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ummagumm-a

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cup-it-ds-classification-pairwise

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{ "score": 0, "text": "Most of these are problems with any large company, not Amazon per se.Yes, companies want to kill competition by any means and do all sorts of bad-for-the-consumer and bad-for-workers things. We didn't just wake up yesterday into the industrial era. That's all of capitalism. Amazon isn't special, just high-profile.> if you rent a server from Amazon, you have no rights.Amazon isn't in the business of granting rights.If you don't like any of the things included in Stallman's list, don't expect change to come from Amazon or some boycott thereof. The change should come from us by way of better governance.I feel like Stallman missed a good time to make a positive point on why we need better governance and perhaps regulation to reign in the much uglier parts of corporations/capitalism/behavior that we might as a society not like. He could have been inspiring and spoken to a much wider audience than the paranoia crowd.Instead he wanted to make a negative piece about Amazon. It made the top of HN, where we'll talk aboutit for 15 hours, and then nobody else will listen.More generally I think its safe to say that people will not listen to a boycott that inconveniences them. They might listen to a positive message on the reasons we should support and enact laws upholding digital freedoms, worker rights, and things to stop anti-competitive practices.There are a lot of digital freedom causes worth championing, but I'm always disappointed by Stallman. It's easy to hate. We need more positive people that can frame causes like this more effectively." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "Interesting article. When you make an alternative to Amazon which has a similar selection and shipping time I will consider it.I do not have a local book shop. My supermarket which is strangling farmers, killing off grocers, butchers, video game shops etc only have the best sellers list.I have yet to find an alternative which is consistently cheap and delivers next day or the day after with free shipping..To your points.> Amazon publishes ebooks designed to attack your freedomThis is no different from music. I could choose to buy a physical book but sometimes I feel that my kindle could get it faster and I could save space in my house which already is littered with large books.> Amazon's on-line music \"sales\" have some of the same problems as the ebooksThis is the same as a number of other music retailers. If I want to avoid this I will get a DVD. Just because Amazon offers you a convenient option doesn't mean you have to take it. I would rather save space in my house and save the environment by purchasing digital music than buy a CD which will be scanned onto my computer once then left on a shelf.> Amazon's shipping in the US is done in a sweatshopOh well.. this is something state officials should look into. I have seen the UK distribution center a number of times on the news and it looks alright.> Amazon cut off service to WikileaksOh well.. it is Amazon's service. Wikileaks can use another. I use a service and I cut people off fairly often due to the content they post. They broke my terms -> They go. The end. They can build their own software. Or in Wikileaks case.. find another host / make their own.> Amazon squeezes small publishers.Amazon looks to give the best deal possible to the customer. Sometimes people get trodden on. If Amazon won't do you an agreeable deal go elsewhere. Make an organization with similar companies and reject any deals which you cannot agree to. Throw your weight behind a different ebook reader.> Amazon doesn't just compete with independent book stores, it arrogantly seeks to destroy them.Please.. there are app's like this which compare prices all over the place. Again. Amazon looks to give the best deal possible to the customer. When I buy from a bookshop I know I am paying more. That is fine because I can see the book, touch the book and take it home then and there. Most people know this.Sometimes a local book store cannot sell a book even remotely competitively. An app which told me this would be nice. I don't mind paying a few pounds more in a store. When it is £5-10 there is a problem with the shop.> Amazon appears to treat self-published authors well, but it can unilaterally cut the price of their books. And when it does, the authors are the ones who lose.It is an authors choice whether they use the publishing platform or not. I wouldn't after hearing how Amazon auto-discounted an authors book and the author got screwed.> Amazon censored an ebook that exposed how ebook bestseller lists can be manipulated (and therefore are meaningless).Is this so unexpected? Guy tries to publish book on Amazon about how to game the Amazon review and ranking system...> Amazon was a member of ALEC.Oh well.Amazon isn't a saint. They are responsible for putting a number of small businesses out of business. They damage the high street. However.. look at any major superstore. Its just the evolution of business. I will not be boycotting Amazon any time soon." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "Interesting article. When you make an alternative to Amazon which has a similar selection and shipping time I will consider it.I do not have a local book shop. My supermarket which is strangling farmers, killing off grocers, butchers, video game shops etc only have the best sellers list.I have yet to find an alternative which is consistently cheap and delivers next day or the day after with free shipping..To your points.> Amazon publishes ebooks designed to attack your freedomThis is no different from music. I could choose to buy a physical book but sometimes I feel that my kindle could get it faster and I could save space in my house which already is littered with large books.> Amazon's on-line music \"sales\" have some of the same problems as the ebooksThis is the same as a number of other music retailers. If I want to avoid this I will get a DVD. Just because Amazon offers you a convenient option doesn't mean you have to take it. I would rather save space in my house and save the environment by purchasing digital music than buy a CD which will be scanned onto my computer once then left on a shelf.> Amazon's shipping in the US is done in a sweatshopOh well.. this is something state officials should look into. I have seen the UK distribution center a number of times on the news and it looks alright.> Amazon cut off service to WikileaksOh well.. it is Amazon's service. Wikileaks can use another. I use a service and I cut people off fairly often due to the content they post. They broke my terms -> They go. The end. They can build their own software. Or in Wikileaks case.. find another host / make their own.> Amazon squeezes small publishers.Amazon looks to give the best deal possible to the customer. Sometimes people get trodden on. If Amazon won't do you an agreeable deal go elsewhere. Make an organization with similar companies and reject any deals which you cannot agree to. Throw your weight behind a different ebook reader.> Amazon doesn't just compete with independent book stores, it arrogantly seeks to destroy them.Please.. there are app's like this which compare prices all over the place. Again. Amazon looks to give the best deal possible to the customer. When I buy from a bookshop I know I am paying more. That is fine because I can see the book, touch the book and take it home then and there. Most people know this.Sometimes a local book store cannot sell a book even remotely competitively. An app which told me this would be nice. I don't mind paying a few pounds more in a store. When it is £5-10 there is a problem with the shop.> Amazon appears to treat self-published authors well, but it can unilaterally cut the price of their books. And when it does, the authors are the ones who lose.It is an authors choice whether they use the publishing platform or not. I wouldn't after hearing how Amazon auto-discounted an authors book and the author got screwed.> Amazon censored an ebook that exposed how ebook bestseller lists can be manipulated (and therefore are meaningless).Is this so unexpected? Guy tries to publish book on Amazon about how to game the Amazon review and ranking system...> Amazon was a member of ALEC.Oh well.Amazon isn't a saint. They are responsible for putting a number of small businesses out of business. They damage the high street. However.. look at any major superstore. Its just the evolution of business. I will not be boycotting Amazon any time soon." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "Reasons to buy from Amazon:* Cheap* Consistent* Fast shipping* Good product availability* Good return policies* Vendor and item ratings" }

{ "score": 2, "text": "Reasons to buy from Amazon:* Cheap* Consistent* Fast shipping* Good product availability* Good return policies* Vendor and item ratings" }

{ "score": 3, "text": "Says the man who charges to have his photograph taken by fansIndependent bookstores are nice, but they fail to account for the long tail, that's where Amazon shines.And for the \"common books\" the big chains do an ok job. E.g. Harry Potter(Still, physical B&N stores seem to be going away, Borders is history already)" }

{ "score": 3, "text": "Says the man who charges to have his photograph taken by fansIndependent bookstores are nice, but they fail to account for the long tail, that's where Amazon shines.And for the \"common books\" the big chains do an ok job. E.g. Harry Potter(Still, physical B&N stores seem to be going away, Borders is history already)" }

{ "score": 4, "text": "> Amazon publishes ebooks designed to attack your freedom (PDF[1] or html[2]).This is real. There is something wrong with the way Amazon deals with ebooks, and it is sad to see people backing it up.---[1]: http://stallman.org/articles/ebooks.pdf[2]: http://gnu.org/philosophy/the-danger-of-ebooks.html" }

{ "score": 0, "text": "I've been using SRS (anki, ankiweb, ankidroid) for almost four years now. I'm up to 4000 Japanese sentence cards and my amazement is constant. When I started I thought I was fooling myself, there was no way I'd be able to read real quantities of Japanese. Instead I can now read the manga for the anime I watched as a kid and enjoy the stories I thought had ended.I've gotten into a rhythm, four new sentences per day which at my memorization rate works out to ~60 cards to review a day. Thus 20-30 minutes per day of review. It has become such a part of my day that skipping a day makes the day feel like a massive failure.Its interesting how 4 cards can translate into 60 even with high memorization rates: for every card you add you'll see it again in 2 days, ~4 days, ~8 days, ~2 weeks, ~1 month, ~2 months, ~4 months, ~8 months, ~1 year... A review session is thus made up of multiple standing waves. The effect is noticeable you'll see a workload increase as the next standing wave of review starts. Right now some reviewed cards are getting scheduled next in ~8 years!" }

