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Title: Hello everyone<p>After reading all I could find on Python/Django/Ajax/JS/etc, I find myself able to write simple sites (blogs/etc). But I still don't know how to do a real project.<p>- Methods and tools to updating/patching a working server (with thousands of users).
- Creating scalable sites
- Setting up a testing environment
And much more.<p>Can any one recommend articles/books on programming that go beyond the "blog app" ?
Upvote: | 58 |
Title: http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=208
Upvote: | 59 |
Title: Hi Everyone,<p>This is the first time that I've submitted anything here, but I lurk and read HN daily. My partner Joe and I just launched a suite of tools for building 2D web games with pure JavaScript and we'd really love your feedback. <p>http://www.effectgames.com<p>Briefly: we're a web developer and designer who are both very heavily into video games. While trying to avoid any negativity around Flash, we thought standard and open web tech would be a better basis for creating games (plus we're more familiar with JavaScript).<p>We have been working on this off and on for over four years, and now we're ready to release the "Effect Engine" -- a pure JavaScript / DHTML framework for displaying and animating game graphics, playing sounds & music, handling keyboard & mouse, and performing sprite collision detection. It smoothly renders multiple layers of parallax scrolling tiles and sprites without requiring Canvas or SVG (so it plays nicely with all modern browsers).<p>Right now, we're working on expanding some of the available game demos to full blown titles (for example: http://www.effectgames.com/effect/games/crystalgalaxy/1.0b), but that doesn't mean that the engine is done.<p>We're planning on launching a slew of new features in the coming months, but we've gotten to a point where we'd really appreciate some feedback for improving Effect.<p>As excited as we are about finally getting to create the games that we've had in our heads for years, we're even more excited to see what our friends on HN can do!<p>Min and Joe
Upvote: | 103 |
Title: It would be interesting and useful to know who the top 5, 10 or even 20 designers are and what they've done that's so impressive, innovative, useful or loved.
Upvote: | 64 |
Title: From the site:<p>Coding Horror experienced 100% data loss at our hosting provider, CrystalTech.<p>I have some backups and I'll try to get it up and running ASAP!
Upvote: | 223 |
Title: From some previous topics I've seen many Dutch people active on Hacker News. I guess it is time to organise a meet-up. So leave a comment if you are in. And of course it would nice if we get his post somehow visible long enough to reach more people.
Upvote: | 58 |
Title: You can create your own or pick from hundreds of artist designs.
Upvote: | 80 |
Title: Amazon's Kindle felt right. When it was announced I thought "finally!". Seth Godin (a popular marketing author) predicted back in '98 that Amazon was building what he called a "permission asset" that would later be leveraged to disrupt the entire book publishing industry when Amazon would supplant the publisher by allowing authors to publish directly via Amazon's platform... ala what is now the Kindle and it's open "Digital Text Platform".<p>Kindle also felt right because if felt like an iPod. Apple had already shown the world a great model for building a system capable of replacing atoms with bits: iPod + iTunes. iPod success was in the design not only of it's digital music player but of the entire music delivery/experience system; from the simplicity of the clickwheel to the immense library that would become the iTunes Music Store. Every music retail store you've stepped into at the mall, every music section at walmart or best buy... all displaced by Apple (once thought of as a mere technology company) as the iTunes store is now the #1 music retailer on or off line. It's clear if there is a model to follow for taking a analog system to a digital system one should study iPod + Itunes.<p>That's just what Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon) did when he hired ex Apple employees to help design the Kindle system (from frog design and ammunition group). No wonder a Kindle "feels like an iPod".<p>but<p>it's too easy<p>this is all too easy, I mean after all I was anticipating Amazon to "ipod-ize" the book.<p>This unease came to me when I played with the Barnes & Noble Nook (currently Kindle's only real competition other than physical books or ignorant people who think reading is a waste of time ;)<p>You see the Nook is good, real good... maybe a better overall design than the Kindle. Ammunition Group (a kick ass design firm started by an ex-Apple employee, the same firm that designed the Dre Beats headphones) was hired by Barnes & Noble to design not just the product but the entire system, so Robert Brunner (the ex Apple employee) "ipod-ized" the book and called it... a nook. I think B&N knows they must transition to digital and so the nook was taken seriously (unlike Sony who proved they are complete idiots to actual put advertising money behind their half-baked e-reader). The nook is just as good as the Kindle if not better.<p>So why do I feel uneasy? Because two companies who are in the business of pushing books have come up with nearly identical solutions... feels like the mp3 player market before Apple introduced the iPod... feels like the smart phone market before Apple introduced the iPhone. The companies who thought they were "in the business of _______" developed digital means to push their content or solve problems. Then Apple showed those companies that they had wasted a lot of money to come up with a solution to the wrong problem, that they had designed (or not designed) a solution to a problem that either didn't exists or only existed because they created it. Apple rethought the "problem" to render a completely different solution.<p>So Kindles cool but obvious (with muscle behind it), Nook is even cooler and just as obvious a solution, and Sony's e-reader is just that, a generic e-reader that I don't even know the name of (probably because it's something like EF-485n).<p>Maybe my unease is just me being too sensitive to the elements at play, looking for something that isn't there...<p>or<p>and here's my prediction<p>Apple will try to solve a better problem. (re-read that line... not "Apple will introduce a better solution, but they will solve a better problem")<p>The problem?<p>Personal computers come in many forms, but none have been accommodating enough to serve as adequate alternatives to the physical forms that manifest of print media: book, magazine and newspapers. Paper for all it's "oldness" has unmatched display resolution, convenience and cultural characteristics. Paper has been one of man's best friends.<p>It's possible Amazon and B&N asked "how can I make a better reading experience?". But I wonder how exploratory they were in finding an answer since they both ended up with "let's put e-ink in their hands with 3g and long battery life".<p>If there is a "better problem" that can be identified maybe it's this: taking audio/video from atoms to bits was invisible to the average person and was only experienced as a increase in convenience or capability (think digital music, digital television, tivo, voip, etc). But how to approach the content normally manifested unto print media? The answer is not easy. You see by all futurists accounts the Internet should have already done away with print media, but we just can't let go of our paper.<p>There will be a form of technology that will serve as a lever by which many people will let go of paper. The company that invents that lever will inherit much power and responsibility to continue paper's many missions and uses.<p>Here we have a problem far more pervasive than what an "e-book" could attempt to solve.<p>So either the e-book is a technology that is part of a larger evolutionary trend towards a technological means capable of ultimately supplanting paper or the e-book is technology designed using a fallacious visual metaphor (we use a graphical user interface modeled after what researchers saw in their office environment: a desktop, files and folders... why we call the main screen a "desktop" with "files" on it).<p>If the latter is true, that the e-book is like artists 1950's rendering of what flying cars would look like (usually a sexy car with wings stuck on it), that it IS "too easy" (this whole idea of an e-book)... well then Apple needs to come to our savior! (of course Apple, who else?...Microsoft? Sony? Hah!)<p>What if you took the design elements inherent in paper (which are completely taken for granted, therefore invisible to almost anyone without a trained eye) and attempted not to emulate their characteristics but instead to render the same EXPERIENCE that they render (think insanely high resolution, high visual bandwidth, easy navigation, convenience, etc).<p>Maybe you'd end up with a tablet with the entire top surface being multi-touch. The screen would feature Mary Lou Jepsen's hybrid e-ink capable of color multimedia AND high resolution "virtual paper". The device would have 3g connectivity and long battery life. But MOST importantly the way the user interacts with the interface would re-create the ease of use rendered by our interaction with print media. This last part, about the user interface, is why I believe Apple is best positioned to tackle this problem.<p>In one year's time we'll see. 2010 should be the year paper learns of it's destiny, the year we reach a tipping point on our way towards bits from the momentum of atoms.<p>So there's my thoughts, "ipod-izing" seems to easy, sony's dumb, paper's smart, Mary Lou Jepsen left OLPC for a reason, Dr. Carlin Vieri being on Pixel Qi's board can't be coincidence, Nicholas Negroponte is the father of "atoms to bits" and probably told Mary Lou Jepsen she has something big with her hybrid screen magic, and lastly I strongly believe the success of iPod+iTunes rests in the designers knowing in exactly what forms to manifest exactly what interactions (you can't delete songs on the iPod from the iPod, seems counterintuitive right? but it's actually a side-effect of brilliant design).<p>Navigating to find content on the Kindle or Nook is poor, which would be ok if we would be happy with just having ebooks in our hands versus also having emagazines and enewspapers. Once you add the rest of the paper world of content navigation would become lackluster at best.<p>So Apple might solve the problem of manifesting the interaction of navigating content better by melding multi-touch+Pixel Qi Screen+apples always kick ass interface design.<p>And those are my thoughts on "e-ink media".<p>comment if you think our kids will one day be rummaging through the attic and stumble upon a kindle/nook and think "lol, they thought the book's form was necessary to render the experience of the book when in fact the books form was an evolutionary design revolving around the paper's dimensions and people adapted to it's form in order to extract their ideal experiences."<p>oh and one more thing, the picture is of OLPC's vision for the second version of it's "childrens machine". Often when you "design for the extremes" you end up bring newfound value to the mainstream users. The XO is designed for the extreme purpose of getting a laptop in the hands of every child in the world, and therefore it's design has already invented what we now call the "netbook" and will probably bring to life another design paradigm with the XO2. The XO2 would use less than 1watt of power (your laptop uses 60-100watts) and cost less than $100 (your laptop was overpriced).
