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16 pixels For Body Copy. Anything Less Is A Costly Mistake
| {
"score": 0,
"text": "This is an important issue to consider, but talking about \"pixels\" alone doesn't get us far in this context.For one thing, different fonts have different design characteristics. In particular, the x-height of one sensible body font at a nominal 16px could easily be 50% more than the x-height of another. Sadly, while CSS lets us specify a stack of fonts to try, it doesn't yet let us specify a different size to go with each one so we can achieve a similar optical result. (CSS3's font-size-adjust might be intended to help here, but seems overcomplicated and underpowered to me.)For another thing, these days pixel densities can vary by at least a factor of 3 between devices. The latest iThings sometimes do better than the 300dpi that used to the be benchmark for a laser printer. For a classic CRT or cheap and cheerful TFT, something more like 96dpi is common. At least you can detect this to some extent in CSS, because the new devices with very high densities also tend to support media queries so you can present larger text (in pixel terms) and higher resolution graphics accordingly.If we're going to improve the way we present text (and graphics) on the web for people whose vision isn't perfect, it's going to take a much more flexible styling system for the web and probably a lot more real world experience of what works and what doesn't as well. As much as I respect people taking a stand on behalf of those who can't see as well as some, I'm not sure advocating a fairly arbitrary 16px guideline is helping."
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "I agree completely with this article. As I've gotten older (now 43) I have had more and more trouble reading web sites. In fact, I've noticed lately that I don't even try on some sites that have \"small\" fonts, I just close the tab. There are some sites that I really like and I generally depend on my browser to help me out. Chrome has a good habit of remembering my page zoom on a particular site so I don't even notice the font problem on subsequent visits."
} |
16 pixels For Body Copy. Anything Less Is A Costly Mistake
| {
"score": 1,
"text": "I agree completely with this article. As I've gotten older (now 43) I have had more and more trouble reading web sites. In fact, I've noticed lately that I don't even try on some sites that have \"small\" fonts, I just close the tab. There are some sites that I really like and I generally depend on my browser to help me out. Chrome has a good habit of remembering my page zoom on a particular site so I don't even notice the font problem on subsequent visits."
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "On the surface the statements seems to make sense and the arguments are well put across, but unless someone actually A/B tests it and proves that it makes a difference to readership, or conversions (or whatever your goal is) then it's currently just unsubstantiated theory."
} |
16 pixels For Body Copy. Anything Less Is A Costly Mistake
| {
"score": 2,
"text": "On the surface the statements seems to make sense and the arguments are well put across, but unless someone actually A/B tests it and proves that it makes a difference to readership, or conversions (or whatever your goal is) then it's currently just unsubstantiated theory."
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "I find myself zooming nearly 80% of the sites I visit now, including Google Docs. And I'm always a little bummed that Google's Spreadsheets give me this warning:\"Your browser's current zoom setting is not fully supported. Please reset to default zoom.\""
} |
16 pixels For Body Copy. Anything Less Is A Costly Mistake
| {
"score": 3,
"text": "I find myself zooming nearly 80% of the sites I visit now, including Google Docs. And I'm always a little bummed that Google's Spreadsheets give me this warning:\"Your browser's current zoom setting is not fully supported. Please reset to default zoom.\""
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "Working closely with designers and observing client requests over the past decade or so, I've seen another pattern that also leads to the \"small type\" problem: Client requests to get as much above the fold as possible. Granted, the majority of the projects I've worked on in the past four or five years have been very large organizations. When client committees make decisions, it's much harder to teach them or even steer them in the right direction.I'm seeing a growing number of comments here that read like \"I can...\" or \"I prefer...\" The article clearly states this is a decision arrived at by considering the end-user. It's all relative; all sites don't need to be that way. You should be user-testing every project with your target market anyways, and if you were and it was a problem you'd hear about it. I know I have, many times.Another great article on this subject is one \"Relative Readability\" by Wilson Miner:http://www.wilsonminer.com/posts/2008/oct/20/relative-readab..."
} |
Live on C-SPAN now: NSA Chief Testifies at Cybersecurity Hearing
| {
"score": 0,
"text": "This is like watching a super awkward scene in a movie or TV show that just won't end.The word "cyber" has been applied to every noun, and I've apparently been out of the loop on terms like "techno-boondoggle".This is just a little terrifying."
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "In this hearing there has been so much smearing in reguards to Snowden's educational background. There are plenty of smart people who didn't graduate from high school."
} |
Live on C-SPAN now: NSA Chief Testifies at Cybersecurity Hearing
| {
"score": 1,
"text": "In this hearing there has been so much smearing in reguards to Snowden's educational background. There are plenty of smart people who didn't graduate from high school."
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "Oh, this is awesome: Keith Alexander explaining how what we really should do is let the NSA have a database that stores absolutely everything, and then they promise only to search through it when it is "reasonable.""
} |
Live on C-SPAN now: NSA Chief Testifies at Cybersecurity Hearing
| {
"score": 2,
"text": "Oh, this is awesome: Keith Alexander explaining how what we really should do is let the NSA have a database that stores absolutely everything, and then they promise only to search through it when it is "reasonable.""
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "I find it deeply disturbing that Sen Mikulski clearly does not understand the meaning of the words she is reading."
} |
Live on C-SPAN now: NSA Chief Testifies at Cybersecurity Hearing
| {
"score": 3,
"text": "I find it deeply disturbing that Sen Mikulski clearly does not understand the meaning of the words she is reading."
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "Every time she says "protect the american people from" I keep filling in "the NSA and other overreaching government agencies" in my head.This is really an incredible spectacle of audacity."
} |
HP said to dump Microsoft ARM tablets over Surface
| {
"score": 0,
"text": "Microsoft is absolutely making the right move here. For years they've stayed out of hardware, and let their OEMs mess it up. They wanted to \"partner\" to deliver a good end user experience, and that's never worked out.Microsoft has done a similar in the hosted services space with Office365. Did that burn a lot of relationships? Oh most certainly - people are annoyed they can't resell Exchange or O365 and make any serious money. But so what? Microsoft is making their products available in a great way, and serving their customers better.If Microsoft had taken this approach a decade ago, perhaps Apple would not have grown to twice MS's size simply by caring about the end-to-end user experience."
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "Note that \"dump\" here means \"won't make Windows ARM tablets\".I know everyone was waiting breathlessly for one of those from HP."
} |
HP said to dump Microsoft ARM tablets over Surface
| {
"score": 1,
"text": "Note that \"dump\" here means \"won't make Windows ARM tablets\".I know everyone was waiting breathlessly for one of those from HP."
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "Microsoft management may have destroyed their partnerships, but they're certainly not imcompetent.The Surface is the exact thing Microsoft needs to stay relevant for consumers. And if Microsoft can start selling their own hardware, in the end they'll be better and more profitable for it.What does SemiArrucate thing Microsoft should do? Stay the same course that has seen them losing marketshare for a decade?"
} |
HP said to dump Microsoft ARM tablets over Surface
| {
"score": 2,
"text": "Microsoft management may have destroyed their partnerships, but they're certainly not imcompetent.The Surface is the exact thing Microsoft needs to stay relevant for consumers. And if Microsoft can start selling their own hardware, in the end they'll be better and more profitable for it.What does SemiArrucate thing Microsoft should do? Stay the same course that has seen them losing marketshare for a decade?"
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "Other than the certification requirements for Windows on ARM, everything else is pretty much speculation (e.g. license prices and HP abandoning Windows) or casting of the status quo as a sudden shift of the landscape (e.g. tablets from anyone other than Apple run Android, today).The fact that there is an existing commitment to Android tablets by all the consumer electronics companies is probably the reason Microsoft is considering making it's own hardware (not that HP was really seemed all that gung-ho on partnering with Microsoft over the long term once they bought Palm to acquire Web-OS).Windows on ARM is not Windows Phone or the Windows OS in so far as economies of scale. The tablet market is always going to be really small compared to the size of the phone and PC markets due to the \"third device\" nature of tablets and their orientation toward media consumption rather than productivity. HP isn't selling a lot of tablets today - nobody is, other than Apple and only because they don't have to share their slice of the pie with anyone else (i.e. the Android slice of the market is shared among lots of competitors)."
} |
HP said to dump Microsoft ARM tablets over Surface
| {
"score": 3,
"text": "Other than the certification requirements for Windows on ARM, everything else is pretty much speculation (e.g. license prices and HP abandoning Windows) or casting of the status quo as a sudden shift of the landscape (e.g. tablets from anyone other than Apple run Android, today).The fact that there is an existing commitment to Android tablets by all the consumer electronics companies is probably the reason Microsoft is considering making it's own hardware (not that HP was really seemed all that gung-ho on partnering with Microsoft over the long term once they bought Palm to acquire Web-OS).Windows on ARM is not Windows Phone or the Windows OS in so far as economies of scale. The tablet market is always going to be really small compared to the size of the phone and PC markets due to the \"third device\" nature of tablets and their orientation toward media consumption rather than productivity. HP isn't selling a lot of tablets today - nobody is, other than Apple and only because they don't have to share their slice of the pie with anyone else (i.e. the Android slice of the market is shared among lots of competitors)."
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "HP Exec: \"That's IT! We need to go it on our own with our tablet strategy. Dang, maybe we should acquire a really good mobile OS?\""
} |
Backdoor found in a China-made US military chip
| {
"score": 0,
"text": "Interesting discussion. Some denial, some tin hat, some contemplative. I think I've had all of those emotions with this sort of thing.There are diagnostics in our network switches that allow for traffic to be replicated and sent to other ports with a different destination mac (this isn't port mirroring is more like port re-directing). Clearly in the hands of a bad guy they might set up a machine on the LAN to get a copy of all the traffic. Is it a cyberwar beach head? Probably not. Could it be exploited in an attack? Probably. Of course if someone tried to route all that traffic outside the network into the transit network it would be pretty obvious. So not a good scenario.Like the controller back door article on Ars last month I suspect most of these things are diagnostic aids. You ask an engineer to test something and that something is buried inside a bunch of silicon and the only way to do that is to build some stuff in there that lets you look at things.Of course you can do this in a 'smart' way, and in a 'stupid' way. When I started at Intel there were extra pads on the silicon that got to these extra functions, you ordered a 'bond-out' chip where bonding wires (between the chip pins and the silicon) would be attached. All of the in circuit emulators up to the 386 had a 'bond out' version in the emulator pod that gave you access to internal state of the chip. Others have pointed out the key for loading replacement microcode, another 'feature' to fix bugs in the field and do diagnostics.So things which require either 'special' chips or attaching a JTAG probe directly to the part, are generally ok in my book. Once you have physical access nearly all bets are off.Its an expensive way to compromise the enemy. Simpler to just build a piece of gear that looks and operates exactly like the original but is your own design. There was some counterfeit Cisco boxes like this in the channel for a bit. Of course they 'fail' when you update IOS and it fails. Still the cost to exploit is lower and more assured than back dooring silicon in a fab.Its also pretty hard to add features to a chip without the designer of the chip in on the game. Every transistor is accounted for by long verification and analysis so 'extra' ones would show up. That limits the risk to a chip manufacturer being the 'bad guy' (and they are very traceable so unlikely to do that)None of this though should take away from the excellent work Cambridge is doing. The silicon analysis is really cutting edge stuff, and I think it would be useful for chip designers in verifying their masks are accurate too. If you could effectively 'decompile' the resulting silicon and verify it against your netlist, that would catch mask errors. And that would save anywhere from $100,000 to $2,000,000 depending on size of the mask."
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "The bit that surprises the fuck out of me is that they're buying stuff in from China. I've never seen that - ever! They would buy expensive stuff fabbed specially in the US rather than import usually.I did a lot of work for the UK Ministry of Defence and the US Department of Defence over the years on custom silicon and FPGA work and the paranoia factor is scary. We had the layouts of everything bought in - even 74-series logic which can pretty much be assumed to be inert. Samples were regularly decapped and scanned using an SEM to verify to make sure the vendors weren't screwing us or integrating backdoors.Every part was asset managed to hell as well. Every part was traceable to the point that every finger that poked it was known (I moved from engineering to writing the asset management systems before leaving).Crazy."
} |
Backdoor found in a China-made US military chip
| {
"score": 1,
"text": "The bit that surprises the fuck out of me is that they're buying stuff in from China. I've never seen that - ever! They would buy expensive stuff fabbed specially in the US rather than import usually.I did a lot of work for the UK Ministry of Defence and the US Department of Defence over the years on custom silicon and FPGA work and the paranoia factor is scary. We had the layouts of everything bought in - even 74-series logic which can pretty much be assumed to be inert. Samples were regularly decapped and scanned using an SEM to verify to make sure the vendors weren't screwing us or integrating backdoors.Every part was asset managed to hell as well. Every part was traceable to the point that every finger that poked it was known (I moved from engineering to writing the asset management systems before leaving).Crazy."
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "The chip in question seems to be an Actel Microsemi ProASIC3 (PA3) [1,2], given the hints in the screenshot of the paper.[1] http://www.actel.com/products/pa3/\n[2] http://www.actel.com/documents/pa3_faq.html(I guess there is no real advantage in keeping this obscured)"
} |
Backdoor found in a China-made US military chip
| {
"score": 2,
"text": "The chip in question seems to be an Actel Microsemi ProASIC3 (PA3) [1,2], given the hints in the screenshot of the paper.[1] http://www.actel.com/products/pa3/\n[2] http://www.actel.com/documents/pa3_faq.html(I guess there is no real advantage in keeping this obscured)"
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "The language used in this article seems very much like the author has something to sell and is trying to create the impression that it is advanced and mysterious. The claims about improvements of many orders of magnitude in speed and cost as well as the unavailability of information and services to private individuals suggest to me that someone is trying to get a defense contract for some overhyped technology that won't really deliver what's promised.Edit: they seem to have submitted a patent application for the process of sending test signals to a chip and monitoring it with an oscilloscope: http://www.sumobrain.com/patents/wipo/Integrated-circuit-inv..."
