instruction stringlengths 4 105 | output stringlengths 8 56.7k |
|---|---|
PhD, Startup, or Career? | Mystalic: I jumped into a startup at the end of my college career, but didn't have the burn capital to do it boostrapping. You may be better off acccumulating a bit of capital before throwing yourself into the start-up (the most rewarding, for most of us).Remember, you can always change your mind and any software company you join does NOT have to be a career - you can quit and start your own start-up at any time if you have the courage. |
What's a Good Professional Font You Use? | ks: I would use Helvetica Neue but I am not sure whether this font is available on Windows. |
c++ or iPhone? | Morieris: What languages do you currently know? |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | jcl: I'm a little surprised "21" wasn't mentioned yet. The movie, like the book "Bringing Down the House", is a fictionalized account of a true story about how the MIT blackjack club took Vegas casinos for many thousands of dollars. |
Review my project, Factolex - the fact lexicon | jgilliam: one simple idea: put a big number in the header or on the homepage with how many terms you have. |
What's a Good Professional Font You Use? | jseeba: I found this to be a good guide to the design of a resume:http://www.lifeclever.com/give-your-resume-a-face-lift/It discusses fonts, layout with a good eye for design. |
PhD, Startup, or Career? | iuguy: Go to the big vendor, try it out there. In the meantime learn how to launch, promote, grow a solution with a safety net. You'll have other ideas. When you do you'll be able to do them on their own and use all the advantages of what you've learned to push it through. |
c++ or iPhone? | yan: How are you planning on tackling each task? Do you have a project in mind that you will create using either c++ or objc/cocoa touch?Plus, does it have to be "either/or"? Spend a few days learning one, spend a few days learning the other. You should have gotten to some non-trivial level with each one and more of a taste for what you actually want to do. |
PhD, Startup, or Career? | huhtenberg: As others said - don't do PhD right away. Take a break from the school and have a closer look at other options first.For one you may discover that you can do cooler stuff in less time and to more satisfaction. For two you may notice that not all PhDs are created equal.I had a choice of doing PhD when I was graduating (that was in Eastern Europe and it required getting an approval, a recommendation and god knows what else, so it was more of a privilege than an opportunity) and decided not to. Now, looking back, I'm pretty sure the stuff I worked on in a past 10 years would easily get me a PhD or two. It also earned me enough money so I can actually go back to school and do that PhD ... only if I wanted to :) |
PhD, Startup, or Career? | gcheong: 1. Start-up2. PhD3. Corporate jobOrder is from "earlier the better" to "later is better" order.I would also suggest you read this: http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Choices-Practical-Making-Decisio... |
PhD, Startup, or Career? | webwright: Do you have a sense of which one you'd regret punting MOST? I can't imagine not getting a PhD gnawing at you for the rest of your life unless you love deep academia.I can't imagine regretting punting a job offer from BigCo, but people are different.The startup idea sounds cool, but making a better (or at least decent) mousetrap is really just an entry fee for attacking the sales/distribution problems associated with enterprise software. Hopefully you or your partner are good at sales and eager to do it.I think most people are likelier to regret punting on a risky choice than the safe choice. |
Getting Started on MSFT Web Stack vs Other Frameworks/Platforms | mattchew: My ASP.NET is a little rusty, but I did a fair bit upon a time. Bottom line, if you drink the Kool-Aid and do it their way, it's not so bad. If you try to translate some other web stack concepts into ASP.NET, you're going to be very frustrated.Specific things to understand:Page cycle. Critical.
ASP.NET events.
Viewstate (nice if you don't lean too hard on it)
App_Code/App_Data directories.
