for $8000). (cf. http://big-old-house.blogspot.com for the blow-by-blow). It's really a whole hell of a lot more room than I need, and - the kicker - it's not alone. There are a boatload of beautiful old brick buildings here, just no economic reason for anybody sane to buy them. There's even a 23-unit building of single-bedroom apartments two or three blocks away from me, standing empty. Lots of these houses are standing empty; there's just nobody left to live in them.<p>So I had this stupid idea, and I'm not even sure it's a stupid idea: why not sponsor young (or non-young) entrepreneurs by giving them rooms or small apartments, server space, good bandwidth, and home-cooked but free food? In return, perhaps a percentage take of whatever they came up with during a certain fellowship period, or whatever other venture capitalists take as their cut. Later in the game, actual capital would be available (it's not on the table, not from me, not right now). But the idea is to build an active and close-knit, quasi-academic, community. There was definitely an era in my life when I would have jumped at such an opportunity, and I'd still seriously consider it.<p>So tell me: in how many ways is it stupid? I love these old buildings; given just a little economic rationale, they're eminently salvageable (people built to <i>last</i> in the 1880's and 90's).
Upvote: | 83 |
Title: I realized recently that it's been a long time since I looked at anyone else's code outside of the context of debugging or working on it for hire. In your opinion, what are some examples of particularly well-designed or implemented software projects worth looking at to broaden one's own horizons as a programmer?
Upvote: | 125 |
Title: It's Microsoft's fastest growing product and tons of people use it, but it seems to be pretty crappy and hard to explain. What exactly would you say it does?
Upvote: | 80 |
Title: Hello HN,<p>Just recently, at Future of Web Apps in London, we launched our startup, Go Test It. Our goal is to make automated functional testing of web applications incredibly simple and efficient.<p>We have an infrastructure hosting various different browsers, and we have a fantastic test recorder which can pick up mouse clicks and keyboard events to create test scripts. Test scripts can be converted to Ruby or Python, and run directly on our infrastructure.<p>It would be awesome to get your feedback on what you think and how you would use Go Test It in your own projects.<p>Please sign up for free at:
http://go-test.it/hackernews
(use "hackernews" as invite code)<p>Thanks :)
Upvote: | 50 |
Title: (via http://www.readwriteweb.com/readwritestart/2009/10/stackoverflow-shares-its-mojo.php)
Upvote: | 60 |
Title: I've been reading some of the C++ hate that's been on HN of late. I've been successfully convinced (not that it was hard) that C++ is a really terrible language. But, if that's the case, then what else are commercial game developers to use? Is pure C sufficient? What about Haskell, or is that too slow?
Upvote: | 42 |
Title: I've been a heavy computer user for more than a decade and I think all those hours are finally taking a toll on my wrists. About a year ago the discomfort was so intense that I switched hands so that now I use my left hand both at work and at home. The problem is that my day job has me at a computer for 35-40 hours/week and then I come home and program for another 20-25.<p>Currently there's kind of a dull, persistent numbness 24/7. Also, when I bend my wrists too far forward or backwards, I feel a sharp pain on the back of my hands. I also occasionally wake up at night and notice that they're numb, which I've read is a symptom of carpal tunnel.<p>I've tried a few ergonomic changes including a new chair, adjusting the monitor position, and a wrist pad for my keyboard and mouse, and even a wrist brace a portion of the time, but the discomfort persists. I asked my doctor about it a few months ago and he gave me a 20 page packet with the usual diagrams showing where my head should be positioned in relation to my monitor and things like that, but not much of it was practical "do this" advice.<p>I'd like to work on a startup in a few years and this is a major concern.<p>I figure a lot of you have had similar problems. What worked for you?
Upvote: | 60 |
Title: Google ?<p>Wonder if they saw that one coming when microsoft decided to launch their new search engine as "BING".<p>And if they did it intentionally then props to them.
Upvote: | 43 |
Title: A fully compliant HTML5 website, with a UI straight from 1998. Uses HTML5, CSS3 and SVG. Have a peek at the source.
Upvote: | 168 |
Title: In the past 6 months our service Thymer.com was in Beta, and today we've finally bit the bullet and launched.<p>No regrets so far!<p>We got our first sales minutes after going live, and now we're dealing with the many emails we get in our inbox every minute. A good portion of those have a GMail tag "gotpaid", indicating that we just got another sale.<p>Our server is feeling the load, but still very stable and responsive -- so we're doing OK on that front too. Crossing fingers.<p>The point of this post? Not much. It's just that this kind of post inspired us to put in unreasonable ours ourselves. Just wanted to say thanks for all the advice and encouragement we've gotten on this board (under various aliases).<p>Thanks so much!
Upvote: | 43 |
Title: Today, in the office, we had a brief discussion of some of the industries or fields that seem to have had relatively little technical innovation over the past decade. Some industries seem to be getting a lot of attention from technical minds these days (e.g. the power grid, alternative fuels, etc.); others seem more stagnant and some may not stand to gain a lot from technological advancements.<p>But, I'm curious to hear others' opinions. What industries are using technology and practices that are antiquated?
Upvote: | 40 |
Title: Whether it's flex, gwt, cappuccino, sproutcore, jquery or mootools, where have you seen extremely exceptional UI on highly sophisticated webapps? I'm talking about interactive, stateful webapps, not the standard list-of-things kind of webapps.
Upvote: | 52 |
Title: See http://blog.plover.com/math/gray-codes.html for the Perma-Link.
Upvote: | 48 |
Title: Here are mine:<p>- Just about anything out of the mouth of Paul Buchheit. I'm convinced he's actually Bob Newhart. If I <i>had</i> to pick only one quote: "If I work for a long time without releasing, I get bored and I go home and watch 'Dukes of Hazzard'."<p>- Lots of little gems from Jason Fried: "Planning is guessing", "Funding is like crack", etc.<p>- Chris Anderson: "I recommend not having crappy products, even free ones."<p>- Evan Williams: "Trust your instincts - except when they're wrong."<p>- Scoble asks Mark Zuckerberg: "What management skills are you learning?" Zuckerberg: "...management skills?"<p>- Tony Hsieh: "We don't think about work/life balance; we think about all of it as life."<p>It was a fantastic experience. Thanks to YC, UC Berkeley, and everyone else who hosted.