} |
Backdoor found in a China-made US military chip
| {
"score": 3,
"text": "The language used in this article seems very much like the author has something to sell and is trying to create the impression that it is advanced and mysterious. The claims about improvements of many orders of magnitude in speed and cost as well as the unavailability of information and services to private individuals suggest to me that someone is trying to get a defense contract for some overhyped technology that won't really deliver what's promised.Edit: they seem to have submitted a patent application for the process of sending test signals to a chip and monitoring it with an oscilloscope: http://www.sumobrain.com/patents/wipo/Integrated-circuit-inv..."
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "The Cambridge Security Lab is not fucking around. Assume this is not hype.I'm less curious about whether overseas silicon is backdoored than I am in how exposed the attack/activation surface for those backdoors are."
} |
Ubuntu One - Store, sync and share
| {
"score": 0,
"text": "Apart from being old news, you don't need to wait for an invitation and can use it with launchpad credentials."
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "I remember evaluating this with dropbox when I was after a backup solution. Ubuntu one was the same price for 10GB as dropbox was for 50. Since I had well over 10 in photos, I didn't go any further in research. Seems ubuntuone has the same price for the 50 GB plan now, but now I'm a very happy dropbox user.To bad. I might still evaluate them again next year when my dropbox expires, but with all my stuff already in there, it might be hard."
} |
Ubuntu One - Store, sync and share
| {
"score": 1,
"text": "I remember evaluating this with dropbox when I was after a backup solution. Ubuntu one was the same price for 10GB as dropbox was for 50. Since I had well over 10 in photos, I didn't go any further in research. Seems ubuntuone has the same price for the 50 GB plan now, but now I'm a very happy dropbox user.To bad. I might still evaluate them again next year when my dropbox expires, but with all my stuff already in there, it might be hard."
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "One thing I haven't seen mentioned much is that Ubuntu One is integrating CouchDB.https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Specs/Karmic/Integrating...Also perhaps it seems like every install of Ubuntu will eventually come with CouchDB?"
} |
Ubuntu One - Store, sync and share
| {
"score": 2,
"text": "One thing I haven't seen mentioned much is that Ubuntu One is integrating CouchDB.https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Specs/Karmic/Integrating...Also perhaps it seems like every install of Ubuntu will eventually come with CouchDB?"
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "Internal Server Error when checking out the app....not what I expected...bad first impression."
} |
Ubuntu One - Store, sync and share
| {
"score": 3,
"text": "Internal Server Error when checking out the app....not what I expected...bad first impression."
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "What apps are integrated? Do they use an open API so alternate providers can be used?"
} |
K as a Prototyping Language
| {
"score": 0,
"text": "Last year someone benchmarked a simplified raytracer in a few different languages--primarily to show off OCaml. Later, someone wrote the raytracer in 7 lines of K. http://www.nsl.com/k/ray/ray.k. The original comparison: http://www.ffconsultancy.com/languages/ray_tracer/index.html"
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "/ Right to left precedence:3*2+5 / yields 21Why should I learn this language that I've never heard of if it can't even do math in any sensible way? Not left-to-right, not order of operations, not lisp-like prefix. Who thought that was a good idea?"
} |
K as a Prototyping Language
| {
"score": 1,
"text": "/ Right to left precedence:3*2+5 / yields 21Why should I learn this language that I've never heard of if it can't even do math in any sensible way? Not left-to-right, not order of operations, not lisp-like prefix. Who thought that was a good idea?"
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "If anyone is interested in some examples, take a look at projecteuler.net - it's a series of mathematical/programming puzzles.After you solve a particular problem you gain access to a forum where people detail their solution. A good amount of the solutions tend to be written in these APL languages (J, K) and may serve as a nice way to learn."
} |
K as a Prototyping Language
| {
"score": 2,
"text": "If anyone is interested in some examples, take a look at projecteuler.net - it's a series of mathematical/programming puzzles.After you solve a particular problem you gain access to a forum where people detail their solution. A good amount of the solutions tend to be written in these APL languages (J, K) and may serve as a nice way to learn."
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "Very interesting, thanks for posting the link.I'm also interested in what industries this language perfoms well."
} |
K as a Prototyping Language
| {
"score": 3,
"text": "Very interesting, thanks for posting the link.I'm also interested in what industries this language perfoms well."
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "Is it \"K\" or \"Q\" language?"
} |
COBOL MOVEs 50 to AGE
| {
"score": 0,
"text": "When I used to ride the train to work, I sat next to a young man who was looking over a printout of what I recognized as COBOL code. I talked to him, and he was debugging a problem that came up the night before in the back-end of a gas pump point-of-sale system. He was very cheerful and seemed to love his work. After that I thought about that one nice thing about being a COBOL programmer was that you didn't have to keep up with all of the latest frameworks and standards."
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "Reading this article made me think of Jared Diamond's assertion that invention is the mother of necessity, not the other way around.Before anyone gripes about outdated technology you need to ask yourself a question: what's so great about the new stuff? I'm not saying there isn't an answer to that question (I'm also not saying that there is), what I'm saying is that the answer needs to be better communicated before anything is going to change."
} |
COBOL MOVEs 50 to AGE
| {
"score": 1,
"text": "Reading this article made me think of Jared Diamond's assertion that invention is the mother of necessity, not the other way around.Before anyone gripes about outdated technology you need to ask yourself a question: what's so great about the new stuff? I'm not saying there isn't an answer to that question (I'm also not saying that there is), what I'm saying is that the answer needs to be better communicated before anything is going to change."
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "It seems that there a few broad problems with owning/using legacy COBOL:1. It's usually run on a big, expensive mainframe.2. Good developers run from it, so you're stuck with the coders left over from adverse selection3. It has questionable modularity/maintainability and integration with more modern stuff is hard.What opportunities are created by these problems?My limited experience is that Mainframe COBOL systems (I know nothing of Microfocus) use either a database (DB2 usually) or large, random access flat files for persistence. COBOL programs are much like scripts run from within a transaction monitor. [Please correct me if I'm wrong here!]. Why has no one done a WINE-style implementation of the important APIs along with an interpreter so that existing code can be run on a horizontally-scalable platform? Mainframes are really expensive. Not only does IBM charge a lot, but you end up buying 3rd party software (ABEND-AID, I'm not kidding...) just to keep the lights on. Perhaps a distributed flat file implementation could be built to mimic 60's era data storage models. Does anyone do this? It seems like a great Open Source business as COBOL users are accustomed to paying for support and services. What do I not understand about this?"
} |
COBOL MOVEs 50 to AGE
| {
"score": 2,
"text": "It seems that there a few broad problems with owning/using legacy COBOL:1. It's usually run on a big, expensive mainframe.2. Good developers run from it, so you're stuck with the coders left over from adverse selection3. It has questionable modularity/maintainability and integration with more modern stuff is hard.What opportunities are created by these problems?My limited experience is that Mainframe COBOL systems (I know nothing of Microfocus) use either a database (DB2 usually) or large, random access flat files for persistence. COBOL programs are much like scripts run from within a transaction monitor. [Please correct me if I'm wrong here!]. Why has no one done a WINE-style implementation of the important APIs along with an interpreter so that existing code can be run on a horizontally-scalable platform? Mainframes are really expensive. Not only does IBM charge a lot, but you end up buying 3rd party software (ABEND-AID, I'm not kidding...) just to keep the lights on. Perhaps a distributed flat file implementation could be built to mimic 60's era data storage models. Does anyone do this? It seems like a great Open Source business as COBOL users are accustomed to paying for support and services. What do I not understand about this?"
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "If cobol is so great, why do Amazon and google run exactly 0 lines of it?There is a cost (vastly increased development time, inflexibility) to sticking with cobol, and it may be so great someday that it'll drive the companies that use it out of business. Just give newer companies 15 years after the current economic crisis is over and free competition and you'll see the difference."
} |
COBOL MOVEs 50 to AGE
| {
"score": 3,
"text": "If cobol is so great, why do Amazon and google run exactly 0 lines of it?There is a cost (vastly increased development time, inflexibility) to sticking with cobol, and it may be so great someday that it'll drive the companies that use it out of business. Just give newer companies 15 years after the current economic crisis is over and free competition and you'll see the difference."
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "If it's such a big industry how come no one has written something that translates COBOL to a modern language?"
} |
Stroustrup: What Should We Teach New Software Developers?
| {
"score": 0,
"text": "I can't believe no one's mentioned: Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.\n -- Edsger Dijkstra\n\nContrary to the beliefs or desires of some, colleges and universities are not vocational training institutions. In the actuarial world, there is a rigorous credentialing process involving a series of exams usually taking a minimum of 4.5 years to complete. However, even with all of the exams passed, without experience you'd be put into an entry-level position. If your experience is in one field of insurance and you want to get into another, that experience won't count for much in the new field and you'll probably be starting near entry-level again.That's for good reason. Academia is for teaching you known facts and theories, and how to think for yourself. Experience in an industry teaches you how to do a particular type of work so that other people are willing to give you money in exchange for your labor. These are inherently different activities, though the former can weed out some inappropriate candidates for the latter."
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "What he says sounds good in the abstract, but I worry about how it will be implemented. For instance he raises the issue of licensing people to practice computer science. However as he acknowledges that it is difficult to even identify who should be in charge of deciding what should be tested for such a license.And that is a big issue. A license created to meet the needs of business 40 years ago would certainly have required learning COBOL. A license created 20 years ago would have no relevance to web development. One created today would likely be geared towards the needs of large organizations with large code bases - which would put most agile development techniques, languages, and practices off the table.For better or worse the programming world has diverse communities with rapidly changing, diverse needs, and no possible solution has any hope of fitting all of them."
} |
Stroustrup: What Should We Teach New Software Developers?
| {
"score": 1,
"text": "What he says sounds good in the abstract, but I worry about how it will be implemented. For instance he raises the issue of licensing people to practice computer science. However as he acknowledges that it is difficult to even identify who should be in charge of deciding what should be tested for such a license.And that is a big issue. A license created to meet the needs of business 40 years ago would certainly have required learning COBOL. A license created 20 years ago would have no relevance to web development. One created today would likely be geared towards the needs of large organizations with large code bases - which would put most agile development techniques, languages, and practices off the table.For better or worse the programming world has diverse communities with rapidly changing, diverse needs, and no possible solution has any hope of fitting all of them."
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "The only problem that he actually mentions is:Also, many students fail to connect what they learn in one class to what they learn in another. Thus, we often see students with high grades in algorithms, data structures, and software engineering who nevertheless hack solutions in an operating systems class with total disregard for data structures, algorithms, and the structure of the software.That is to say pass fail grading of programs, grading should be similar to an English class how you express it is just as important as what you express."
} |
Stroustrup: What Should We Teach New Software Developers?
| {
"score": 2,
"text": "The only problem that he actually mentions is:Also, many students fail to connect what they learn in one class to what they learn in another. Thus, we often see students with high grades in algorithms, data structures, and software engineering who nevertheless hack solutions in an operating systems class with total disregard for data structures, algorithms, and the structure of the software.That is to say pass fail grading of programs, grading should be similar to an English class how you express it is just as important as what you express."
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "I find it interesting the he suggests requiring a minor in another field. I largely agree with this, but at my school, you can't get a minor if you're a CS major. For instance, by the time I graduate, I will have the required credits for a minor in math. That minor won't be recognized by the university, and I can only say that I've completed the courses for a math minor without actually earning one.The same is true for double-majoring. I have a friend that wanted to double major in CS and linguistics to do AI, but he was told that he couldn't. Instead, he has to stick around for an extra year to get two distinct degrees. He's had to waste time because some of the courses he needed to take required you to have declared a major in that field.This is from a school that probably has a more vocationally applied view of a CS degree. We are, for instance, required to take two semesters of software engineering. They're obviously interested in giving a student an education that will be useful in the industry, but they also have inane rules like the one described above."
} |
Stroustrup: What Should We Teach New Software Developers?
| {
"score": 3,
"text": "I find it interesting the he suggests requiring a minor in another field. I largely agree with this, but at my school, you can't get a minor if you're a CS major. For instance, by the time I graduate, I will have the required credits for a minor in math. That minor won't be recognized by the university, and I can only say that I've completed the courses for a math minor without actually earning one.The same is true for double-majoring. I have a friend that wanted to double major in CS and linguistics to do AI, but he was told that he couldn't. Instead, he has to stick around for an extra year to get two distinct degrees. He's had to waste time because some of the courses he needed to take required you to have declared a major in that field.This is from a school that probably has a more vocationally applied view of a CS degree. We are, for instance, required to take two semesters of software engineering. They're obviously interested in giving a student an education that will be useful in the industry, but they also have inane rules like the one described above."
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "It seems unproductive to respond to this discussing how difficult it would be to fix/implement. I think Stroustrup probably knows that better than most anyone else, given, as he noted, his unique perspective.What is productive is gaining acknowledgement that this problem exists, as that is the (cliche) first step. I believe this is a serious problem. I've seen the sub-par software, code, and the people writing it for years - it's not changing through academia or industry. Both sides continue to address their needs independent of one another, and that is far from optimal.Many of the finest professionals I have met in the industry cannot say more than a few positive words about their CS programs. Most of them will also recommend against pursuing the degree if you actually want to excel with code.Agreed, the fix(es) will not be an easy find, but it is far from impossible. This needs to be taken care of - I'd love to be able to tell friends that want to be a good coder that they can go to school for that."