{ "score": 1, "text": "I use Anki every day. I think part of the project is in learning how to use it best. I have little interest in learning word-of-the-day or country names. I am more interested in learning new skills, and I shared the concern that it wouldn't work so well for that.I think it's doing all right though. Here are some of the decks I'm most proud of:- Using lilypond snippets and a midi-to-wav generator, I wrote a perl script that generates a deck for every (non-accidental) note on a guitar fretboard. It shows the fret position with a question mark, and then when you identify the note, it plays the pitch and shows the note on a treble clef. I'll probably expand it to include accidentals soon.- Also using lilypond, I wrote a jazz theory deck for major chords. Questions like, "What chord quality and inversion is this?" where it plays a chord, and answer would be m7b5 (half-dim) 2nd inversion. My ear training has improved a ton. And, what is the key scale for bII7/iii in B major? (Plays the chord audio). Answer: B melodic minor or E lydian/mixolydian, playing and showing the scale on treble clef. And an effect like gwern described has happened. I haven't actually memorized the answer to every card in the deck (since the perl script generated about 2500 of them). Instead, I've gotten faster of doing the actual music theory processing in my head to calculate/recognize the right answer almost instantaneously. End result is that it has improved my speed in reading lead sheets. (It has not, however, improved my melodic improvisation abilities. :-) )The rest of my decks are basically based off of Coursera courses. Unfortunately, I haven't finished any of them yet. I routinely run into the problem where partway through the course, the amount of time I need to spend keeping up with the new cards limits my time available to watch new videos and do new assignments, so I don't finish the course. I am now taking the Scala course again, and I'm hopeful that since I'm fully reviewed up through week 4, I might be able to power through and finish it with a deck that fully reflects the course.This also means that I am improperly creating a separate deck for each subject matter, when Anki doesn't let you scramble them. I should be putting them all in one deck, but I kinda don't want to before a deck is "complete". I'm also a couple of chapters into "Learn You A Haskell", with the rest of the book on pause.Finally, I can echo that practicing helps a lot. For instance with the Haskell deck, I got up to fully reviewed, and each card was still kind of hard. Then I spent a couple of hours playing with the first Project Euler problem. After that, the entire deck was much easier and faster. So, retaining familiarity still is somewhat different than learning the concepts. If I have a fully reviewed Anki deck from Odersky's Scala course (on coursera), it won't mean I know Scala. But if I go start a Scala project, the Anki knowledge will help me a ton, and then afterwards, the experience from hacking on the project will make the Anki cards much easier, maybe even to the point that I could delete a bunch of them.BTW, that's feature I wish I had from the deck - some kind of advice for when it might be appropriate to delete a card. I worry that I'm doing the equivalent of writing pointless unit tests sometimes." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "I use Anki every day. I think part of the project is in learning how to use it best. I have little interest in learning word-of-the-day or country names. I am more interested in learning new skills, and I shared the concern that it wouldn't work so well for that.I think it's doing all right though. Here are some of the decks I'm most proud of:- Using lilypond snippets and a midi-to-wav generator, I wrote a perl script that generates a deck for every (non-accidental) note on a guitar fretboard. It shows the fret position with a question mark, and then when you identify the note, it plays the pitch and shows the note on a treble clef. I'll probably expand it to include accidentals soon.- Also using lilypond, I wrote a jazz theory deck for major chords. Questions like, "What chord quality and inversion is this?" where it plays a chord, and answer would be m7b5 (half-dim) 2nd inversion. My ear training has improved a ton. And, what is the key scale for bII7/iii in B major? (Plays the chord audio). Answer: B melodic minor or E lydian/mixolydian, playing and showing the scale on treble clef. And an effect like gwern described has happened. I haven't actually memorized the answer to every card in the deck (since the perl script generated about 2500 of them). Instead, I've gotten faster of doing the actual music theory processing in my head to calculate/recognize the right answer almost instantaneously. End result is that it has improved my speed in reading lead sheets. (It has not, however, improved my melodic improvisation abilities. :-) )The rest of my decks are basically based off of Coursera courses. Unfortunately, I haven't finished any of them yet. I routinely run into the problem where partway through the course, the amount of time I need to spend keeping up with the new cards limits my time available to watch new videos and do new assignments, so I don't finish the course. I am now taking the Scala course again, and I'm hopeful that since I'm fully reviewed up through week 4, I might be able to power through and finish it with a deck that fully reflects the course.This also means that I am improperly creating a separate deck for each subject matter, when Anki doesn't let you scramble them. I should be putting them all in one deck, but I kinda don't want to before a deck is "complete". I'm also a couple of chapters into "Learn You A Haskell", with the rest of the book on pause.Finally, I can echo that practicing helps a lot. For instance with the Haskell deck, I got up to fully reviewed, and each card was still kind of hard. Then I spent a couple of hours playing with the first Project Euler problem. After that, the entire deck was much easier and faster. So, retaining familiarity still is somewhat different than learning the concepts. If I have a fully reviewed Anki deck from Odersky's Scala course (on coursera), it won't mean I know Scala. But if I go start a Scala project, the Anki knowledge will help me a ton, and then afterwards, the experience from hacking on the project will make the Anki cards much easier, maybe even to the point that I could delete a bunch of them.BTW, that's feature I wish I had from the deck - some kind of advice for when it might be appropriate to delete a card. I worry that I'm doing the equivalent of writing pointless unit tests sometimes." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "I think spaced repetition software, which typically involves flashcards, is great for memorising a large quantity of facts. E.g. for learning foreign language vocabulary, anatomy, etc... For this kind of learning it can really save you time, especially when you have 100s or 1000s of items to remember.Using flashcards to learn mathematics, computer programming, physics, or anything requiring more creative or analytical thought is not so useful. For these subjects the number of raw facts required is usually smaller, and the thought processes, concepts and problem solving ability are much more important.However, spaced repetition could be beneficial to these more creative and analytical subjects if it was applied more dynamically. In this case the units to learn could be the rules, laws, concepts which can manifest themselves in different ways within different problems, instead of being static flashcards. Does anyone know of software which works in this way?My interest in this stems from http://readlang.com, a site I'm working on at the moment for learning foreign languages. I use SRS to keep track of words, but in future it could be nice to think about applying SRS to grammatical concepts too." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "I think spaced repetition software, which typically involves flashcards, is great for memorising a large quantity of facts. E.g. for learning foreign language vocabulary, anatomy, etc... For this kind of learning it can really save you time, especially when you have 100s or 1000s of items to remember.Using flashcards to learn mathematics, computer programming, physics, or anything requiring more creative or analytical thought is not so useful. For these subjects the number of raw facts required is usually smaller, and the thought processes, concepts and problem solving ability are much more important.However, spaced repetition could be beneficial to these more creative and analytical subjects if it was applied more dynamically. In this case the units to learn could be the rules, laws, concepts which can manifest themselves in different ways within different problems, instead of being static flashcards. Does anyone know of software which works in this way?My interest in this stems from http://readlang.com, a site I'm working on at the moment for learning foreign languages. I use SRS to keep track of words, but in future it could be nice to think about applying SRS to grammatical concepts too." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "Spaced repetition is great for material which is divided into very small chunks and where you have a ton of time for comparatively little information (Vocabulary, especially in languages you are not learning for a degree).Problems arise in practical situations when you want to pass an exam. Or a couple of them in a certain period of time.Proponents of SR will say that it takes at least 6 times the amount of time/effort over learning "short term". So if you are learning for an exam, you better have plenty of time to spare. And you better start early, like 6 months before the exam. All that makes it pretty useless in a lot of situations I've been in.Short term learning isn't as bad as it looks. If you really "cram" for an exam, and you think you forgot all of it a couple of days or weeks later, that's not what happened. Instead, your brain is now primed for the material, and when you come into contact with it later, a lot of information is still there and re-learning will be easier." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "Spaced repetition is great for material which is divided into very small chunks and where you have a ton of time for comparatively little information (Vocabulary, especially in languages you are not learning for a degree).Problems arise in practical situations when you want to pass an exam. Or a couple of them in a certain period of time.Proponents of SR will say that it takes at least 6 times the amount of time/effort over learning "short term". So if you are learning for an exam, you better have plenty of time to spare. And you better start early, like 6 months before the exam. All that makes it pretty useless in a lot of situations I've been in.Short term learning isn't as bad as it looks. If you really "cram" for an exam, and you think you forgot all of it a couple of days or weeks later, that's not what happened. Instead, your brain is now primed for the material, and when you come into contact with it later, a lot of information is still there and re-learning will be easier." }

{ "score": 4, "text": "Gwern, how long does it take to put together a comprehensive document like this? Also, what motivates you the most in compiling the information? Is it a rabbit hole of fascinating discovery which you joyfully explore until your knowledge is satiated or does something else compel you?" }

{ "score": 0, "text": "I must be mistaken because this looks like a nonissue. Servers are not ever expected to trust client provided data. The origin header is optional for non web services which means that servers probably won' be too picky about this field. This just looks like the analog to the \"Referer\" field. Is there a security issue I'm not seeing here?" }

{ "score": 1, "text": "The Origin header can be used to protect against CRSF. It's OK that the header is not useful for much more than this important task." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "The Origin header can be used to protect against CRSF. It's OK that the header is not useful for much more than this important task." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "This post represents a gross misunderstanding of origin security on the Web. Protection against a malicious client is an explicit non-goal of origin security, if not an outright impossibility. To put it another way, if the client is already compromised, then what can you possibly do at the server to protect it anyway?" }

{ "score": 2, "text": "This post represents a gross misunderstanding of origin security on the Web. Protection against a malicious client is an explicit non-goal of origin security, if not an outright impossibility. To put it another way, if the client is already compromised, then what can you possibly do at the server to protect it anyway?" }

{ "score": 3, "text": "If you want to secure WebSockets, use WSS. More info: http://blog.kaazing.com/2012/02/28/html5-websocket-security-..." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "If you want to secure WebSockets, use WSS. More info: http://blog.kaazing.com/2012/02/28/html5-websocket-security-..." }

{ "score": 4, "text": "It would be nice if there were a better, more reliable way to do this, but it's consistent with how the rest of the web works. We use heuristics to try to detect rogue/fake clients, and hellban them." }

{ "score": 0, "text": "I wrote a blog post about this a few weeks ago:\nhttp://blog.opportunitycloud.com/2009/12/21/stealth-disease-...Summary:\n\"The cure for the First Mover Paranoia is to not view competitors as impassable roadblocks but as a verification that the idea actually works and has a market. That is in fact great news! Now the challenge becomes to find holes in the existing market (geographic, pricing, quality etc.) or to improve on what the competitor is doing.\"" }

{ "score": 1, "text": "Keep going.Although, if your disposition is such that you get discouraged from a press release, you should stop and assess if you really have the personality and disposition for such a marketplace. Rarely ever do you see a successful marketplace with only enough room for a single product/solution.There is no free lunch, and an \"overnight success\" takes an average of 3 years to build. Along way will be many roadblocks, distractions and false alarms.Good luck." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "Keep going.Although, if your disposition is such that you get discouraged from a press release, you should stop and assess if you really have the personality and disposition for such a marketplace. Rarely ever do you see a successful marketplace with only enough room for a single product/solution.There is no free lunch, and an \"overnight success\" takes an average of 3 years to build. Along way will be many roadblocks, distractions and false alarms.Good luck." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "It is easy to say \"just go for it\". In reality, it is quite risky.Theoretically, it is possible to unseat a competitor like Google in search, or Facebook in social networking, but you really have to know what you are doing.In your case, a better approach is to do some customer development first. Speak to potential users of your product. Find out if they are dissatisfied with your competitor's offering. What will it take to switch.After that exercise, you should be in a better position to make an informed decision." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "It is easy to say \"just go for it\". In reality, it is quite risky.Theoretically, it is possible to unseat a competitor like Google in search, or Facebook in social networking, but you really have to know what you are doing.In your case, a better approach is to do some customer development first. Speak to potential users of your product. Find out if they are dissatisfied with your competitor's offering. What will it take to switch.After that exercise, you should be in a better position to make an informed decision." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "Nobody should work for months on an iPhone app. The platform is not friendly to that style of app. Work for weeks, launch and test." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "Nobody should work for months on an iPhone app. The platform is not friendly to that style of app. Work for weeks, launch and test." }

{ "score": 4, "text": "Keep pushing on. You should be encouraged that the idea has competition, I think that gives it merit.Also - their large team and funding could actually limit them. You will have a lot more freedom to build what you want." }