Upvote: | 59 |
Title: While us programmers tend to say "I'll just program it myself" it is actually much faster to:<p>- Buy an off the shelf program and take 3 hours to read their proprietary API for extra functionality.<p>- Use an existing library and read the documentation rather than building your own code.<p>- Use VB.NET or Delphi for the front-end user interface.<p>- Buy a properly documented royalty-free library for under $1000 rather than spend months integrating open source code.<p>- Use Python or VB.NET even tho it just feels right to use Java/C. (Ok, I said it. Now if I can only get this VB.NET flame shield program to finish loading.)<p>Unfortunately, us programmers tend not to do this. "Oh, we need a queue class? I'll just build it myself, takes like 30 minutes tops."<p>As coders, we need to think like an engineer who is building a car. No engineer building a car will make the engine or windshield themselves. But us coders do this all the time.<p>There are 2 parts to every program:
[1]: The new scientific code/algorithm you are writing. Which is typically quite small. (5%) [2] Everything else. (95%)<p>How many times have I got that urge.. "I don't want to do the research. I want to jump right in.. I bet I can finish this tonight.."
90% of the code out there is already written. It is more about adding the glue. And of course, finding it and <i>reading</i> the docs.
Upvote: | 68 |
Title: Hi again HN,<p>I've been trying to learn more about statistics of late, motivated by some really fantastic applications I've seen, like automated composition of music, medical models, and stock market tools.<p>Atm I've been going through the book Elements of Statistical Learning, which I got from the frontpage a few days ago. But it's kind of slow going, since without really knowing how things relate to each other all I can do is go through it sequentially. What I want is to jump in with both feet, and start writing cool code.<p>Does anyone know of good books or articles for someone in my situation? Or you give me sort of a minimal spanning roadmap for what I need before I can start having some fun?<p>I know about basic probability theory, bayesian text classification and hidden markov models, but that's about all.
Upvote: | 99 |
Title: In the what startups are really like topic, a few people wanted pg to expand on this, so I figured it'd be a good standalone topic.<p>What was your strategy in getting the first 1,000 users?
Upvote: | 87 |
Title: Yesterday I was surprised to find myself trying Yahoo search because I couldn't get satisfactory search results in Google. It was the first time in years. I started thinking about this, and I realized that in the past few months I haven't been getting particularly good results from Google. I don't get spam or anything, but a lot of times I don't get useful results.<p>The thing is, I'm not sure if it's because I do a lot of very specialized stuff these days, or because the search quality really has gone down. Consider these two examples:<p>Search for "Linux asynchronous IO". You'll get a lot of articles, but most are four years old (which is an eternity in the Linux world). These results aren't very good - posix AIO is implemented in userspace threads, and io_submit and friends don't work in many cases. Which cases? Hard to tell - I couldn't find any information in the results no matter how long I searched. I couldn't find any benchmarks either.<p>Perhaps it's because there is no good info on this on the web (hard to believe). So let's try something else - search for "concurrent hashmap in C". After hours of searching and playing with keywords, I got almost no useful results (other than Intel's libs, but not too much info on that either). It's difficult to believe that there are no good implementations out there.<p>So, is it the specialized nature of my searches, or is it Google? What do you think?
Upvote: | 112 |
Title: Here are some questions I'm coming across, but I'm curious to hear whatever you have discovered in general makes a good resume.<p>Should I include a skills section at the end? (It looks tacky, but I think a lot of places use automated searches?)<p>For each project I list should I include languages and tools used?<p>If I only have one publication is it worth having a publications section?
Upvote: | 46 |
Title: For me, I now believe that hypnosis is a real phenomenon: http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?article_id=218392595
Upvote: | 54 |
Title: Hi HN,<p>(Text below is pretty long, forgive me)<p>I'm a long-time user, you may know me on this site, but I'll use this brand new account because I don't want this story to be public yet.<p>I registered an iPhone developer account about a year ago (a company account, with an English Ltd). I started with one small app, made $30 in the first month, then $90, then $700, $1000, $2500, $3000, then $3500.<p>Good income, right? Problem is, I have never seen a penny of it. When I signed up, I made a mistake. I had registered as a company, but I gave my personal bank account. There was a field to enter the account information, it went through a verification process of a few days, and came back alright.<p>At the point I made $2500, I quit my job. Things were looking good. A few days later, Apple wrote me an email saying that they tried to pay me and it did not go through.<p>After a series of emails, it turned out that even though Apple lets you specify the Account holder name, they do not send to that account name! They send to the company name. My bank of course rejected this transfer from Apple.<p>So I tried to make a bank account in England. I could not because I don't live in England! I decided to change the company to a company in my home country, and the bank as well.<p>This process took well over 3 months to do. Apple would take weeks to reply emails, and I had to send a letter to Steve Jobs and some other random high-ups at Apple before some head of department suddenly appeared on the scene, and got the issue resolved in a couple of weeks.<p>At this point, my savings had dried up (yes, I did not have a lot), and I had to borrow money to live. Apple would always say that they were shortly about to resolve the issue, I just had to sign this or that or fax to this number this document. It kept dragging on, till finally, last week on friday, it was over! Company name was changed, bank account was changed.<p>Apple issued me a payment file for $11.000, the amount they are owing me. I checked my bank account several times. Nothing.<p>Then I wrote an email, asking why I had not received the money. They wrote back saying that all income was still associated with the old bank account because it was earned by that account, and that they could not transfer the money to the new account. They had sent the money to the very same account I had started the process with!<p>Now, in spite of earning $450 on saturday, $400 on sunday with my iPhone apps, I am broke and don't even have enough on my bank account to pay my rent.<p>I feel like I'm an ant trying to break down the great wall of china - HN, What can I do? Who can I email to solve this problem for me? Before going public with this, what can I do? How do I make them reconfigure whatever Oracle payment system is preventing them from just transfering the money to the correct account?<p>What steps can I still take here?
Upvote: | 96 |
Title: I wrote a comment for Hacker News back in August in response to a guy's question about what a non-programmer should do in a startup. My response received 164 up votes and is the tenth most popular comment of all time. In this article I add some depth to most of my previous twenty bullet points.<p>Original comment thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=779378
Upvote: | 154 |
Title: Is there a list, or did you just go through technorati and emailed them all?<p>And which ones actually covered you?<p>Also, what strategy did you use to contact? Start off with the small ones and worked your way up? Or start off with the big ones and hoped for a homerun?
Upvote: | 90 |
Title: We've recruited some YC alumni to help us read applications,
starting with this cycle. They've agreed to (a) stop reading
any application that seems like it will compete with something
their startup is doing or plans to, and (b) keep stuff in
applications confidential.<p>These are people we know and trust, so we doubt there will be any problems. But since we didn't tell people about this before they
applied (we are in fact still organizing it), we're giving anyone who wants to the opportunity to unapply. If you want to have your
application deleted, just email me ([email protected]).<p>Also, in case anyone didn't know, the deadline for applying is
tonight at 10 Pacific.<p>Make sure you actually submit your application, using the
submit or resubmit button on http://news.ycombinator.com/apply,
or we won't consider it. (If you don't see a submit/resubmit button on that page, it's been submitted.) Every cycle a few people
who probably meant to apply forget to actually submit their
application after editing it.<p>Edit: Since a lot of people seem to be worried about this, the alumni are reading the applications in addition to us, not instead of us. Our goal is to ensure that we don't overlook promising applications. If we give an application a low rating but it gets high marks from alumni, we'll give it a second look.