} |
Tell HN: Your social widgets are losing you visitors right now
Recently a lot of sites are getting slow for me. The reason? They add a lot of social submit widgets that use non-async scripts.<p>If you see a substring <script src="http:// or <script src="https:// in your HTML source - you are killing your site slowly.<p>Using Twitter's official ReTweet button? You've slowed your site down by 60 seconds per each page (I don't know how many people are affected by this hiccup that lasts more than 5 days now for me, but you can easily fix it for everybody, see below)<p>Just to be clear. I'm on 35Mbps line in Russia near Moscow (4.3MBytes/s - very fast! 4ms ping to national traffic exchange point in Russia).<p>Yet some sites load up to 2-5 minutes for me? Why?<p>According to Chrome Dev Tools I receive main blog content, including all images within 1-2 seconds. (It's a 35Mbps!), but I don't see anything from your site on screen (even though it has finished loading), because...<p>"platform.twitter.com" responds in 49-62 seconds! Uses <script src="http://... for their "retweet" button. Your site is STUCK until "platform.twitter.com" loads (1 minute).<p>Facebook's CDN responds within 30-50 seconds. The site doesn't load until it's loaded.<p>"www.stumbleupon.com"'s button loads in 20 seconds.<p>I'm not sure what the problem is, but I can tell you for sure - it takes minutes to load some sites with those buttons, it takes less than a blink after I add "127.0.0.1 platform.twitter.com" and others to /etc/hosts (that's not a way to solve it, it's a way to diagnose the problem, see below for solution).<p>Many of you use a lot of those buttons in hope that they will bring you visitors. But while they load - they lose you visitors that have to wait 2 minutes for your page to load.<p>WordPress' social submit plugins are often have the same effect on your site.<p>The solution? Use async code and ask your plugin developer to move to async code.<p>It's not some futuristic HTML5 goodie that works only in modern browsers. It works everywhere.<p>Facebook has async code - use it!
Google Analytics has async - use it!<p>Twitter doesn't give out async, but it's easy to do it, based on FaceBook and Google Analytics code:<p><pre><code> <a href="http://twitter.com/share"
class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal"
data-via="WhitePostsCom">Tweet</a>
<script>
(function() {
var src = document.createElement('script');
src.async = true;
src.src = document.location.protocol + '//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';
document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(src);
}());
</script>
</code></pre>
Replace the first part with your own code instead of WhitePostsCom one.<p>StatCounter doesn't give async, adapt it from the code StatCounter gives you:
(There was a day when StatCounter didn't load in 2 minutes! Your site is stuck again if you don't do async)<p><pre><code> <!-- Start of StatCounter Code -->
<script type="text/javascript">
var sc_project=[YOUR CODE HERE];
var sc_invisible=[YOUR CODE HERE];
var sc_security="[YOUR CODE HERE]";
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script');
ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
ga.src = document.location.protocol + '//www.statcounter.com/counter/counter.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>
<noscript><div
class="statcounter"><a title="web analytics"
href="http://statcounter.com/" target="_blank"><img
class="statcounter"
src="[YOUR CODE HERE]"
alt="web analytics" ></a></div></noscript>
<!-- End of StatCounter Code -->
</code></pre>
StumbleUpon? Adapt it from the above codes.<p>Seeing someone asking you to insert '<script src="http://' into your code? Tell them to do better engineering and stop slowing down your site.<p>P.S. The reasons for hiccups of Twitter and FB's CDN might be poor peering, bad servers, anything really. You can't fix Twitter's and Facebook's software and servers, but you can let your visitors see your site without depending on how good do engineers at those companies do their job.<p>P.P.S. There is a good question in comments about how to diagnose your own site's problems: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1771755<p>Problematic hosts list (the srcs that cause sometimes huge slowdowns for me) - just in case you need it:<p><pre><code> widgets.digg.com
platform.twitter.com
static.ak.fbcdn.net
www.stumbleupon.com
i.ixnp.com</code></pre> | {
"score": 0,
"text": "In general I find these buttons obnoxious as hell (they are tasteful on some sites like the NYTimes). This just adds insult to injury."
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "Incredibly annoying. I have a quad core machine, 16GB RAM, SSD, 100Mbit broadband yet it takes 14 seconds for TechCrunch to fully load due to the Post Up widget they use. Once it loads the page scrolling is not smooth at all. It definitely makes me less likely to visit."
} |
Tell HN: Your social widgets are losing you visitors right now
Recently a lot of sites are getting slow for me. The reason? They add a lot of social submit widgets that use non-async scripts.<p>If you see a substring <script src="http:// or <script src="https:// in your HTML source - you are killing your site slowly.<p>Using Twitter's official ReTweet button? You've slowed your site down by 60 seconds per each page (I don't know how many people are affected by this hiccup that lasts more than 5 days now for me, but you can easily fix it for everybody, see below)<p>Just to be clear. I'm on 35Mbps line in Russia near Moscow (4.3MBytes/s - very fast! 4ms ping to national traffic exchange point in Russia).<p>Yet some sites load up to 2-5 minutes for me? Why?<p>According to Chrome Dev Tools I receive main blog content, including all images within 1-2 seconds. (It's a 35Mbps!), but I don't see anything from your site on screen (even though it has finished loading), because...<p>"platform.twitter.com" responds in 49-62 seconds! Uses <script src="http://... for their "retweet" button. Your site is STUCK until "platform.twitter.com" loads (1 minute).<p>Facebook's CDN responds within 30-50 seconds. The site doesn't load until it's loaded.<p>"www.stumbleupon.com"'s button loads in 20 seconds.<p>I'm not sure what the problem is, but I can tell you for sure - it takes minutes to load some sites with those buttons, it takes less than a blink after I add "127.0.0.1 platform.twitter.com" and others to /etc/hosts (that's not a way to solve it, it's a way to diagnose the problem, see below for solution).<p>Many of you use a lot of those buttons in hope that they will bring you visitors. But while they load - they lose you visitors that have to wait 2 minutes for your page to load.<p>WordPress' social submit plugins are often have the same effect on your site.<p>The solution? Use async code and ask your plugin developer to move to async code.<p>It's not some futuristic HTML5 goodie that works only in modern browsers. It works everywhere.<p>Facebook has async code - use it!
Google Analytics has async - use it!<p>Twitter doesn't give out async, but it's easy to do it, based on FaceBook and Google Analytics code:<p><pre><code> <a href="http://twitter.com/share"
class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal"
data-via="WhitePostsCom">Tweet</a>
<script>
(function() {
var src = document.createElement('script');
src.async = true;
src.src = document.location.protocol + '//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';
document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(src);
}());
</script>
</code></pre>
Replace the first part with your own code instead of WhitePostsCom one.<p>StatCounter doesn't give async, adapt it from the code StatCounter gives you:
(There was a day when StatCounter didn't load in 2 minutes! Your site is stuck again if you don't do async)<p><pre><code> <!-- Start of StatCounter Code -->
<script type="text/javascript">
var sc_project=[YOUR CODE HERE];
var sc_invisible=[YOUR CODE HERE];
var sc_security="[YOUR CODE HERE]";
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script');
ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
ga.src = document.location.protocol + '//www.statcounter.com/counter/counter.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>
<noscript><div
class="statcounter"><a title="web analytics"
href="http://statcounter.com/" target="_blank"><img
class="statcounter"
src="[YOUR CODE HERE]"
alt="web analytics" ></a></div></noscript>
<!-- End of StatCounter Code -->
</code></pre>
StumbleUpon? Adapt it from the above codes.<p>Seeing someone asking you to insert '<script src="http://' into your code? Tell them to do better engineering and stop slowing down your site.<p>P.S. The reasons for hiccups of Twitter and FB's CDN might be poor peering, bad servers, anything really. You can't fix Twitter's and Facebook's software and servers, but you can let your visitors see your site without depending on how good do engineers at those companies do their job.<p>P.P.S. There is a good question in comments about how to diagnose your own site's problems: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1771755<p>Problematic hosts list (the srcs that cause sometimes huge slowdowns for me) - just in case you need it:<p><pre><code> widgets.digg.com
platform.twitter.com
static.ak.fbcdn.net
www.stumbleupon.com
i.ixnp.com</code></pre> | {
"score": 1,
"text": "Incredibly annoying. I have a quad core machine, 16GB RAM, SSD, 100Mbit broadband yet it takes 14 seconds for TechCrunch to fully load due to the Post Up widget they use. Once it loads the page scrolling is not smooth at all. It definitely makes me less likely to visit."
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "I have written a very simple tester for these problems that you can use to diagnose your own site: http://whiteposts.com/not-asyncNow also shows the code to be replaced to make calls async.If you like the tool - please upvote it at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1772169"
} |
Tell HN: Your social widgets are losing you visitors right now
Recently a lot of sites are getting slow for me. The reason? They add a lot of social submit widgets that use non-async scripts.<p>If you see a substring <script src="http:// or <script src="https:// in your HTML source - you are killing your site slowly.<p>Using Twitter's official ReTweet button? You've slowed your site down by 60 seconds per each page (I don't know how many people are affected by this hiccup that lasts more than 5 days now for me, but you can easily fix it for everybody, see below)<p>Just to be clear. I'm on 35Mbps line in Russia near Moscow (4.3MBytes/s - very fast! 4ms ping to national traffic exchange point in Russia).<p>Yet some sites load up to 2-5 minutes for me? Why?<p>According to Chrome Dev Tools I receive main blog content, including all images within 1-2 seconds. (It's a 35Mbps!), but I don't see anything from your site on screen (even though it has finished loading), because...<p>"platform.twitter.com" responds in 49-62 seconds! Uses <script src="http://... for their "retweet" button. Your site is STUCK until "platform.twitter.com" loads (1 minute).<p>Facebook's CDN responds within 30-50 seconds. The site doesn't load until it's loaded.<p>"www.stumbleupon.com"'s button loads in 20 seconds.<p>I'm not sure what the problem is, but I can tell you for sure - it takes minutes to load some sites with those buttons, it takes less than a blink after I add "127.0.0.1 platform.twitter.com" and others to /etc/hosts (that's not a way to solve it, it's a way to diagnose the problem, see below for solution).<p>Many of you use a lot of those buttons in hope that they will bring you visitors. But while they load - they lose you visitors that have to wait 2 minutes for your page to load.<p>WordPress' social submit plugins are often have the same effect on your site.<p>The solution? Use async code and ask your plugin developer to move to async code.<p>It's not some futuristic HTML5 goodie that works only in modern browsers. It works everywhere.<p>Facebook has async code - use it!
Google Analytics has async - use it!<p>Twitter doesn't give out async, but it's easy to do it, based on FaceBook and Google Analytics code:<p><pre><code> <a href="http://twitter.com/share"
class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal"
data-via="WhitePostsCom">Tweet</a>
<script>
(function() {
var src = document.createElement('script');
src.async = true;
src.src = document.location.protocol + '//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';
document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(src);
}());
</script>
</code></pre>
Replace the first part with your own code instead of WhitePostsCom one.<p>StatCounter doesn't give async, adapt it from the code StatCounter gives you:
(There was a day when StatCounter didn't load in 2 minutes! Your site is stuck again if you don't do async)<p><pre><code> <!-- Start of StatCounter Code -->
<script type="text/javascript">
var sc_project=[YOUR CODE HERE];
var sc_invisible=[YOUR CODE HERE];
var sc_security="[YOUR CODE HERE]";
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script');
ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
ga.src = document.location.protocol + '//www.statcounter.com/counter/counter.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>
<noscript><div
class="statcounter"><a title="web analytics"
href="http://statcounter.com/" target="_blank"><img
class="statcounter"
src="[YOUR CODE HERE]"
alt="web analytics" ></a></div></noscript>
<!-- End of StatCounter Code -->
</code></pre>
StumbleUpon? Adapt it from the above codes.<p>Seeing someone asking you to insert '<script src="http://' into your code? Tell them to do better engineering and stop slowing down your site.<p>P.S. The reasons for hiccups of Twitter and FB's CDN might be poor peering, bad servers, anything really. You can't fix Twitter's and Facebook's software and servers, but you can let your visitors see your site without depending on how good do engineers at those companies do their job.<p>P.P.S. There is a good question in comments about how to diagnose your own site's problems: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1771755<p>Problematic hosts list (the srcs that cause sometimes huge slowdowns for me) - just in case you need it:<p><pre><code> widgets.digg.com
platform.twitter.com
static.ak.fbcdn.net
www.stumbleupon.com
i.ixnp.com</code></pre> | {
"score": 2,
"text": "I have written a very simple tester for these problems that you can use to diagnose your own site: http://whiteposts.com/not-asyncNow also shows the code to be replaced to make calls async.If you like the tool - please upvote it at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1772169"
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "Google and Amazon have published research to the effect that even small increases in page load time have a massive effect on traffic.Social sharing is intended to boost traffic virally, but I wonder if these stupid widgets are actually reducing traffic by slowing the page load so much.Many of these submit tools could be replaced (with less functionality) with an image button or text link."
} |
Tell HN: Your social widgets are losing you visitors right now
Recently a lot of sites are getting slow for me. The reason? They add a lot of social submit widgets that use non-async scripts.<p>If you see a substring <script src="http:// or <script src="https:// in your HTML source - you are killing your site slowly.<p>Using Twitter's official ReTweet button? You've slowed your site down by 60 seconds per each page (I don't know how many people are affected by this hiccup that lasts more than 5 days now for me, but you can easily fix it for everybody, see below)<p>Just to be clear. I'm on 35Mbps line in Russia near Moscow (4.3MBytes/s - very fast! 4ms ping to national traffic exchange point in Russia).<p>Yet some sites load up to 2-5 minutes for me? Why?<p>According to Chrome Dev Tools I receive main blog content, including all images within 1-2 seconds. (It's a 35Mbps!), but I don't see anything from your site on screen (even though it has finished loading), because...<p>"platform.twitter.com" responds in 49-62 seconds! Uses <script src="http://... for their "retweet" button. Your site is STUCK until "platform.twitter.com" loads (1 minute).<p>Facebook's CDN responds within 30-50 seconds. The site doesn't load until it's loaded.<p>"www.stumbleupon.com"'s button loads in 20 seconds.<p>I'm not sure what the problem is, but I can tell you for sure - it takes minutes to load some sites with those buttons, it takes less than a blink after I add "127.0.0.1 platform.twitter.com" and others to /etc/hosts (that's not a way to solve it, it's a way to diagnose the problem, see below for solution).<p>Many of you use a lot of those buttons in hope that they will bring you visitors. But while they load - they lose you visitors that have to wait 2 minutes for your page to load.<p>WordPress' social submit plugins are often have the same effect on your site.<p>The solution? Use async code and ask your plugin developer to move to async code.<p>It's not some futuristic HTML5 goodie that works only in modern browsers. It works everywhere.<p>Facebook has async code - use it!