Master pages (heh)Also MS has some funky way of handling javascript that is non-standard. You add a javascript handler in Page_Load or something like that. I wasn't doing JS back then so can't tell you more. If use a lot of JS you'll want to understand how the IDs for ASP.NET controls are generated.I tried to use a UserControl in a project and wasn't satisfied, couldn't get the different pieces to see each other and talk to each other correctly. Try before you fly.I'd recommend finding a source of examples and starting there.(P.S. If anyone else is curious like me about why someone would want to move from RoR & Django to ASP.NET, read the first post on n00bnotes, it's explained there.) |
PhD, Startup, or Career? | mmc: Some good points - I agree with hs saying 'do the scariest thing'. While you're young. I think this means either the startup or the PhD. But you sound more interested in the startup - you didn't even mention your intended research area!A PhD is lots of really hard and thankless work, and if you're not really excited about it at the beginning, you won't finish, and that's the worst thing you can do.So - unless you're hiding your passion for research in your post, I recommend the startup.I'm sure you know about them, but just in case: the AML field as represented in the Wikipedia article (and the sales report PDF it linked to) missed one company I know of who's been doing AML services 'since 1993', called Logica: http://www.logica.com/risk+and+compliance/350234053 |
What's a Good Professional Font You Use? | iuguy: Use a serif font for headings and a sans font for text. For code blocks or anything requiring monospace be sure it clearly defines characters (like profont) such as 0.You can go all Sans-Serif or all Serif but it won't be the same as combining the two. Going Sans-Serif for headlines and Serif for text kind of works but you have a narrower range of choices.We use a Serif font for headlines and a Sans-Serif for body text, freeing us up to use the Sans-Serif font exclusively in certain situations for headlines where needed, and the Serif font for bolder statements. |
PhD, Startup, or Career? | brentr: If I had a cofounder with an interest in finance, I would choose the startup path. |
How does HN rank the comments section? | jwilliams: Code is available here:
http://arclanguage.org/install |
PhD, Startup, or Career? | vidioradeo: Considering you have a masters or at least an undergrad, you could probably ride the recession out inside a classroom.A startup seems like a relatively quick return but its a gamble.As for a career, both other options constitute as elements of one. If you mean striving to have some polished, dignified social timeline in your field, I say screw it, live for now. |
PhD, Startup, or Career? | alain94040: Congratulations on lining up all the top options. This may as well be a rethorical question since it covers all the possibilities!Normally, based on my background I'd recommend the startup as #1, the job at Microsoft as #2 and the Ph.D last.But I must say I'm not crazy about the startup you describe. Would I really advise you to join a startup I don't believe in?Failure is a great learning experience. Looking for paying customers is a lesson that neither Microsoft nor a Ph.D will ever teach you. But isn't it a little bit early? My preference is to become an expert first and then start something. You must do your own soul searching. Are you satisfied that you are "great enough" in your field yet?For some, it takes a few years of a regular day job. For others, they are great by the time they get their bachelor degree. |
c++ or iPhone? | joubert: C++ programming is like a monkey fucking a ball. You would probably want to stab your eyes out.C / Objective-C will probably provide you with more joy and opportunity to work on the iPhone.I suspect other mobile platforms either use C or Java for programming apps (as opposed to C++), but I might be wrong. |
Getting Started on MSFT Web Stack vs Other Frameworks/Platforms | johns: I've been using .NET full-time for 3.5 years. There are two types of .NET developers. The first group uses the * View controls, uses the designer, does everything (or most things) declaratively and generally conforms to the Microsoft way. Then there's another group of developers that care about design patterns, maintainability, testability, and everything else that goes along with being a good programmer, not just a good employee. I started out in the first group and now I'm in the second. It's a totally different world.Microsoft has made a lot of effort lately to improve their appeal to hackers. They have free (Express) editions of their tools. IIS is still free. If you want the full-blown tools, they're available for very cheap (BizSpark) for startups. They're releasing more and more source code everyday (you can step through the .NET Framework core while debugging in VS2008) and CodePlex is helping bulk up the available OSS libraries for .NET. It's very rare when I need a library and there isn't an open source one or its included in the framework.ASP.NET MVC is an excellent framework and eliminates most of the problems Webforms has. Webforms has its place in corps for the first type of developer I listed above, but MVC is made for the second. I wouldn't spend anytime with Webforms if I were just starting out. Save yourself the headaches.I think the quality of C# 3.0 has been covered enough. If you like dynamic languages, IronPython and IronRuby rely on the Dynamic Language Runtime which will be included in .NET 4. C# is getting support for interopping with dynamic languages. F# is purely functional and will be a first-class language with tool support coming up in VS2010. |
Getting Started on MSFT Web Stack vs Other Frameworks/Platforms | johns: You should have probably disclosed up front that you work for Microsoft. As much as I like .NET, I like full disclosure more. |
c++ or iPhone? | alain94040: If you learn iPhone programming, you'll learn essentially the equivalent of C++ in the process, so you win on both sides.If you just try to learn C++ with no clear purpose, I'm not so sure your learning will stick.So go with the iPhone, you'll enjoy it more and you'll learn just as much. |
PhD, Startup, or Career? | jonursenbach: Life is all about taking chances. Do what you think is best to further your career. |
How does HN rank the comments section? | spoiledtechie: Found it in the news.arc page. About 1/4 the way down. Do a search for ranking. |
PhD, Startup, or Career? | RK: How about work for a year, save as much money as possible while working on your idea. Then quit to start your startup. If that tanks, go for the PhD. |
c++ or iPhone? | Allocator2008: I'd have to recommend c++. I own an iPhone myself, so they are definitely fun, but c++ is more ubiquitous. Personally I know C far better than c++ (which is a superset of C). The main difference is c++ has classes and more "object oriented" concepts. For the long-haul c++ I think will have more staying power than the iPhone - who knows, maybe the iPhone will be not as popular in a few years, but c++ will still be here. |
PhD, Startup, or Career? | bluelu: My former employer also had an AML solution. You entered the name of the person as starting point, and the solution tried to fetch all related persons from the web by analyzing the name where the person was matched. These names were then associated with different keywords to create a ranking for each person and for the original person itself.One problem will be getting the contacts. Also different banks have different systems. Maybe you can work something out with avaloq (their system is used more and more in different banks). Banks will never transmit data outside of their servers, and even people working there will not access any web service at all, if their computers are connected to customer data.