Upvote: | 43 |
Title: I'd like to set up a webhost just to play around with during my spare time. I'd like some kind of virtual private server so I can have root access and customize it to my heart's content.<p>I don't need anything too expensive. Does anyone have suggestions?
Upvote: | 106 |
Title: What are the best shiny new technologies that you worked with this past year? I'm always interested in hearing about what others are working with, and loving.<p><i>edit</i> I'd also love to hear what you love about it and why.
Upvote: | 90 |
Title: I just flagged 10 obvious spam posts, spread over the past 8 hours. I realize that most of HN has been asleep for approximately these hours; but please join me in reading http://news.ycombinator.com/noobstories and flagging the spam.<p>PG: Please make this easier by putting [flag] links directly onto the noobstories page.
Upvote: | 58 |
Title: Right now to flag something is to recommend that it be killed. I'm thinking of adding additional types of flags that are more specific, and less draconian. The goal is to create things
between a flag and a downvote, or maybe even to replace downvotes
in some cases. The two most obvious options are to allow
comments to be flagged as uncivil, and frivolous. The numbers of these flags (but not who issued them) would be displayed to
whoever posted the comment in question. So this would be a
way to tell someone to stop being a jerk, or posting dumb stuff,
without having to write a comment to say so.<p>Any opinions about the types of flags there should be, and how
they should work?
Upvote: | 132 |
Title: Lyrical excerpts from the past decade of Jay-Z's most inspirational business-themed rhymes
Upvote: | 42 |
Title: Last week we all had a very interesting investigation ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=997508 ) of how apple seems to have come up with a css/js/html5 framework called pastryKit to make really good "native-looking" web-apps on the iphone before they ever started with the whole app store idea. Some of us, like myself went and looked at it ( http://help.apple.com/iphone/3/mobile/ ) and then pulled it down and put it up on github so we can take a look at what they are doing and learn how we too could do some of the same css transforms, transitions and "flick" scrolling like they do in their code.<p>Well, it looks like Apple is scared to death of that idea. They want to make sure that the web-app experience on the iphone (except for their own help system) remains crippled and seemingly second class when you compare it to one of their native apps (even though their own help system shows the it <i>is</i> possible for it to be just as good). It looks like they went straight to gitHub and forced them to take it down. Here's the email I got from them. Bummer!!<p>I'm writing to inform you that we have received a takedown notice from Apple regarding your repo, PastryKit. We have made the repo and all forks private so that they are no longer publicly accessible. If we do not receive a counter-notice from you within 10-14 days the repo will be deleted.<p>I would like to encourage you to read up on the DMCA takedown procedure and your rights here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act<p><pre><code> Tekkub
GitHub Tech Support
http://support.github.com/
Join us on IRC: #github on freenode.net
Discussion group: [email protected]</code></pre>
Upvote: | 65 |
Title: I was just browsing through "The Economist Numbers Guide," and read the part on inflation. Here's the part that jumped out at me, which I thought the econ geeks here would find thought-provoking:<p>"Accounting for inflation is easy in a numerical sense. The ugly dragon is nothing more than an interest charge. The annual rate of inflation is compounded yearly." (p.51)<p>I've heard inflation referred to as a "hidden tax" (which it is), but framing it as compound interest charged to all dollars circulating in an economy is new to me. The beneficiary of this "interest" is the monetary issuer (the central bank) and the member banks that receive the use of this new money first, before the money is devalued due to the increase in supply.<p>Think of the Fed (or your respective central bank) as the equivalent of a big JP Morgan Chase / MBNA / Bank of America credit card, charging you interest on every dollar in your pocket every second of every day, without your permission or consent. At any time, the central bank has the power to increase the interest rate (by printing more money), and there's no way you can opt-out outside of reverting to bartering for goods directly.<p>They don't even have to bill you: your money simply becomes less valuable over time, so it takes more currency to buy the same goods. If you're like 99.999% of the human population that holds some form of fiat currency, you're paying compound annual interest to the central bank in exchange for nothing. Eventually, the currency becomes worthless - historically, every fiat currency ever created as eventually lost 100% of its value. It's less a question of "if" and more a question of "when".<p>Now I have a better idea of what Mayer Amschel Rothschild meant when he said, "Give me control of a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws."
Upvote: | 41 |
Title: For the year 2010, I plan to:
1. Learn Clojure and CLisp.
2. Learn Erlang
3. Learn to play the violin
4. Start exercising seriously again.
5. Take up photography
6. Become a better friend, brother, uncle, son and cousin.(despite the AS diagnosis)
7. try to find inner peace and purpose.
Upvote: | 53 |
Title: Hello HNers,<p>Those that I've had personal contact with outside of the forum and everybody else too.<p>2009 has been a tumultuous year there has been lots of change both personal, business wise and in the world at large.<p>December 7th I was a HN member for exactly a year and when cleaning up my inbox the other day I suddenly realized that there is more out-of-band communication between other HN people and myself in my inbox than from any other group of people that I've ever been involved with.<p>What an amazing community this is.<p>Thank you all for a wonderful time in 2009, especially those that took the time out to educate me on subjects where I was as curious as the 3 year old from long ago asking 'why' all the time.<p>greetings, & all the best to you and yours!<p><pre><code> Jacques Mattheij</code></pre>
Upvote: | 74 |
Title: Everyone has goals, what are your top goals for 2010?
Upvote: | 40 |
Title: PG, have you ever considered doing another startup? Or, even if you aren't considering it anymore, did you ever consider it after finishing up at Yahoo? If so, what would it be? Merry Christmas
Upvote: | 58 |
Title: :-)
Upvote: | 113 |
Title: Please see http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html and feel free to add your own.<p>1. Spotify (for the music element)
2. Chrome
3. Twitter/BBC News
4. service-now.com
5. 37 signals
6. ??
7. ??
8. Match/Plentyoffish
9. Facebook
10. eBay
11. Google Docs/ Zoho
12. Adwords/Adsense
13. University of Phoenix
14. ??