Google Analytics has async - use it!<p>Twitter doesn't give out async, but it's easy to do it, based on FaceBook and Google Analytics code:<p><pre><code> <a href="http://twitter.com/share"
class="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal"
data-via="WhitePostsCom">Tweet</a>
<script>
(function() {
var src = document.createElement('script');
src.async = true;
src.src = document.location.protocol + '//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';
document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(src);
}());
</script>
</code></pre>
Replace the first part with your own code instead of WhitePostsCom one.<p>StatCounter doesn't give async, adapt it from the code StatCounter gives you:
(There was a day when StatCounter didn't load in 2 minutes! Your site is stuck again if you don't do async)<p><pre><code> <!-- Start of StatCounter Code -->
<script type="text/javascript">
var sc_project=[YOUR CODE HERE];
var sc_invisible=[YOUR CODE HERE];
var sc_security="[YOUR CODE HERE]";
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script');
ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
ga.src = document.location.protocol + '//www.statcounter.com/counter/counter.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>
<noscript><div
class="statcounter"><a title="web analytics"
href="http://statcounter.com/" target="_blank"><img
class="statcounter"
src="[YOUR CODE HERE]"
alt="web analytics" ></a></div></noscript>
<!-- End of StatCounter Code -->
</code></pre>
StumbleUpon? Adapt it from the above codes.<p>Seeing someone asking you to insert '<script src="http://' into your code? Tell them to do better engineering and stop slowing down your site.<p>P.S. The reasons for hiccups of Twitter and FB's CDN might be poor peering, bad servers, anything really. You can't fix Twitter's and Facebook's software and servers, but you can let your visitors see your site without depending on how good do engineers at those companies do their job.<p>P.P.S. There is a good question in comments about how to diagnose your own site's problems: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1771755<p>Problematic hosts list (the srcs that cause sometimes huge slowdowns for me) - just in case you need it:<p><pre><code> widgets.digg.com
platform.twitter.com
static.ak.fbcdn.net
www.stumbleupon.com
i.ixnp.com</code></pre> | {
"score": 3,
"text": "Google and Amazon have published research to the effect that even small increases in page load time have a massive effect on traffic.Social sharing is intended to boost traffic virally, but I wonder if these stupid widgets are actually reducing traffic by slowing the page load so much.Many of these submit tools could be replaced (with less functionality) with an image button or text link."
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "Warning: while the above async loading code works for Twitter, it won't work for any JavaScript containing calls to document.write() as they'll append the data to the end of the page depending on the browser (or even replace the whole page!)All is not lost though, as you can patch document.write to do the right thing and write to an element's .innerHTML or equivalent. If you are a JavaScript API provider though, please take heed and don't use document.write(). I'm looking at you, PollDaddy!"
} |
Startup escape path
| {
"score": 0,
"text": "Somewhere in those steps you should add \"make a name for yourself.\" Marketing yourself and your company can lead you from a good idea/MVP/prototype to a successful business. I've seen it first hand on several occasions. It's not about what you know, but who you know. Numerous articles on HN have been targeted towards the difficulty of traction. \"I have a good product, but I have no traction.\" There comes a point when a good product is not necessarily enough. This is especially true for niche markets. Marketing, marketing, marketing. And I don't mean the kind where you hire an agency. All they have is connections; you can make those with effort. There are all sorts of guerilla marketing tactics if you're looking for cost effective ways to get your name out there.Some of the key points fall under the blanket of marketing: * blogging, guest blogging\n * submitting articles to HN, reddit, etc\n * connecting to local startup/tech communities\n\nDon't live in a bubble. Your startup should not be your personal safe haven that you keep secret from everyone. People need to hear about it, talk about it, criticize it, tear it apart, love it, live it, hate it... you get the picture. You want people to have opinions about your product, strong ones. It doesn't matter if it's a 50/50 split of those that love and hate it. People KNOW about it. If nobody knows you exist, there's no exit.That leads me to my next big topic: CONNECTIONS. Chose them wisely and treat them well. You are your own personal sales guy. Why do you think the startup incubators are so successful? Their connections. PG has connections, go impress him. I'll let you in on a secret though: he has a very high bullshit detector and has seen it all. It helps to know your target audience as well. PG has a preferential tendency towards startup ideas coming from founders that have domain knowledge (and aren't assholes.. he blogged about it).Last point: DON'T BE AN ASSHOLE. Be nice to people, don't talk about them behind their back, always say nice things. It's all too easy to get in the habit of gossiping or talking shit about somebody when they aren't there. Word gets around. At some point they'll likely hear about it through the grapevine. Wouldn't you rather have them hear about the nice things you've said? That's friendship. That's a connection."
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "Step 1, \"Register a Business\" (LLC or LTD) is not something I'd advise on a lark. It costs real money (hundreds if not thousands of dollars), will require an administrative burden (filing of annual reports, filing of additional tax forms, etc, out of state tax forms if you register out of state or move.)I think a more realistic approach is to review and understand all of the requirements for registering a business: What papers to file, who to file them with, what the deadlines are, and what the costs are. Once you understand that, you'll know when your business generates enough income to at least cover these costs, or the business is risky enough to warrant the liability protection. (Most software is sold \"as-is\" and is not that risky.)"
} |
Startup escape path
| {
"score": 1,
"text": "Step 1, \"Register a Business\" (LLC or LTD) is not something I'd advise on a lark. It costs real money (hundreds if not thousands of dollars), will require an administrative burden (filing of annual reports, filing of additional tax forms, etc, out of state tax forms if you register out of state or move.)I think a more realistic approach is to review and understand all of the requirements for registering a business: What papers to file, who to file them with, what the deadlines are, and what the costs are. Once you understand that, you'll know when your business generates enough income to at least cover these costs, or the business is risky enough to warrant the liability protection. (Most software is sold \"as-is\" and is not that risky.)"
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": ">4. Build something someone uses: build something, anything, that at least one person other than you finds useful enough to use it at least 5 times. It doesn't have to look good or change someone's life. In fact, it shouldn't. Just find someone with a problem that recurs every once in a while and build something that solves that problem for them. Learn both how easy and how hard that is.Very much agree with this, but I'd add to SELL that solution you built. App stores make it insanely easy to sell and (sorta) promote a minimum viable app.I did this with Reddit Notifier, a simple Mac OS X app that gives your menubar the same \"orangered\" envelope you get on Reddit:Reddit Notifier: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reddit-notifier/id468366517?m...That \"wow, people will pay real money for this little app I made\" mindset goes a long way towards encouraging your loftier startup/technology goals."
} |
Startup escape path
| {
"score": 2,
"text": ">4. Build something someone uses: build something, anything, that at least one person other than you finds useful enough to use it at least 5 times. It doesn't have to look good or change someone's life. In fact, it shouldn't. Just find someone with a problem that recurs every once in a while and build something that solves that problem for them. Learn both how easy and how hard that is.Very much agree with this, but I'd add to SELL that solution you built. App stores make it insanely easy to sell and (sorta) promote a minimum viable app.I did this with Reddit Notifier, a simple Mac OS X app that gives your menubar the same \"orangered\" envelope you get on Reddit:Reddit Notifier: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reddit-notifier/id468366517?m...That \"wow, people will pay real money for this little app I made\" mindset goes a long way towards encouraging your loftier startup/technology goals."
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "Here are the points I would question. I don't speak from any experience or expertise, so let these thoughts stand on their own merits:2. Connect to the local startup community? More important to connect to customers and users. I won't discount the value of the startup community entirely, but there are echo-chamber and groupthink effects. Connect to customers first, and then the startup community might be more valuable to you. Treat the startup community as an end in itself and you just end up creating derivative, unprofitable ideas.3. Read Hacker News? Maybe 2-3 years ago this was more valuable. Now I would suggest skimming Hacker News and using what you can, but also find the important forums and venues your customers use, and read those more closely.6. Start a blog? Not bad advice, but the more general point--to write--is more broad than that. Blogging is only one medium, and there are many other mediums you have to write well in."
} |
Startup escape path
| {
"score": 3,
"text": "Here are the points I would question. I don't speak from any experience or expertise, so let these thoughts stand on their own merits:2. Connect to the local startup community? More important to connect to customers and users. I won't discount the value of the startup community entirely, but there are echo-chamber and groupthink effects. Connect to customers first, and then the startup community might be more valuable to you. Treat the startup community as an end in itself and you just end up creating derivative, unprofitable ideas.3. Read Hacker News? Maybe 2-3 years ago this was more valuable. Now I would suggest skimming Hacker News and using what you can, but also find the important forums and venues your customers use, and read those more closely.6. Start a blog? Not bad advice, but the more general point--to write--is more broad than that. Blogging is only one medium, and there are many other mediums you have to write well in."
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "I'd like to add that if you live in Canada, do _not_ register a 'corporation', unless you know exactly what you are doing. Your accountant will tell you a good idea, your lawyer will tell you it's a good idea, but wait until the end of your first fiscal year and it costs $2,000 + to have your taxes done!In Canada, just wing it as a Sole proprietor!"
} |
Hire Athletes
| {
"score": 0,
"text": "Yikes this is a bad article. The author makes no connection to how the attributes he describes are more commonly found in athletes. What makes them generalists? Why are they adaptive? Why are they 'makers'?And even worse I think he missed a good opportunity to talk about what kind of attributes an athlete may bring to the table in general, or specifically at a startup. Attributes I have noticed:-An ability to take criticism. Usually coaches don't hold back telling you what you're doing wrong and how to fix it. I've had a lacrosse coach go through every player on a team and publicly tell them what they do poorly. I'm not saying that is the best coaching style, but it gets you used to handling criticism and responding to it.\n-An ability to face failure. At one point or another everyone fails at sports. Usually it happens a lot. Being able to respond and grow from those failures can be really important, especially at a startup.\n-Competitiveness. Obviously by competing a lot athlete will have a desire to win. In addition, I've found they have a \"do anything to win\" attitude that can be great at a startup when you need people to fill in rolls that may not be glamorous or cool but are integral to successthese attribues aren't only found in athletes, but I have found them more often with athletes more than the general populous"
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "I can't tell if this is literally talking about people who compete in physical activities or not. I feel like you could replace every instance of the word \"athlete\" with \"ninja\" or some other term and it would make just as much sense. Am I missing something?"
} |
Hire Athletes
| {
"score": 1,
"text": "I can't tell if this is literally talking about people who compete in physical activities or not. I feel like you could replace every instance of the word \"athlete\" with \"ninja\" or some other term and it would make just as much sense. Am I missing something?"
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "This metaphor will probably fly over most people's head.It makes perfect sense to me if you can imagine the progression of a beginner entering any sportWhen you try to become more athletic do you shoot more free throws or run more passing routes ? Neither. Your goal is to build a strong foundation in strength, speed, agility, and power up to an elite level and then specialize once you've decided what sport or position you want to play to tailor your training appropriately."
} |
Hire Athletes
| {
"score": 2,
"text": "This metaphor will probably fly over most people's head.It makes perfect sense to me if you can imagine the progression of a beginner entering any sportWhen you try to become more athletic do you shoot more free throws or run more passing routes ? Neither. Your goal is to build a strong foundation in strength, speed, agility, and power up to an elite level and then specialize once you've decided what sport or position you want to play to tailor your training appropriately."
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS.I don't understand why so far (6 comments) people are commenting seriously on this essay.This essay looks like a somewhat mechanical prank to me, as if someone decided to:1. Assemble generic hacker news style article about why hackers are good. For example, \"Hackers are always making things, they can't help themselves\". [RE-EDIT: This is an actual quote from the essay, except that the word \"athletes\" was used instead of \"hackers\".]2. Make it stupid by substituting \"athlete\" for \"hacker\". Maybe they thought this would be an obvious absurdity because they think hackers are \"nerds\", and that \"nerds\" and \"jocks\" are obvious opposites?3. Make it slightly less obvious by dressing it up with a little extra athlete-related stuff, like the cartoons about athletes.I would also like to suggest that \"Jason Freedman\" is an obvious parody substitution for \"Jason Fried.\" Also, \"42floors\" <--> \"37 signals\" [EDIT: My God, it turns out these are supposedly a real person and his real company. Coincidence, or convenient choice to surf on the influence of similarity?]My take: do you spend too much time reading \"Hacker News\", so hurriedly that your credulity muscles get too much exercise?"
} |
Hire Athletes
| {
"score": 3,
"text": "WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS.I don't understand why so far (6 comments) people are commenting seriously on this essay.This essay looks like a somewhat mechanical prank to me, as if someone decided to:1. Assemble generic hacker news style article about why hackers are good. For example, \"Hackers are always making things, they can't help themselves\". [RE-EDIT: This is an actual quote from the essay, except that the word \"athletes\" was used instead of \"hackers\".]2. Make it stupid by substituting \"athlete\" for \"hacker\". Maybe they thought this would be an obvious absurdity because they think hackers are \"nerds\", and that \"nerds\" and \"jocks\" are obvious opposites?3. Make it slightly less obvious by dressing it up with a little extra athlete-related stuff, like the cartoons about athletes.I would also like to suggest that \"Jason Freedman\" is an obvious parody substitution for \"Jason Fried.\" Also, \"42floors\" <--> \"37 signals\" [EDIT: My God, it turns out these are supposedly a real person and his real company. Coincidence, or convenient choice to surf on the influence of similarity?]My take: do you spend too much time reading \"Hacker News\", so hurriedly that your credulity muscles get too much exercise?"