{ "score": 0, "text": "These kind of posts always leave me with a mix of inspiration and discouragement.It is awesome to read about someone like you (local developer, similar learning style, beginner entrepreneur) who actually builds something. There is a lot to be proud of for just Doing Something - even if you fail. But at the same time, I feel like I would fall into the same pitfalls that you mentioned.I am not looking forward to doing anything related to setting up an LLC, doing sales calls, etc. I like my job and don't want to quit. I know other developers but end up working on my own stuff alone in most cases.Thanks for sharing Aaron - I'll have to try to make it out to the next Devs With Side Projects meetup." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "My story is just like your story except that each time something didn't work, I took a few days or weeks off and then tried another site. And another. And another. It took dozens of ideas until I found a business that worked for me.Take the lessons you learned and start again. Sooner rather than later. You'll probably fail again too, but eventually you'll stumble upon something that clicks. The key is refusing to give up.Perseverance is much more important than any idea, programming language, or system of doing things. People who get it all right on the first or second try aren't skilled entrepreneurs. They're just lucky." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "My story is just like your story except that each time something didn't work, I took a few days or weeks off and then tried another site. And another. And another. It took dozens of ideas until I found a business that worked for me.Take the lessons you learned and start again. Sooner rather than later. You'll probably fail again too, but eventually you'll stumble upon something that clicks. The key is refusing to give up.Perseverance is much more important than any idea, programming language, or system of doing things. People who get it all right on the first or second try aren't skilled entrepreneurs. They're just lucky." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "Sometimes, the best startups start when you are dissatisfied with your present job, have nothing else to lose, but are smart, and have a couple of ideas you think are really awesome and a game changer. Check out this TechCrunch article where one of the cofounders of DoubleClick, Kevin O'Connor talks about the attributes of an entrepreneur: http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/19/founder-stories-kevin-oconn...He lists a few signs of a successful entrepreneur. A desire for control and the ability to challenge authority are near top of the list. A way to detect the second trait? \"Have you told your boss to shove it?\"" }

{ "score": 2, "text": "Sometimes, the best startups start when you are dissatisfied with your present job, have nothing else to lose, but are smart, and have a couple of ideas you think are really awesome and a game changer. Check out this TechCrunch article where one of the cofounders of DoubleClick, Kevin O'Connor talks about the attributes of an entrepreneur: http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/19/founder-stories-kevin-oconn...He lists a few signs of a successful entrepreneur. A desire for control and the ability to challenge authority are near top of the list. A way to detect the second trait? \"Have you told your boss to shove it?\"" }

{ "score": 3, "text": "Most of the time, if your startup is a side-project (IE: you have a full-time job), it won't be successful. Not to say that this is impossible.I've found that when you are working full-time on something, your mind is in a different place. You can also move much faster." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "Most of the time, if your startup is a side-project (IE: you have a full-time job), it won't be successful. Not to say that this is impossible.I've found that when you are working full-time on something, your mind is in a different place. You can also move much faster." }

{ "score": 4, "text": "I really enjoyed reading your story. I had similar experiences with my side project as well.In my case, I tried to take on the behemoth that is Intuit. I spent 2 years working on the same side project. In my third year, I decided to quit my job and focus on it fulltime. Six months into working on my startup I realized that I made the mistake of trying to pick a fight with Intuit since the product that I was building was too much for me to handle.I decided to switch course and focus on niche products for the Mac App Store. Two months after my pivot, I was making a few thousand a month from my apps. I've since accepted fulltime employment and am continuing to work on my Mac Apps as they are still generating the same amount of money.From this experience I learned its best to focus on a niche market if you are a one man band. I think your failure was because your focus was too wide. Perhaps for your next project, you should consider focusing on a niche market.Good luck." }

{ "score": 0, "text": "I tried to think of some constructive criticism (since that's more useful than \"good luck guys!\"), but couldn't really figure anything really penetrating, but here's my best shot at some question to think about, constructive criticism, etc.1) how is this different than people just going out to events with friends and then randomly meeting friends of friends to date?\nMy best guess is that this is different because there's more of a recognition that people are looking. How does this change the dynamics?2) My guess is that this is going to be kind of a platform for matchmakers too. What, if anything, do they get out of it?3) Will the businesses hosting/benefiting from the event pay a cut of their proceeds to TLF?4) Will people who meet on the site attend the events as pairs? Or will it be like a singles event? If the latter, then we'll see an \"alpha male\" problem where a handful of males will be desired. The betas will drop out and more importantly many women will be turned off by the competition for a few men.5) Finally, and most importantly, any play in the dating space is most likely not going to be a tech play (that's been done - OKCupid and eHarmony among many others have all sorts of fancy algorithms). Like most social media today, the business model will stand or fall based on very nuanced understanding of human nature, in particular very nuanced understanding of male/female romantic and sexual interactions.Now, no offense, but when I think of \"very nuanced understanding of male/female romantic and sexual interactions\" the image of two college guys who read HN does not come to mind. Nothing personal, I would apply the same reasoning to myself (which is one of the reasons I have not started a dating site). It's just something to be aware of, you're stepping into an area that is one of the most misunderstand social arenas for our species.All of the above are just my musings intended to plant some seeds in your head. I think this is a great idea and you should go for it with gusto.The only real advice I have: If you don't already have one, get a woman on your team. Gone are the days where dating sites are just tech/algorithm plays, like I said above you've got to understand the psychology and there's just no way to do that with 50% of your target market missing from your founding team." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "Their site http://thislooksfun.com/ is currently unimpressive. It's noticeably slow on my broadband connection. Why? Huge background images changing on a relatively quick timer (sizes as large as 4.5mb, 7.56mb).It's just an email gathering page, but a few minutes spent in an image editing program would give a much better first impression." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "Their site http://thislooksfun.com/ is currently unimpressive. It's noticeably slow on my broadband connection. Why? Huge background images changing on a relatively quick timer (sizes as large as 4.5mb, 7.56mb).It's just an email gathering page, but a few minutes spent in an image editing program would give a much better first impression." }

{ "score": 2, "text": ">“Current dating sites suck … an undergrad could build something better as a class project.” ~Paul Graham from his essay, How To Start a Startup>we decided to take PG’s advice a bit further and take time off of school.A lot has changed in the online dating world. Hopefully they have a better argument than a 6 year old quote from one person, albeit being from PG." }

{ "score": 2, "text": ">“Current dating sites suck … an undergrad could build something better as a class project.” ~Paul Graham from his essay, How To Start a Startup>we decided to take PG’s advice a bit further and take time off of school.A lot has changed in the online dating world. Hopefully they have a better argument than a 6 year old quote from one person, albeit being from PG." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "\"Current dating sites are not the last word. Better ones will appear. But anyone who wants to start a dating startup has to answer two questions: in addition to the usual question about how you're going to approach dating differently, you have to answer the even more important question of how to overcome the huge chicken and egg problem every dating site faces. A site like Reddit is interesting when there are only 20 users. But no one wants to use a dating site with only 20 users—which of course becomes a self-perpetuating problem. So if you want to do a dating startup, don't focus on the novel take on dating that you're going to offer. That's the easy half. Focus on novel ways to get around the chicken and egg problem.\"From http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html" }

{ "score": 3, "text": "\"Current dating sites are not the last word. Better ones will appear. But anyone who wants to start a dating startup has to answer two questions: in addition to the usual question about how you're going to approach dating differently, you have to answer the even more important question of how to overcome the huge chicken and egg problem every dating site faces. A site like Reddit is interesting when there are only 20 users. But no one wants to use a dating site with only 20 users—which of course becomes a self-perpetuating problem. So if you want to do a dating startup, don't focus on the novel take on dating that you're going to offer. That's the easy half. Focus on novel ways to get around the chicken and egg problem.\"From http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html" }

{ "score": 4, "text": "When you read about most founders who dropped out, they already had significant traction before making the leap. In my honest opinion you shouldn't drop out of college until you have a finished product(even if it's only a MVP) with traction and can show that this is a better alternative. Obviously you're free to do whatever you want but from an impartial observers perspective, this move seems unecessarily risky until you have a finished product, and enough users to prove it's viability." }

{ "score": 0, "text": "This article is pretty confused, it mixes together operational IT (managing desktops, etc.) with custom IT (building specialist applications, etc.). It tries to imply that Orca was built by Best Buy, but if you read the article carefully it very clearly avoids saying that. Pretty shoddy journalism.It's perfectly sensible for companies to outsource non-core services just as desktop support to third party companies who can do it a lot better than you can. Even among enterprise level companies it's becoming pretty standard.There may well be a story about how Orca was built on the cheap by an ineffective team, but this isn't it." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "The approaches between the two campaigns relay the IT as a cost center vs a profit center debate. The Obama campaign used its technology to create a competitive edge while the Romney campaign minimized its internal operations and relied on outside parties which were not completely aligned with the goal of the campaign.Also, I have a question which I would love to gain any insight on. In this article and others I've read about this , its been said that the Romney campaign could only start developing Orca after the primaries were finished. Why is this? Shouldn't the RNC have been in charge of developing something like this? Or are these applications very specific to the actual candidate?" }

{ "score": 1, "text": "The approaches between the two campaigns relay the IT as a cost center vs a profit center debate. The Obama campaign used its technology to create a competitive edge while the Romney campaign minimized its internal operations and relied on outside parties which were not completely aligned with the goal of the campaign.Also, I have a question which I would love to gain any insight on. In this article and others I've read about this , its been said that the Romney campaign could only start developing Orca after the primaries were finished. Why is this? Shouldn't the RNC have been in charge of developing something like this? Or are these applications very specific to the actual candidate?" }

{ "score": 2, "text": "I quite liked the profile of @harper in The Atlantic the other day, even if it was a little too fawning.To me the lesson to be drawn from these articles is that the Obama campaign saw their IT infrastructure as a 'core business unit' and vertically integrated it, whereas the Romney campaign treated it like any other commodity service.http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-t..." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "I quite liked the profile of @harper in The Atlantic the other day, even if it was a little too fawning.To me the lesson to be drawn from these articles is that the Obama campaign saw their IT infrastructure as a 'core business unit' and vertically integrated it, whereas the Romney campaign treated it like any other commodity service.http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-t..." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "Um.At the top, however, Romney's campaign brought back old hands and paid them well. Kevin Rewkowski, a tech deputy during Romney's primary run in 2008, returned to serve as the campaign's Technology Director and pushed a lot of tech business through his company, Minuteman Strategies (that's in addition to Rewkowski's six-figure salary). His CFO also double-dipped, with money going to his financial compliance software company.This is why the business of politics makes me throw up in my mouth a little." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "Um.At the top, however, Romney's campaign brought back old hands and paid them well. Kevin Rewkowski, a tech deputy during Romney's primary run in 2008, returned to serve as the campaign's Technology Director and pushed a lot of tech business through his company, Minuteman Strategies (that's in addition to Rewkowski's six-figure salary). His CFO also double-dipped, with money going to his financial compliance software company.This is why the business of politics makes me throw up in my mouth a little." }

{ "score": 4, "text": "With all the talk of this being a big data driven election I was surprised to not see Palantir utilised by either party.If I was running for office I would be giving those guys a call." }

{ "score": 0, "text": "Gruber essentially tiptoes around the main problem. The iOS 6 map app was released before it was polished up to what people expect from Apple. \"Oh Apple had to release it now or else Apple would have to release in a non major release!\" Are you kidding me?The alternative being to release a terrible version that tarnishes their brand, that is way better alternative" }