So you have to sell the hardware as well. I think the biggest problem will be to integrate into the existing system. |
c++ or iPhone? | siong1987: I have been working on iPhone development for the past few weeks. The entry level to learn obj C is actually quite high because I really cannot find any book that helps me to learn obj C. Most of the books that I stumbled upon require me to learn some sort of C or C++ before learning obj C.After I finished the iPhone project, I am learning C++ now because I believe that it will definitely helps to understand more about obj C.P/S: I used Beginning Iphone Development, Cocoa Programming For Mac OSX, and the Apple Iphone documentations to learn obj C. |
How does HN rank the comments section? | pg: it's (* (/ (- (realscore s) 1)
(expt (/ (+ (item-age s) timebase*) 60) gravity*))
where (= gravity* 1.5 timebase* 120)
and item-age returns age in minutes |
What's a Good Professional Font You Use? | mattdennewitz: The Serif, Avenir, Black Slabbath |
PhD, Startup, or Career? | zackola: PhD or Startup |
PhD, Startup, or Career? | TweedHeads: Go for a PhD, the older you get the harder it is to pick up the books again. You know, family, kids, and once you taste money you will want more and more, spending less time in other activities.If you don't do it now, you will never do it. |
PhD, Startup, or Career? | kin: You should ask yourself what you are really passionate about. I'm currently going through similar options and here's what I have to say.If you can do PhD later, then do it later. If it's an opportunity that you must act upon immediately, then do so. You'll double-triple your salary when you re-enter the corporate job market. However, keep in mind the being a graduate student is being an adult with no money. You'll have to tough it out for a few years.The same situation lies with your start-up. You've already let out your idea, therefore you must invest a large amount of time and effort (money) to release before any competition gets there first. At that point, what are the odds of your success?To be really cautious, I would personally go with the PhD and tough it out. If you're confident enough in your talent, you can develop for your start-up on the side. If, for some reason you fail at either or both, when you re-enter the job market, you'll still be worth gold. |
Is Content Management a solved problem? | arc: I'll consider CMS solved when end users can create most any basic site -- to the pixel, with absolutely no XHTML or CSS written by hand coupled with a robust management and analytics framework. It's a ridiculously difficult problem to both create a system that is developer AND end user friendly that satisfies this requirement.I think it's through the development of some new UI paradigms that this sort of problem will eventually feel more "solved". That said -- have you guys looked at Squarespace - http://www.squarespace.com/ (Disclaimer: My company.)? We have a pretty unique take on the problem -- with separate editing modes (content, structure) + an expansive module base + an excellent visual CSS designer + an extremely robust hosting core (think: S3 for pages). 5 years in business.Definitely don't feel we've completely solved it, as evidenced by our system constant upgrades, but it's a great shot. If anyone on this thread is interested some facet the CMS problem, feel free to add a question. |
What's a fair policy for employee-generated IP? | jwilliams: In the past I've requested explicit opt-in and out.Usually there is a blanket IP clause, but if I say "I'm going to work on ABC in my spare time" - and we all agree this isn't core the business - then it's added as a schedule exclusion.You need to be specific, but it works just fine if all the parties are operating in good faith (which you'd hope with a good employee relationship). |
PhD, Startup, or Career? | abl: This question reminds me of Howard Rourke's (Fountainhead)advice to Peter Keating when Peter is presented with a similar choice after graduating from Stanton. Rourke ranks them as 1.startup 2.corp 3.continued study |
Considering an affiliate program. How to decide/implement? | il: Read wickedfire.com. You'll learn everything you need from the advertiser perspective and the affiliate perspective. |
What's a fair policy for employee-generated IP? | sunir: California law has a pretty good balance. If it's related to the job, it's the company's. If you use the company's resources (hardware, software, customer list, employees, ideas) it's the company's. Otherwise, if it is on your own time, with your own resources, and unrelated to your job, then it's yours. |
What are some (good) hacker movies? | z3r0p4r4d0x: Zack and Miri make a pornoSeriously, they're broke, they bootstrap and they make the porn, and it's really entertaining. |
hn for biz students? | sil3ntmac: Is HN open source? I never thought about that... |