15. ??
16. Bing
17. Paypal
18. ChromeOS
19. AWS/Rackspace
20. Thefind
21. Mint/Quickbooks
22. Google Docs/Zoho
23. ??
24. ??
25. Gumtree/Facebook
26. ??
27. ??
28. Gmail with filtering
29. Too many to list
30. ??
Upvote: | 54 |
Title: A second question is: What are some things you wished you knew before you started getting into programming?<p>I'm just starting, but I guess as a girl who majored in the social sciences, I don't have as many friends interested in computers. A very nice person from the Boston Lisp meet-up tipped me off to Felleisen et al. "How to Design Programs", as well as their paper comparing their text to the standard "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs."
Upvote: | 45 |
Title: Just a question for the people who have been here longer and contribute more than I do. It used to always seem I could find some of the most cutting edge links about many aspects of technology and hacking. Now there is a lot of content, most of which is awesome and I usually click on anyway, but it's not as tech/hacker centric. Is this good? Should it maybe be split into two news portals? I dunno.
Upvote: | 63 |
Title: Currently I have a Code directory which is littered with all sorts of stuff and in general is pretty unorganized. Between small code snippets and fully-fledged projects, the whole directory is a complete mess.<p>So, how do you organize your code?
Upvote: | 41 |
Title: I've been working as a developer at the same job for almost 5 years. While the work is somewhat interesting and challenging, I'd hardly say it's something I'm passionate about. On top of that, I'm working with proprietary technology in a proprietary programming language.<p>My problem is that I don't have much inspiration to come up with my own project ideas. I'd like to do <i>something,</i> but I feel like I'm dry on ideas. I'm not looking to create "the next hotness" or to become some Social Media Kingpin. I'm really just looking to do something fun and useful, that others might find useful as well.<p>My problem is - or, rather, one of my many problems (because I surely have more than <i>one</i> problem) - is that my hobby, my passion is programming. The problem therein is that programming - at least in my mind - is akin to writing poetry. If you're a poet and the topic of all your poems is poetry (whoa, that's meta, dude), well, you're not going to be a very profound poet.<p>I'm a programming nerd. My dream project is, "Hey, we need someone to develop an infrastructure for scheduling and running thousands of jobs on hunreds of different boxes and to keep the status of said jobs, etc." But that kind of makes me an architecture astronaut which, supposedly, is A Bad Thing (tm). And, besides, the above problem has been solved many times over.<p>I guess my question is: what should I do? What do you do for inspiration? How do you come up with your personal projects? When do you find time to do them outside of work?
Upvote: | 40 |
Title: I have always been fascinated with telephony programming (thanks, "War Games") and radio call-in contests where you have to "be caller nine" in order to win a prize.<p>Well, I have now developed a system that would allow any person/group/event/company/podcaster to run one of these call-in style contests just by administrating the incoming calls through a browser (instead of a giant 300 line switchboard like radio stations have). I have a working prototype, and the few people that have seen it thought it was a pretty neat idea.<p>My question is, would there be a market for this sort of thing? Would people/groups be willing to pay to be able to run such a contest?<p>I imagine this being used for things like: live podcasts that have sponsorships; conferences; internet radio stations; college radio stations; school fundraiser events; ad-hoc internet events (think twitter chats); etc...<p>What do you think?
Upvote: | 48 |
Title: I perceive an increase on the number articles about C# and .NET. Since HN activity reflects our own interests, I am curious as who is developing what for .NET.<p>Anyone wants to tell their story?<p>Disclaimer: I was a Windows user and did a lot of Windows development up until about 2002. Since about 1999, I have been preferring Unix-like environments and languages such as Perl, Python and Ruby (and, sometimes, Java) for developing and deploying web applications. Sometimes, I am also quite vocal about my personal preferences.
Upvote: | 45 |
Title: I have friends who got very deep into iPhone dev a few years back.
Now, they are considered masters of their craft, have managed to build a good name and connections for themselves. (And monetize on it).<p>Now that I have lots of spare time, I decided to delve into something (very)new.
In the hope that two/thee years down the road, I too, can position myself in the same way in a new field.<p>So what do you think is most worth learning ?
Upvote: | 59 |
Title: Hey,<p>Every once in a while, I see a comment or something that brings up a subdivision I hadn't known. The last one I discovered was /noobstories. The obvious ones are /newest, /threads, /comments and /leaders. Here's a list of the least obvious ones that I have found. Add any missing ones in the comments. Happy new year!<p><pre><code> /noobstories - news submitted by new members (intended for moderation
/noobcomments - comments submitted by new members
/active - actively commented stories
/best - best recent stories submitted
/classic - submissions by established members
/bestcomments - best recent comments submitted
/newpoll - submit a new poll
did I miss any?
</code></pre>
added:<p><pre><code> /saved?id=yourusername shows stories you've upvoted</code></pre>
Upvote: | 86 |
Title: Since everybody is talking about predictions for 2010, I thought I would bump it up a notch. Anybody care to make some predictions about what we'll see in the coming decade (2010-2019)?<p>I'll try a couple.<p>- Major changes will happen in Iran, one way or the other. The current trajectory they are on does not seem sustainable for a decade.<p>- Ubiquitous computing will finally arrive, with smart cards/RFID on our bodies seamlessly interacting with computers in our environment. As you walk up to your refrigerator, for instance, you're logged in and presented with a customized display. Same goes for the car or the entertainment surface at the Dentist's.<p>- Flat panel displays will not drop to rock-bottom. Instead, a new generation of 2160 and 3240p 3-D panels will appear for consumer setting. Rock-bottom 10-20 inch panels will stabilize in the 50-100 range and stay there. Sorry, no panel/OLED wallpaper, at least not cheaply in the coming decade.<p>You guys have any?
Upvote: | 75 |
Title: I got a Kindle halfway through 2009 and I've been reading a lot more but I'm always on the lookout for great books. I'd love to hear about what books others in the HN community enjoyed during the last year and would recommend. I'm primarily looking for non-programming books, but if anything really blew you away, I'd love to hear about it.<p>Here are a few of my favorites:<p><i>Note: I'm not trying to start a flamewar, as I didn't agree with all the books below, just that I found them interesting and they inspired further research and exploration on my part.</i><p><i>The Family</i>, by Jeff Sharlet - Fascinating overview of the intersection between American fundamentalist Christianity and conservative ideology and how they gave birth to the "Religious Right".<p><i>The Fountainhead</i>, by Ayn Rand - Philosophical novel that uses architecture as a metaphor to introduce the tenants of Objectivism.<p><i>His Majesty's Dragon</i>, by Naomi Novik - Alternate-history fantasy set in the Napoleanic Wars. The entire series was very enjoyable, and I don't usually enjoy fantasy.<p><i>The Omnivore's Dilemma</i>, by Michael Pollen - Overview of our food, how it is grown, and the things we should know about it. I found it very persuasive without being preachy and it completely revolutionized the way I eat and view food in general.
Upvote: | 125 |
Title: Nothing new, all is in the documentation. I just tried to make the things simpler for noobs as I was few hours ago on this subject.
Upvote: | 68 |
Title: Hello everyone,<p>From the many previous posts I have read, it seems like there is a large community of people from Tel Aviv (and the surrounding area) on HN.<p>So, we decided to "pick up the glove" and organize a HN meetup in TelAviv.<p>Everyone who are interested in joining please comment / pm-via-profile.