{ "score": 1, "text": "> Technically, they could roll such a thing out in a 6.1 or 6.2 update, but major changes — and I think everybody can agree this has been a major change, for users and app developers alike — should be delivered only in major new OS updates.Well, I personally can't wait for OS XI, since by that criteria, Apple apparently hasn't released a major OS update since OS X yet.Version numbers schmersion numbers. Ship it when it's ready." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "> Technically, they could roll such a thing out in a 6.1 or 6.2 update, but major changes — and I think everybody can agree this has been a major change, for users and app developers alike — should be delivered only in major new OS updates.Well, I personally can't wait for OS XI, since by that criteria, Apple apparently hasn't released a major OS update since OS X yet.Version numbers schmersion numbers. Ship it when it's ready." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "Problem with this analysis is that if the replacing maps on iOS6 was always going to be this year then it just compounds the culpability of Apple for shipping it half baked with no fallback. ie. in trying to assuage the criticism of Apple for shipping maps too early (what I read as the main point of his piece here), Gruber only begs the question of why they weren't better prepared for it." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "Problem with this analysis is that if the replacing maps on iOS6 was always going to be this year then it just compounds the culpability of Apple for shipping it half baked with no fallback. ie. in trying to assuage the criticism of Apple for shipping maps too early (what I read as the main point of his piece here), Gruber only begs the question of why they weren't better prepared for it." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "I dont get why Maps releases are tied to OS releases. If the Maps api to other apps doesn't change, why can't maps be updated as other apps are?" }

{ "score": 3, "text": "I dont get why Maps releases are tied to OS releases. If the Maps api to other apps doesn't change, why can't maps be updated as other apps are?" }

{ "score": 4, "text": "Ok, can someone help me? I’m quite confused. Apple’s maps have undeniable problems. Pretty big ones in some cases.But are they really unusable? From my perspective it seems as though Apple’s maps are merely inferior, not unusable. Some aspects are even better than they were before (on iOS), some (very few) are better than Google Maps (traffic info in Germany is quite impressive).Everyone here seems to take it as self-evident that the maps are unusable. I don’t get that. To me it looks like a slight (again, depending on use case) regression in the short term.I also don’t get the deification of Google Maps. I remember they weren’t that great in Germany only two or so years ago. I still encounter mistakes regularly. Google Maps are awesome despite those flaws." }

{ "score": 0, "text": "The sponsored tiles are defaults, and they're replaced by sites you actually use over time. This is a good, unobtrusive way for Firefox to get funding." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "As most people, I'm not a big fan of Ads, but in this case I'm making an exception, provided it helps Mozilla diversify its source of incomes (at least a bit), I'm all for it." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "As most people, I'm not a big fan of Ads, but in this case I'm making an exception, provided it helps Mozilla diversify its source of incomes (at least a bit), I'm all for it." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "> Instead of seeing blank tiles when a new Firefox user opens a new tab, Mozilla thought it would be best that they see “content.”I don't care much about this sponsored tab fuss but that is some serious BS logic.Feels like UX goes in circles. The web of the 90s was "Show as much content as possible". Google came around and it became "show only the absolutely crucial stuff". Then facebook came around and we're back to shoving as much crap down the monitors as possible.Feels like we jump from one extreme to another all the time. And yet, the Google.com homepage remains clean and uncluttered (yes, there's more stuff than there used to, but its still 90% whitespace).Take it this way: When you create a new folder, a file manager won't show the contents of other folders you often access just because it's "best that you see content". Or when you empty your inbox, gmail won't show some random popular emails. So on.Showing popular sites is a good idea at its core but if you're on a fresh profile, well you're on a fresh profile. Make money off firefox of course, you need it, but "it's best you see content" is bullshit justification." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "> Instead of seeing blank tiles when a new Firefox user opens a new tab, Mozilla thought it would be best that they see “content.”I don't care much about this sponsored tab fuss but that is some serious BS logic.Feels like UX goes in circles. The web of the 90s was "Show as much content as possible". Google came around and it became "show only the absolutely crucial stuff". Then facebook came around and we're back to shoving as much crap down the monitors as possible.Feels like we jump from one extreme to another all the time. And yet, the Google.com homepage remains clean and uncluttered (yes, there's more stuff than there used to, but its still 90% whitespace).Take it this way: When you create a new folder, a file manager won't show the contents of other folders you often access just because it's "best that you see content". Or when you empty your inbox, gmail won't show some random popular emails. So on.Showing popular sites is a good idea at its core but if you're on a fresh profile, well you're on a fresh profile. Make money off firefox of course, you need it, but "it's best you see content" is bullshit justification." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "it's really surprising to see how strongly people here oppose the idea of Mozilla making money. Mozilla is arguably one of the most important tech companies, committed to FOSS, transparency and providing a much needed counter balance to much larger tech giants that would steamroller all over the web without them. This is probably the least obtrusive change they could have made, how do you expect them to survive without revenue?" }

{ "score": 3, "text": "it's really surprising to see how strongly people here oppose the idea of Mozilla making money. Mozilla is arguably one of the most important tech companies, committed to FOSS, transparency and providing a much needed counter balance to much larger tech giants that would steamroller all over the web without them. This is probably the least obtrusive change they could have made, how do you expect them to survive without revenue?" }

{ "score": 4, "text": "I'd rather like to see a progress bar for donations (just like on Wikipedia, reddit and Kickstarter) and I wouldn't mind if it was boldly integrated into the user interface (for example next to the address bar). Advertisement does not feel right for a company like Mozilla." }

{ "score": 0, "text": "The jpg artifacts in the rendering look really awful. With Microsoft betting so much on a device like this, why can't they take a second to get something small like that right?" }

{ "score": 1, "text": "Wow, look at the Microsoft “logo” in the bottom right. Is that their new wordmark? Microsoft.com is still using the gashed-O wordmark." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "Wow, look at the Microsoft “logo” in the bottom right. Is that their new wordmark? Microsoft.com is still using the gashed-O wordmark." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "No coffeetable any more? It was a pretty weird idea, but with interesting concepts." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "No coffeetable any more? It was a pretty weird idea, but with interesting concepts." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "The secret sauce is in the case. Touch + a trackpad is necessary to use both metro and the traditional desktop UI. Could be a good compromise so I can keep using legacy desktop apps until all the new metro apps are ready." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "The secret sauce is in the case. Touch + a trackpad is necessary to use both metro and the traditional desktop UI. Could be a good compromise so I can keep using legacy desktop apps until all the new metro apps are ready." }

{ "score": 4, "text": "Ah, look, rounded corners. Almost indistinguishable from my Galaxy Tab. I wonder if Apple will sue them for design patent violation too." }

{ "score": 0, "text": "With respect, the press is regularly quoting how many places now 'accept bitcoin' but it is all really a vanity metric. I know it is difficult to know how much these merchant accounts get used without internal information from the providers themselves, but from all internal accounts I have heard, the usage is dismal. For no surprising reason customers are generally disinterested in purchasing anything with Bitcoin that they can already purchase with their credit card.I think Bitcoin is going to be revolutionary but the application is lacking - entrepreneurs really need to find a real world application where the use of Bitcoin actually improves the experience. Remittances and International Money Transfers are the first legal industry I can think of where that will work, but businesses in that area need time to grow and navigate the uncertain regulatory environment before Bitcoin will actually see adoption that really means something." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "What is an example of a service* or product* that is served better with cryptocoins than with cash, bank transfers or credit cards? What are people spending bitcoins on and why?That would be nice to know and definitely more informative than a graph of daily activity within the blockchain.* preferably something mundane and totally within the boundaries of the law" }

{ "score": 1, "text": "What is an example of a service* or product* that is served better with cryptocoins than with cash, bank transfers or credit cards? What are people spending bitcoins on and why?That would be nice to know and definitely more informative than a graph of daily activity within the blockchain.* preferably something mundane and totally within the boundaries of the law" }

{ "score": 2, "text": "So, if I had invested when I planned to a couple of years ago (or actually bought decent hardware to mine on) I would have made a decent return. But now I'm curious if we're in a bubble that will decrease in popularity or if it's still something that will continue to be on the rise.Seems to me that all of the recent news has brought attention to bitcoin which has helped with it's popularity. Is it something that will continue to rise or will it fall once people aren't talking about it as much?Can anyone weigh in with their opinions?" }

{ "score": 2, "text": "So, if I had invested when I planned to a couple of years ago (or actually bought decent hardware to mine on) I would have made a decent return. But now I'm curious if we're in a bubble that will decrease in popularity or if it's still something that will continue to be on the rise.Seems to me that all of the recent news has brought attention to bitcoin which has helped with it's popularity. Is it something that will continue to rise or will it fall once people aren't talking about it as much?Can anyone weigh in with their opinions?" }

{ "score": 3, "text": "Is there really an exponential growth in transactions per day? The last I heard it has been constant for months:https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions[edit] I see he's excluding the 100 most popular addresses. Is there any justification for that? I'm sure he would have left them in if the chart looked right." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "Is there really an exponential growth in transactions per day? The last I heard it has been constant for months:https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions[edit] I see he's excluding the 100 most popular addresses. Is there any justification for that? I'm sure he would have left them in if the chart looked right." }

{ "score": 4, "text": "How do (real world) shops accept bitcoin? I thought that it takes some time for a transaction to be confirmed by the blockchain. Even if it is a matter of minutes, you can't expect customers to wait by the checkout until their payment is cleared. And yet without this confirmation, you are opening yourself up to fraud." }

{ "score": 0, "text": "Hey guyswould love to have your APIs on Mashape (http://www.mashape.com) --> I think our community of developers will love it.cheers\naghi" }

{ "score": 1, "text": "I am interested in a good movie search api. i currently use tmdb.from the \"original search site\" i tried spiderman and spider man.no results." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "I am interested in a good movie search api. i currently use tmdb.from the \"original search site\" i tried spiderman and spider man.no results." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "Can you provide an endpoint for using the API? How can we evaluate a service if you don't let us try it." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "Can you provide an endpoint for using the API? How can we evaluate a service if you don't let us try it." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "Nothing. http://www.nanocrowd.com/" }

{ "score": 3, "text": "Nothing. http://www.nanocrowd.com/" }

{ "score": 4, "text": "Look at my bag full of awesome things, a bag full of nothing (poof)" }