What's a fair policy for employee-generated IP? | newy: "(and doesn't complete freak out investors [and their lawyers doing due diligence])" is the key here.I totally get where you're coming from in trying to be reasonable with your new hires. Unfortunately, everything-you-do-belongs-to-us is pretty much the standard for IP ownership in employment contracts. Whether you enforce it is a different matter, and this is where your "goodwill" towards your employees will come into play.jwilliams is correct though, if a guy comes to you with a specific project that he's working on, perhaps you can have a specific carveout -- but even that's a little awkward (may be hard to define the scope of that side project).At the end of the day, as a company you'll want to be making the call of whether IP created by an employee should be considered company property, and not the other way around. So it might be wise to be a little selfish up front and have a blanket clause.Just my two cents. |
What's a fair policy for employee-generated IP? | whichdokta: What is a fair price for permanently giving up a piece of the only brain you're ever going to have in your career in exchange for a job from which you can be laid off at a moment's notice without, it must be noted, getting back that piece of your brain you had to sign away?If I were (which I am not) gullible enough to buy into the kind of rules that applies the same logic to ideas as fixed property [1] I would certainly start the conversation by asking what kind of rental you think you can afford![1] ...and then everyone acts surprised when both the market for ideas and fixed property suffers! |
Does anyone here use software RAID on Linux? | RobGR: The most reliable general solution on linux is 3Ware RAID cards, but linux software RAID generally works, as other posters have noted.If you are having persistent problems, you should search carefully for a flaky hardware cause. Are the drives in an external sata enclosure that might have a barrel-type power connector that is sometimes jiggled ? Are all the problems always on the same motherboard -- perhaps it has a bad IDE controller ? Are the drives overheating ?If your drives support it, try to use the smartmon tools to see if one or both is having errors. Also, consider writing a script to dump and archive the output of smartctl -a . Next time you have an issue, look at those outputs over time, and in addition to the badblocks and so on, look at the recorded number of times the disk has been powered up, and see if this is consistent with the number of times the computer has been rebooted.I have done a lot of RAID stuff, and currently I am moving away from it and making servers that have just one disk in them. The reason is, is that I have decided that the best way to acheive reliability is to have two copies of any important computer. RAID sometimes seems to introduce more problems that it solves, and switching to a second machine that is maintained by rsync is quick and always works. |
Best Book for learning SQL? | kqr2: I actually recommend playing with sqlite. It's fast and easy to setup. You can work with it via command line or use a web browser plugin.I can also recommend Mike Owens' book Definitive Guide to SQLitehttp://www.amazon.com/Definitive-Guide-SQLite-Mike-Owens/dp/... |
Best Book for learning SQL? | morbidkk: if you are completely new to this then Head First Sql would be good start |
c++ or iPhone? | hboon: Why are the only choices C++ and iPhone?You mean Objective C on the iPhone, since you can do C++ on the iPhone too.Almost definitely Objective C + iPhone if these are the only choices you have. It's helpful to switch programming environments once in a while to gain a new perspective.What work do you do which makes C++ in high demand? Also, C++ isn't the language that separates men from boys. |
Best Book for learning SQL? | NonEUCitizen: online: http://philip.greenspun.com/sql/ |
PhD, Startup, or Career? | randomtask: Can you defer the Phd? If so then you can choose to give the startup a go for a while and see how that works out without closing the door on the Phd. Personally I wouldn't give preference to the industry jobs unless they're really very good. |
PhD, Startup, or Career? | sweis: I think you can build a broader network of colleagues and will be exposed to a wider range of ideas while pursing a PhD.That being said, a PhD is a long haul and a lot of work. The good news is that you can always leave after getting a masters. |
Best Book for learning SQL? | wigglywonk: Skip the book. Find, read, and 'do' a few online tutorials, and you'll know over 90% of what you need to get going. Pick one specific to your engine of choice (MySQL in this case, it seems) and just go with it. |
PhD, Startup, or Career? | seshagiric: You can narrow down the choices to two:1. Take the startup job. In the worst case it will fail. If so you would have gained so much valuable experience in programming + project management + finance + HR. With that experience you will easily get a Senior level job in any company. And that is the worst case. If it succeeds the returns will simply be atleast 10 times more than that of a career life.2. Given the market situation do your PHD, perhaps working on algorithms for detect money launder. The idea is by the time you complete your PHD (3 yrs?) the markets would have turned around surely.And if the PHD is not in one of the top 10 universities, ditch the idea and go for the startup. |
Is there room for another photo sharing service? | pclark: A lot of users want to share their photos and are blissfully unaware of FaceBook/Flickr.You said it yourself:>But there are always people who are looking for a better solution.Don't dive straight in, work out what users want that flickr/etc doesn't offer - and do that. |