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "Read closely and you'll spot this...\"Metaphorically speaking, that is. I don’t mean athletes as in people who play sports. Athletes, as in people that can play any position within your startup. It means someone is first and foremost a generalist. \""
} |
The Key to Snapchat's Eventual Profitability: It's Dirt Cheap to Run
| {
"score": 0,
"text": "Interesting article, terrible title. It's key to profitability will be actually generating revenue while preventing their users from fleeing to the next new thing."
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "I know it's a little off topic by why on earth wouldn't one take a 3-billion-cash offer for a company without revenue? This simply amazes me. I must be missing the uber-motivated-entrepreneur gene."
} |
The Key to Snapchat's Eventual Profitability: It's Dirt Cheap to Run
| {
"score": 1,
"text": "I know it's a little off topic by why on earth wouldn't one take a 3-billion-cash offer for a company without revenue? This simply amazes me. I must be missing the uber-motivated-entrepreneur gene."
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "Serious question: how can a company be profitable without any revenue? Or do they have non-obvious (to someone who doesn't use the service) revenue?"
} |
The Key to Snapchat's Eventual Profitability: It's Dirt Cheap to Run
| {
"score": 2,
"text": "Serious question: how can a company be profitable without any revenue? Or do they have non-obvious (to someone who doesn't use the service) revenue?"
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "Most things are dirt cheap to run. People just choose not to do so.There have been countless services and websites over the last decade that somehow get or require massive infusions of money. Tens of millions of dollars, even. It blows my mind. Why does your website that mostly just regurgitates tech news in blog format each day (and usually only about cell phones and tablets, at that) require twenty million dollars of capital? You need a couple servers at rackspace and a couple people at home in their underwear surfing the web and parroting existing stories and news throughout the day.When I hear "snapchat is incredibly cheap to run", what I hear is "it is reasonably priced to run, like most other services should be, but without the bloated and inflated needs that others somehow ladle onto their sites/services"."
} |
The Key to Snapchat's Eventual Profitability: It's Dirt Cheap to Run
| {
"score": 3,
"text": "Most things are dirt cheap to run. People just choose not to do so.There have been countless services and websites over the last decade that somehow get or require massive infusions of money. Tens of millions of dollars, even. It blows my mind. Why does your website that mostly just regurgitates tech news in blog format each day (and usually only about cell phones and tablets, at that) require twenty million dollars of capital? You need a couple servers at rackspace and a couple people at home in their underwear surfing the web and parroting existing stories and news throughout the day.When I hear "snapchat is incredibly cheap to run", what I hear is "it is reasonably priced to run, like most other services should be, but without the bloated and inflated needs that others somehow ladle onto their sites/services"."
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "I'm not hugely familiar with mobile, but I don't quite understand why Apple/Google can't just immediately kill Snapchat by rolling out an expiring photo message feature in their next update. As far as I can tell, there is nothing keeping users specifically on Snapchat since it pulls from your phone's contacts, and since the content expires it's not like you have a mountain of pictures stored in the application that you don't want to lose, like in Instagram."
} |
How Sleep Deprivation Drives The High Failure Rates of Tech Startups
| {
"score": 0,
"text": "Once upon a time I did the start-up, sleep-deprived, living at work thing, and frankly younger me thought it was awesome. Older me looks back and things younger me was sometimes an idiot.Recently I had a kid and got to experience the sleep-deprivation effects all over again except this time with one big difference: I work with an awesome team who were able to pick up the slack, and I was smart enough to know when to ask for help (once literally saying "I'm too stupid to do this now, can you do it?")Sleep-deprivation is going to continue to be endemic in our industry (not just amongst start-ups, the twenty-somethings today are going to be having kids soon themselves). Instead of fighting through the slack, find ways to mitigate it; build your teams with people you can rely on to cover you when you're short."
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "This is a really weak article. As much as the headline is somewhat plausible, none of the cited evidence even indirectly supports it. In fact, it mentions only Mayer/Dorsey as data points linking sleep deprivation to success, and they're counterexamples!... so why is this article being upvoted?"
} |
How Sleep Deprivation Drives The High Failure Rates of Tech Startups
| {
"score": 1,
"text": "This is a really weak article. As much as the headline is somewhat plausible, none of the cited evidence even indirectly supports it. In fact, it mentions only Mayer/Dorsey as data points linking sleep deprivation to success, and they're counterexamples!... so why is this article being upvoted?"
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "One of the fascinating parts about needing "x hours of sleep per night" and in the past people slept "x hours a night" is I never see anyone take into account the seasons. For all of us at one end of the year we're in a place with 14 hours of darkness and later we're at 14 hours or more of light. I think that impacts how much sleep we need probably by 10 - 20%. I for one hate 6:30am flights in winter when it's dark but don't find them nearly as hard in the middle of summer when the sun's been up for an hour."
} |
How Sleep Deprivation Drives The High Failure Rates of Tech Startups
| {
"score": 2,
"text": "One of the fascinating parts about needing "x hours of sleep per night" and in the past people slept "x hours a night" is I never see anyone take into account the seasons. For all of us at one end of the year we're in a place with 14 hours of darkness and later we're at 14 hours or more of light. I think that impacts how much sleep we need probably by 10 - 20%. I for one hate 6:30am flights in winter when it's dark but don't find them nearly as hard in the middle of summer when the sun's been up for an hour."
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "Here is another single datapoint (but supported by a peer-reviewed paper!): I just bought blue light blocking glasses which I put on at around 9 or 10pm every day. They look goofy but it seems to actually work! It’s like a real-life Flux app. I seem to fall asleep much faster and it seems that the bright bathroom light does not to make me as alert anymore.http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/mind-read/what_keeps_you...http://www.amazon.com/Uvex-S1933X-Eyewear-SCT-Orange-Anti-Fo...http://justgetflux.com/"
} |
How Sleep Deprivation Drives The High Failure Rates of Tech Startups
| {
"score": 3,
"text": "Here is another single datapoint (but supported by a peer-reviewed paper!): I just bought blue light blocking glasses which I put on at around 9 or 10pm every day. They look goofy but it seems to actually work! It’s like a real-life Flux app. I seem to fall asleep much faster and it seems that the bright bathroom light does not to make me as alert anymore.http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/mind-read/what_keeps_you...http://www.amazon.com/Uvex-S1933X-Eyewear-SCT-Orange-Anti-Fo...http://justgetflux.com/"
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "I think success in this context is less about hours of sleep and more about manic focus. You can sleep 8 hours, spend 2-4 hours on random crap, and still work/be around work for the other 12-14 hours. I've been either inside or involved early on with a few very successful startups and none of them felt like an environment of balance or moderation. The founders and early employees (especially technical employees) are maniacs who focus on their product, vision, or whatever it is, at the expense of all else. Founder types especially seem to think about work 24/7 and never really switch that off until the companies have matured significantly."
} |
Any Tech Sites that don't always talk about Google, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft?
My feedly account is always filled with the same top tech companies. Sites like The Verge, Mashable, Engadget, ReadWriteWeb, Ars Technica, The Next Web, etc seem to copy each other's topics all the time.
.
I need some variety.
Google, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, are not the only tech companies I want to know about. | {
"score": 0,
"text": "http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/"Low-tech Magazine refuses to assume that every problem has a high-tech solution. A simple, sensible, but nevertheless controversial message; high-tech has become the idol of our society.Instead, Low-tech Magazine talks about the potential of past and often forgotten knowledge and technologies when it comes to designing a sustainable society. Sometimes, these low-tech solutions could be copied without any changes. More often, interesting possibilities arise when you combine old technology with new knowledge and new materials, or when you apply old concepts and traditional knowledge to modern technology. We also keep an eye on what is happening in the developing world, where resource constraints often lead to inventive, low-tech solutions.""
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "A good way to avoid articles on those big companies is to start reading "region specific" startup blogs or "topic specific" startup blogs.\nSome of the blogs I follow:by regionArctic Startups (Scandinavia) http://www.arcticstartup.com/Rude Baguette (France) http://www.rudebaguette.com/Silicon Allee (Berlin) http://siliconallee.com/by topicTnooz (Travel)http://www.tnooz.com/Search Engine Land http://searchengineland.com/3D Printing Industry http://3dprintingindustry.com/"
} |
Any Tech Sites that don't always talk about Google, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft?
My feedly account is always filled with the same top tech companies. Sites like The Verge, Mashable, Engadget, ReadWriteWeb, Ars Technica, The Next Web, etc seem to copy each other's topics all the time.
.
I need some variety.
Google, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, are not the only tech companies I want to know about. | {
"score": 1,
"text": "A good way to avoid articles on those big companies is to start reading "region specific" startup blogs or "topic specific" startup blogs.\nSome of the blogs I follow:by regionArctic Startups (Scandinavia) http://www.arcticstartup.com/Rude Baguette (France) http://www.rudebaguette.com/Silicon Allee (Berlin) http://siliconallee.com/by topicTnooz (Travel)http://www.tnooz.com/Search Engine Land http://searchengineland.com/3D Printing Industry http://3dprintingindustry.com/"
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "ArabCrunch covers Arab tech startups and tech industry there http://arabcrunch.com\nalso http://techinasia.com"
} |
Any Tech Sites that don't always talk about Google, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft?
My feedly account is always filled with the same top tech companies. Sites like The Verge, Mashable, Engadget, ReadWriteWeb, Ars Technica, The Next Web, etc seem to copy each other's topics all the time.
.
I need some variety.
Google, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, are not the only tech companies I want to know about. | {
"score": 2,
"text": "ArabCrunch covers Arab tech startups and tech industry there http://arabcrunch.com\nalso http://techinasia.com"
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "I was going to mention OSNews, but then I realized it's been a while I didn't visit so I went to check it:And this is the current frontpage: Sony, Samsung, QNX, Valve, Microsoft, Linux, Google, Microsoft, Google, Valve, OpenBSD, Apple, Apple/Microsoft, Apple/Microsoft/Google, Apple, Google, Cisco, Motorola, Nokia, Apple.My memory was that it was more of a site about alternative OSes and the like..."
} |
Any Tech Sites that don't always talk about Google, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft?
My feedly account is always filled with the same top tech companies. Sites like The Verge, Mashable, Engadget, ReadWriteWeb, Ars Technica, The Next Web, etc seem to copy each other's topics all the time.
.
I need some variety.
Google, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, are not the only tech companies I want to know about. | {
"score": 3,
"text": "I was going to mention OSNews, but then I realized it's been a while I didn't visit so I went to check it:And this is the current frontpage: Sony, Samsung, QNX, Valve, Microsoft, Linux, Google, Microsoft, Google, Valve, OpenBSD, Apple, Apple/Microsoft, Apple/Microsoft/Google, Apple, Google, Cisco, Motorola, Nokia, Apple.My memory was that it was more of a site about alternative OSes and the like..."
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "Could be a good idea and call it NoGASM. :P"
} |
Ask HN: What do you look for in a terminal?
Aside from "obvious" things like speed, accuracy, etc. what kinds of features do you really want in a terminal emulator (especially if you don't know of any terminals that do what you want)? What are a few really important things that just seem to have been dropped?<p>I develop a Mac terminal emulator, and a friend once asked me <i>why</i>. His reasoning was that the OS already had one, and that seems to be a recurring theme with bundled software: people don't tend to ask for features beyond what OS-bundled apps already provide. So I thought I would finally ask; are people really content with what's there out of the box? | {
"score": 0,
"text": "I've used iTerm2 (http://www.iterm2.com/) for quite a while, especially for its full-screen mode (a must-have) and its semi-transparent capability (total vanity there). Importantly, the full-screen mode is actual full-screen, without a menu bar or any other nonsense. Switching between terminals is easy.I can't really think of anything else in a terminal program that I'd look for. Good font rendering, obviously. Huge scrollback buffers would be nice. Maybe better copy-paste handling?I can still use MacOS X's built-in terminal app, and I often do when working on a client's computer, but it feels really inelegant now by comparison. A little like having to give up your favorite ratcheting box wrench set for standard combo wrenches."
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "I use rxvt-unicode. The 3 things i would love to have is low mem usage, 256 color support, and large scrollback. I love good colorschemes in my vim."
} |
Ask HN: What do you look for in a terminal?
Aside from "obvious" things like speed, accuracy, etc. what kinds of features do you really want in a terminal emulator (especially if you don't know of any terminals that do what you want)? What are a few really important things that just seem to have been dropped?<p>I develop a Mac terminal emulator, and a friend once asked me <i>why</i>. His reasoning was that the OS already had one, and that seems to be a recurring theme with bundled software: people don't tend to ask for features beyond what OS-bundled apps already provide. So I thought I would finally ask; are people really content with what's there out of the box? | {
"score": 1,
"text": "I use rxvt-unicode. The 3 things i would love to have is low mem usage, 256 color support, and large scrollback. I love good colorschemes in my vim."
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "Gnome-terminal is the fastest terminal on Linux, and looks good too!"
} |
Ask HN: What do you look for in a terminal?
Aside from "obvious" things like speed, accuracy, etc. what kinds of features do you really want in a terminal emulator (especially if you don't know of any terminals that do what you want)? What are a few really important things that just seem to have been dropped?<p>I develop a Mac terminal emulator, and a friend once asked me <i>why</i>. His reasoning was that the OS already had one, and that seems to be a recurring theme with bundled software: people don't tend to ask for features beyond what OS-bundled apps already provide. So I thought I would finally ask; are people really content with what's there out of the box? | {
"score": 2,
"text": "Gnome-terminal is the fastest terminal on Linux, and looks good too!"
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "It has to have the ability for the context of keystrokes to be toggled. Sometimes I notice that there are conflicts between Emacs key bindings and the operating system."
} |
Ask HN: What do you look for in a terminal?