(fbgroup): http://bit.ly/hackernews_il
Upvote: | 44 |
Title: I have found the article on The Old New Thing: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2010/01/04/9943210.aspx
Upvote: | 60 |
Title: This question comes from a great thread from a while back that I really enjoyed (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=700662), so I thought with the new year here, it'd be a good time to ask again.<p>I'm still developing readthekanji.com, a site for helping Japanese students learn to figure out how to read kanji. It's been one of the best learning experiences, and I'm loving every minute of it.<p>So what projects are you currently working on, or planning for the new year? Is it a startup, or research perhaps? And how's it going?
Upvote: | 114 |
Title: HN seems not to produce correct no-cache headers, so sometimes I appear logged in as other users. Kinda eerie, though I suppose with HN there's no major privacy issue :-), and it's not like I can do actual operations logged in as the other users, just viewing.<p>Incidentally, reddit had this exact bug almost two years ago, and spez fixed it: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/6b2kq/<p>It happens because our ISP is caching the other guy's logged in page, and then serving it up to me (and vice versa, I suppose). I'm pretty sure my ISP's caching proxy is following the HTTP spec. HN can fix it by giving more stringent no-cache headers. At the moment HN says "Cache-Control: max-age=0". reddit serves "Cache-Control: no-cache" as well as "Pragma: no-cache" and that seems to do it.
Upvote: | 50 |
Title: It seems a rethorical question, but apparently it needs asking because it seems to be that this is not clear to some.<p>Because it isn't mentioned in the guidelines this is looked upon as a 'loophole' and some people use this to boost submissions to the new page.<p>So, what is your take on this?
Upvote: | 60 |
Title: Easier to get started and less buggier than ruby-processing and clj-processing.
Upvote: | 50 |
Title: In the discusson on the Anic language http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1042122, drhowarddrfine asks "Is every language claiming to be faster than C now?"<p>The trivial answer is "Yes", but that answer raises two non-trivial and more interesting questions:<p>1) If the language is faster than C, why cross compile the language in C rather than natively compiling it (the acid test of a C compiler is if it can compile itself).<p>2) What computer languages <i>are</i> used to write computer languages?<p>Please expand and correct the list...<p>* C/C++: C<p>* Python: C, but also Java and C#<p>* Ruby: C, but also Java<p>* Perl: C<p>* Ada: C (gnat), it seems like there are Ada-based Ada compilers, but I am not sure<p>* Forth: essential words in assembly (sometimes C) and the bulk of it in Forth<p>* APL: C (?)<p>* Smalltalk: ?<p>* Fortran: Originally assembly? Fortran? C for GCC-based GNU Fortran
Upvote: | 44 |
Title: I'm sick and tired of banks. This all started with a personal irresponsibility, an overdraft fee I tried to pay by traveling to an ATM and depositing the difference in cash. My local bank doesn't accept cash in ATM's... so I might get nabbed with another fee tomorrow morning.<p>Decent banks still have their glaring flaws, and most big banks are quite simply crooks. Local banks typically do a decent job competing since they need to in order to steal customers from big institutions like Chase and Wells Fargo, but in places like Hawaii (where I live and work) those banks don't exist. So.. local banks such as Bank of Hawaii, First Hawaiian Bank, etc... don't need to do as much to compete because they're all there is. I get a $26 overdraft charge on even a $1 charge, and I don't get notified for 3 days via a note in the mail. By then things are even worse. Services like Mint help... but they don't work all the time. A bank needs to solve this, but they never will because so much of their profits come from these kinds of fees.<p>I'm also a customer with ING Direct where they do a great job providing more than all other banks by not having any branches. They exist purely online, so their online services are great. I can pay my rent online and they mail out a paper check to my landlord. If I need a check somewhere real fast, they can do that too and overnight it for a $20 fee. They also give you a line of credit for overdrafts, instead of charging you an overdraft. You pay a tiny bit of interest and solve the problem with a few cents down the tube. ING falls slightly short because while not having branches helps keep their overhead low, it makes it harder for customers to use their services. I have to mail a check to some place 5000 miles away (again, a lot of my anguish is probably due to being in Hawaii) and wait for it to appear in my account.<p>There are big stinky issues with our financial system today. My problems aren't incredibly large, I have $500 to my name and I'm 20 years old with zero investments. I'm not talking Enron here. I mean... why can't I receive money from a client overseas instantly into my account without going through someone like Paypal (who can take control of my funds at any time)? Why aren't all banks letting me take a photo of my check and get the funds like USAA does? Why doesn't a bank send me an email or text message as soon as my funds get to a certain point, or when I overdraft? Banks are OLD technology and they really need to be brought up to speed. I'd spend night and day working on something to revolutionize the banking industry, from top to bottom. What do we need to do guys? I imagine that all of you have LOTS of more ideas and feedback for banks and this problem in general.<p>Further reading on the topic - http://ma.tt/2009/08/starting-a-bank/<p>Come on HN, let's start a BANK! I realize it's incredibly hard... there are security issues and more legal issues than I care to shake a stick at. It will require capital, experience^200, etc.. No one is going to give their money to some jacknob 20 year old like myself. I want all of your feedback though, I know that we all hate our banks.
Upvote: | 45 |
Title: Step #1: Visit www.baidu.com or cn.yahoo.com.<p>Step #2: Search for Google or blogspot.com. Note that both work.<p>Step #3: Now search for google.blogspot.com.<p>Step #4: Enjoy your Baidu lockout. You should be able to search again in 5-10 minutes, I haven't timed the duration exactly.<p>Source: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1508260&cid=30746302
Upvote: | 45 |
Title: Howdy.<p>++This is at least a double-scroll message, so I appreciate you taking a couple minutes to read it++<p>I'm currently working on growing my startup (a YC company), but previously I spent 2 years building a non-profit that sets up volunteer centers in disaster areas and I'd like to ask you for your help in supporting it. We are a super lean organization with an executive director that takes a $0 per year salary. Donations are being gathered to directly help the people in Haiti.<p>Haiti has suffered a catastrophic disaster. It's quite hard to fully conceptualize what something like this does to a country. For those of you who have experienced life in a 3rd world country, you know how shocking everyday life can be for some people... add on top of that chaos, pain, fear and a collapse of basic services... The people in Haiti are greatly suffering now and will be for the months if not years to come.<p>My organization (Hands On Disaster Response, www.HODR.org) sets up volunteer centers so that anyone can spend a day/week/month volunteering and doing meaningful work to help people recover from a natural disaster. If a volunteer can get themselves to one of our projects, we provide the food, housing, tools and work management. There is no cost to volunteer with us. We source work locally in connection with local residents and officials to make sure we're doing the work that the people really need. We live in the communities we are working to help and we form personal relationships with them.<p>We will give 100% of the donations we receive for the Haiti Earthquake Response to Haiti. We may also set up a volunteer center where we would welcome any of you to visit and lend a hand personally.<p>The immediate needs will be for cash donations and for PR help. Cash donations can be made directly on our website www.hodr.org/haiti_earthquake and our Development Officer Andrew Kerr is available via email at [email protected] or by phone at 919-830-3573 for inquiries. We can also use support in spreading the word about us and the work we do. Any connections to the national media or to PR firms willing to help with Pro Bono work would be greatly appreciated.<p>How You Can Help:<p>Make a donation. It will all go to help the people in Haiti. 100% of it. (You can make a secure donation online at www.HODR.org)<p>Spread the word. Let your people know about us and if you need any information, photos, material, etc. contact [email protected] or by phone at 919-830-3573.)<p>----<p>Our Haiti Experience:<p>We ran a six-month-long hurricane response project in Haiti from October 2008 to March 2009, organizing 151 volunteers from 14 countries and collaborating with dozens of other organizations like CRS, UNICEF, Oxfam Intermon, Oxfam Great Britain, IFRC, UN OCHA, OIM, and Action Against Hunger. We did all of this meaningful work on the small budget of $200,000. Your donations go a very long way with us. $5,000 - Provided 25 contamination-resistant wells to hundreds of families. $30,000 - Sponsors an entire project for 1 month, bringing direct assistance to those who need it most.<p>We're sending an assessment team down this weekend to reconnect with our local contacts to establish how best we can help the people of Haiti. This might mean we'll deploy a team to organize a volunteer center... or it might mean we'll decide that we're not the best organization to help the people and we'll give 100% of the funds we've raised for Haiti to organizations that will be their helping.<p>During this critical time it is important for everyone to be patient and realize that with the amount of the devastation this will be a long term recovery process. Search and rescue will be critical over the next week, and then the long term work of helping the country recover will begin. We post regular updates to our blog and our twitter streams. You can learn more about us at www.HODR.org.<p>Info From Our Previous Haiti Project: http://hodr.org/pages/haiti/<p>Read Our Annual Report from 2009:
http://hodr.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/HODR_2009_Annual_Report.pdf<p>(HODR is an official 501c3. We've been running now for 5 years and have organized 12 volunteer projects in 7 countries. Our annual financial reports are available on our website)<p>----<p>Another Request:<p>For a lot of people who feel compelled to give, they're going to do what a majority of the press are telling them to do... and that is to donate to the Red Cross. I am going to urge you to reconsider that. I'll speak lightly about my frustrations with the Red Cross, and focus more on the positives about how you and your donations can make a real impact... But, the Red Cross is $600,000,000 in debt. They spend $200 million a year on their administrative costs. (I understand that they do important work and that good people deserve good living wages, but they have a history of mismanagement with their funds) 100% of donations made to the Red Cross right now will not end up in Haiti. So if you or your friends, co-workers or family want to help the people in Haiti; help them give to an organization that is on the ground and who will spend their donations directly on the people in Haiti. Tell them about HODR.org<p>----<p>Thanks,
+Darius
Upvote: | 110 |
Title: tl;dr: Now my votes are broken, and I'm sad. (edited: "dl;dr" -> "tl;dr" - sorry.)<p>================<p>I've seen this complaint made several times before, with people finding that their votes are apparently not having any effect. I've watched the discussions, not feeling I have anything to contribute, wondering what they may have done to trigger the secretive "vote-ignoring" logic that you tinker with.<p>I understand that you need to stay on top of the problem of people gaming the system, and that being too open just makes it easier for people to screw around and make the voting system less valuable.<p>But generally I rely on high-quality items bubbling to the top, so when I see a comment I think is valuable and yet which is low down in the pecking order, I upvote it. I take care, I try to add value, I invest time.<p>And now I've found that some of my recent votes haven't made a difference. The comments I thought were worth boosting continue to languish. The people I thought were worth rewarding haven't got the karma.<p>I've wasted my time trying to make the site more valuable.<p>So, while I'll continue to believe that things are partially random, but biased to having better stuff near the top, I'm no longer as confident as I was. I'll continue to scan the new submissions to see if there's anything interesting, and maybe I'll click on an up arrow, but I'm pretty disincentivized about bothering to spend time trying to add value.<p>The message is that my time isn't valued. You've encouraged me into taking without giving back. You've encouraged me to react without thinking.<p>If that's the message you intended, I think that's sad.<p>Here are two links to earlier discussions - there are more.<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=871202<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=233460
Upvote: | 123 |
Title: Hi Guys,<p>I have a working prototype for a device that addresses the needs of a large and neglected sector of the tech market (the blind) and am looking for a VC.<p>What are your suggestions for a startup <i>with a finished product</i> looking to go big? I'm looking for the industrial connections, product advice, etc. that only someone in the field would have. The current hype is all about (web) software, but I have a hardware product I'm looking to make something out of it.<p>From what I've been told, the terms of hardware VCs are much more favorable towards startup founders than in the software world because (esp. with a finished product) the result is tangible and the founder has done all the hard work and then some and it's basically a more sound investment, but I don't if that's actually true.<p>I'm looking for investments in order to pay for the legal costs (several patents on this product), the development of a polished version instead of something hacked together in a workshop, as well as marketing and business costs.<p>Any advice on this matter is most welcome.<p>Thanks!
Upvote: | 46 |
Title: Hola! This is an experimental hidden content hack for HN.
You need to upvote this post to read the content.<p>{{hidden_content_23}}<p>Soon we can have password protected posts right within HN. Have fun :)
Upvote: | 43 |
Title: What's your favorite scientific paper, from any field?<p>(Particularly interested in papers which readers here think are truly great, but, for whatever reason, aren't very widely known.)
Upvote: | 67 |
Title: I sell apps on the app store. A lot of small cheap apps. Revenue is hitting $1000 per day on the weekends (Here is the graph: http://imgur.com/T0z5p.png).<p>But I'm facing another problem. I don't know what to do with the money, how to use this very large monthly income to actually make myself rich. The app store income is going to end soon enough - the ecosystem is pretty fragile. Now that I have this raw cash, no debts, have a job I enjoy, don't want or need a car, my apartment is perfectly comfortable, what can I do?<p>I do NOT want to invest in the stock market, or invest in anything long term like bonds or property. I want to somehow use the money to make more money quickly (within a 2 year time span). But I have no idea! What I know how to do best is the app store, but I want other type of things that do not require much time investment, but give as good returns as that.<p>What do I do with the money? How do I invest it in making more money quickly?
Upvote: | 132 |
Title: Hi,
I started work at a big coorporation with a three letter acronym about a year ago. The consulting job is quite challenging and fun. Most of all,
I get to learn how to deal with people.<p>However there's one general thing which bugs me about work life:
During my uni time, I always found time to study beyond the "required stuff" (i.e. to pass the exam) and focus on the fun part (aka. study for f's sake).
Looking back over the last year, I haven't been able to read any scientific book, learn a new programming language, read any fundamental papers nor any
published specification of my field. It just feels like there's no time for things which are important but not urgent and instantly useful.<p>I assume this problem doesn't only apply to people in a big corporation but even more so for people in a startup, where time is scarce and execution is king.<p>How do HN people organize their time in this regard? How much time do you spend in actively learning fundamentals vs. time spent on building stuff?
Upvote: | 42 |
Title: I'm trying to find a good name for a startup I'm working on and think I've finally found one that is really good. The problem is I've only managed to secure the .net domain for it. The .com is taken by a domain squatter who is not replying to my emails. Should I proceed with the name or continue looking?
Upvote: | 43 |
Title: The comment was here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1063863<p>I wrote:<p>----<p>From what I can tell there is no fee to send or receive payments with a limit capped at $500/month. Once a CC and bank account is verified, the limit could be either raised or removed at Amazon's discretion. A business account carries charges. Details are here: https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/about?nodeId=6022#fees<p>The user agreement says that the difference between a personal account and a business account is that personal accounts may not receive credit card payments.<p>----<p>I would not have known it was killed but for an email I received which I first regarded as suspicious, alerting me to the fact and telling me "It will probably look fine for you, but only other logged-in users with [showdead] turned on will see it. Try making another comment and see if it shows up when logged-out. If it got killed, you've been hellbanned." The user goes on to tell me that s/he sends out a few of these type of emails a month to people who get banned capriciously, but that my case is completely ridiculous.<p>I can only guess that perhaps there is some kind of filter on HN that picked up on something in my comment?
Upvote: | 97 |
Title: Protest against censorship in Australia.
Upvote: | 89 |
Title: I am based in the UK and I have built a web application and now I want to charge people for a 'premium' account.
I guess I have the following basic options:<p>1. Use an API from a bank and handle the payment processing myself (which one?)<p>2. Use a 3rd party payment system and don't have anything to do with the actual processing<p>3. Use PayPal<p>Does anybody have any experience (pros/cons) with these approaches? Any help would be REALLY appreciated (of course, I will research this myself and also publish my own findings).