{ "score": 0, "text": "A Amazon Smartphone could be a rather interesting device, since Amazon is mainly selling content. So they do not care (much) if they make money by selling hardware.For example a phone which is mostly geared towards ebooks, that is a very good display but no GPS and no strong graphics capabilities, could have a market. (Especially if it is cheap and already unlocked). Additionally Amazon is a trusted brand, which already has the credit card number of most potential customers, they could therefore easily build a strong app store/ mobile shopping site (actually they already have it)." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "After the Kindle Fire, I don't know if I really trust Amazon to release quality hardware. The traditional Kindles are top of the line, but their foray into more advanced electronics hasn't been up to snuff.They'll definitely need a huge hook in order to gain a solid market share. It can't be just an Amazon branded phone running a customized Android OS." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "After the Kindle Fire, I don't know if I really trust Amazon to release quality hardware. The traditional Kindles are top of the line, but their foray into more advanced electronics hasn't been up to snuff.They'll definitely need a huge hook in order to gain a solid market share. It can't be just an Amazon branded phone running a customized Android OS." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "Maybe they could MVNO on one or more networks, with favorable data plans internationally, and handle all sales/service on the phones as well.If I could have Amazon customer service handle all of my cellphone needs, I'd be fine with paying twice what I pay Verizon or ATT now. The hardware would be largely irrelevant." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "Maybe they could MVNO on one or more networks, with favorable data plans internationally, and handle all sales/service on the phones as well.If I could have Amazon customer service handle all of my cellphone needs, I'd be fine with paying twice what I pay Verizon or ATT now. The hardware would be largely irrelevant." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "This will be tough given their business model. Plenty of very strong android phones can be bought for free on contract, and off contract phones have already scratched <$100 for okay android hardware.Amazon said their strategy with the Fire was to make it as affordable as possible. They know they make their money back in app/book/video sales. However, there is no room for a budget Android phone any more. The only way they can conceivably go is up towards the high-end, but that seems antithetical.Only real selling point I can see for an Amazon device is video from Prime, which would require good data plans that I doubt major carriers would be happy to offer.Perhaps we'll see an Amazon Wireless soon?" }

{ "score": 3, "text": "This will be tough given their business model. Plenty of very strong android phones can be bought for free on contract, and off contract phones have already scratched <$100 for okay android hardware.Amazon said their strategy with the Fire was to make it as affordable as possible. They know they make their money back in app/book/video sales. However, there is no room for a budget Android phone any more. The only way they can conceivably go is up towards the high-end, but that seems antithetical.Only real selling point I can see for an Amazon device is video from Prime, which would require good data plans that I doubt major carriers would be happy to offer.Perhaps we'll see an Amazon Wireless soon?" }

{ "score": 4, "text": "MediaTek is going to bring iphone 4S features to $150 - $200 handsets. Today such phones cost around $600. Phones using it would be released in Q3-2012. They are supposed to change the whole price dynamics in the phone market.I think amazon will use this market change to it's benefit somehow. It'll probably release the cheapest phone in this new category or go for a less capable phone but at a really cheap price. The latter might be good offer as unsubsidized phone and together with republic wireless $19/month phone plan it would be a nice package for a low end phone. But i'm not sure amazon will do it and anger the telcos." }

{ "score": 0, "text": "Some important background on this.At issue here is sales tax. By state law, the tax is owed by the citizens to the state no matter where they make the purchase. To make enforcement easier, the tax is supposed to be collected by businesses. In theory the tax is owed regardless, but as a practical matter when businesses do not collect the tax, customers don't volunteer the information and the state loses revenue.This annoys states to no end. However courts have long ruled that a company that is not in a state cannot be forced to be regulated by that state, even if it does businesses with residents from that state. They can't do that because that is interstate commerce, which the Constitution says is regulated by Congress, not the states. But if the company has a presence in that state, then it can be forced to obey state regulations, even if the actual commercial act crosses state boundaries.This is all old hat, and was settled back in the 1800s with catalog companies.The new twist here, that several states (now including California) have pursued, is declaring that the existence of an affiliate program with state residents is a business presence in that state. Because it is a presence, they can make Amazon collect taxes.Amazon's position is that affiliates are not Amazon employees, and are not a presence of Amazon in that state. And therefore those laws are unconstitutional. However Amazon has chosen to not contest these laws in court. Instead Amazon has chosen to cut off all affiliates in any state that tries this tactic. It thereby guarantees that it no longer has a presence in that state, and it doesn't go about trying to collect taxes from people in that state.The net result is that Amazon loses some business, the state continues to not get taxes, and some residents lose a source of income." }

{ "score": 1, "text": " Update Governor Brown just signed the aforementioned affiliate nexus taxes into law minutes ago. They took effect instantly." }

{ "score": 1, "text": " Update Governor Brown just signed the aforementioned affiliate nexus taxes into law minutes ago. They took effect instantly." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "So, what exactly is deemed \"presence?\" Apparently an Amazon distribution center in Texas was deemed \"presence\" a while back. On the other hand, surely Amazon operates a fairly extensive network of data centers, warehouses, and other fixed-location logistical inputs in California? Is that \"presence?\" Where is the distinction lie?" }

{ "score": 2, "text": "So, what exactly is deemed \"presence?\" Apparently an Amazon distribution center in Texas was deemed \"presence\" a while back. On the other hand, surely Amazon operates a fairly extensive network of data centers, warehouses, and other fixed-location logistical inputs in California? Is that \"presence?\" Where is the distinction lie?" }

{ "score": 3, "text": "This sounds like a terrible idea from a technology standpoint as each county and city seemingly has different sales tax rates. To comply with taxation, every out of state company will now need to pull the active sales tax rates for the shipping destination and then apply this to the order.What happens if the rate isn't kept up to date?Are states like California actually ready to supply this data in a form that is easily consumable as a web service rather than a PDF file, to avoid hindering interstate commerce?Personally I don't think Amazon is completely the victim in this situation. Their attorneys spend quite a bit of time and money figuring out how to avoid paying tax. I interviewed once for an Amazon.com company who's \"primary\" development offices were in California, yet their checks came from their \"legal\" headquarters in Nevada. Shady at best... for example: http://www.lab126.com" }

{ "score": 3, "text": "This sounds like a terrible idea from a technology standpoint as each county and city seemingly has different sales tax rates. To comply with taxation, every out of state company will now need to pull the active sales tax rates for the shipping destination and then apply this to the order.What happens if the rate isn't kept up to date?Are states like California actually ready to supply this data in a form that is easily consumable as a web service rather than a PDF file, to avoid hindering interstate commerce?Personally I don't think Amazon is completely the victim in this situation. Their attorneys spend quite a bit of time and money figuring out how to avoid paying tax. I interviewed once for an Amazon.com company who's \"primary\" development offices were in California, yet their checks came from their \"legal\" headquarters in Nevada. Shady at best... for example: http://www.lab126.com" }

{ "score": 4, "text": "I received notice today from 4 of my affiliate programs that they are terminating their programs in California. I expect the remaining few to notify me soon enough. I may end up registering again with these program using an Oregon address if I feel like my site is something I still want to work on if this goes down the way it is looking." }

{ "score": 0, "text": "The premise is surely nonsense! The full logic ought to go: Why do we have cars? To go faster. Why do cars have brakes? In order to slow down again.If all we were concerned about was going fast then why ever slow down? Cars need to regulate their speed in order to provide safety, and also so they are usable, if I can't stop then I can't get out at my destination. Many elements of a car help in it's overall function, which is to go fast, but you may as well say the purpose of a fan belt is to go fast. Brakes are a part of a car and saying that their purpose is the same as the whole car is useless and confusing. They have a specific purpose within the machine.From the linked article: \"[the] answer feels paradoxical which usually means there's a deep truth\". Indeed. The simpler explanation is that it's pure twaddle." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "I wonder if car technicians go around making weak analogies with software development to justify their industry practices.\nSomething like: \"Why do software developers have compilers? blah blah blah, and that's why we need to keep your tools organized\"" }

{ "score": 1, "text": "I wonder if car technicians go around making weak analogies with software development to justify their industry practices.\nSomething like: \"Why do software developers have compilers? blah blah blah, and that's why we need to keep your tools organized\"" }

{ "score": 2, "text": "Has the art of using the engine to slow down become so unknown that it is no longer considered a way to slow down a vehicle?" }

{ "score": 2, "text": "Has the art of using the engine to slow down become so unknown that it is no longer considered a way to slow down a vehicle?" }

{ "score": 3, "text": "Overextending the analogy, there's no brakes on track bikes but they go fast too. They don't need them, the fixed gear means applying counter pressure on the pedals stops the bike.The clunky software analogy would be to do with lightweight simplicity." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "Overextending the analogy, there's no brakes on track bikes but they go fast too. They don't need them, the fixed gear means applying counter pressure on the pedals stops the bike.The clunky software analogy would be to do with lightweight simplicity." }

{ "score": 4, "text": "The analogy between automobiles and software testing can be extended to consider the racing line - the combination of velocity and distance through a corner which results in the fastest time.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_line" }

{ "score": 0, "text": "I wonder how viable this would be for someone who wants to actually scam Spotify? For example, I'm assuming that with only minimal investment one could produce and submit a series of silent audio tracks. Then one could produce a field of virtualized instances of Spotify and a fleet of bots to "listen" to those tracks. But how expensive would all of that be? And at what scale would the operation be necessary to produce an actual profit, if it could happen at all?According to this article [1] the artist makes about $.004 per play. So, 250 plays comes out to about a dollar and thus 25,000,000 plays comes out to $100,000 which I would consider to be a pretty good outcome for such a quickly baked scam. But that comes out to 7.5 million hours of streaming at 30 seconds per play, and there are what...9000 or so hours in a year? So over 800 years to make $100,000 (pre-tax).Now I suppose it could be ramped up. What if we had 100,000 bots that each streamed a clip for 30 seconds and they ran around the clock. If we play one clip for 30 seconds 100,000 times, simultaneously then we get to 100000/250=$400 worth of plays. So then we could make out 100,000 in about 75 hours. But how expensive would it be to run that many bots all at the same time?Someone please check my math and my assumptions, I'm sure I did something wrong here.[1]: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/19/zoe-keatin...[edit 1]: also we need to count the hours planning and spinning up the bots in our value calculation..right?" }

{ "score": 1, "text": "Perhaps this is why Pandora has the annoying "I'm still listening" button, so they don't have to pay out royalties on things their users aren't listening to." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "Perhaps this is why Pandora has the annoying "I'm still listening" button, so they don't have to pay out royalties on things their users aren't listening to." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "This makes my product harder.I am recording a lot of "record player noise" (stylus on vinyl; run-out grooves and clicks; run-in grooves; clunking arms and needle drops; etc.People download (or rip) their music as high quality lossless flac. They then mix my recorded record noise in, with other processing ("bad 80s digital amp"; "good 90s hifi amp"; "valve amp" etc) to get the vinyl experience with modern computing convenience.Having the distribution of near silent tracks being scrutinised is going to be gently worrying." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "This makes my product harder.I am recording a lot of "record player noise" (stylus on vinyl; run-out grooves and clicks; run-in grooves; clunking arms and needle drops; etc.People download (or rip) their music as high quality lossless flac. They then mix my recorded record noise in, with other processing ("bad 80s digital amp"; "good 90s hifi amp"; "valve amp" etc) to get the vinyl experience with modern computing convenience.Having the distribution of near silent tracks being scrutinised is going to be gently worrying." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "Best comment is on that Guardian page by a "LoveActuary":\nI really hope that the album has a hidden track which is an ear-piercingly loud alarm." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "Best comment is on that Guardian page by a "LoveActuary":\nI really hope that the album has a hidden track which is an ear-piercingly loud alarm." }

{ "score": 4, "text": "Probably more effective all around to turn your device off instead, and when you get your electricity bill, which will be a few cents cheaper as a result, send the band half the difference." }