Aside from "obvious" things like speed, accuracy, etc. what kinds of features do you really want in a terminal emulator (especially if you don't know of any terminals that do what you want)? What are a few really important things that just seem to have been dropped?<p>I develop a Mac terminal emulator, and a friend once asked me <i>why</i>. His reasoning was that the OS already had one, and that seems to be a recurring theme with bundled software: people don't tend to ask for features beyond what OS-bundled apps already provide. So I thought I would finally ask; are people really content with what's there out of the box? | {
"score": 3,
"text": "It has to have the ability for the context of keystrokes to be toggled. Sometimes I notice that there are conflicts between Emacs key bindings and the operating system."
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "Not really sure what a terminal emulator would do that the Mac OS terminal.app doesn't do. My wants are not complicated."
} |
Ask HN: Is this an idea worth pursuing further?
Hello everyone,<p>two weeks ago me and a friend were in a bar and suddendly we came up with the idea for http://www.learntoplayanything.com . By now we have put some work in it and we get a few visitors each day. (Although Google apparently hasn't indexed everything yet.)<p>It was all done in the spirit of "f*ck it, let's just do it and see what happens", but now we wonder if it was such an excellent idea after all.<p>What do you think? Is it worth to invest more time into this website? What features can you imagine that would make the site more valuable?<p>We are currently thinking about inserting links to guitar tabs and piano sheet music and changing the layout to something more pretty. | {
"score": 0,
"text": "The way I see it is that you are taking advantage of bad search results in a specific area. You are simply creating a web page that tries to match a specific video with a specific search query and monetize by putting your ads around the content (the youtube video).If you simply built a single page with a collection of links with that text to the video of interest, you'd largely serve the same purpose for users - search engines would rank the actual video higher for that query, but unfortunately you wouldn't be inserting yourself into the middle in order to extract revenue.Your model is negatively effected by search engines improving their ranking algorithms with respect to video content. That seems like a bad place to be."
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "it's a good idea, and has some decent traffic #s(i.e. \"sweet home alabama guitar lesson\" 14,800 searches/month) but it seems to be a little bit competitive. Go exact searching for \"sweet home alabama guitar lesson\" and you get 185,000 sites.I think \"sweet home alabama guitar tutorial\" is a much better fit. Only 53,700 hits, and none are really an exact match for the search on page 1(which is probably true for all other searches). And that still gets you 6,600 searches a month.So update your titles to be [SONG TITLE] guitar tutorial.And you should be able to hit some decent traffic numbers with that."
} |
Ask HN: Is this an idea worth pursuing further?
Hello everyone,<p>two weeks ago me and a friend were in a bar and suddendly we came up with the idea for http://www.learntoplayanything.com . By now we have put some work in it and we get a few visitors each day. (Although Google apparently hasn't indexed everything yet.)<p>It was all done in the spirit of "f*ck it, let's just do it and see what happens", but now we wonder if it was such an excellent idea after all.<p>What do you think? Is it worth to invest more time into this website? What features can you imagine that would make the site more valuable?<p>We are currently thinking about inserting links to guitar tabs and piano sheet music and changing the layout to something more pretty. | {
"score": 1,
"text": "it's a good idea, and has some decent traffic #s(i.e. \"sweet home alabama guitar lesson\" 14,800 searches/month) but it seems to be a little bit competitive. Go exact searching for \"sweet home alabama guitar lesson\" and you get 185,000 sites.I think \"sweet home alabama guitar tutorial\" is a much better fit. Only 53,700 hits, and none are really an exact match for the search on page 1(which is probably true for all other searches). And that still gets you 6,600 searches a month.So update your titles to be [SONG TITLE] guitar tutorial.And you should be able to hit some decent traffic numbers with that."
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "I like the idea. Not sure about making money from it, but definitely see it as useful.typo on home page... \"Also contact us if you want to contribute by helping uns organizing the links.\"Can you add more specific information to your search results lists? For me right now, this page...\nhttp://www.learntoplayanything.com/component/tag/green%20day\nreturns 20 results that all are \"Boulevard of Broken Dreams \" - would be more useful if there was some additional info to differentiate.On this page:\nhttp://www.learntoplayanything.com/component/tag/green%20day...\n Which is the third page, the paginated link to page 1 actually goes back to the third page. The link to page 1 on all paginated results pages seems to link to the current page instead of page 1."
} |
Ask HN: Is this an idea worth pursuing further?
Hello everyone,<p>two weeks ago me and a friend were in a bar and suddendly we came up with the idea for http://www.learntoplayanything.com . By now we have put some work in it and we get a few visitors each day. (Although Google apparently hasn't indexed everything yet.)<p>It was all done in the spirit of "f*ck it, let's just do it and see what happens", but now we wonder if it was such an excellent idea after all.<p>What do you think? Is it worth to invest more time into this website? What features can you imagine that would make the site more valuable?<p>We are currently thinking about inserting links to guitar tabs and piano sheet music and changing the layout to something more pretty. | {
"score": 2,
"text": "I like the idea. Not sure about making money from it, but definitely see it as useful.typo on home page... \"Also contact us if you want to contribute by helping uns organizing the links.\"Can you add more specific information to your search results lists? For me right now, this page...\nhttp://www.learntoplayanything.com/component/tag/green%20day\nreturns 20 results that all are \"Boulevard of Broken Dreams \" - would be more useful if there was some additional info to differentiate.On this page:\nhttp://www.learntoplayanything.com/component/tag/green%20day...\n Which is the third page, the paginated link to page 1 actually goes back to the third page. The link to page 1 on all paginated results pages seems to link to the current page instead of page 1."
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "This is a good aggregation idea for learning - why not find a few content providers/creators that could serialize a process for learning - so pieces of a song, or basic chords for guitar. Get some content made by people looking to raise their recognition, and customize it for the site. I'll bet you could get free contributions, or even mechanical turk it for different languages. Ad-supported is definitely the model right now, but what about taking requests and getting people to \"donate\" for specific content providers to produce requests - you may have a runaway hit for people that can tab/teach/play. Best of luck."
} |
Ask HN: Is this an idea worth pursuing further?
Hello everyone,<p>two weeks ago me and a friend were in a bar and suddendly we came up with the idea for http://www.learntoplayanything.com . By now we have put some work in it and we get a few visitors each day. (Although Google apparently hasn't indexed everything yet.)<p>It was all done in the spirit of "f*ck it, let's just do it and see what happens", but now we wonder if it was such an excellent idea after all.<p>What do you think? Is it worth to invest more time into this website? What features can you imagine that would make the site more valuable?<p>We are currently thinking about inserting links to guitar tabs and piano sheet music and changing the layout to something more pretty. | {
"score": 3,
"text": "This is a good aggregation idea for learning - why not find a few content providers/creators that could serialize a process for learning - so pieces of a song, or basic chords for guitar. Get some content made by people looking to raise their recognition, and customize it for the site. I'll bet you could get free contributions, or even mechanical turk it for different languages. Ad-supported is definitely the model right now, but what about taking requests and getting people to \"donate\" for specific content providers to produce requests - you may have a runaway hit for people that can tab/teach/play. Best of luck."
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "If you included guitar tabs and perhaps allowed users to upload custom tabs (so that people can improve on publicly available ones), it'd be absolutely great. I'd use it on a weekly basis at least, if not daily."
} |
Designers should be arbiters of truth - Mr. X of American Airlines
| {
"score": 0,
"text": "This post is a bit whimsical for my taste. The author seems to imply that it's the job of a designer to rise above the ordinary requirements of their job and insert some kind of politically-charged influence into their day to day work and their interactions with non-designer co-workers, based on what they feel is good or effective design, even if it does not align with the broader corporate strategy.As for the gift card anecdote used in the article, it doesn't take a good designer, or even a designer at all to realize that \"hiding\" a customer's gift card balance, or making it difficult to access, is an underhanded thing to do. I think it has little to do with design and more to do with a company's culture and true relationship with their customers."
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": " In the end, the gift card idea evaporated as quickly as it\n was conceived, so I didn't need to stand up and object to \n slimy tactics.\n\nDid anybody else think the ending was anti-climatic? Mr. X was, \"standing up for the truth,\" but he ended up not standing up for anything because the project got canceled."
} |
Designers should be arbiters of truth - Mr. X of American Airlines
| {
"score": 1,
"text": " In the end, the gift card idea evaporated as quickly as it\n was conceived, so I didn't need to stand up and object to \n slimy tactics.\n\nDid anybody else think the ending was anti-climatic? Mr. X was, \"standing up for the truth,\" but he ended up not standing up for anything because the project got canceled."
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "\"Arbiters of truth\" ? Smug self-righteousness and self congratulation seem to get a lot of upvotes on Hacker News."
} |
Designers should be arbiters of truth - Mr. X of American Airlines
| {
"score": 2,
"text": "\"Arbiters of truth\" ? Smug self-righteousness and self congratulation seem to get a lot of upvotes on Hacker News."
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "So Mister X's implication, in context, is that American Airlines' website is so deviously and incredibly terrible not because they're incompetent, but because they would rather you didn't use it.Having been a customer of AA before vowing in disgust never to let them take a penny from me ever again, I surmise that the hidden plan here is to make you call their customer-service agents to book or change your ticket, since you can't work out how to do it on the website. At AA, calling them to book means a $35 extra fee on top of your ticket.So that's it? They have the worst website in the industry just to screw their customers for a lousy $35?"
} |
Designers should be arbiters of truth - Mr. X of American Airlines
| {
"score": 3,
"text": "So Mister X's implication, in context, is that American Airlines' website is so deviously and incredibly terrible not because they're incompetent, but because they would rather you didn't use it.Having been a customer of AA before vowing in disgust never to let them take a penny from me ever again, I surmise that the hidden plan here is to make you call their customer-service agents to book or change your ticket, since you can't work out how to do it on the website. At AA, calling them to book means a $35 extra fee on top of your ticket.So that's it? They have the worst website in the industry just to screw their customers for a lousy $35?"
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "Mr. X points out how they make money off people who forget, lose, or simply discard their gift cards. They also make extra money off people who are compulsively responsible about their cards. After all, the easiest way to make sure you use the card before it expires and \"get your money's worth\" is to make a purchase that you are sure will drain the entire card. The less sure you are about the remaining balance, the bigger that purchase will be. The same thing goes for getting all those damn gift cards out of your wallet after your birthday so you don't develop a spinal deformity from storing them under one butt cheek."
} |
Show HN: Quote Vote, my Android app combining social voting with 140 characters
| {
"score": 0,
"text": "I like the concept but I think it's missing something to get the user interested in the first place. HN has content I like from people I don't know. Twitter has random soundbites from people I can choose to follow. It looks like your app drops the interesting content part of the social-networking thing and the interesting tweeter part of the twitter soundbite machine so I end up being asked to be interested in completely random soundbites from completely random people. The example of the leaderboard on your post would be an unfortunately accurate prediction of the kind of content I'd expect. You really should try to get more interesting content on your sample leaderboard.1. Maybe I'd be more interested if I knew or in some way could identify with the people sharing quotes. So what about names being visible. Or:2. Maybe I'd be more interested still if there was a way to filter by group. Christians might be interested in random quotes from other self-styled Christians. Atheists might be interested in god-debunking soundbites. Technophiles might be interested in \"android v. apple\" slugfests. And so on.3. Maybe I'd also be interested if event-specific or news-specific quote voting were possible. E.g., I'm at a baseball game and I can follow people from all over the park sharing observations about players and hotdogs. Or there's an earthquake, and I can follow stuff about that. In this respect, you'd be doing something that makes Twitter interesting rather than just the thing that makes it boring, and the voting would be a real addition.Caveat: complete novice here, in awe of people who can so readily conceive and execute an idea like this."
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "I think this is a great idea. I wish I would have thought of this myself, it is about time that someone came up with a democratic social networking utility. I think that this could be expanded to several other topics. As far as your memcache issue goes, you may want to ask people more familiar with app engine to see if they could be of assistance."
} |
Show HN: Quote Vote, my Android app combining social voting with 140 characters
| {
"score": 1,
"text": "I think this is a great idea. I wish I would have thought of this myself, it is about time that someone came up with a democratic social networking utility. I think that this could be expanded to several other topics. As far as your memcache issue goes, you may want to ask people more familiar with app engine to see if they could be of assistance."
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "I don't know what the general percentage is, but for example on reddit, most people are consumers or lurkers, and its a small percentage to get people to participate. So I would possibly implement something for so called karma people, a leader board, or showcase the user name more, to give people the vanity that apps like yours need to provide."
} |
Show HN: Quote Vote, my Android app combining social voting with 140 characters
| {
"score": 2,
"text": "I don't know what the general percentage is, but for example on reddit, most people are consumers or lurkers, and its a small percentage to get people to participate. So I would possibly implement something for so called karma people, a leader board, or showcase the user name more, to give people the vanity that apps like yours need to provide."
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "How did you do user accounts/ authentication? Did you make each user have an account or did you use the phone's ID or something? (Not an Android developer, just curious)"
} |
Show HN: Quote Vote, my Android app combining social voting with 140 characters
| {
"score": 3,
"text": "How did you do user accounts/ authentication? Did you make each user have an account or did you use the phone's ID or something? (Not an Android developer, just curious)"
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "I don't understand the concept. The post has mostly technical tidbits but not much about the functionality."
} |
The Law-School Scam
| {
"score": 0,
"text": "Law school grad here (top 10 school). Anyone asks my opinion (which seems to happen an awful lot -- I guess lots of people consider law school at some point or another), I tell them I think it's a pretty bad idea.1) The cost (direct and opportunity) is ENORMOUS. And even with special federal govt repayment plans, if you don't get that big firm job, the debt will potentially weigh you down well into middle age (with the possibility of a nasty tax bite at the end if you have any assets and the law isn't changed).2) The likelihood of getting a high paying job is slim. It's even pretty risky from top 10 schools.3) Even during the boom times, when people from top schools were getting jobs at top BIGLAW firms left and right, people were HATING LIFE at the firm because they didn't realize what it was going to be like. And more broadly, lots of people get all the way through law school and realize they don't wanna be lawyers. This is super common.4) Non-big-firm opportunities are either super competitive (like govt or public interest), super low paying (also includes lots of govt and public interest), or not a great value proposition (how'd you like 200k in debt to try scratching out 50k a year as a solo?)Lots of the reasons people want to attend law school are pretty dumb/false (stuff like: like to argue, wanna be prestigious, think its a safe/good-paying career track). The people that should attend law school are those who:a) won't be financially ruined by the decision,b) actually want to be a lawyer, andc) have some real sense of what being a lawyer actually means (e.g. they spent at least a couple years working at a firm in some non-lawyer capacity, or they have a parent who was a lawyer and told them lots about their job, or they spent tons of their time researching law and legal practice. In other words their knowledge of legal practice is not based entirely on fictional TV and movie lawyers).I'd say that describes under 1% of the people enrolled in law schools nationwide."