Upvote: | 116 |
Title: A technical person at a potential large government customer of ours invited me to discuss our technology with him outside the office. This could be a red flag in itself but we had met twice before and I had learned that he graduated from the same school as I and around the same time I did and we knew some people in common. Additionally, he had given me a paper of his to read which was pretty decent and said he would like feedback. In general, he seemed like an enlightened techie who was enthusiastic about our technology and technology in general. There seemed to be no red flags.<p>The first time I met him, we discussed his paper and our project in general and he was generally encouraging, saying his organization could be very bureaucratic but he really believed what we were doing was the future and he would pull for us. He also indicated he was stifled in his job and would be interested in working for us in the future. This was a bit of a red flag but considering our connections outside of this project, it seemed like it could be an innocent thing. I told him that if he decided to leave his employer he should let me know and that we were at least a few months away from thinking seriously about hiring someone with his skills.<p>When I met him the second time, he out and out suggested that we pay him to push our project through and, when I told him his employer would most likely find that objectionable, he suggested various ways of hiding it. I was too shocked to say anything, afraid he would sabotage us if I said no to his face and insulted him and the only thing I could say to him was that my cofounder is very by the book and I really have to run it past him and that he should double check to find if it is actually allowed.<p>I have no intention of paying him or dealing with him again, but I feel dirty for not telling him off on his face. I am just posting this here to vent and see if anyone else has faced similar issues. How did you deal with them? Any advice for me?<p>How could I have handled this better? I am asking this seriously. Although I did not do anything wrong (or so my partner tells me), I feel that not doing anything more assertive than what I did was wrong. :(
Upvote: | 91 |
Title: What is the point of downvoting someone?<p>I apologize to anyone who may take offense to the following, but I find it very barbaric.<p>Most people, I believe, downvote because they do not agree with someone's opinion. I cannot see how that is different than someone throwing a stone at another person just because they do not agree with them.<p>Maybe web communities are still primitive, or maybe there is a real flaw in current commenting/rating systems.<p>If there were some consequences to downvoting, i.e. we knew who downvoted whom, what do you think would be the result?
Upvote: | 41 |
Title: I'm looking for a simple service that sends me an email or text message if a website goes down. Any suggestions?
Upvote: | 40 |
Title: What could ruin the Google profit party? I have a hard time imagining another search engine coming along that everyone would suddenly jump to, but I guess it is possible. It is trivial to switch search engines.<p>I can't come up with any reason why AdWords spend would suddenly vanish. Presumably companies are spending so much on AdWords because they are getting a return.<p>Because of smartphones, people are searching more and more. Local search ads seem like they could be a nice new rev source. At the same time more people are getting online, so more searches there too.
Upvote: | 45 |
Title: I know I am in the minority and the point of this message is more or less fruitless, but hopefully some people might listen, and that's the best I can hope for.<p>This site has become horrible. Right now people post about the most mundane, boring, stupid crap that I can imagine. It either has to do with<p>a). posts from key blogs (joel, fireball)<p>These are sometimes good, but come on, it ain't like these guys are actually the only people coming up with original stuff or that it's always original. Just trusting a source or liking a guy doesn't mean he knows his stuff or that he makes sense.<p>b). new versions of obvious software<p>Just quit talking about that, come on.<p>c). website design<p>Really? Just do something easy and simple and I am sure it will work out. Listening to critics and suggestions on the matter is more or less the blind leading the blind.<p>d). How to start a startup.<p>Just friggin start it man. NASA was started with a lot
of engineers and astronomers who had no clue how how to put anything together, but people still figured out how to do it. All you need is the determination and the rest will work itself out.<p>What would I like to see here?<p>a). Research, research, research! Lets talk about new stuff on arxiv or something, and the potential applications. I hate reading about new perl/python/c stuff. I mean I am sure it's cool, but come on, it usually ain't breaking new ground.<p>b). Stuff not related to computer science! I friggin love awesome articles about the new discoveries made today or theories about philosophy or whatever. I mean it ain't directly relevant, but that definitely doesn't mean it's useless.<p>c). what sucks in computer science and how to fix it. Let's talk about basic stuff with semi-broken implementations of software and talk about how they could be made better today.<p>d). math! I love reading math stuff, even if I don't get it. Statistics, topology, fuzzy logic, whatever. This site needs more of it.<p>It's been on my mind for a while and thought I would mention it.<p>p.s. Also, quit friggin making blog posts somewhere and then linking to them from here. Come on people, you can't be that desperate for cash. Just make it a ycombinator post and humble yourself with that.
Upvote: | 85 |
Title: I'm sure many of you guys and gals know this. And it might be just one of those things that I have somehow missed during all my time coding QBASIC, VBA, C++, C, Ruby, Python, etc...<p>Most of the time when you are writing an if statement, you are comparing a mutable variable to something constant (i.e. variable to string, variable to integer, variable to symbol), so you can avoid the assignment-instead-of-comparison bug by writing constant == variable instead of variable == constant. This way if you forget one of the equals signs you'll get a syntax error. The key with this is you have to get in the habit of doing it and do it all the time, so that you don't have a false sense of security.
So instead of:<p>if foo.to_str == "hi everyone!\n"<p><pre><code> puts "hello there!"
</code></pre>
end<p>use<p>if "hi everyone!\n" == foo.to_str<p><pre><code> puts "hello there!"
</code></pre>
end
Upvote: | 41 |
Title: 37signals have started their own podcast.
Upvote: | 69 |
Title: Yes, it's from 2002, but still surprisingly pertinent.
Upvote: | 41 |
Title: <i>Background</i>: I've got a fairly good intuition for logic and algorithms as a coder, but no formal training in the maths side of things. I last did math in high-school (A-level here in the UK at 18) and while I remember some calculus, pure maths, probability etc., I've never really touched advanced stuff. I didn't take any maths modules at University either.<p>I've recently come across quite a few interesting stats-heavy compsci papers where the mathematical notations and concepts expressed escape me. I'd like to correct this -- and I've seen a few comments floating around here that this stuff isn't actually that hard, and this has got me thinking.<p>Could HN recommend any 'math for programmers' resources or suggest structured approaches (ie. 'look into X, then Y, then try understanding Z) to go about learning this sort of stuff? I think I'm probably not alone here in wanting to learn more about this sort of thing.<p>A quick google provides some interesting links to get started:<p>Math for programmers: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/math-for-programmers.html<p>'Concrete Mathematics' by Graham, Knuth & Patashnik:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_Mathematics
Upvote: | 59 |
Title: somewhere in the wilds of Canada was born the baby we now know as Trevor Blackwell. Happy birthday Trevor!
