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How to learn languages with non-Latin alphabets? | vaksel: go get a Russian book, and crack open a dictionary...then go through it one word at a time. |
How to learn languages with non-Latin alphabets? | timf: I found it very helpful to study and learn ancient greek with a modified alphabet song repeated (and written) ad nauseum... had to get the letters burned in my mind before I could start learning anything. Learning an order helped. |
How to learn languages with non-Latin alphabets? | jdowdell: The alphabet is a separate problem from learning a language. I can "sorta" learn it in a session, but then find I haven't retained it well. Two tricks:1) Print out the alphabet and hang it in the bathroom, at eye level. But after a time it becomes invisible.2) Flash cards with words that contain the letters you know least. This is a great way to burn things in across sessions. Write each word yourself, so you'll be embarrassed when you can't remember it.Computer programs like Rosetta Stone are useful for audio/visual testing of a new language. I'm not sure how they handle the input of a strange language, but Rosetta Stone helped me with Korea's Hangul even though I couldn't type it. |
customer backups delivered on the cheap? | wmf: At the prices SmugMug is charging, bandwidth cost is negligible. Just download the data to your office and burn it. |
How to learn languages with non-Latin alphabets? | fharper1961: I have learned the Persian alphabet in the last year or so. At first I avoided learning it because it seemed like a daunting task.But once I figured out that I'd be better off knowing the alphabet, it wasn't hard at all. There are only a very limited number of symbols to learn after all.After that it's just practice, practice, practice.Which leads me to highly recommend using a SRS (Spaced Repetition System); think automated flash cards with an algorithm built to optimize the time you spend reviewing. Anki is the open-source multi-platform and web SRS software I use and recommend.http://ichi2.net/anki/ |
customer backups delivered on the cheap? | timf: If DVD backups mailed every month could be cheap enough to actually subscribe to, it would be an awesome add-on to some of these SaaS sites (including the one I'm building). |
How to learn languages with non-Latin alphabets? | indiejade: When I started Uni, my language elective was Japanese. I changed majors, and the school I eventually transferred to didn't offer it, but wowza, non-Latin based alphabets are tough!If you have a basic understanding of the Latin-based sentence structures, you can use that to understand a foreign language: brush up on sentence diagramming. Seriously. Subject, Verb, Object, Direct Object, Indirect Object, Prepositional Phrases, etc. Learning the culturally-accepted syntax of a language is really valuable. Once you start to recognize and understand certain words, you'll be able to see how they fit into the larger sentence structure overall. |
How to learn languages with non-Latin alphabets? | giardini: In the end you've got to do what you did as a kid when learning the alphabet: sit down, focus completely and repeatedly practice speaking and reading the characters.
It helps to take a nap after each learning session.Once you can recognize and speak characters you move on to words and develop a basic vocabulary. From there go to sentences.And I've heard that ADD and ADHD drugs work well. |
CMU's Information Systems or Computer Science? | giardini: CS at CMU can be a crushing experience for even extremely bright students. I knew one. He chose to go into CS, but didn't realize that a large percentage of the other CS students were already hardened developers far more prepared than he was. He crashed and burned and almost lost his scholarship before moving to another degree plan. Today he's a programmer but his self-esteem is gone and he feels like he's faking it even though his work is good.I chalk it up to the CMU CS experience. They should screen their CS students more carefully. It is extremely difficult for students (who tend to be idealistic and optimistic) to anticipate how difficult the workload will be. It should be the university's responsibility to restrict class size or offer alternative preparatory classes for less-prepared students. "Survival of the fittest" may be great for the university but it's a tremendous waste of time and effort for many students. |
How to learn languages with non-Latin alphabets? | gommm: For languages that have a phonetic alphabet (like georgian, armenian, russian, japanese hiragana and katakana, korean), I found the easiest way is to spend one hour a day practicing for 1 or 2 months and then never ever use an alternative transcription when you could use the native phonetic alphabet (or it will take you that much longuer to really master it).First start by some simple study of each letters pronunciation and use them in simple words and use flash cards to remember.Once you master that I recommend doing some dictation exercise, just listen to a dialogue in the target language and start writing it, it's a great way to improve your speed and fluency in the new alphabet... And fluency in an alphabet is very important to help you with memorization of new word (once you get past the decoding phase, I find it's much quicker to learn new words written in the alphabet)For ideograph (like japanese kanji, chinese hanzi and korean hanja), I find that finding a book that teach you the ethymology of the character helps a lot in learning by giving you context on why the character is used that way and it's also very helpful to help master the differences between same characters used in japanese and in chinese.A good website to read on learning languages (despite the rather cheesy title) is http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/index.html The forum discussion is rather interesting...Good luck, and try to visit the country, it's still the quickest way to learn the language |