Upvote: | 42 |
Title: A student writing a thesis about software patents emailed me asking about cases "in which having a patent on an algorithm prevented some significant technological progress." HN seemed the best place to find answers. What are the clearest examples of this happening, and how much did they slow things down?
Upvote: | 57 |
Title: A lot of the people that frequent HN have remarked on the high techcrunch content and other frequently submitted sites.<p>The reason for this is that there is a relatively small group of people that all 'race' to get articles from these outlets submitted.<p>The first one to make it is the one that will get points from all the other submitters, mostly because in their haste to be 'first' they forget to check whether the link has already been submitted.<p>It's the HN equivalent of the /. meme of 'first post', only with a karma boost as an incentive.<p>This leads to lots of borderline articles getting lots of time on the homepage, which in turn is a small but persistent factor in crowing out the more interesting stuff.<p>To protect the guilty and the innocent alike I've removed the usernames from the following report, the sort was by number of points per domain per user, so every line reflects a single individual submitting a certain domain.<p>So, for instance the first individual has submitted 716(!) links from the same domain (and first!).
Upvote: | 67 |
Title: Self posts are strongly discounted on HN, if you post a question or an article without a link then you will find that there is a good chance that you will not be getting any traction at all.<p>The reason for this is that self posts are discounted at (and this is a guess, maybe PG can correct me) roughly 40% of what it would take to get a similar frontpage ranking for a regular post.<p>So even if your well formulated article that you posted on HN (nice, because you are obviously not in it for the advertising revenue) is voted up a few times its chances of being really discussed are very slim indeed.<p>On the other hand, you could post an external link to an article about prostitution ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1075970) or the latest episode in one of the soaps (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1075944) and you'd be guaranteed plenty of discussion.<p>The practical upshot of this is that if you <i>really</i> want an answer of if you <i>really</i> want to discuss a subject and you think that it is not mainstream enough to catch a couple of upvotes in the first half hour you can more than double your chances by posting it elsewhere and then submitting the link.<p>I don't pretend to understand the reason behind the penalty assigned to 'Ask HN' style posts and articles that are posted as original content on HN, I just notice that plenty of those seem to drop sight unseen whereas lots of trivial content makes the homepage without too much trouble, as long as it is on an external site.<p>We'll see if this post is self-defeating ;)<p>To see how big this effect is, as long as this post is on the homepage you can check it against other posts with links that have roughly the same number of points and age.
Upvote: | 93 |
Title: I found this book to be an extremely clear introduction.
Upvote: | 82 |
Title: Even better than the 3D Meninas
Upvote: | 252 |
Title: here is the message it shows:<p>So Arrington, how much did all the media coverage yesterday brought you in trough the welcome.html ad you
forced
people to? What a fucking retarded move was that you twat. You should be thanking me and sucking on my fucking ballsack for not deleting everyone on the box and publishing the mysql, if that's what you want O.K, I can do that. Also, you fucking dickwads from sites like Yahoo!, BBC and plenty more, where the FUCK do you see adult content on
http://dupedb.com/
???????? I mean honestly, are you fucktards also in just for the money?!?!?!
Upvote: | 74 |
Title: Just came across this web based book - 19 Chapters no author name I could find - which I've barely been able to put down. Body language fascinates me and this book provides lots of stuff to interest including little anecdotes about use of various signals by the famous (mainly heads of state).<p>Example:
<i>In Japan it can mean 'money'; if you're doing business in Japan and you make this sign for 'OK' a Japanese may think you're asking them for a bribe. In some Mediterranean countries it's an orifice signal, often used to infer that a man is homosexual. Show a Greek man the OK signal and he may thinkyou're inferring you or he is gay, while a Turk might thinkyou're calling him an 'arsehole'. It's rare in Arab countries where it is used as either a threat signal or as an obscenity.<p>In the 1950s, before he became President, Richard Nixon visited Latin America on a goodwill tour to try to patch up strained relations with the locals. As he stepped out of his plane he showed the waiting crowds the American 'OK' signal and was stunned as they began booing and hissing at him Being unaware of local body language customs, Nixon's OK signal had been read as 'You're all a bunch of arseholes.'</i><p>Entertainingly written and bite-sized chapters that will doubtless help you in your daily face-to-face communications.
Upvote: | 73 |
Title: I don't get the hate.<p>Pay your $99 to become a developer, and, once the NDA is lifted, share your code freely with others on github or some other public venue.<p>Think of the $99 as the cost of the SDK. (Even though the SDK & associated tools are freely downloadable.)<p>If you're really interested in sharing arbitrary code with people, this is even perhaps the best way to do it. They download the code, and build & go in Xcode.<p>You're running on a Mach/BSD Unix-based system, so go hog-wild. Port terminal programs, or write your own. Yes, it's true that apps are sandboxed, but now you've got inter-app file sharing (oops, is that under NDA?).<p>Apple has zero interest in what you do with the iPad that doesn't go through the App Store.<p>Think of the App Store as the public roads for the iPad--the state has a vested interest in making sure that drivers are minimally competent, so they have a gatekeeping function in the form of a license. On the private roads, or roads you make yourself, go crazy.
Upvote: | 65 |
Title: It might be for your mom, it might not be. Let's revisit the topic when the first sales numbers come out.
Upvote: | 215 |
Title: For convinience I also included the keywords "lisp" and "clojure" in the recommended version:<p>http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2196687/ybs-lisp.user.js<p>or you can download the ipad only version at:<p>http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2196687/ybs.user.js<p>Have fun!
Upvote: | 111 |
Title: Hi all,
I recently decided to start learning Lisp, and after some very unscientific research decided on Clojure. I'd like to know about some good resources to start learning clojure. I come from a mostly C background.<p>Also, I don't believe in starting small and then gradually writing more complex programs, I usually just do a small Hello World and then jump directly into a decently complex program, and I'd like to do the same with clojure. Is this a good approach to clojure?<p>Ideally, I'd like to get started with a small GUI program.<p>Regards,
chaosprophet<p>Edit: I don't know anything about functional programming either.
Upvote: | 40 |
Title: Facebook has been rewriting the PHP virtual machine for the past 2 years in an effort to make it faster. On Tuesday, they will announce the release of this software as a new open source project.
Upvote: | 163 |
Title: Is your company looking for interns for the summer?<p>Do you care more about talent than years of work experience?<p>Are you an inexperienced but ambitious hacker/designer/<anything which may be useful to a real company> looking for something more stimulating than mowing lawns?<p>This is your thread.<p>As always, if your position is location specific, please say so in the post.
Upvote: | 113 |
Title: Alright, I hate to post another "Who's hiring?" thread, but it seems as though Python jobs are suddenly getting a bit hard to come by lately. Am I just not looking in the right places, or is Python not a very hot skill right now?
Upvote: | 73 |
Title: Every once and a while (at least once a week) I stumble upon some essay heralding the euphoria of working in a good team, or on a good project, or of spending your life solving projects. They all seem to have the same underlying tone, that engineers don't care about money, they care about the work they do. Sometimes I wonder if these articles are some creative, subtle, under-handed manipulation to convince young engineers to feel guilty for demanding to get paid a fair wage for the value of their services.<p>Am I the only engineer out here that wants to scream, "fuck you, pay me" whenever somebody rambels on and on about how wonderful it is to drink the kool-aid at flickr, google, twitter, or zynga? (and for the record, all of my friends at these 4 companies feel very under-paid).