{ "score": 0, "text": "I am from a \"business\" family in India: This means, most of my relatives run small and large businesses. Risk and entrepreneurship is considered normal and a desirable thing to do. Due to this I know a lot of types of businesses and get access to data of their revenues and profitability.The most profitable businesses I have seen built in the past 5 years, are brick and mortar, infrastructure and real estate businesses. These are not VC funded, or typical for the HN crowd. These are very offline businesses, built on angel capital (friends and family), then institutional bank loans and then directly public money via small IPOs at the best outliers.A few of these businesses make $100MN+ revenues and the scenarios in which they reached here, was the Government + private contractor nexus. Privileged access to information and contracts is the only case where I have seen hockey stick growths of revenue in India. Most of the profitability comes from \"cutting corners\".These businessmen/women stay off the public radar, typically run massively profitable businesses.Most of them wouldn't consider going to a VC. Private Equity, sometimes yes.So, in view, its a great time to be in India and to build infrastructure projects, brick and mortar things. A \"relationship\" with the Government officials is almost a necessary condition to get the contracts. I don't know how honest you can remain in this business, but I have seen so many examples of real startup like hockey stick growth. Hustlers is the word I can think of people who succeed in this type of environment." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_india seeded hatred and distrust among people in India for the past 3000 years.http://www.firstpost.com/world/painting-india-red-why-the-gl...You either collude/bribe to get things done in India.http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/24/indians-among-..." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_india seeded hatred and distrust among people in India for the past 3000 years.http://www.firstpost.com/world/painting-india-red-why-the-gl...You either collude/bribe to get things done in India.http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/sep/24/indians-among-..." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "It is always very simple to come up with these kind of post-hoc explanations. Not that these are false but they are not certainly \"killers\". Compared to say United States, Indian middle class and even lower middle class shows tremendous resilience. I am sure these kind of obstacles are not that big. I feel the real obstacle is a totally dysfunctional government and absence of law." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "It is always very simple to come up with these kind of post-hoc explanations. Not that these are false but they are not certainly \"killers\". Compared to say United States, Indian middle class and even lower middle class shows tremendous resilience. I am sure these kind of obstacles are not that big. I feel the real obstacle is a totally dysfunctional government and absence of law." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "> (some) people negotiate all the corner cases in extreme detail, to the point where the law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty strongly.I have seen that. I once negotiated a contract going back and forth over 2 months. The total business generated by that contract? 5000 INR. < 100 USD. (Of course, I didn't know that while negotiating the contract.)I try not to do that now." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "> (some) people negotiate all the corner cases in extreme detail, to the point where the law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty strongly.I have seen that. I once negotiated a contract going back and forth over 2 months. The total business generated by that contract? 5000 INR. < 100 USD. (Of course, I didn't know that while negotiating the contract.)I try not to do that now." }

{ "score": 4, "text": "The articles touches on it, but as a startup Co founder one of the biggest problem in India is - access to Capital. Dharmesh Shah once said - \"Indians are terribly practical\" and it shows. VCs and even Angel investors stay away from a venture which isn't already turning in profit. Sure, there is a funding once you are making good chunk of money, but for many startups it is too late already." }

{ "score": 0, "text": "The web page rubs me the wrong way. How can you claim to be the fastest anything without a single benchmark? How can you claim to be a \"scripting language\" when you're statically-typed and compile to C++? What does \"scripting language\" even mean then? How can you say things like \"it will be a bit slow the first time but subsequent runs will load much faster than any VM.\" Any VM? Are you really \"much faster\" than: $ time lua empty.lua \n\n real\t0m0.005s\n user\t0m0.002s\n sys\t0m0.002s\n\n $ time ./luajit empty.lua \n\n real\t0m0.005s\n user\t0m0.001s\n sys\t0m0.002s\n\nMaybe there's cool stuff going on here but I can't get past being annoyed at these over-hyped claims." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "@nmcfarl thanks for resubmitting with a different url. I find the home page a bit baity but the tutorial page http://felix-lang.org/web/tutorial.fdoc is great.Depending on how you look, it is C++ speed OCaML, or perhaps more correctly C++ in a fully type-inferred (unfortunately, nowadays almost everything gets called type-inferred. Hence the added qualification \"fully\"), ML like language.It does whole program optimization. It uses a mix of lazy and eager evaluation strategies for speed.I believe it can generate Python modules too, thanks to how well it interacts with C. The details have to be gleaned from the mailing list though." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "@nmcfarl thanks for resubmitting with a different url. I find the home page a bit baity but the tutorial page http://felix-lang.org/web/tutorial.fdoc is great.Depending on how you look, it is C++ speed OCaML, or perhaps more correctly C++ in a fully type-inferred (unfortunately, nowadays almost everything gets called type-inferred. Hence the added qualification \"fully\"), ML like language.It does whole program optimization. It uses a mix of lazy and eager evaluation strategies for speed.I believe it can generate Python modules too, thanks to how well it interacts with C. The details have to be gleaned from the mailing list though." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "While I enjoy reading about new and interesting languages (note: Felix has been around for over ten years), I really wish that language designers would put example code for something like FizzBuzz right on the front page to give people a flavor of the syntax.I can't remember how many times in my life I've done a link expedition through a website or docs just to see a simple programming example." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "While I enjoy reading about new and interesting languages (note: Felix has been around for over ten years), I really wish that language designers would put example code for something like FizzBuzz right on the front page to give people a flavor of the syntax.I can't remember how many times in my life I've done a link expedition through a website or docs just to see a simple programming example." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "They are smoking crack if they think anyone will use a scripting language that doesn't have a functioning REPL.My goto-languages for quick development are Perl 5, Clojure and Javascript.All 3 are adequately fast for real tasks. All are cross-platform, and all 3 support a REPL that allows doing real work interactively.These conditions are the absolute minimum to be viable as a scripting or sketch/prototyping language." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "They are smoking crack if they think anyone will use a scripting language that doesn't have a functioning REPL.My goto-languages for quick development are Perl 5, Clojure and Javascript.All 3 are adequately fast for real tasks. All are cross-platform, and all 3 support a REPL that allows doing real work interactively.These conditions are the absolute minimum to be viable as a scripting or sketch/prototyping language." }

{ "score": 4, "text": "I've kept an eye on felix-lang the last several months, and the project seems to be progressing continuously.I'm curious though: has it been used in production? I'd be very interested in reading real use stories, with up and down sides!Also, how is the community doing, and what about contributors? Do both groups grow?" }

{ "score": 0, "text": "Blimp looks interesting, but I didn't know what it was until I clicked around, and I'm still not clear on the major differences between it and Trello. May I politely suggest that not everyone reading this post will know what Blimp is and may not take the effort to click around and read? You'd be doing yourself a favor by either: saying what Blimp is somewhere on that page, or providing a brief list of reasons I might want to switch from Trello to Blimp." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "Looked interesting enough to give them my email address and see what might be different.Importer is broken.sad trombone" }

{ "score": 1, "text": "Looked interesting enough to give them my email address and see what might be different.Importer is broken.sad trombone" }

{ "score": 2, "text": "Their site looks gorgeous, but I wish there was a video walkthrough or at least some full screenshots so I could see what the app itself looks like and how it functions." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "Their site looks gorgeous, but I wish there was a video walkthrough or at least some full screenshots so I could see what the app itself looks like and how it functions." }

{ "score": 3, "text": ">Made by the Blimp crew in San Juan, Puerto RicoThis made me happy. Cool to see a Puerto Rican startup on the front page of HN.Are there other notable PR startups that I might not know about?" }

{ "score": 3, "text": ">Made by the Blimp crew in San Juan, Puerto RicoThis made me happy. Cool to see a Puerto Rican startup on the front page of HN.Are there other notable PR startups that I might not know about?" }

{ "score": 4, "text": "This is pretty cool! I wish other apps (I'm looking at you, to-do list apps) had the same \"easy migration\" philosophy." }

{ "score": 0, "text": "\"Yada is a patent pending method for implementing a peer-to-peer based social network without the use of a ANY central server.\"Is that a joke? Seriously?" }

{ "score": 1, "text": "Pardon what may seem to be a silly question (amateur \"would-be\" engineer speaking), but I have a doubt, which is the following:Data needs to be stored. You either store it locally, and as such it is only accessible when the device is on, or it's stored on a central repository or index, meaning it's always on even if one of the devices is off.How do you tackle this? How do you make sure that user A tries to access news feed of user B, and fails to get it because user's B device is offline?Maybe I'm being slow or noobish, but it seems to be the same problem one has with bitorrent: user A downloads from user B if user B is online. If data is common, I have multiple seeds, but social network implies that nobody has the same data. Unless you copy my graph to my friends \"device\" so one has multiple seeds, which could be quite unpractical on mobile devices if I have a lot of friends.How do you solve this \"intermittent issue\" and the synchronization and persistence problems it generates? Without a central \"clearing\"/indexing server? Even Skype has \"Super nodes\" to handle this issues...This aside from the fact that \"IPV6 deployment\" is not going to be a easy cake to bake, one has to fix the problems faced by GPG trust model to ensure that two parties can verify (with some degree of trust) that the other party with whom they're communicating is, indeed, the person they expect, dynamic IPs, and so on." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "Pardon what may seem to be a silly question (amateur \"would-be\" engineer speaking), but I have a doubt, which is the following:Data needs to be stored. You either store it locally, and as such it is only accessible when the device is on, or it's stored on a central repository or index, meaning it's always on even if one of the devices is off.How do you tackle this? How do you make sure that user A tries to access news feed of user B, and fails to get it because user's B device is offline?Maybe I'm being slow or noobish, but it seems to be the same problem one has with bitorrent: user A downloads from user B if user B is online. If data is common, I have multiple seeds, but social network implies that nobody has the same data. Unless you copy my graph to my friends \"device\" so one has multiple seeds, which could be quite unpractical on mobile devices if I have a lot of friends.How do you solve this \"intermittent issue\" and the synchronization and persistence problems it generates? Without a central \"clearing\"/indexing server? Even Skype has \"Super nodes\" to handle this issues...This aside from the fact that \"IPV6 deployment\" is not going to be a easy cake to bake, one has to fix the problems faced by GPG trust model to ensure that two parties can verify (with some degree of trust) that the other party with whom they're communicating is, indeed, the person they expect, dynamic IPs, and so on." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "There appear to be a number of problems with this proof of concept:1. A requirement seems to be the ability to make and receive socket connections. How would you address the typically restrictive home firewalls/NATs that most people are living with?2. In the responses, a commenter raises this issue: With the above example of two users and 56 connections it seems like there could be scaling issues and or perormance issues.\nThey may be less obvious on computers but mobile devices with more limited bandwidth and sometimes quotas may suffer for those users with muilple devices and their multi device highly connected friends.The response from admin is: \"Correct, this technology will have to scale along with hardware. I don’t believe we are too far off with 4g, more inexpensive memory and the like.\"That doesn't inspire much confidence in the idea as a proof of concept.You're also claiming to solve a far more fundamental problem: that of creating and maintaining a reliable distributed peer-to-peer network without any central servers at all. If you do have a practical solution to this problem, then a bunch of other difficult problems (like tracker-less Bittorent, for example, which currently relies on distributed hash tables) reduce to yours. Are you sure you're able to make that claim?" }