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "There are way, way too many lawyers in this country.Back in the good ol' days, law was a profitable endeavor. It was limited to the elite, and as a result there was a great scarcity of people who were able to become lawyers. They could then charge a lot of money for their services and become rich.This changed as soon as law schools became the dumping ground for people who wanted to become professionals but sucked at math. Can't do engineering? Programming's a bitch? Your lab grades suck too much to get into med school? Law school will take you! They'd better; they're charging 40k a year for it.Then these kids get out into the working world and find out that BigLaw firms will work your ass to the bone. Why not? You can't quit; you're lucky to have the job in the first place, and you have $250k of debt. Okay, so BigLaw is out if you don't want to be driven to a nervous breakdown. How about being a public attorney? $35k a year salary. Okay, that sucks... how about being an ambulance chasing personal injury lawyer? Not going to happen, because there are tens of thousands of people just like you who went through the above options and realized that they were just as fucked. So now every billboard in town has a different grim-looking face promising the moon to anyone with a slip-and-fall case. "I don't get paid until you get paid!" There's only so many people who can slip and fall on a rogue can of peas at the Kroger, and you can't pay the bills with the few that will come to you.As a result, almost a majority of people who go to law school don't end up as lawyers. The ones who do almost universally say that they wouldn't do it over again if they had the opportunity.The organizations that profit from this? BigLaw and the law schools. BigLaw firms profit immensely because they have a massive supply of new lawyers who will take anything that's given to them. 90 hour weeks? Thank you sir, may I have another! I have student loans to pay!The law schools also make a killing because, like many other colleges, they've managed to convince people that a college degree is The One True Path to attaining the American Dream. The people who get shafted, of course, are the newly minted lawyers."
} |
The Law-School Scam
| {
"score": 1,
"text": "There are way, way too many lawyers in this country.Back in the good ol' days, law was a profitable endeavor. It was limited to the elite, and as a result there was a great scarcity of people who were able to become lawyers. They could then charge a lot of money for their services and become rich.This changed as soon as law schools became the dumping ground for people who wanted to become professionals but sucked at math. Can't do engineering? Programming's a bitch? Your lab grades suck too much to get into med school? Law school will take you! They'd better; they're charging 40k a year for it.Then these kids get out into the working world and find out that BigLaw firms will work your ass to the bone. Why not? You can't quit; you're lucky to have the job in the first place, and you have $250k of debt. Okay, so BigLaw is out if you don't want to be driven to a nervous breakdown. How about being a public attorney? $35k a year salary. Okay, that sucks... how about being an ambulance chasing personal injury lawyer? Not going to happen, because there are tens of thousands of people just like you who went through the above options and realized that they were just as fucked. So now every billboard in town has a different grim-looking face promising the moon to anyone with a slip-and-fall case. "I don't get paid until you get paid!" There's only so many people who can slip and fall on a rogue can of peas at the Kroger, and you can't pay the bills with the few that will come to you.As a result, almost a majority of people who go to law school don't end up as lawyers. The ones who do almost universally say that they wouldn't do it over again if they had the opportunity.The organizations that profit from this? BigLaw and the law schools. BigLaw firms profit immensely because they have a massive supply of new lawyers who will take anything that's given to them. 90 hour weeks? Thank you sir, may I have another! I have student loans to pay!The law schools also make a killing because, like many other colleges, they've managed to convince people that a college degree is The One True Path to attaining the American Dream. The people who get shafted, of course, are the newly minted lawyers."
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "Since getting a law degree here (Denmark) is tuition-free, and the incoming class is regulated to be approximately in line with the annual demand for new lawyers, everything in this article reads like bizarro-land. Yeah, it would be a mess if students paid for educations out of pocket, and also were the ones who decided how many people were needed in a given field (a field in which they did not as of yet have any expertise). That does sound like a good recipe for a bunch of people in debt not able to get jobs. Here is a solution: don't do that."
} |
The Law-School Scam
| {
"score": 2,
"text": "Since getting a law degree here (Denmark) is tuition-free, and the incoming class is regulated to be approximately in line with the annual demand for new lawyers, everything in this article reads like bizarro-land. Yeah, it would be a mess if students paid for educations out of pocket, and also were the ones who decided how many people were needed in a given field (a field in which they did not as of yet have any expertise). That does sound like a good recipe for a bunch of people in debt not able to get jobs. Here is a solution: don't do that."
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "Relevant:Imagine for a moment that you are the owner of a popular restaurant located on a street with many restaurants. You do your best to provide the best experience to your customers while staying ahead of the competition by keeping your prices down. You try to avoid spending too much on labor, and do as much of the work yourself as you can, often putting in long hours. Although there is a good wholesale market nearby, you drive an extra hour to another market just to get your ingredients a little cheaper.One day a wealthy patron who is a big fan of your cooking announces a new idea. Because he wants as many people as possible to enjoy your food, he is going to pick up the tab for most of your customers. You can just go on doing what you always do, but when the check arrives for many tables, this wealthy patron will pay the tab. The next day, your waitress complains that there are too many tables and you should hire more help. What would you do?Normally, you would try to find a way to avoid hiring another person as it would eat into what little profits you make. But now you realize there is another solution. You can just raise prices. Since most of your patrons are not paying for their meals, your place will still stay popular and you won’t have to worry about losing business to your competition. So why not hire another waitress? While you are at it, why not hire a manger so you don’t have to be there all time, and stop driving to the further market?. Whatever increase in costs you suffer you can make up for by raising prices more and more.Now imagine all your competitors also have wealthy benefactors picking up the check for many of their customers. You can all raise prices constantly without losing any sleep – or business.This scenario is effectively what America’s higher education financing system has turned into. There are many reasons why college tuition is rising faster than virtually anything else, from more applicants than ever to state budget cuts for public universities, but all of those factors are allowed to persist because often times the person getting the degree is not the person paying the tab – not for today anyway.http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-09/why-tuition-keeps-r..."
} |
The Law-School Scam
| {
"score": 3,
"text": "Relevant:Imagine for a moment that you are the owner of a popular restaurant located on a street with many restaurants. You do your best to provide the best experience to your customers while staying ahead of the competition by keeping your prices down. You try to avoid spending too much on labor, and do as much of the work yourself as you can, often putting in long hours. Although there is a good wholesale market nearby, you drive an extra hour to another market just to get your ingredients a little cheaper.One day a wealthy patron who is a big fan of your cooking announces a new idea. Because he wants as many people as possible to enjoy your food, he is going to pick up the tab for most of your customers. You can just go on doing what you always do, but when the check arrives for many tables, this wealthy patron will pay the tab. The next day, your waitress complains that there are too many tables and you should hire more help. What would you do?Normally, you would try to find a way to avoid hiring another person as it would eat into what little profits you make. But now you realize there is another solution. You can just raise prices. Since most of your patrons are not paying for their meals, your place will still stay popular and you won’t have to worry about losing business to your competition. So why not hire another waitress? While you are at it, why not hire a manger so you don’t have to be there all time, and stop driving to the further market?. Whatever increase in costs you suffer you can make up for by raising prices more and more.Now imagine all your competitors also have wealthy benefactors picking up the check for many of their customers. You can all raise prices constantly without losing any sleep – or business.This scenario is effectively what America’s higher education financing system has turned into. There are many reasons why college tuition is rising faster than virtually anything else, from more applicants than ever to state budget cuts for public universities, but all of those factors are allowed to persist because often times the person getting the degree is not the person paying the tab – not for today anyway.http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-09/why-tuition-keeps-r..."
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "I [semi-foolishly] graduated from law school in 2008. I was fortunate, as an employer paid for the cost of my law degree (and for my bar exam), and then laid me off in 2010 due to the economy tanking (and forgave all of my debt).Since graduating, most of my friends (including myself) have all moved to careers where the law is not the primary driver; most are saddled with a mountain of debt, make between 40 and 80K/year (most first year law grads make less than 60K in their first year).People think that lawyers are glamorous, due to the fictionalization of their career (law and order). You have attorneys who are either left or right wing whackjobs (I went to law school with a woman who was only going to law school so that she could overturn Roe v. Wade) who have no sense going into law, let alone practicing with clients.I'm much happier as a programmer/nerd. Even with being on call, I still sleep much much better at night. I'll still do legal things (contract law, estate planning, and not giving legal advice to drunk people), but, I never call myself an attorney and I rarely admit that I'm a lawyer to anyone outside of my friends and family.With that said, Law school is something that plays on the dreams of these kids. They're saddled with debt from undergrad and post-grad, thinking that they're going to be the next Erin Brokovich or Jack McCoy. My friends joke that Law School made them better drinkers, better readers, and that their 6-figure student loan debts came with a great group of friends. Sadly, that's where most kids come out of law school with these days -- a drinking problem, a mountain of debt, and nowhere to go."
} |
Dr. Eric Schmidt Resigns from Apple’s Board of Directors
| {
"score": 0,
"text": "A little OT.But I think it is really, really cool that a very technical person is acknowledged to be a capable CEO. Many companies still consider technical people incapable to be leaders (just by definition). Agree some techies may not have the desire or the social skills to lead but not all techies are like that."
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "Fake Steve Jobs must be ready to explode right around now."
} |
Dr. Eric Schmidt Resigns from Apple’s Board of Directors
| {
"score": 1,
"text": "Fake Steve Jobs must be ready to explode right around now."
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "I wonder if the GV thing was a result of internal politics with the aim being to force Schmidt to resign. I mean it seemed a bit too heavy handed even for Apple. Either way he had to go.Hopefully this will mean it's 'game on' for full competition in the mobile space."
} |
Dr. Eric Schmidt Resigns from Apple’s Board of Directors
| {
"score": 2,
"text": "I wonder if the GV thing was a result of internal politics with the aim being to force Schmidt to resign. I mean it seemed a bit too heavy handed even for Apple. Either way he had to go.Hopefully this will mean it's 'game on' for full competition in the mobile space."
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "What took them so long?"
} |
Dr. Eric Schmidt Resigns from Apple’s Board of Directors
| {
"score": 3,
"text": "What took them so long?"
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "Now tell me that this has nothing to do with the recent events (the Google Voice removal from the App Store)."
} |
What to do when your Amazon EBS fails
| {
"score": 0,
"text": "Can I ask: why do people chose to waste their very precious time writing software to deal with EBS failures (and other AWS deficiencies) instead of just not using AWS?The world is full of wonderful alternatives like SoftLayer, for example (no affiliation). We've been running a very high traffic system there with individual box uptimes of 700 days before we had to reboot them during scheduled OS upgrade/maintenance.The \"AWS scaling stories\" I hear at dev. meetups make absolutely no sense. People, AWS original sales pitch was to take care of scaling for you, not the other way around.The developers obsession with AWS amazes me. It's like paying for a BMW and being proud of carrying around a self-made toolbox in case of an engine failure in the middle of nowhere, and everyone is proud to \"know someone inside Amazon\". Since when establishing a personal relationship with a car mechanic is seen as \"cool\"? Why not just pick a quality brand?"
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "I use the iptables reject trick all the time. It's particularly useful when you have a bunch of servers in a DNS round robin. When one of them adds the reject rule, clients start failing over to the next server in the DNS round robin essentially immediately."
} |
What to do when your Amazon EBS fails
| {
"score": 1,
"text": "I use the iptables reject trick all the time. It's particularly useful when you have a bunch of servers in a DNS round robin. When one of them adds the reject rule, clients start failing over to the next server in the DNS round robin essentially immediately."
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "Maybe I'm missing something, but why not create a software RAID 1+0 array of disks (easily doable with EBS volumes and mdadm) instead of relying on a heartbeat-style solution as described in this post?"
} |
What to do when your Amazon EBS fails
| {
"score": 2,
"text": "Maybe I'm missing something, but why not create a software RAID 1+0 array of disks (easily doable with EBS volumes and mdadm) instead of relying on a heartbeat-style solution as described in this post?"
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "How about using a proven high availability solution such as Corosync/Pacemaker instead of rewriting a limited implementation from scratch? http://corosync.org/"
} |
What to do when your Amazon EBS fails
| {
"score": 3,
"text": "How about using a proven high availability solution such as Corosync/Pacemaker instead of rewriting a limited implementation from scratch? http://corosync.org/"
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "This is a total side question but I noticed this line:> The process was stuck in the kernel waiting for an IOCTL, so killing the process did nothing – even kill -9. It was going to stay that way until EBS was back to normal.I did not know that can happen! Can anyone provide a further explanation/material for why this is the case?"