Upvote: | 152 |
Title: Before I start, I wanted to say I have been apart of this community for over 3 years now and greatly trust the amount of thought and time taken in giving opinions here, so that is why I am asking on this forum.<p>I know this is sort of off topic, but I am a coder out of the Washington, DC area and I am about to be offered a job to go to IRAQ for 1 year at a pay of around $200k.<p>I am wondering, if offered, should I actually take it? I enjoy my job here and have actually just been transferred here about 4 months ago.<p>200k is a lot of money, I would be able to pay off all my student loans which equals about 80k and have some left over to invest in and maybe take another year off for setting up my own software project. I would also take the time off there to code and really focus on a project or two that I always wanted to get off the ground.<p>On another note, I truly live to experience. I love new experiences and this would truly be a once in a lifetime experience, so do I do it?<p>I can be debt free and sit and code hard for 1 year and push out something amazing also while enjoying the time in a greatly different country than what I am used to.<p>I do appreciate the responses!
Upvote: | 53 |
Title: I regularly get negative comments about the looks of my sites, and I want to do something about it.<p>The problem is: most of them look just fine to me. It's not like code where I can see what looks bad and then work towards something that looks better. For that matter, it's not even like a drawing where I can tell whether it looks how I want it. I <i>like</i> the simple/spare/plain look. However... that doesn't seem to match what a lot of the rest of the world wants, so any advice from hackers who have made progress in that direction?
Upvote: | 140 |
Title: It's been a while since there has been a "who's hiring" thread. What companies out are there looking for hackers?
Upvote: | 129 |
Title: I recently inherited a little over $5 million. I don't have exorbitant dreams of penthouses or private planes so I'm not looking to turn this amount into $50 million or anything. Instead, I'm looking for ways to generate a steady 4-5% annual return. I have meetings set up with tax/financial advisors later this month, but I wanted to ask the smart people on HN -<p>What would you do to generate a steady 4-5% annual return from $5 million?
Upvote: | 78 |
Title: I am a long-time lurker here on HN, and have never submitted a story before, but I really need your opinions/advice.<p>I work for a large company that owns a website with a couple million members that allows them to get answers to their technical questions, read blogs, network with their peers, etc from that website. I am a salaried mid-level .NET developer at work during the day.<p>I came up with an idea for a web app that could really take off. I've been working on it at home, on my own machine, on my own time. Its written in Python using the Google App Engine SDK (super awesome, BTW). I can see needing Angel or VC funding at some point, or selling it if it really does take off (that would be my ultimate
goal, of course -- selling it to a larger company and cashing out).<p>My concern is, since I work for this larger company and signed an "Employer Protection Agreement" when I was hired, do they own my "invention" (web app), even though it was developed on my own time, with my own resources? Where is the line between whether a web app relates to my current employer's site or not. Without going into too many details at this point, it would essentially be an aggregator of my user's personal contacts.<p>The exact wording in the agreement I signed says:<p>"The Company will own (a) any inventions, trade secrets, ideas, original works of authorship or confidential information that Employee conceives, develops, discovers or makes in whole or in part during Employee's employment by the Company that relate to the Company's business or the Company's actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development"...<p>That part I <i>think</i> is fine, because my idea does not really directly relate to their website. What worries me is this blanket catch-all statement at the end:<p>"...To the extent any of the foregoing is not deemed to be a work made for hire, Employee hereby irrevocably assigns all copyrights, patent rights, and other ownership to the Company...and Employee will not at any time contest the validity of such rights".<p>Does that mean they own ANYTHING I invent that relates to any subject matter? Do I need to quit my job just to be able to work on this idea? I have three kids and a wife at home and work full time just to make ends meet. I work on my ideas for as long as I can at night, until I'm about to collapse. I'm making progress, but is it worth it?
Upvote: | 41 |
Title: This caught me by surprise, so I thought I'd share it. You can go back to your google profile settings and uncheck "Display my full name so I can be found in search" and "Display the list of people I'm following and people following me."
I think the privacy settings are all around lacking, but this "feature" was pretty opaque to me--they gave me an option to "save" my google profile when enabling buzz, but since I already had one set up I thought this to be an irrelevant step. I had to poke around for a while to realize that my profile had been changed.
Upvote: | 75 |
Title: The thing that struck me about yesterday's interview with PG on Mixergy, was how central to YC's process you are Jessica. I've really enjoyed reading Founders at work, and I'm looking forward to reading the second edition.<p>I'd be really interested in hearing your take on what qualities you find make for a good founder/co founder.
Upvote: | 70 |
Title: Do you have a blog? And if so, why?
Upvote: | 43 |
Title: Where do you go? Any experiences?
Upvote: | 124 |
Title: I recently submitted a link to a PDF paper. It first appeared as I submitted it, but after some time the title had been changed to include a Scribd link. I found this off-putting: it implied either that I was encouraging the use of Scribd, or that the author had already chosen to use Scribd as a publisher.<p>What is the relationship between Hacker News and Scribd? Are all PDF links modified to link to Scribd automatically, or is this done by hand on a case-by-case basis? And why is the use of Scribd officially encouraged, while primary non-framed links are preferable for HTML content?
Upvote: | 49 |
Title: I so wish I could have seen this talk @ TED.
Upvote: | 82 |
Title: I recently submitted the same (reasonably interesting, IMO) story twice.<p>The first time, the story didn't get any upvotes; the second time, I asked some friends (in the interest of, erm, "science") to upvote it immediately after posting. The story appeared on the frontpage and gathered ~20 upvotes (in line with my "expectations"). In terms of clickthroughs, the ratio is probably 1:100+.<p>Don't consider that a real experiment; I didn't control for anything (time of day &c.), so it's almost purely anecdotal. Nevertheless, my preconceptions were strengthened to the point of almost making them hypotheses:<p>- a. "Kick-starting" a story by asking friends or followers to upvote it _dramatically_ increases the chances of it being read, without any inherent difference in "story quality" (if we assume that inherent story quality is a reasonable notion at all).<p>- b. A very small fraction of HN readers check out http://news.ycombinator.com/newest.<p>Do you?
Upvote: | 52 |
Title: Better link: http://venomousporridge.com/post/389785000/a-conversation-i-have-every-month-or-so
Upvote: | 292 |
Title: "Surprisingly the snooper worked at first attempt. I didn’t even care to check that I didn’t mixed up SDA and SCL. Apparently Murphy had other things to mess up that day."
Upvote: | 93 |
Title: The source is available here: http://code.google.com/p/canviz/
Upvote: | 55 |
Title: Hi everybody,
I was wondering what do you guys think about cloning a US startup for a european market ?<p>There is this american startup that has a great product, but there isn't any equivalent in my country ( France ). I'm thinking about cloning it because I felt in love with the product and think it could be a success in my country. Originally I didn't want to "clone" any product, but seeing this one really made me want to develop it.
Anyone has done it before ? What are the different things to consider before starting such a project ? Would it be viewed as "bad" to do such a thing ?
Upvote: | 41 |
Title: This site is using an interesting invite strategy. It opens its signup window once a day at a random time and for only 15 minutes.
Upvote: | 42 |
Title: Cloud based services are creating huge efficiency increases in cost and development. AWS did it with file storage, VPS systems, queues (and more), drop.io is doing it with media conversion and transfer, Twillio is doing it with telephony...
Upvote: | 57 |
Title: Does anybody other than Yahoo use Traffic Server?
Upvote: | 44 |
Title: Come by the RescueTime offices at StartPad.org from 6.30pm on February 25 to talk with Harj Taggar from Y Combinator and several Seattle based YC alumni. Harj was a founder of Auctomatic, acquired by Live Current Media in 2008. Tony Wright of RescueTime, Mike Miller of Cloudant, Niall Smart of Echodio and Phil Yuen, founder of TextPayMe (acquired by Amazon in 2006), will also be there.