Upvote: | 150 |
Title: Homes are shrinking in America. After doubling in size since 1960, the national average dropped for the first time in nearly 15 years (by 9%, the size of an average room). But far from this new average of 2,000 plus square feet are the so-called tiny houses. Also called wee homes, mini dwellings, or microhomes, their definition is not exact, but they run as small as 65 square feet.<p>The video is worth watching.
Upvote: | 51 |
Title: In the past year or two, I've had to explain closures--what they are and why they are interesting--several times. Usually, at the end of my explanation, the person doesn't get it, and they go back to doing whatever they are familiar with.<p>So, I ask HN to put yourselves in this scenario and tell me what your answer would be:<p>Joe is a talented but inexperienced developer. He's got a year or two of experience, maybe as much as 5, but he programs for a job, not for fun. Also, for whatever reason he's never encountered closures--most likely he's only worked in languages that don't really support them.<p>You want to explain to him (a) what they are and (b) why he would want to use them. You have about 10 seconds to get his interest before he starts thinking about his WoW raid tonight, and about 5 minutes for the whole explanation.<p>What do you say?
Upvote: | 69 |
Title: I've read about a lot of people developing services for a crowded market (or what some would call a saturated market) and still able to reach a 'ramen profitable' stage.<p>I do not want to point out specific startups, but recently read about Thymer, a project management app and Stunf's blog post on the launch here: http://stunf.com/blog/launch-the-week-after/<p>So to all those who have done it and are doing it, how did you guys do it?<p>P.S: Any links to articles dealing with topic?
Upvote: | 45 |
Title: In the early days of HN, there seemed to be a tight-knit group of entrepreneurs that offered support and advice to each other. Now when I read comments, there seems to be a race to see who can write the first criticism or who can pick out the first inconsistency.<p>Don't get me wrong, constructive criticism is essential for growth. But I feel like the atmosphere of the comments dialogue is becoming more and more negative each day. Am I the only one feeling this?<p>Maybe I'm just overly sensitive.
Upvote: | 74 |
Title: Fret War is a guitar competition site where contestants try to defeat lesser guitarists in weekly rounds playing randomly generated music. Awards are given each week for interpretation, accuracy, speed, and uniqueness.
Upvote: | 49 |
Title: Wow, see you in Portland Paul...<p>An invitation from Paul Graham:
I’m Paul Graham. I made it rich several years ago selling a company to Yahoo! I now spend my days thinking about problems, and publishing solutions to those problems. I have been on stage many times but I have never been portrayed by an actor on stage. At first, I had reservations, but I was pleased to find that an attractive, strapping man has been cast for my role. So come on November 11th to hear him, oh..ah me, give a lecture on constructive disagreement requiring the evacuation of the theatre and cake for all.<p>Stay for the Cake is an all-original work written, directed, designed and performed by The Montgomery Street Players, Portland Actors Conservatory’s new alumni performance group. Each of the three slices skewer the creative process with sardonic hilarity and cake for all! PAC will present one slice of the Cake at South Waterfront: “I Am Paul Graham.” We’ve heard it’s delicious!<p>Portland Actors Conservatory has been providing quality stage productions to the greater Portland community for 24 years. The Conservatory gives student actors the opportunity to put acting theory into practice in weekly performance labs, public showcases and the Conservatory Season of Plays.<p>Shows run Friday through Sunday October 30 through November 15
Upvote: | 52 |
Title: I wrote Kiwi for a project I just launched. I think it is quite a solid base for something better, so I'm putting it out there for any potential collaborators. Needs some work, feel free to fork or critique :)
Upvote: | 61 |
Title: Hey HN, this is my first submission, but I've been reading HN for quite a while now.<p>Last spring I completed my first year of study in Computer Science, at a relatively large American university. I took two courses in CS: Intro To Programming, and Data Structures. Both of these classes taught exclusively C++.<p>Besides a little Python (that I've completely forgotten), that is my background in programming.<p>Initially, I was satisfied with the courses I took. I'm taking a year off to travel (currently, I'm living in Japan), and I've been doing a bit of thinking. I've begun to realize, that while my professors preached that they were trying to teach me the underlying algorithms and not the language, I really only was taught how to do stuff in C/C++. I recently have been playing with SBCL, and I realized that I had no idea what I'm doing. I feel like most of the concepts they taught me depend completely on the way C++ works.<p>I've decided to correct this. I won't be back at the university for another 10 months, and during that time I want to learn a new language.<p>I've seen discussions about Scheme, Clojure, CL, C, C++, Java, Haskell, Erlang and so many more.<p>In your opinions, what should I learn, and how should I learn it? I don't really care about usefulness in the workplace, I just want to see what I know, and I want to learn more.<p>Anyway, I'm just feeling a little discouraged. I hate feeling like I'm wasting my time at a university to a tune of $20,000 a year. I'm sure I've learned valuable stuff, but it all feels very one-sided.<p>I really appreciate any advice. I've been really impressed with the entire community here, and I dislike feeling as though I have nothing to offer back.
Upvote: | 41 |
Title: I wrote Tempest to reliably generate image heatmaps/clickmaps in multiple languages with the same or similar API.<p>I also hate compiling dependencies, so each implementation is done purely in its targeted language instead of the common practice of implementing in C with language-specific bindings. Clearly, this has its own pros and cons.<p>I know it's far from perfect (it's still in beta), but I'd welcome any suggestions or constructive criticism from the HN community.
Upvote: | 58 |
Title: Email marketing is one of the most effective methods of advertising online yet the majority of companies are missing out. I have put together an outline on how to design and send emails, along with a few examples.
Upvote: | 44 |
Title: PG just finished his talk at Business of Software 2009 where he listed trends he would bet on and trends he would stay away from. Here are my hopefully correct notes:<p>-Trends to bet on-<p>Innovation<p>Software<p>Efficient Markets - More information leads to a new efficient market.<p>Measurement - You make what you measure.<p>United States<p>Silicon Valley<p>Small Companies<p>Economic Inequality<p>Moore's Law<p>Things on Screens<p>Server based apps<p>Super Good Customer Service<p>Apparently Frivolous Stuff (facebook)<p>Programming Languages<p>Open Source<p>Linux will never be a factor on the desktop<p>iPhone<p>Design<p>Real-Time<p>Venture Funding<p>Founders<p>-Things not to bet on-<p>Credentials based on institutions (degrees)<p>Business School<p>The Government changing<p>Copyright<p>Restricted flow of information (everything is getting more liquid)
Upvote: | 55 |
Title: Perhaps you remember my post here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=906168 about Apple not paying out for my iPhone apps and my state of brokeness.<p>I don't want to leave that accusation in the air without following up on what happened.<p>A couple of days later, the lady I was speaking to at Apple told me she would take care of the situation. She sent me daily updates on the status of the money, got in communication with all the different sections at the Apple corp and resolved the issue.<p>Apple actually reprogrammed iTunesConnect to fix my issue (if you upgraded from personal account to business account in the past, you may have noticed the new "Vendor Selection" option). The guy who seemed in charge of this was sending me updates on a saturday as well as a sunday, so it seemed he was at the office at the weekend doing this.<p>So, I'd like to say that indeed, a lot of it was my fault, and Apple really came through in the end, and the level of personal service was truely extra-ordinary.<p>Thanks Apple! I'm happy to be selling apps on your store! And thanks HN for discussing the issue so I could see it a bit clearer!