Best Book for learning SQL? | compay: Joe Celko's "SQL For Smarties" and "SQL Puzzles and Answers" are classics in the field. They're still very relevant despite being 10+ years old, since SQL hasn't changed anywhere near as much as, say, Java in that time.http://www.celko.com/books.htm |
Is there room for another photo sharing service? | axod: Seems like niche specific sites like twitpic.com can do pretty well... |
Is there room for another photo sharing service? | nader: It would have to stand out clearly as there is so much competition from big and small players out there. |
Is there room for another photo sharing service? | tdavis: Sam seems to think so and apparently YC agreed with him (well, maybe): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=453303 |
Is there room for another photo sharing service? | andhapp: There is always room for better solutions. Think about Google...there were other search engines around when Google was launched but where are they now. If you can deliver a better solution always go for it. |
Is there room for another photo sharing service? | eterno: I think photo-sharing services need to verticalize and create niches.I see a clear case for a photo-sharing service specifically designed to host high-resolution images (big size) images which are rapidly becoming the norm with higher resolution cameras rolling out.What would it take:1. Uploading will take more time. Should happen in the background.
2. Browsing can be made better - by showing reduced resolutions on the fly - zooming out on parts etc. |
Is there room for another photo sharing service? | theklub: Yeah, it's tough when facebook is becoming the default for everyone uploading their pictures. If facebook expands that aspect of their business it might hard between them and flickr already being huge. |
Is there room for another photo sharing service? | vaksel: of course there is. even the biggest photo sharing sites like Flickr have less than 1% of market share of internet users, plenty of space to go in.Also you have to remember that its a standalone service, so users will get value from day 1. So just throw up a good looking user interface and first time users will sign up to try it out |
How Trustworthy is Google PageRank? | pierrefar: There are two PR calculations: the internal one and the publicly visible one you see on the toolbar.Google uses the internal PR value as one factor (out of reportedly hundreds) in determining the rank of a page in the search results.The publicly visible one is, for all intents and purposes, an entertainment channel like, for example, Comedy Central. It is never an accurate reflection of the current PR value Google uses internally.So what to do? Use the Webmaster Tools and authenticate your site. The Webmaster Tools give you a ton of data about how Google sees your site which is a lot more valuable from a little green progress bar. |
Is there room for another photo sharing service? | Maro: There are probably a lot more of these sites out there than the "big ones". I estimate in the tens, but possible 100+. I'd spend a few days enumerating and categorizing the competition in terms of approach taken, features, etc. learning what their Google footprint is, whether they're mentioned in blogs, what Alexa says about them, etc. This would give you a better picture about what your chances of success are. Without actually doing this research, I'd say it's a crowded segment, so your chances of succeeding are probably relatively low. I'd wait for a better idea / differentiator.Good luck! |
Best Book for learning SQL? | gtani: fromthat other sitehttp://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7n9q8/ask_progg... |
Best Book for learning SQL? | silentbicycle: It isn't specific to MySQL, but an excellent book for understanding relational databases is _An Introduction to Database Systems_ by C. J. Date. Reading that (even just the first several chapters, and then others as needed) will help you understand the mindset behind both SQL and relational databases in general. While I had figured out the basics of SQL on my own, I found that getting the big relational ideas made it much clearer why some schema designs are better, the intent behind some aspects of SQL that seemed strange, etc.It has a new edition published every couple years (it's a textbook), so you can usually get the previous edition for quite cheap.Also, note that a lot of the books on SQL deal specifically with MySQL, SQL server, etc., and don't always make it clear which aspects are the implementation vs. which are standard SQL. (I was learning with SQLite and Postgresql, so I probably got bit by this more than you will.) |
How Trustworthy is Google PageRank? | profgubler: Forget about your page rank. It won't get you anywhere. It helps you know where you are at, but what matters most is search traffic. You want to make sure that continues to climb. A high PR helps, but focusing on it won't help. Focus on building links with good anchor text, that match the keywords you are focusing on.And if you do have a an actual PR 7 in Google that is great. It means you have a lot of link authority. Use it by targeting certain key pages on your site for the keywords that will drive traffic. |