{ "score": 2, "text": "There appear to be a number of problems with this proof of concept:1. A requirement seems to be the ability to make and receive socket connections. How would you address the typically restrictive home firewalls/NATs that most people are living with?2. In the responses, a commenter raises this issue: With the above example of two users and 56 connections it seems like there could be scaling issues and or perormance issues.\nThey may be less obvious on computers but mobile devices with more limited bandwidth and sometimes quotas may suffer for those users with muilple devices and their multi device highly connected friends.The response from admin is: \"Correct, this technology will have to scale along with hardware. I don’t believe we are too far off with 4g, more inexpensive memory and the like.\"That doesn't inspire much confidence in the idea as a proof of concept.You're also claiming to solve a far more fundamental problem: that of creating and maintaining a reliable distributed peer-to-peer network without any central servers at all. If you do have a practical solution to this problem, then a bunch of other difficult problems (like tracker-less Bittorent, for example, which currently relies on distributed hash tables) reduce to yours. Are you sure you're able to make that claim?" }

{ "score": 3, "text": "Have you spoken with the Diaspora team? This was their exact idea, until they started implementing, and the practical concerns moved them back to the client-server, node-based model." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "Have you spoken with the Diaspora team? This was their exact idea, until they started implementing, and the practical concerns moved them back to the client-server, node-based model." }

{ "score": 4, "text": "Sorry, but I don't understand how this works without a central server.edit: Namely, how do you securely add a friend without prior knowledge of his public key?" }

{ "score": 0, "text": "You know, I'm not particularly famous. I'm not the best engineer, software designer, or manager you will find. I am certainly not the worst of these you will find, and I enjoy my work and challenging projects; these are aspects that employers seem to look for in employees.I have no angry blog posts demanding I am hired, no complaints about how my work is under-appreciated splashed on a news site, and no demo work thrown out to the world like a challenge. And so, it surprises me that people feel the need to do PR stunts to get recruiters to call them. Too many call me. I write at least one polite rejection a week—the worst it's ever been was 6 in a week.I'm not sure what I'm doing right and these people doing wrong, but there's nothing magical about having recruiters call you. Put your name where recruiters look, and they will call you. But be warned, this is not as awesome as you might think... most companies are far worse at vetting how well you'd fit than you are. You end up wasting a lot of time." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "I don't know about this. Something about Andrew Horner's reverse job application was amusing; I find this one a bit creepy. I find his demo application to be a disheartening demonstration of an oblivious sort of sexism that's all too prevalent in software development already. And using this to seek contract work (versus a FT job) also rings false; there are plenty of better ways about that, too.What's more, the application needs work; this data isn't useful. Who cares where the ladies are right at this instant? They're not some foursquare-checking horde who zip from place to place en masse, and the statistics page (http://nolaladies.com/pages/statistics) shows just how few people use foursquare in New Orleans at all." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "I don't know about this. Something about Andrew Horner's reverse job application was amusing; I find this one a bit creepy. I find his demo application to be a disheartening demonstration of an oblivious sort of sexism that's all too prevalent in software development already. And using this to seek contract work (versus a FT job) also rings false; there are plenty of better ways about that, too.What's more, the application needs work; this data isn't useful. Who cares where the ladies are right at this instant? They're not some foursquare-checking horde who zip from place to place en masse, and the statistics page (http://nolaladies.com/pages/statistics) shows just how few people use foursquare in New Orleans at all." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "Johnny is right in pointing out that this is simply called advertising, and is part of contracting. He's also entirely correct in pointing out that in the world of software all you really need to do is produce something.I think the best way to go about writing a 'reverse' job application is generally \"don't.\" Trying to copy The Oatmeal, adding in cute images, and other 'fun' gags to show you think freely (only when compared to an average 9-5er) doesn't make your software any better.\nGive me someone who wants to create software that they feel passionately about, and can also express that, and leave the XKCD comics at home.The photographer Rick Sammon has said a few times \"Before people care how much you know, they want to know how much you care.\" Personality is great in any application, but if you walked into an office with a comic strip, we'd point you to one of the city newspapers." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "Johnny is right in pointing out that this is simply called advertising, and is part of contracting. He's also entirely correct in pointing out that in the world of software all you really need to do is produce something.I think the best way to go about writing a 'reverse' job application is generally \"don't.\" Trying to copy The Oatmeal, adding in cute images, and other 'fun' gags to show you think freely (only when compared to an average 9-5er) doesn't make your software any better.\nGive me someone who wants to create software that they feel passionately about, and can also express that, and leave the XKCD comics at home.The photographer Rick Sammon has said a few times \"Before people care how much you know, they want to know how much you care.\" Personality is great in any application, but if you walked into an office with a comic strip, we'd point you to one of the city newspapers." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "This person gets it. It took me a year after grad school to find a job I wanted. I tried a semester of teaching first, as an experiment, but eventually was hired when I could demonstrate the ability to produce new ideas.That last article had me thinking the same. In one year why not demonstrate any sort of ambition or drive? Go out and make something. Unless you've signed a contract giving your current employer rights to all your ideas there's really no excuse. 4 hours a day looking for work, 4 hours hacking. There's your 9-5." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "This person gets it. It took me a year after grad school to find a job I wanted. I tried a semester of teaching first, as an experiment, but eventually was hired when I could demonstrate the ability to produce new ideas.That last article had me thinking the same. In one year why not demonstrate any sort of ambition or drive? Go out and make something. Unless you've signed a contract giving your current employer rights to all your ideas there's really no excuse. 4 hours a day looking for work, 4 hours hacking. There's your 9-5." }

{ "score": 4, "text": "Maybe, but one of the first things I look for in a prospective candidate is open source contributions. That is what I consider an ideal reverse job application. You're benefitting the community and I get to see your code." }

{ "score": 0, "text": "Blog post explaining what problem this is meant to solve in more detail:http://blog.apps.npr.org/2014/04/21/introducing-copytext-py...." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "gspread is a little-known Python module that uses the Google Spreadsheet API and offers a simple interface atop it. You don't even need to download the .xlsx file -- you can keep in sync with the file in real-time.https://github.com/burnash/gspreadI use it for some internal proj management tools at Parse.ly." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "gspread is a little-known Python module that uses the Google Spreadsheet API and offers a simple interface atop it. You don't even need to download the .xlsx file -- you can keep in sync with the file in real-time.https://github.com/burnash/gspreadI use it for some internal proj management tools at Parse.ly." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "It would be nice to mention that this is a wrapper around openpyxl: http://pythonhosted.org/openpyxl/" }

{ "score": 2, "text": "It would be nice to mention that this is a wrapper around openpyxl: http://pythonhosted.org/openpyxl/" }

{ "score": 3, "text": "Another useful tool for working with spreadsheets in Javascript is SheetJS: https://github.com/SheetJS/js-xlsx" }

{ "score": 3, "text": "Another useful tool for working with spreadsheets in Javascript is SheetJS: https://github.com/SheetJS/js-xlsx" }

{ "score": 4, "text": "There's https://github.com/nesquena/sheet_mapper too for Ruby." }

{ "score": 0, "text": "I don't show it at all. I try to streamline users into tricking them to join up.I display all functionality out right, give them as much access as I can, and when unauthenticated users try to activate functionality they are lead to a registration page using Facebook Oauth.When working smoothly you only need 2-3 clicks to have a users registered onto your site if they are already logged into Facebook." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "The problem with \"Sign In\" is that it reads a lot like \"Sign Up\" (another common web site expression).Consumers should be accustomed to Log In and Log Out (e.g. on Mac OS X the Apple menu says \"Log Out [user name]...\" and the user menu has a \"Login Window\" item)." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "The problem with \"Sign In\" is that it reads a lot like \"Sign Up\" (another common web site expression).Consumers should be accustomed to Log In and Log Out (e.g. on Mac OS X the Apple menu says \"Log Out [user name]...\" and the user menu has a \"Login Window\" item)." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "Sign In. Like you, I was ambivalent. I went with Login. Surprisingly, a couple friends, who don't take a particular interest in tech stuff, mentioned to me that they'd prefer Sign In, so I switched it. I still don't think it matters much." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "Sign In. Like you, I was ambivalent. I went with Login. Surprisingly, a couple friends, who don't take a particular interest in tech stuff, mentioned to me that they'd prefer Sign In, so I switched it. I still don't think it matters much." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "For what it's worth, I'm going with SIGN IN. I think that sounds more consumer-y. LOG IN sounds like a corporate intranet." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "For what it's worth, I'm going with SIGN IN. I think that sounds more consumer-y. LOG IN sounds like a corporate intranet." }

{ "score": 4, "text": "I had log in and log out but recently I switched to sign in and sign out as log in just didn't seem right for my service." }

{ "score": 0, "text": "I disagree fundamentally with the article; it does not reflect the experience of many people at all.I excelled in all subjects in high school except for math, which I detested and felt as difficult and, for the most part, uninteresting.Fast forward to third year of Uni and I was looking at set theory, graph theory, and logical proofs. They were all difficult, yet they sucked me in. It was hard but I wasn't dissuaded from studying. And the reason why was because thinking of interesting proofs and devising ways of solving puzzles is far, far more interesting than doing arithmetic from rote memory.It really doesn't surprise me at all that kids do badly in math when they're introduced to such boring and dry topics. Kids are taught useless trigonometric identities when they could be studying applied statistics, which is not only substantially more useful, but it opens a lot more doors for reasoning about the world. Learning statistics, graph theory and logic have literally helped to mold my thinking. I can't really say the same about trig of high-school level calculus (not that there's anything wrong with calculus, but i think that in order to get something out of it you need to dedicate much more time than what is available in high school)." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "This is deeply incorrect.If it were correct, mathematics education would have to begin with set theory and physics probably could not begin with F = ma. Our pedagogy is cumulative but it is tellingly built on some hand-waving and \"you'll have to trust me on this part\".This means that we can take a different approach to it pretty easily. For example, why does set theory often wait until college and probability until... never? These concepts are much more analytically useful to the average person than is the quadratic equation (which you can look up as needed) or (heaven help me) angle-side-angle.We teach math through loaded down problem sets instead of heading right after the most conceptually useful (and therefore) meaty chunks first. We don't even teach children mathematically-grounded science for the most part; that's a missed opportunity to take those problem sets and make them analytically powerful and memorable." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "This is deeply incorrect.If it were correct, mathematics education would have to begin with set theory and physics probably could not begin with F = ma. Our pedagogy is cumulative but it is tellingly built on some hand-waving and \"you'll have to trust me on this part\".This means that we can take a different approach to it pretty easily. For example, why does set theory often wait until college and probability until... never? These concepts are much more analytically useful to the average person than is the quadratic equation (which you can look up as needed) or (heaven help me) angle-side-angle.We teach math through loaded down problem sets instead of heading right after the most conceptually useful (and therefore) meaty chunks first. We don't even teach children mathematically-grounded science for the most part; that's a missed opportunity to take those problem sets and make them analytically powerful and memorable." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "I agree completely with this article. Math and physics are hard. It requires a certain disposition to be willing to sit with a problem for minutes or hours and have faith that you will be able to find the solution. The fields are also littered with geniuses and people with significantly more talent than yourself. The gap between those who tried and those who were gifted was severe at my alma mater(USC).I remember being in an intermediate mechanics course with only physics majors when our professor asked us how long it took us to complete the homework sets. I was regularly spending 15-25 hours a week on them. Some of my classmates were completing the sets in 2-3 hours. What shocked me wasn't that there were students who could complete the assignments that quickly but that:\n1) students were either taking 2-5 hours or 10+ hours to complete the assignment. It was very bimodal.\n2) that the gap in efficiency between the best and worst students was almost 10x.In comparison my estimate of the gap in efficiency between the best and worst medical students is 1.5-2x at the most. No medical student can claim that they can accomplish in 2-5 hours what would take another medical student 15-25 hours to learn.In the end I made the choice to go in to medicine where I was consistently in the top 3% of my class. There were a handful of 'superheroes' in medicine but not many. Most of us started in the same place and where we ended up ranking in our class was a function of effort. It was a refreshingly level playing field in comparison to physics." }