} |
Nerd Merit Badges: 01 - Contribute to an Open Source Project
| {
"score": 0,
"text": "I think this is a lovely idea!Ok, bit of a tangent, but I was discussing this the other day with a friend...Sometime around the late 70's/early 80's something happened in America. People started working longer hours, watching more TV, and generally socializing less. Membership in the Elks, Scouts, Rotary Club, Shriners, Knights of Columbus, etc., etc. all declined. The statistic that I think sums it up the best is this: The average number of picnics attended by Americans has dropped 60% since 1975!What does this have to do with anything? Well, it used to be that social groups formed primarily based on proximity, and secondarily based on similar interests. What I see happening now, with social networks and such, is that being flipped on it's head a bit. Still, I think we're beginning to see an upswing in the picnic rate, as it were. (The Obama campaign was, I think, a potent indicator of this...)This is one of the reasons that I love GitHub so much. Forget the git vs. hg vs. bzr vs. etc arguments. GitHub is a coder's social network! It seems only natural that someone should start formally organizing around this idea...(also, see Zed's http://freehackersunion.org/ for more of the same idea)"
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "I'm an avid scouter (currently an assistant scoutmaster for a troop in Arizona) and I'd been trying to think of some iteration of \"Hacker scouts\" that would make sense. I think this is a great -launch the simplest thing that works and iterate- way to go about it.It would be interesting to have levels of badges so level one is getting a commit, level three might be hit X downloads or something like that.Also, I'm going to go try to propose \"Make asteroids in scratch\" as badge number two."
} |
Nerd Merit Badges: 01 - Contribute to an Open Source Project
| {
"score": 1,
"text": "I'm an avid scouter (currently an assistant scoutmaster for a troop in Arizona) and I'd been trying to think of some iteration of \"Hacker scouts\" that would make sense. I think this is a great -launch the simplest thing that works and iterate- way to go about it.It would be interesting to have levels of badges so level one is getting a commit, level three might be hit X downloads or something like that.Also, I'm going to go try to propose \"Make asteroids in scratch\" as badge number two."
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "I realize this may come across as an advertisement, but I'm not affiliated with them. I just thought it was a clever idea."
} |
Nerd Merit Badges: 01 - Contribute to an Open Source Project
| {
"score": 2,
"text": "I realize this may come across as an advertisement, but I'm not affiliated with them. I just thought it was a clever idea."
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "You've overlooked an important detail: how will I manage to look nerdy while wearing a sash?"
} |
Nerd Merit Badges: 01 - Contribute to an Open Source Project
| {
"score": 3,
"text": "You've overlooked an important detail: how will I manage to look nerdy while wearing a sash?"
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "There should be a vendor / company neutral symbol."
} |
Developers: We are no longer Apple’s target market
| {
"score": 0,
"text": "Some interesting stats in the article:iOS = 75% of company revenueMac OS = 14% of company revenueUnlike the early days of Apple when the company embraced and found refuge in the hacker mentality, Apple has emerged as a consumer company thanks to the wide reach and accessibility of its iOS products.The thesis is that Mac OS and being hacker friendly are becoming increasingly less relevant to Apple, and consumers are now the focus. That's broadly true, however as a long-time user I'd say the focus on consumers (not developers/hackers) has been there since at least the late 90s, and possibly the 80s (with a gap in the middle where they floundered).Re Mac OS, I fully expect them to migrate desktops to iOS completely at some point and just have a few interface tweaks for the mouse/window paradigm. The move of AppleTV to iOS foreshadows this, and the numbers above make it almost inevitable, given the cost of maintaining two ecosystems, and the fact they now have an operations guy in charge. It'll be interesting to see just how far they take developer restrictions and sandboxing on the desktop, and whether that affects their market share at all. I suspect as they are a consumer company that it won't matter to them if they lose the hackers/developers to some extent, and they will continue to attract enough developers to survive at least in the short term, while pulling them ever closer into the Apple orbit. There is a great and growing tension there though between the interests of developers (who ideally would like a cross platform solution and the flexibility to use any tools) and Apple (who want lock-in to their ecosystem).The broader problem of developing for an ecosystem like this is that it is in the control of one vendor, and you must play by their rules - the Amazon, Google, Microsoft and even Twitter platforms come with similar problems - either you adopt their chosen technology this year, and accept the restrictions they wish to impose, or you're suddenly frozen out and may fail as a result. It's a lesson for anyone building a business on someone else's ecosystem - it's hard to avoid, but does come with dangers.I'll be interested to see if the open web has a second renaissance as people recognise the deep difficulties of controlled ecosystems - its one great advantage is that it sidesteps the question of control by one platform owner, which sets it apart from all the binary or closed web platforms currently being touted as the future."
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "If his site was still up, I would read it and then write the comment. But instead, I will make some sweeping assumptions about what it says based on the title.We were never their target market. It is a happy accident that what works for their consumers can also work great for developers. There were always pain points adopting the Mac as your development platform. For example, when it first came out, the JVM available for it was woefully old and out of date. Generally you had to wait 6 months to a year to get the last GA version. Now that the latest is built nightly by Oracle, this is a huge improvement. On Mountain Lion, almost every command line utility (that isn't GPL v3) has been updated like git, ruby, svn, python, etc. At the end of the day, this developer loves that it is still a unix command line with a pretty face. More than I can say for any version of Windows or Linux."
} |
Developers: We are no longer Apple’s target market
| {
"score": 1,
"text": "If his site was still up, I would read it and then write the comment. But instead, I will make some sweeping assumptions about what it says based on the title.We were never their target market. It is a happy accident that what works for their consumers can also work great for developers. There were always pain points adopting the Mac as your development platform. For example, when it first came out, the JVM available for it was woefully old and out of date. Generally you had to wait 6 months to a year to get the last GA version. Now that the latest is built nightly by Oracle, this is a huge improvement. On Mountain Lion, almost every command line utility (that isn't GPL v3) has been updated like git, ruby, svn, python, etc. At the end of the day, this developer loves that it is still a unix command line with a pretty face. More than I can say for any version of Windows or Linux."
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "It's not just developers. It's PRO users of any kind. Graphic designers and video professionals haven't been catered to as well. Heck, we're still waiting for a new Mac workhorse that's not an iMac or laptop. Video editors have been duped by the new iOS like Final Cut Pro that was not backwards compatible."
} |
Developers: We are no longer Apple’s target market
| {
"score": 2,
"text": "It's not just developers. It's PRO users of any kind. Graphic designers and video professionals haven't been catered to as well. Heck, we're still waiting for a new Mac workhorse that's not an iMac or laptop. Video editors have been duped by the new iOS like Final Cut Pro that was not backwards compatible."
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "> We are no longer Apple’s target marketAnd even that would be ok; the problem is when developers are actively despised by Apple, or treated like digital peons.But since I'm stuck with Android leaking file descriptors right now, even the peon option seems attractive..."
} |
Developers: We are no longer Apple’s target market
| {
"score": 3,
"text": "> We are no longer Apple’s target marketAnd even that would be ok; the problem is when developers are actively despised by Apple, or treated like digital peons.But since I'm stuck with Android leaking file descriptors right now, even the peon option seems attractive..."
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "Developers are a relatively small percentage, and in some ways not an overly profitable one as whilst we want the best we're also prone to pushing machines as hard as possible, as long as possible.I've been developing on OS X for something like 8 years now, ranging from C++ dev work up to RoR and some other bits. I've never had any real issues with it as a development platform, never felt like the OS was getting in my way or anything similar. I also heavily use Linux in my day-to-day and that's definitely more developer focussed but it can also be way less productive at times. ML is a solid consumer focussed OS but it's still a very nice development platform as well, but thats my opinion."
} |
In 1897, a Bicycle Superhighway Was the Future of California Transit
| {
"score": 0,
"text": "True story: I moved from southern California to Holland in no small part because of how amenable the country is to cycling.People like to think that cycling is popular here naturally because the country is flat and densely populated. However, it's easy to forget that during the postwar boom years, a major shift toward cars happened and it took a concerted effort of willful resistance and politically non-expedient measures to bring back the bike paths (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj7o). Clearly, 1897 was not the last chance the Dutch had to fix their transit system, and with the groundwork they've laid over the years, it now costs only €30 per person in funding annually! (http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2010/05/487-million-eur...)Yet I see very little chance of this happening in California, not because cyclists lack a voice, but because we need to create more disincentives to driving. This obviously is a political no-go considering that motorists are by far the majority demographic. It's saddening, though, that there is so much willful ignorance (or apathy) with regard to how we've externalized the true cost of driving, whether it's in the form of:- damage to the environment- subsidy to cheap gas prices by the DoD budget (and body count) for controlling the world's oil flow- casualties from motor vehicle accidents- health problems resulting from sedentary lifestyles- zoning rules that require abundant free parking to be available in communities.We'd probably have to see gas hit $10/gallon and parking lots charge $50/day before Americans start to reconsider. (These prices are actually quite typical in European cities.)Oddly enough, I think it's good that the Great Recession has caused a lot of Americans to reconsider their car expenses and choose to scale back their lifestyles in ways that are more healthy, safe, and environmentally friendly. I hope this trend (not the recession, of course) continues and if America can set an example of moving away from a car culture, it will do far more good around the world to discourage the growing middle class in China, India, and other developing countries from adopting the same wasteful practices.In the meantime, though, I'll piggyback on the 40-year head start on bicycle infrastructure in the Netherlands. If I sound bitter, it's my sore legs from yesterday's 70km ride talking ;)"
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "Copenhagen has had bicycle highways for a while now.http://www.copenhagenize.com/2012/04/launching-copenhagens-b...The elevated highway that mjn mentioned is only a few hundred metres long while the new highways have 300Km planned."
} |
In 1897, a Bicycle Superhighway Was the Future of California Transit
| {
"score": 1,
"text": "Copenhagen has had bicycle highways for a while now.http://www.copenhagenize.com/2012/04/launching-copenhagens-b...The elevated highway that mjn mentioned is only a few hundred metres long while the new highways have 300Km planned."
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "I think this is still an excellent idea for a lot of areas, especially Los Angeles where the traffic is horrendous all the time. It wouldn't take much to build this alongside major freeways so that you won't have to claim eminent domain and go through private properties. This would take up a max of an extra 10-15 feet on the side of freeways. Now, in LA a lot of freeways are built out so much that there's not even 10-15 ft without hitting a building or house, but there are a lot of areas this could work. Sometimes it takes 3 hours to go 10 miles in LA during rush hour, and this could make everything better."
} |
In 1897, a Bicycle Superhighway Was the Future of California Transit
| {
"score": 2,
"text": "I think this is still an excellent idea for a lot of areas, especially Los Angeles where the traffic is horrendous all the time. It wouldn't take much to build this alongside major freeways so that you won't have to claim eminent domain and go through private properties. This would take up a max of an extra 10-15 feet on the side of freeways. Now, in LA a lot of freeways are built out so much that there's not even 10-15 ft without hitting a building or house, but there are a lot of areas this could work. Sometimes it takes 3 hours to go 10 miles in LA during rush hour, and this could make everything better."
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "On a much smaller scale, Copenhagen is reviving the idea of a grade-separated bike \"highway\" in at least one place. A major bicycle commuting route currently goes through a complex congested area (with a bunch of 90-degree turns, pedestrian cross traffic, canals, and even a staircase at one point), but will from next year bypass it on a 1/4-km overpass: http://politiken.dk/ibyen/nyheder/gadeplan/ECE1594066/koeben...In the rest of the city the goal is to string together something more like arterial bicycle roads, though, rather than fully grade-separated highways."
} |
In 1897, a Bicycle Superhighway Was the Future of California Transit
| {
"score": 3,
"text": "On a much smaller scale, Copenhagen is reviving the idea of a grade-separated bike \"highway\" in at least one place. A major bicycle commuting route currently goes through a complex congested area (with a bunch of 90-degree turns, pedestrian cross traffic, canals, and even a staircase at one point), but will from next year bypass it on a 1/4-km overpass: http://politiken.dk/ibyen/nyheder/gadeplan/ECE1594066/koeben...In the rest of the city the goal is to string together something more like arterial bicycle roads, though, rather than fully grade-separated highways."
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "Yes, so in 1897 we missed an opportunity. Have we completely missed the boat to bring bicycling back as a mainstream form of local travel, like they do is so many European cities? Maybe the biggest challenge is: people need to stop thinking about cycling only as exercise."
} |
Ask HN: Do you read Medium.com
I am attracted to the visual nature of the site and the ease at posting content -- which I do often for Aha.io But the reality is that posts that drive 15K views elsewhere drive 50 there. Do you read Medium.com? If not, why? | {
"score": 0,
"text": "If a link leads to Medium, I tend to avoid the article. Just like Buzzfeed, Upworthy, Forbes, etc."
} | {
"score": 1,
"text": "Every time I see a medium url on HN I shudder and skip past content that just feels manufactured and forced on us."
} |
Ask HN: Do you read Medium.com
I am attracted to the visual nature of the site and the ease at posting content -- which I do often for Aha.io But the reality is that posts that drive 15K views elsewhere drive 50 there. Do you read Medium.com? If not, why? | {
"score": 1,
"text": "Every time I see a medium url on HN I shudder and skip past content that just feels manufactured and forced on us."
} | {
"score": 2,
"text": "Almost daily. It's like shopping at Marshall's (might just be an East Coast store) - there are some really killer finds amongst the muck, you just need to be aware enough to recognize them. (Particularly since it opened to everyone recently.)"
} |
Ask HN: Do you read Medium.com
I am attracted to the visual nature of the site and the ease at posting content -- which I do often for Aha.io But the reality is that posts that drive 15K views elsewhere drive 50 there. Do you read Medium.com? If not, why? | {
"score": 2,
"text": "Almost daily. It's like shopping at Marshall's (might just be an East Coast store) - there are some really killer finds amongst the muck, you just need to be aware enough to recognize them. (Particularly since it opened to everyone recently.)"
} | {
"score": 3,
"text": "If a link points to medium.com (such as from HN or twitter or somewhere else) and I intend to read the article, yes, I read it. But I don't goto medium to browse news."
} |
Ask HN: Do you read Medium.com
I am attracted to the visual nature of the site and the ease at posting content -- which I do often for Aha.io But the reality is that posts that drive 15K views elsewhere drive 50 there. Do you read Medium.com? If not, why? | {
"score": 3,
"text": "If a link points to medium.com (such as from HN or twitter or somewhere else) and I intend to read the article, yes, I read it. But I don't goto medium to browse news."
} | {
"score": 4,
"text": "No. It seems they allow anyone to write on medium and most of the authors seem to be pretty bad at providing quality content."
} |