Upvote: | 143 |
Title: We're definitely seeing more overt troll comments lately. I'm not talking about baiting the Apple fanboys or spouting political talking points; I'm talking about comments with Slashdot "first-post" type nonsense.<p>That's not a big deal. The problem is, people here seem to feel compelled to point out to the troll that this is the "wrong site" to post to. They don't care. Who does care? The rest of us, who have to page through comment threads of people slapping each other on the back for telling off a troll.<p>We have moderation for a reason. Just let the troll comments drop to the bottom of the page. Can that be the new plan? And can we politely (and preferably out-of-band) ask people who do respond to troll comments to delete their comments to keep the threads clean?
Upvote: | 156 |
Title: I've heard it many times: cofounding a startup is like getting married. So, like the stories that couples tell, tell us your stories: how did you meet? From the first time you exchanged words, to the moment that you fully made the plunge .. what happened?
Upvote: | 46 |
Title: The world is full of problems that need solving. They're all around us. I'd say we run into at least 5 frustrations every day, whether those are frustrations we experience first hand or ones we overhear others complaining about, but we probably don't think much of them. So let's train our eyes/ears to recognize them!<p>So how about for the next day, November 12th, we try and pick up on 3 potential problems/complaints/frustrations we see ourselves and/or others facing. At 8PM Pacific time, I'll post another thread where we can all share our findings and possible solutions.<p>I figured it'd be a good way to get into the habit of recognizing problems, because really, no problem is too small.<p>What do you think?<p>EDIT: Some are saying that there are problems that just can't be solved ( a terribly attitude! ) like traffic lights, etc. Maybe then keep your problems to ones that can be solved within reason, like with a capable team.
Upvote: | 86 |
Title: I'm posting this with a new nick to hide my identity. I'm one of the top people (by karma) on HN and if I told you my nick or name you'd probably know me.<p>But I'm totally lost.<p>From the outside you'd be amazed to know that inside I am in terrible turmoil. You know me because of code I've written, books I've published, and my contributions here. Perhaps you follow me on Twitter. But I have reached a point in my life where I do not know what to do, or where to turn.<p>I'm in my early 40s, I've worked for start-ups and big companies. I made a little bit of money in the early 2000s which helped pay off a bit of mortgage. I have a family that depends on me financially. And yet I feel I have nothing to show.<p>I don't own my home, I don't have lots of savings, I have a job with a difficult boss. Because of the hours I work and commuting I barely see my children. I am utterly unhappy with my life.<p>Where should I turn? And what would you do?<p>I am tempted to totally change my life and stop working and create something new that will be challenging and interesting. Create something that I can do from home so that at least I am not a slave to my boss.
Upvote: | 366 |
Title: I believe that learning certain tools can make a programmer much more productive. What knowledge about tools do you have that makes you more productive?<p>Aim your advice toward a competent *nix user who knows a little about everything, but doesn't know anything in any real depth.
Upvote: | 59 |
Title: I have a little Android app (http://phonalyzr.com to see the bar chart) which displays graphs of a user's call history. Today I got a 5-star rating from a user who posted:<p>"I used this to show my GF that her bar chart block towered over my band. It got me laid that minute. Not kidding"<p>It reminded me of a this classic Jamie Zawinski blog post: http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html<p>"So I said, narrow the focus. Your "use case" should be, there's a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid?"<p>That was never MY use-case (my use-case being - I wonder if my call lengths follow a gausssian distribution?), but that post made me smile.
Upvote: | 111 |
Title: Alright folks. Idea day deadline has finally been reached, so let's hear the three (or more) problems/frustrations/annoyances you experienced/overheard/observed today with possible solutions!<p>This is in reference to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=937032 for those who are confused.
Upvote: | 46 |
Title: I'm 3 years out of college. The first year my product made the CEO a million dollars while I made less than $50k in salary and 0.01% equity. Ugh. I moved to another company which paid double that, and worked like a dog (80 hours weeks) for nearly two years, and was one of the most productive engineers. One of my products helped bring in over 6 million in VC investment money. After two years I asked for a raise, and didn't receive one, being told "we can't give raises during layoffs."<p>When I told them I was quitting, they offered me a giant (>25%) raise, but I couldn't stomach the thought of staying after accepting another offer, so I moved to another startup. I took my first project from $50 to $700+ daily revenue in 2 months by working 100 hours weeks. Yet because I take a modest salary, and have significant but non-founder equity (1-2%) to be vested over 4 years, I feel like I'm just making other people rich. I'm starting to become depressed. My sex life with my girlfriend has become non-existent. I dream about the rewards of hard work--I want to travel, to live the good life--but then I look at my life and see my twenties beginning to slip away, with a high likelihood of nothing but memories of hard work and my morning coffee to replace them. My company would have to be acquired for $10 million, at the very least, to make a very modest improvement to my lifestyle, and over $50 million to make any significant difference.<p>Am I being too impatient, or am I simply having my twenties milked by charismatic CEOs who know how to exploit eager young workers, and how can I even tell the difference? What is the best thing I can do, right now, to take control of my professional life? Is it okay to ask for more salary just two months into a position? I feel exhausted and exploited.
Upvote: | 92 |
Title: First off, Dustin -- sorry!
Second, I'm still relatively new to RoR and design stuff -- so, yes, I ripped off stuff that I liked from common sites I visit. :)<p>Anyways, I saw Dustin's post the other day about Snail, his new webapp and thought it was a pretty sweet idea. A couple days later, I saw that he tweeted about it not being too profitable at all. Bummer.<p>Then, last weekend, my dad happened to complain about having to find "damn stamps" every time he needed to mail a customer a invoice or receipt. (He's in construction, an industry that really doesn't use email for anything...)<p>Anyways, I threw this together and launched it on Monday and now mail off 20-30 letters a day. It's barely profitable but most of that is because I haven't automated some of the key steps... stuff I'll be doing over the next few days.<p>Today I threw some ghetto code together for another guy that wanted to be able to email stuff to me that gets automagically mailed off to his clients. I think I just doubled the amount of letters I send every day...<p>Anyways, I'd love some feedback: http://www.snailpad.com
Upvote: | 62 |
Title: Hi all, long-time reader, occasional poster here. You may remember me as this guy:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=653655<p>Just wanted to let you know that in big part thanks to some ideas I've got here, my last day at Big Soul Sucking Corp. is next week, and then I'm jumping into my own business full time :))<p>I still don't have a hot billion dollar idea, but I've decided to open a software development company (don't want to self-promote, if you're interested, there's a link in my profile). I've got some clients already, been working on it 4-5 hours every day for the last 4 months, and now actually making enough money to survive without a day job (ramen-survive, but still).<p>I also started another business, it has nothing to do with computers/technology, but it is bringing in an income stream too, and has potential to grow (international wholesale trading, if you're interested).<p>So, just wanted to say a big THANK YOU to everyone on this board, who provided an inspiration for me over the years to finally "make a leap". Thank you!