{ "score": 2, "text": "I agree completely with this article. Math and physics are hard. It requires a certain disposition to be willing to sit with a problem for minutes or hours and have faith that you will be able to find the solution. The fields are also littered with geniuses and people with significantly more talent than yourself. The gap between those who tried and those who were gifted was severe at my alma mater(USC).I remember being in an intermediate mechanics course with only physics majors when our professor asked us how long it took us to complete the homework sets. I was regularly spending 15-25 hours a week on them. Some of my classmates were completing the sets in 2-3 hours. What shocked me wasn't that there were students who could complete the assignments that quickly but that:\n1) students were either taking 2-5 hours or 10+ hours to complete the assignment. It was very bimodal.\n2) that the gap in efficiency between the best and worst students was almost 10x.In comparison my estimate of the gap in efficiency between the best and worst medical students is 1.5-2x at the most. No medical student can claim that they can accomplish in 2-5 hours what would take another medical student 15-25 hours to learn.In the end I made the choice to go in to medicine where I was consistently in the top 3% of my class. There were a handful of 'superheroes' in medicine but not many. Most of us started in the same place and where we ended up ranking in our class was a function of effort. It was a refreshingly level playing field in comparison to physics." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "I struggled through high school never managing to get my head around statistics. I changed majors from chemistry to microbiology my first year of my science degree (because thats where all the girls where), and found statistics really easy. So what was the difference? the teachers thats all, some of the best tutors I every experienced where in the science area.I had one tutor explain to me why he threw curve ball problems at the class. He would use it to weed out which ones gave up quick, which ones powered on, which ones just threw tantrums etc... he would then only really teach the percentage of the class that wanted the degree. The rest he said he'd get to passing, some just weren't worth teaching, but he'd make sure the real scientists walked out of the class with the best training they could get (albeit at the expense of others).I'd hazard a guess that type of teaching behavior is endemic, so drop out rates for people who can't get the initiative to put in the extra effort get left behind pretty quickly and hence drop out." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "I struggled through high school never managing to get my head around statistics. I changed majors from chemistry to microbiology my first year of my science degree (because thats where all the girls where), and found statistics really easy. So what was the difference? the teachers thats all, some of the best tutors I every experienced where in the science area.I had one tutor explain to me why he threw curve ball problems at the class. He would use it to weed out which ones gave up quick, which ones powered on, which ones just threw tantrums etc... he would then only really teach the percentage of the class that wanted the degree. The rest he said he'd get to passing, some just weren't worth teaching, but he'd make sure the real scientists walked out of the class with the best training they could get (albeit at the expense of others).I'd hazard a guess that type of teaching behavior is endemic, so drop out rates for people who can't get the initiative to put in the extra effort get left behind pretty quickly and hence drop out." }

{ "score": 4, "text": "A Mathematician's Lament\"TEXTBOOK PUBLISHERS : TEACHERS ::A) pharmaceutical companies : doctorsB) record companies : disk jockeysC) corporations : congressmenD) all of the aboveWe have millions of adults wandering around with “negative b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus 4ac all over 2a” in their heads, and absolutely no idea whatsoever what it means.\"https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:qcqr-s07yTgJ:..." }

{ "score": 0, "text": ">""He tells the story of a high school teacher whose students confronted him with the same question: "Why do we need to learn this?" The teacher replied, "You don't. You need to learn to ask just one question." The piqued students implored him to tell what that was. His answer: "Would you like fries with that?""This is deplorable. As someone who didn't go to college, the fact that the author acts like they're right because of the status quo, and because Thiel's first start-ups weren't successful is absolutely laughable.I love how their main argument relies on the fact that the perception of the degree is what's most important. While this may be true, this is simply a perception, and can easily be changed. It's not a "fact".Secondly, if Thiel's lack of success from his ventures proves anything, it's that he needs work finding the right people to invest in. Just because a small subset of adventurous young adults failed their first time (understandable) doesn't mean that all young adults need the experience of college before they can fail/succeed in their first venture.Lastly, let's see if the author is bias. Well, they're an academic, are adjuncts in two colleges... I find it interesting that an Academic intellectual has a problem understanding that people can be didactic learners and learn what they want on their own."Would you like fries with that?" - Sure, I'd love to buy some fries with my great job that I got right out of high school because I ACTUALLY worked towards my craft in high school. I doubt you can do that with an English, Psychology, Sociology, or even a regular Science degree. What this really sounds like is that college is important if you want to become an engineer. That's obvious. Most other things? Not so much." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "Interesting article, considering I dropped out of school yesterday (literally).The reason I dropped out isn't because I'm lazy or incompetent; I'm actually 30 credits (two semesters) away from graduation. But as I look at what my class schedule would be, I realize that the bubble they're trying to force me into takes me a different direction than where I really want to go. I don't think I could handle the cognitive dissonance of that realization day after day.I love technology and mass media, and I want to go into Internet marketing - I've worked in Internet marketing for five years, so I ended up in the communications department, which was perfect. The program was great - we would discuss how media is changing, work on being creative, study design, understand why people do the things they do; it was great. But then, after my 2nd year, it got specific to make sure we could get a job at an advertising agency - to make sure we stay the 2nd best school in the nation for advertising.And now I look at my class schedule of the classes I have to take to graduate. Advanced account management? A forced internship (when I've been working in Internet marketing for five years)? Writing 150? (I tested out of that with two different AP tests and my ACT score, but it's required in the Commms program no matter what.) What college wants me to do to ensure I get a job just isn't relevant enough to what I want to learn or where I want to end up. Not to mention the fact that the company I'm a co-founder of has investors begging me to drop out of school and go full-time... it's just not a good fit. It just doesn't make sense.I'm designing my own curriculum around the things that I want to learn. It's difficult to do and will be hard to force myself to do those things, but at least it's relevant to where I want to go." }

{ "score": 1, "text": "Interesting article, considering I dropped out of school yesterday (literally).The reason I dropped out isn't because I'm lazy or incompetent; I'm actually 30 credits (two semesters) away from graduation. But as I look at what my class schedule would be, I realize that the bubble they're trying to force me into takes me a different direction than where I really want to go. I don't think I could handle the cognitive dissonance of that realization day after day.I love technology and mass media, and I want to go into Internet marketing - I've worked in Internet marketing for five years, so I ended up in the communications department, which was perfect. The program was great - we would discuss how media is changing, work on being creative, study design, understand why people do the things they do; it was great. But then, after my 2nd year, it got specific to make sure we could get a job at an advertising agency - to make sure we stay the 2nd best school in the nation for advertising.And now I look at my class schedule of the classes I have to take to graduate. Advanced account management? A forced internship (when I've been working in Internet marketing for five years)? Writing 150? (I tested out of that with two different AP tests and my ACT score, but it's required in the Commms program no matter what.) What college wants me to do to ensure I get a job just isn't relevant enough to what I want to learn or where I want to end up. Not to mention the fact that the company I'm a co-founder of has investors begging me to drop out of school and go full-time... it's just not a good fit. It just doesn't make sense.I'm designing my own curriculum around the things that I want to learn. It's difficult to do and will be hard to force myself to do those things, but at least it's relevant to where I want to go." }

{ "score": 2, "text": ""He paid children $100,000 not to complete their college educations."No. He paid "children" $100,000 to put off their college educations for two years, and be open-minded about not ever going back. If I recall correctly, some of the thiel fellows had already finished college." }

{ "score": 2, "text": ""He paid children $100,000 not to complete their college educations."No. He paid "children" $100,000 to put off their college educations for two years, and be open-minded about not ever going back. If I recall correctly, some of the thiel fellows had already finished college." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "What in this article demonstrates that you do or don't need a college education to be an entrepreneur (presumably a successful one)? The evidence as provided seems to be, "Most of Peter Thiel's college-abstainers are failing, and the few successes shouldn't really count." I feel like a lot more work needs to be put into this article before it's fit to be published.What is the central point of this post? From what I could tell, it's roughly a mix of:- Kids should stay in college- Peter Thiel is doing a disservice to the college-aged- Entrepreneurs who go to college are more successful- Peter Thiel's program isn't as successful at TechStars (because he exclusively selects college abstainers)- College dropouts earn less (regardless of career choice) than degree holdersPick one, and then find data that is relevant. Even better, pick a central point and turn it in to a hypothesis. Gather data and test the hypothesis. Write an article about the findings.I really expect better from PBS." }

{ "score": 3, "text": "What in this article demonstrates that you do or don't need a college education to be an entrepreneur (presumably a successful one)? The evidence as provided seems to be, "Most of Peter Thiel's college-abstainers are failing, and the few successes shouldn't really count." I feel like a lot more work needs to be put into this article before it's fit to be published.What is the central point of this post? From what I could tell, it's roughly a mix of:- Kids should stay in college- Peter Thiel is doing a disservice to the college-aged- Entrepreneurs who go to college are more successful- Peter Thiel's program isn't as successful at TechStars (because he exclusively selects college abstainers)- College dropouts earn less (regardless of career choice) than degree holdersPick one, and then find data that is relevant. Even better, pick a central point and turn it in to a hypothesis. Gather data and test the hypothesis. Write an article about the findings.I really expect better from PBS." }

{ "score": 4, "text": "Random thought of the day:I don't see any mention in this article of "social networks". Even if an entrepreneur can be smart and driven, can learn a wide array of technical skills on his own, if he is literally on his own he is going to be at a serious disadvantage.Some people acquire a network of cofounders, lawyers, and financiers through their parents' social networks, and some people can acquire them online or off with no help, but maybe, maybe if you're a smart, driven individual with no pre-existing social network, it might be worthwhile to go to college to meet that special someone you could settle down and start a company with?" }