We'll be bringing in pizza and beers and hanging out all evening to talk about startups and answer any of your questions about YC.<p>This is a great opportunity for those who have applied, or are considering applying, for the next YC round to tell us more about your application in person and learn about YC from founders who have been through the process.
Upvote: | 45 |
Title: I am a horrible finisher.
I would consider myself reasonably smart (my IQ scores have generally kept between 125 to 148), I am considered a creative asset at the workplace, but the one thing holding me back is my ability to finish a project.
And this is true of almost everything I undertake; I have a track record of unfinished projects that shame me into seeking help. My projects folder is full of projects I started but left incomplete and unfinished; at work I have not yet finished this project that should have been completed by now.
This character flaw is undermining all my strengths and I have to combat it at any cost. Any advice would be appreciated.
Upvote: | 251 |
Title: I'm compiling a list of founders who have achieved OPP. There are the obvious ones like Markus Frind and Gabe Rivera, but I'm sure there are many HN readers who have also successfully bootstrapped as single founders.<p>Anyone know of a verified one person profitable startup? Have any YC founders accomplished it?
Upvote: | 76 |
Title: Edit: I'm not the creator of this, I just saw it on programming reddit and thought it would interest people here. With that said, if you want to give feedback to the creator, there would be a better place: http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/b58rk/try_haskell/
Upvote: | 111 |
Title: pycon2010 scalability talk: scaling facebook apps
Upvote: | 42 |
Title: From the March issue of Inc. Magazine's "How Hard Could It Be?" column...<p><pre><code> Let's Take This Offline
A decade ago, I started Joel on Software, a blog
that put my company on the map. But as the
business matures, I've come to realize that
blogging is holding me back.
</code></pre>
Later in the article:<p><pre><code> So having become an Internet celebrity in the
narrow, niche world of programming, I've decided
that it's time to retire from blogging. March
17, the 10th anniversary of Joel on Software,
will mark my last major post. This also will be
my last column for Inc. For the most part, I
will also quit podcasting and public speaking.
</code></pre>
The article also has some good insights into why most startup blogs are awful and boring. JoelOnSoftware, on the other hand, was by accident an effective blog for the niche of readers who might use Fog Creek products. Short answer: blog about topics interesting to people who haven't yet heard of your startup, but who might be customers one day.<p>I haven't been able to find the text online, possibly because Inc wants the print edition to circulate first?
Upvote: | 90 |
Title: What's everybody working on right now? I'll start:<p>I'm putting together a quick custom todo list app to organize my main project, because I'm not happy with the vanilla one in Basecamp.<p>What about you?
Upvote: | 75 |
Title: Dear HNers,<p>I'm heading down to the Bay Area March 6th - 21st to start my job hunt (details here: http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/career-transition/).<p>Cooking is one of my huge passions* and I know from experience that every time I travel, I literally get itchy fingers if I spend more than 3 or 4 days not cooking.<p>So here's the deal: On the nights I have free, I will come to your house/apartment, we will go shopping together, you pay for the ingredients & I will cook you a 3 course meal based on what you like & what looks good on the day.<p>A couple of caveats:<p>* You need to be somewhat flexible on the date, I don't know what my plans are for when I'm down there so I can't guarantee anything.<p>* Groups of anywhere between 2 & 8 people are fine. If you have more than 8 people, I'll need a helper.<p>* I've produced some pretty tasty food in some pretty dire kitchens in my life but if your kitchen comes equipped with at least the basics, it's going to be much easier for me to produce something amazing.<p>* If you're interested in cooking, feel free to help in the kitchen and I might be able to teach you a couple of things. If you have no interest, that's fine too.<p>* I'm an inveterate meat lover but I can also do very tasty vegetarian food.<p>If this is something you're interested in, shoot me an email at [email protected] and tell me a little bit about yourself and we'll see if we can get it done.<p>Thanks HN!<p>*For my 21st birthday, I cooked 21 courses of food over 21 hours for 21 people. Pics here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2019448&id=219000104&l=9edeae22ea
Upvote: | 122 |
Title: Due to a sudden decision to quite my day job and return to being a student (leaving IT), I have been sorting through all my books and deciding what I'm going to give to charity etc. The following books I felt would be better served within the HN community. They're all as-new condition, most have never been opened. I'm not asking for any money, I will even pay the shipping costs as I know a lot of us here are bootstrapping start-ups and or students themselves. I do live in the UK though, so if you're asking me to send a book to the other side of the world, it would be nice if you did paypal me at least some of the postage :P<p>The only rule I have is one book per HN user (it might be good to just say why you want the book / how it will be helpful)! I will update each listing below with a username of the receiver.<p>Books as follows:<p>[1] Principles of Biomedical Informatics (Hardcover) - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Principles-Biomedical-Informatics-PhD/dp/0123694388/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267352239&sr=1-1<p>[2] Ruby Programming for Medicine and Biology - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Programming-Medicine-Bartlett-Biomedical-Informatics/dp/0763750905/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267352284&sr=1-1<p>[3] Bioinformatics for Dummies - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bioinformatics-Dummies-Jean-Michel-Claverie/dp/0470089857/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267352308&sr=1-1<p>[4] Ferret - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ferret-David-Balmain/dp/0596519400/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267352339&sr=1-1<p>[5] The Ruby Programming Language - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ruby-Programming-Language-David-Flanagan/dp/0596516177/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267352356&sr=1-1<p>[6] Java All-in-one Desk Reference for Dummies (Paperback) - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Java-All-one-Reference-Dummies/dp/0470124512/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267352380&sr=1-3<p>[7] Building Bioinformatics Solutions: with Perl, R and MySQL (Paperback) - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Building-Bioinformatics-Solutions-Perl-MySQL/dp/0199230234/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267352412&sr=1-1<p>[8] Beginning Ruby on Rails (Wrox Beginning Guides) (Paperback) - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beginning-Ruby-Rails-Wrox-Guides/dp/0470069155/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267352434&sr=1-2<p>[9] Designing Virtual Worlds (Paperback) - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Designing-Virtual-Worlds-Richard-Bartle/dp/0131018167/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267352457&sr=1-1<p>[10 GONE klaut] Founders at Work - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Founders-Work-Startups-27-Startups-Problem-Solution/dp/1430210788/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267352477&sr=1-1<p>For those willing to contribute to shipping, my paypal is [email protected] - don't worry if you can't afford postage, I'll still send the book to you.
Upvote: | 50 |
Title: Dear HNers,<p>I fairly recently started kendō and I find it helps with building character (especially regarding dealing with pressure in my case). I'm curious about what aspects of which martial arts that others have found particularly beneficial to life as a programmer/software developer.
Upvote: | 58 |
Title: Does such a site exist? Would you be interested in one?<p>Edit: If any of you want to help, email me at [email protected], if you wish.
Upvote: | 46 |
Title: I don't know how I have lived without it for so long: http://www.decimus.net/dterm.php<p>Fast access to the shell that defaults to the working directory of the currently used file from say xcode and you can paste in the current working file(s) as arguments to whatever you want to run. There is an option to run the command in the overlay app or in terminal.<p>I recently found out about it because I was looking for xcode git integration and this makes accessing the shell git stuff quick. It's free too.
Upvote: | 108 |
Title: Solid long-format article about the costs of healthcare for a dying husband.
Upvote: | 59 |
Title: This means DNS queries will not resolve for government employees if they point to Linode hosted machines.<p>I've verified this with USMC, USDA, & Sandia national lab. Heard that the top level domain linode.com was black holed due to its association with malicious activity as per a US-CERT Situational Awareness Report 10-015-01A UPDATE.<p>This is a big pain in butt for those of us that are grant funded or work with U.S. Government.
Upvote: | 68 |
Subsets and Splits