Upvote: | 58 |
Title: *during high winds at 5:50am on a Sunday morning
Upvote: | 70 |
Title: "Psystar just got what's coming to them in the California case. Here's the order [PDF]. It's a total massacre. Psystar's first-sale defense went down in flames. Apple's motion for summary judgment on copyright infringement and DMCA violation is granted. Apple prevailed also on its motion to seal."
Upvote: | 43 |
Title: I'm thinking of using Amazon's EC2 to run my database and web farm but I'm concerned about the intense IO that's required to run the database. I've shared resources on a vps in the past and it's been a nightmare. I know they offer high IO servers that have limited sharing but it's still sharing.<p>Has anyone had good or bad experience running a high IO operation using EC2?
Upvote: | 62 |
Title: Dear HN,
This is a plea for advice. I've recently decided to take the plunge and learn how to code. I have my own startup that I foolishly outsourced, and I've decided that there really is no other way around it then sitting down and learning to hack myself, and then iterating the product once I have a better handle on things.<p>Items I submit for consideration:<p>1. I have a site already running (more or less, it will be at least within the week) on rails. I have no idea what is going on, but I'd like to figure it out and be able to change functionalities as I learn about my customers.<p>2. I have never coded before. Not even once. I still don't understand what a hash is, really. Aside from taking a class, I really don't know the best way to learn. I've been reading books, but reading hasn't been doing much for me, since I'm not really absorbing the material. I want to try 'testing' things out...I don't know if that makes sense, but I feel like if I have exercises to do, I will understand concepts much faster then simply reading.<p>3. I have availability to take courses. But, I do not know what courses to take. I am based out of the bay area, and am open to suggestions for classes for beginners.<p>4. I have a self-imposed deadline of four months. Is this enough time to be able to handle simple, workable functions on rails? (The common answer, my guess is, is that it's completely up to me. But I'm just looking for perspective. what can I possibly get accomplished, if I am starting from scratch?)<p>Also, supplemental 5: Would there be anyone out there who would be willing to learn with me? I think having a partner would help tremendously, but I don't know where to find people in such a situation.<p>Please let me know your thoughts.
Upvote: | 44 |
Title: On the hypothesis that this site selects for certain personality types that are different from the general population, I decided to run some simple statistics on the results of yesterday's MBTI poll (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=943722).<p>I compared the frequencies of each of the types to the population means on the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator#Type_dynamics_and_development). The results show that we are a very atypical group indeed:<p><pre><code> Using a binomial test at a 99% confidence level.
ISTJ is significant: 1.82% ( 12/660) vs. 11.60% expected.
ISFJ is significant: 0.61% ( 4/660) vs. 13.80% expected.
INFJ is NOT significant: 2.12% ( 14/660) vs. 1.50% expected.
INTJ is significant: 31.21% (206/660) vs. 2.10% expected.
ISTP is significant: 2.42% ( 16/660) vs. 5.40% expected.
ISFP is significant: 0.15% ( 1/660) vs. 8.80% expected.
INFP is significant: 8.48% ( 56/660) vs. 4.30% expected.
INTP is significant: 28.94% (191/660) vs. 4.30% expected.
ESTP is significant: 0.45% ( 3/660) vs. 4.30% expected.
ESFP is significant: 0.15% ( 1/660) vs. 8.50% expected.
ENFP is significant: 3.33% ( 22/660) vs. 8.10% expected.
ENTP is significant: 8.48% ( 56/660) vs. 3.30% expected.
ESTJ is significant: 1.36% ( 9/660) vs. 8.70% expected.
ESFJ is significant: 0.76% ( 5/660) vs. 12.30% expected.
ENFJ is NOT significant: 2.27% ( 15/660) vs. 2.40% expected.
ENTJ is significant: 7.42% ( 49/660) vs. 1.80% expected.
</code></pre>
The data are up-to-date as of about 20 minutes ago. Here's the script I used to generate these results: http://gist.github.com/236850<p>EDIT:<p>Here are the results broken down by pairs:<p><pre><code> FP is significant: 12.12% ( 80/660) vs. 29.70% expected.
TP is significant: 40.30% (266/660) vs. 17.30% expected.
FJ is significant: 5.76% ( 38/660) vs. 30.00% expected.
NJ is significant: 43.03% (284/660) vs. 7.80% expected.
NF is NOT significant: 16.21% (107/660) vs. 16.30% expected.
TJ is significant: 41.82% (276/660) vs. 24.20% expected.
NP is significant: 49.24% (325/660) vs. 20.00% expected.
NT is significant: 76.06% (502/660) vs. 11.50% expected.
EN is significant: 21.52% (142/660) vs. 15.60% expected.
EJ is significant: 11.82% ( 78/660) vs. 25.20% expected.
IP is significant: 40.00% (264/660) vs. 22.80% expected.
IS is significant: 5.00% ( 33/660) vs. 39.60% expected.
EF is significant: 6.52% ( 43/660) vs. 31.30% expected.
IT is significant: 64.39% (425/660) vs. 23.40% expected.
IJ is significant: 35.76% (236/660) vs. 29.00% expected.
IN is significant: 70.76% (467/660) vs. 12.20% expected.
ET is NOT significant: 17.73% (117/660) vs. 18.10% expected.
EP is significant: 12.42% ( 82/660) vs. 24.20% expected.
ES is significant: 2.73% ( 18/660) vs. 33.80% expected.
IF is significant: 11.36% ( 75/660) vs. 28.40% expected.
SP is significant: 3.18% ( 21/660) vs. 27.00% expected.
ST is significant: 6.06% ( 40/660) vs. 30.00% expected.
SJ is significant: 4.55% ( 30/660) vs. 46.40% expected.
SF is significant: 1.67% ( 11/660) vs. 43.40% expected.
</code></pre>
Apparently, 76% of Hacker News is an NT type of one type or another. I've updated the Gist link above with the code that computes this.
Upvote: | 50 |
Title: I've been doing web application development (and general programming) for almost 10 years now. I've also done a lot database design, working with very large databases, and optimizing queries, etc. But I have no biology experience.<p>I've always wanted to work with new biological technologies, for example figuring out what genes do, or how proteins fold, or anything cool like that where I can increase the world's knowledge.<p>It seems to me that a good programmer would be useful for these types of jobs. Does anyone have advice for how to enact this career shift?