Is there room for another photo sharing service? | catone: My buddy Allen Stern (of CenterNetworks) said something recently in a podcast that I liked and is relevant here. Paraphrasing, he said something like, "In New York City there are a thousand pizza places and new ones opening up all the time. Many of them are successful and some of the new ones will be, too."Or, in other words, there is always room for new startups that do the same thing. Just do it better or differently -- have better crust, better toppings, faster delivery, free breadsticks, etc.As you said, "there are always people who are looking for a better solution." You just need to make it. |
Is there room for another photo sharing service? | matthias: flickr etc = images + community... so go create images + technology.that photo stuff we hear about from time to time, like face recognition or stitching together photos or turning them into videos or building 3d models of landmarks from tons of user photos... are any of those on photo sharing site yet? |
How Trustworthy is Google PageRank? | puzzle-out: If any of your team went to university in the uk, get the company featured on their news page - they all want to push their enterprise credentials - with a link, thats a free way of getting good google juice. |
Is there room for another photo sharing service? | sstrudeau: What I'd like (and what I'd build if I had more spare time & mental capacity) is a photo-hosting service driven by a Flickr-like API, but designed to be an intelligent "asset store" for photos so large sites or communities can use this service as their photo storage & hosting back-end. The service itself wouldn't need much of a UI and users of sites/systems that depend on the service wouldn't necessarily know their photos are there.I imagine this working something like S3 except that it knows about images, so it can process/resize them (and provide APIs to control such things) and also include a bundled CDN service (CloudFront). The pieces are all there but an API that made it really easy to put images in, process them and get them out again would save a lot of time.(I manage a high traffic blog network and am spec'ing out some image-heavy niche web apps/sites. I'm eventually going to have to build something like this for internal use -- wish I could just buy in now). |
Is there room for another photo sharing service? | dpapathanasiou: It seems hard to believe now, but when Google started, some people wondered "why another search engine?", since Yaho and Altavista had that market "locked up".So yes, there is room for another photo sharing service. |
Does karma affect what you write? | pclark: 25 you can downvote200 you can post polls250 you can change colour of top bar |
Does karma affect what you write? | tokenadult: I don't mind checking karma results of my individual postings to see which ones fit best into the site culture.I've been considering karma systems, and I guess I think a two-dimensional system might be a useful improvement. One dimension would be1) agree or disagree (factually) with this post,with no impact on the user's cumulative score but display by each postand the other would be2) this post is a significant contribution to the community or not,with the same cumulative scoring by user that now occurs on HN.Sometimes people want to register disagreement with posts that are good posts for getting other people to think and bringing new ideas into the discussion. |
Is there room for another photo sharing service? | greyman: Yes, there is a room. For example, I myself still didn't found an "ultimate" sharing site for myself. I use Google picasaweb, because I like the integration with the Picasa client, but I miss the social features. I can have those on flickr, but on the other site, the free option in flickr is rather limited and there is not a seamless integration with a good client. |
Does karma affect what you write? | jncraton: I rarely think about karma before posting, but I used to think about it a lot more. It was never about following the HN group think, though. There is some of that here, but it really isn't comparatively that bad. In general, it just makes me think twice before posting a comment that isn't well thought out, adds nothing to the discussion, or is actually outside of my knowledge. It also encourages people to simply post more respectfully.As I said though, it doesn't really matter much to me anymore. |
Is there room for another photo sharing service? | buro9: I'd like a service that in one way made photos second class entities, and in another way treated them as the be all and end all.I want the hires, the digital negative, to be able to pair a digital negative and a jpg... so that's the first class stuff.But I want the current attributes of a photo on Flickr to be first class... time and place matter. In fact, a photo is an attribute of a moment in time. And so it should figure out when multiple people upload based on a shared event that the uploads are happening at the same place, and it should then work out from the timestamps when it was, so if anyone adds a geotag all matching files are implicitly tagged unless overridden.I want to search photos like tineye.com does... provide a photo as a search token. I want to find "similar" photos to the one I have... did someone link to a photo that belongs to a set, how do I get back to that set? How do I widen the search to find other photos from the event?I want to be able to get the original or negative, regardless of the size, if it's a CC image.I want to be able to background upload. If the images are local, then they're magically going to be published too.I'd like an auto image stitcher for lo-fi gigapan-ish images... select the ones to be stitched and go for it.Lots of things really. There's so much room still. |