Upvote: | 70 |
Title: I'm a programmer and I don't know much about business but I'd like to start my own venture. What are some good resources (books, websites, etc.) for learning the basics of business?
Upvote: | 65 |
Title: How do you go about spreading the word about your product or service? I am more specifically interested in website or desktop application?<p>Also what are the usual mechanisms for you to get contacts of sites/bloggers who can review you app?
Upvote: | 42 |
Title: Hello everyone<p>As part of my site, I need to allow users to transfer funds to the site's account (later to be used for online purchases).<p>It seems that the most common option, is using PayPal. But, for small transactions (<500$) the fee is close to 4%. That cuts very deeply into our profit margin.<p>Can anyone recommend other (cheaper) ways to allow users to transfer funds to a site ?
Upvote: | 41 |
Title: I'm currently evaluating potential new angel investments. Checking out hacker news as a potential source of discovering interesting startups in need of some help.
Upvote: | 59 |
Title: We've had a couple of popular hiring threads in the past so it'd be great to have some updates.<p>"Are you hiring? Does your company (or your friend's) have openings? Let HN know!!! Let's get some good people good jobs."<p>Internships and contracting are also welcome. Previously:<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=375410 [Ask HN: Who's Hiring?]<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=759452 [Ask HN: Who's Hiring? (take 2)]<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=759756 [Ask HN: Who's Hiring... Students?]
Upvote: | 162 |
Title: I want to learn statistics and data mining. I can't afford to buy many books right now, so I'm asking for one or two on the topic, and also one or two available online, as ordering through amazon would take a month for shipping.<p>I'd like to get your opinions before spending time on random books. Thanks a lot.<p>P.S. My math background is not very strong but I'm willing to learn.
Upvote: | 105 |
Title: Are there APIs that you wish existed to help make your work easier? Help your startup? Or just allow you to build cool products?
Upvote: | 68 |
Title: I'm thinking of trading on either the FX or Stock markets using ML algorithms (primarily neural networks) on an intraday timescale. Does anyone have any experience in doing this? Any tips/stories/recommendations on brokers, data, etc? Is it a complete waste of time to try without being a big fish (I've only got about 10K to venture on this)?
Upvote: | 53 |
Title: I used to be a freelance web developer. (Before you ask: vim, Rails, MacBook Pro, and BSD servers - OpenBSD to store private data, and FreeBSD to scale; everything else is for failures)<p>The biggest pain about this, clients aside, is having to deal with the designers. I understand that they use a different part of the brain than I do, but some things are simply ridiculous.<p>From my experience in dealing with them, designers can either produce incredible work but be extremely difficult to work with, or produce eye pollution and be great to work with.<p>Does anyone know of a designer that produces good work without making you want to kill yourself? If you're a designer looking for work, send your portfolio to nick[at]whitepaperclip[dot]com<p>[edit] Web work; I don't want HTML/CSS coded.<p>My email is nick[at]whitepaperclip[dot]com
Upvote: | 89 |
Title: Although I enjoy reading hacker news, I haven't found a satisfying interface for doing so. I have major gripes with both the website interface and the RSS feed.<p>Why I dislike the website interface:<p>--Front page stories are not in chronological order (I can't keep track of which stories I've already read)<p>--Stories are limited to the latest 210 (if I don't visit frequently, I can't see which stories I've missed)<p>--Links to comments are too small and not not in a consistent location horizontally (I almost always want to read the discussion before I click through to the external site)<p>--I would also like to be able to filter stores that are below a certain points threshold.<p>Why I dislike using the RSS feed:<p>--Does not show the number of points or the number of comments (crucial for selecting what to read)<p>I'm not just trying to be a hater; I think these things significantly harm my experience here.<p>So, am I just ignorant of better ways to consume HN? Do these things not annoy you too?
Upvote: | 62 |
Title: Over the course of the past week I designed and wrote a plugin for jQuery which provides a client-side implementation of the "Sandbag" approach to getting text/content to wrap around the actual contents of a floated image (as opposed to the typical bounding box you are usually stuck with).
Upvote: | 43 |
Title: I'm at step #1: admitting I have a problem.<p>I consider myself a skilled programmer, but for the past few years my ability to sit down and finish a project has been waning. HN, do you have any advice?
Upvote: | 82 |
Title: Its a couple paragraphs down, but these are companies that have been found to sell your credit card numbers to 3rd parties. I have used Fandango for a long time, but never will again.<p>"The government says the investigation shows that Webloyalty, Affinion, and Vertrue "trick" consumers into entering their e-mail address just before they complete purchases at sites such as Orbitz, Priceline.com, Buy.com, 1-800 Flowers, Continental Airlines, Fandango, and Classmates.com. A Web ad, which many consumers say appears to be from the retailer, offers them cash back or coupon if they key in their e-mail address."