Does karma affect what you write? | Jem: If I have something to say I will say it irrelevant of how I feel it will perceived and/or affect my karma.I do find it helps me concentrate on "unstupidifying" what I've got to say though. Nobody wants to see me explain myself 5 times because I couldn't get to the point the first time. |
Does karma affect what you write? | th0ma5: naturally, i want to be interesting to you all ;p |
Does karma affect what you write? | jerf: I look more at replies. My goal over the past few years is to learn how to post a controversial argument without getting a ton of replies arguing with something that was not in my message. You can't avoid getting arguments about what was in the message, of course, but it's just wearing when you get tons of flames about something you didn't actually say.I have found that on a good site, that argument will also tend to be voted up, even if it's against the local dominant opinion, but that's just a side-effect.I left Slashdot when I could no longer do that, and I felt it was because I'd plumbed the depths of idiocy rather than failing to write my arguments correctly. (You can never reach perfection, of course, but assuming I didn't become radically worse at it over the course of a year, the fact that it become virtually impossible implicates the community.)Write well, ignore karma. If you're getting consistently downvoted after that, consider that you may not be a match for the community. (And I do mean "consider"; it's not proof, but it's worth considering.)And yes, karma encourages groupthink, though it doesn't create it. A strong community can overcome that, but the pull is inexorable and continuous. Compared to other karma-based communities I've been in, this is still a ways away from group-think dominance, though. |
Does karma affect what you write? | ericb: Absolutely. It makes it better--usually.Karma, the way it is used here, kills off some normal parts of human conversation, such as the making friends-by-agreeing and making mundane conversation part of socialization. From the perspective of a reader, though, those parts of conversation are very dull if I'm not the poster or respondee.On the other hand, it encourages conformity. You "win" psychologically and karmically by saying things you know everyone will agree with, and you are rewarded with a tangible boost in your score. Granted, many of us try to upvote good arguments regardless, but there's a natural human tendency to regard opinions you disagree with as flawed. |
Does karma affect what you write? | fredBuddemeyer: good question. recently there was a "capitalism as a ponzi scheme" article and i wrote that ponzi had better insight into nature than malthus. i can't see anything objectionable here - just an expression of opinion and an implicit comparison between tim o'reilly's thinking and that of thomas malthus. i got dinged 2 points for this and i just can't understand why. if there was a reason so be it but i dont understand why anonymous negativity like this is part of the system. it has made me hold back from further commenting... till now :) |
Does karma affect what you write? | ars: I do think about it, but I never let it stop me.But a few times I've been surprised (both ways) by the karma score, so either I don't fully know the "group think" here - or there isn't one. |
PhD, Startup, or Career? | abyssknight: I'm just going to take a devil's advocate role here and say get a job.A start up is nothing without capital, and until you get funded that capital is you and your cofounder. Your savings, your time. A job means you can't put all your time into your startup, but it also means you can eat.Having coworkers to bounce things off of, learn from and both see and make mistakes is invaluable. You can learn how to start your start up from working at your day job. You might even meet driven, hard working people who can help.As far as continuing your education, that's awesome. Do it, but get someone else to pay for it. If you work at a big corporation they'll usually offset the cost or even give you a free ride.That said, do what fuels you. If you like to code, get the job. If you like the theory, keep on with schooling. If you're into the startup thing, just do it. If you want it all, do it all. Just remember to eat. |
Does karma affect what you write? | Prrometheus: It sometimes affects what I write, but not in a bad way. If I see a comment that I wrote has poor karma, or a critical response to a comment I wrote has high karma, I will often go back and flesh out my argument better.At least on Hacker News, it seems to be a sign that my comment was poorly written rather than against popular wisdom. |
Is there room for another photo sharing service? | mattjung: The fact that a lot of your friends are not happy with the existing solutions should be an indicator that there is potential for a new photo sharing site. I think, "photo sharing" includes a lot of different, sometimes very specific use-cases implying different devices that could be explicitly supported. The answer is clearly: yes! |