Upvote: | 59 |
Title: I've read a lot of posts here on HN about start-up tips and advice. Many are good, but some are too vague to be actionable. Others, while useful, sometimes repeat common themes.<p>I run a start-up that is relatively successful. I am a long time lurker on HN, and wanted to give back to the community. I don’t have a personal blog, and HN is the primary audience I want to share this with, so apologies in advance for the formatting.<p>Although they might sound similar to other posts, hopefully these tips will be unique enough for someone to find useful. I know that they've been worthwhile for me.<p>== 1. Learn to say "no" gracefully ==
A lot of tips stress the importance of saying "no", turning down projects that you can’t do, and focusing on your core competencies. This is all great advice. However, in my experience, saying no is not always an easy task. Often times, you’ll be saying "no" to an existing partner, or someone with whom you might want to develop a business relationship in the future. It’s important to learn how to say "no" gracefully, burning no bridges in the process. By all means, be clear in your response, but don’t be a jerk about it, and leave the option open for future discussion at a time of your choosing.<p>Most online industries have relatively small social circles, and it’s important to be respectful, even if you can’t possibly understand why you might want something that another person is offering. Situations and circumstances change; you might need those connections in the future.<p>== 2. Negotiate everything ==
Get in the habit of negotiating everything. "You don’t ask, you don’t get". Remember that phrase and repeat it to yourself. Revenue shares, commissions, server costs, bandwidth costs, CDN costs, software costs, marketing costs, conference ticket prices and contracts are all negotiable. At first you might feel weird asking for a discount, but pretty soon you get used to it, and it will become natural. Contrary to what you might assume, most people won’t find your request offensive, and you wont sound like a jerk. You don’t ask, you don’t get.<p>You’ll find it changes your life, not just your business. I negotiate everything now, and it’s probably saved me thousands of dollars this year alone, all for a few minutes of work. Car repairs, hotel prices, restaurant reservation times, and most recently an engagement ring from a high end jeweler that supposedly "didn’t negotiate" ;) Remember: you don’t ask, you don’t get.<p>== 3. Don’t obsess over stats ==
If you run an online business, it is easy to get caught up in the habit of checking your stats repeatedly throughout the day. Maybe you check your revenue reports every hour. You know how it’s "supposed" to look at 11AM on a Friday, and if it isn’t hitting your past targets you get discouraged and distracted, searching for a reason. Maybe your traffic is slightly down from what it was a week ago.<p>The problem with this is three-fold. First, it’s a huge distraction. It takes your attention away from other tasks you could be doing. It distracts your focus from long term, strategic thinking. Second, day to day (or even hour to hour) data is unreliable and unpredictable. There are seasonal trends. There are 500 other factors outside your control. Third, it accomplishes nothing. Checking your stats isn’t going to change them.<p>Start checking your stats only once a day, at most. That way, you’ll be alerted to any potentially significant changes (i.e. your ecommerce engine is down), but still be able to keep focused on your daily tasks and the big picture, which is going to make more of a difference in the long run.<p>== 4. Make money ==
Ok, so this one is pretty obvious. But it’s shocking how often it is ignored. There are plenty of reasons to justify starting a business. Maybe you want to work for yourself, maybe you like the challenge, or maybe you really want to change the world. But it won’t matter if you aren’t making any money. Trust me.<p>A lot of times you will be faced with hard choices. Should I put this ad up here? Will this feature make my app/site look too commercial? Should I charge? If you don’t have a proven business model, you need to make figuring it out your NUMBER ONE priority.<p>If you’re only getting 1,000 visitors a day, it might seem hard to justify putting up an ad to get what might seem like chump change. But, by doing so, you’ll understand where your money is coming from, and what kind of traffic levels it will take to get you to where you really want to go. Most importantly, you might find that your business model doesn’t really scale, and it will force you to think of a new one. Better now than later. Don’t fool yourself into thinking otherwise, or you’ll just be delaying the inevitable.
Upvote: | 153 |
Title: A friend and I will be giving a talk to a group of computer science students in a few weeks. We're both students ourselves, but are a bit older and have more working experience than the average attendee will probably have.<p>Here are some of the ideas we've had so far:<p>- Present on "using and knowing the tools" from OS to editor to libraries.<p>- Something interactive, like working as a group through one of the problems from the New Turing Omnibus.<p>- Talk about the social aspects of coding, like group dynamic and collaboration tools, and maybe introduce pair programming.<p>The audience will be mostly undergraduate CS students. My friend and I are 25, and have worked freelance and at startups/medium sized companies on mostly Rails, PHP, and Java web apps for 5+ years. We have a lot to learn ourselves, and see this speaking opportunity as a way to better ourselves as presenters and learn more about the topic we pick.<p>So, what's a good topic? What's something every CS grad wishes they had learned or heard about? Thanks in advance for your suggestions!
Upvote: | 44 |
Title: What's a reasonable range of equity (options) for a first employee (engineer; two nontechnical founders) with a 500k convertible-debt seed round?
Upvote: | 80 |
Title: More than 350 million active users; Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics)<p>(6.7 billion * 24 hours)/(350 million * 55 minutes) = 500<p>It's unclear how they're measuring time spent on the site, but most of Facebook's statistics seem to be honest (they only count active users, etc).
Upvote: | 60 |
Title: I have been job hunting for the better part of six months. Although it is disappointing that the market is overwhelmingly biased towards web developers and I've yet to receive a single offer, what has irked me most is the apparent lowered standard of courtesy and care displayed by some employers, with larger companies more likely to be offenders. (Going into an interview without really studying a candidate's resume, being disappointed that a new graduate doesn't have more professional experience, taking much too long between correspondence, not notifying of rejection after interview, etc...)<p>Yes, employers more often than not have much more on their plate than applicants, but having passed through enough of the screening process to have a face-to-face interview for a position starting ASAP, I can't help but feel offended when the other party do not have the courtesy to say "Sorry; good luck."<p>But, enough of that: I would like to get the other point of view.<p>As an employer, what are some of the things you wish applicants did more of to make the whole process smoother and generally more pleasant for everybody involved?
Upvote: | 74 |
Title: Nobody seems to have noticed the other Google DNS IP that they haven't disclosed yet. It's 4.3.2.1<p>You heard it here first. :-)
Upvote: | 69 |
Title: EtherPad was probably the most useful web app I have ever used. The main use case of EtherPad for me was that I embedded it into my startup's blog, so that we could seamlessly collaborate on blog posts together and it would auto-save, etc.<p>Now that EtherPad has been killed, what are some alternatives? Is there any other embeddable, collaborative text editor out there?<p>It looks like old EtherPads are still active for the next couple months, so until March, I will probably be abusing the crap out of a poor, used EtherPad. It would be great to migrate onto a more permanent solution though.
Upvote: | 71 |
Title: I run Obsidian Portal ( http://www.obsidianportal.com ), a content management system for tabletop RPGs (ie. Dungeons & Dragons). We've been doing this for about 3 years now.<p>When I originally started, I (naively) believed that the publisher of D&D would see the value of what we were doing and immediately acquire us. Back then, I just thought that's how things worked. Make a site, get bought out, go buy expensive car.<p>Fast forward 3 years, and they've never once contacted us. I actually met one of their web developers at a convention, and introduced myself. First thing he said: "Yeah, we know who you are..." So, they definitely have heard of us, and frankly at this point, it would be impossible for them not to know who we are.<p>Anyways, we instituted a freemium model about 1.5 years back and things have been great. We've got a lot of premium subscribers, and the ranks are swelling every day. We're not rich, but we're getting close to ramen profitable.<p>However, we've started to hear rumors that the publisher is getting ready to develop their own campaign management system. They tried once before and failed miserably, but their new team is very competent and I have every reason to believe they'll succeed this time around. With their exclusive access to all the copyrighted material, I'm pretty sure it will be a big hit, even if they lack some of the cool features we have. Plus, I fully expect them to borrow heavily from our feature-set. It's what I'd do in their place...<p>So, I'm frustrated and worried that they're about to enter the arena with a big advantage (ie. the brand and the exclusive content) and I won't be able to compete. Still, it seems that even after all this time, my site remains a perfect fit to be acquired. We could deliver exactly what they're looking for without all the risk of developing it from scratch.<p>Since they've never once tried to contact me all this time, is it time I put a foot forward? I've read the conventional wisdom that "companies are bought, not sold", but my shy-girl-at-the-dance stance of waiting to be asked so far hasn't generated any results.<p>How do I go about making that first contact? Who do I contact? Do I propose some kind of partnership in the hopes that the relationship grows from there?<p>Any advice here would be greatly appreciated.
Upvote: | 47 |
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