Does karma affect what you write? | tptacek: Choosing what to say so you can rack up karma points is just trolling in reverse. Nobody you care about cares about karma. |
Does karma affect what you write? | russell: I think it encourages civility, which is sorely missing on other sites. There is almost no mudslinging and very few comments of the "Great post" variety, no "profit" or "in Soviet Union" memes. It encourages me to think clearer, especially if I have a negative opinion. OTOH it probably discourages the pithy but on target remark. |
Does karma affect what you write? | rsheridan6: Sort of. I don't make smartass reddit or Digg-style comments here because they seem not to be appreciated. But if you say something relevant and interesting at a website like HN, reddit, or Digg, and you get downmodded, that either means that you were wrong or that the site is full of idiots and you shouldn't be wasting your time there. Either way it's just as well to know about it. |
Does karma affect what you write? | Angostura: Yes. If my karma is sufficiently bad, I won't have opposable thumbs anymore. That makes writing a drag. |
Best banks for startups/corps, by their web interfaces | run4yourlives: You guys aren't going to like this, because they are out of reach unless you're Canadian, but both TD Bank and Coast Capital Savings (my credit union) have great web interfaces.Take a look: http://www.coastcapitalsavings.com
Demo: https://www.coastcapitalsavings.com/Online_Banking/Online_Ba... |
Does karma affect what you write? | time_management: Not directly. Occasionally, after a couple down votes and a rebuttal, I'll restate my point in a clearer, less confrontational way. |
Does karma affect what you write? | known: I really don't care about karma. Recently I suggested to regulate market capitalization of companies so that more opportunities are created for start-ups.I know HN won't like it. But still I expressed my opinion. |
Does karma affect what you write? | josefresco: I do think of karma when I post. It helps me keep my comments helpful and not negative, and forces me to think a little more about each comment then I would at a site with no karma system. The sense of community/group of peers plays a part as well. |
Does karma affect what you write? | vaksel: Not me, karma affects nothing, even if you get downvoted -1000 so what? It won't change anything.If you are worried about karma so much you have a few options.A) diversify: post more, that way if you "screw up" and say something people won't like, it'll be made up with points from your other comments.B) deletion: monitor your comments, if you suddenly see that its at 0, quickly delete it. Because it really is a bandwagon, and people will downvote a comment just because it has been downvoted before. |
Does karma affect what you write? | dan00: No. Or I'm trying to convince me that it's not.But at the end, I think that's the main reason why I have few friends.
Most people aren't interested in real discussions, they get upset if you
argue against their view. They take it to personally, they aren't
interested in new views, they just want to get their views confirmed.If you play the game you're inside the group, otherwise you're an
outsider. |
Idea for Next Generation of Social Networking | nostrademons: I think you really should create a prototype and test out some of these ideas. You know Rails; you don't need a super technical genius to test whether this'll be somewhat useful for people. And you'll find out a lot more than you would by simply thinking about the problem.If your prototype is interesting, you'll probably have no trouble finding talented technical people to help you. If it isn't, you've got more information to redesign it. Right now, it's really difficult to communicate just what you're getting at. Don't tell us, show us. |
Does karma affect what you write? | froo: I don't think it really matters - I try to contribute to the great little community here, provide whatever insight, argument or counter-argument that I can.The only times I've put in a "I know I'm going to get downmodded for this" are when I'm commenting that serves no purpose other than my own personal amusement. In all honesty, I'm expecting it :) |
Does karma affect what you write? | andreyf: Similar post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=222211 |
How to programmatically observe program execution? | fauigerzigerk: Maybe something like dtrace? I'm not sure what your application scenario is though. |
Does karma affect what you write? | alex_c: Not directly. The only two filters I apply to my comments are: Is this self-evident? Is this disrespectful of the community? If the answer to either question is yes, then I try not to post.I find myself not always using these filters on other websites where the quality is lower to start with. I suspect that goes a long way towards explaining the decline in quality on most social sites (an online version of the broken windows theory?) |
Does karma affect what you write? | jws: It does not affect what I write. I regularly put in comments that are not "up worthy", just small factual additions or musings for further thought (or data responses to questions). Sometimes these get pushed down, I have no idea why, but I do not care.It isn't karma that prevents me from posting inflammatory or (intentionally) idiotic material. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.