Which accounts (twitter, gmail, etc) should I secure? | bandushrew: No offence intended, but I think the utter irrelevance of this question has taken everyone a little by surprise.I can kind of see why you are thinking about it, but ultimately this question is entirely unimportant in the great realm of Things That Will Help You Succeed. |
Which accounts (twitter, gmail, etc) should I secure? | martian: I would suspect that you would want to pay attention to where your users are. If you're a Web 2.0 social network site, then Twitter is probably essential since most of your users would likely be using Twitter as well. Same things goes for Delicious. If you're in the US, then look into getting a presence on Facebook or MySpace (MySpace especially if you're working with music). If you're somewhere overseas, then Orkut may be worth a look. If you're a design firm, it probably wouldn't hurt to have a Flickr account.The answer to this question seems to depend on where your users hang out. If they hang out on the web, then be on the web. If they hang out at trade shows, then go to trade shows.(Sam_in_nyc, I read your profile so know that not all of this applies directly to your situation, but maybe it's useful for thinking about the more general case...?) |
Which accounts (twitter, gmail, etc) should I secure? | sh1mmer: You should think about registering a trademark if possible. This means it's easy in the long run. If you have a trademark you can have various services reclaim them for you.That said, twitter, gmail, yahoo, some tech news sites, digg, reddit, etc are all probably worth doing.You might also consider adding a getsatisfaction.com account. |
Which accounts (twitter, gmail, etc) should I secure? | catone: All of them. Or, more precisely, anywhere you either:1. may want to some day communicate officially with users, or,2. wouldn't want someone else impersonating youCheck out the list at http://www.usernamecheck.com/ (also handy for checking them) and then start registering. :)I wrote about social media cybersquatting in a blog post in October. Might be interesting to read about the experience the company I work for had: http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/10/31/do-you-own-your-so...(Short story: someone else has their natural Twitter account -- @companyname -- and they were forced to use the somewhat clumsier @companynamedotcom instead) |
Another Brand To Beat Apple In The Future | jmtulloss: Palm.Disclaimer: I work for Palm. That being said, I actually believe it. The Pre rocks, and it's just the beginning. Plus, if the Pre works out, I'm sure we'll have a lot of motivated, intelligent people (maybe even from HN) willing to come help us out. |
How to learn languages with non-Latin alphabets? | pseingatl: I think it makes a difference if you want to learn a language like Russian, in which there is a great wealth of written material, or Arabic, where there is not. For Russian, you have to bite the bullet and learn the alphabet. However, for Arabic (and Persian) another alternative has grown up in the past year: Arabizi. Arabizi is the use of the Roman alphabet plus four numbers to transcribe Arabic. It grew out of the need to send SMS messages on mobile phones. It is read left to right, not right to left. Moreover, everyone can read it. This means that if you need to write a street address, you can write it in Arabizi and a cab driver can read it. You can memorize vocabulary as you work on your spoken fluency in the language. A friend of mine told me that Greek kids are using the Roman alphabet to send SMS's as well. Eventually, you can work on the traditional alphabet, but for the beginner seeking to learn Arabic, Arabizi is the way to go. |
Another Brand To Beat Apple In The Future | pg: It seems unlikely. Apple is the result of a unique combination of circumstances: a CEO who is both terrifyingly effective and also has a great sense of design. There are very few people with both those qualities. Even if boards of existing companies consciously tried to pick CEOs with design sense, they wouldn't be able to, because you can't recognize it unless you have it. So the only way you could get another CEO like Steve Jobs would be the way he himself got the job: by founding the company. |
Another Brand To Beat Apple In The Future | mixmax: Yes, it's the way of the cool-cycle.10 years ago everyone thought Bang & Olufsen (http://www.bang-olufsen.com/) was the coolest stereo around. Everybody wanted to have one, and eventually the not-so-cool people got one too. Now the cool people would never be seen alive with a Bang & Olufsen stereo, because everyone has got it. Even their dad, by definition the most uncool person on the face of the earth, has one standing around in his un-cool living room.The reason something is cool is that trendsetters and opinion leaders endorse it. The reason they endorse it is that nobody else has it yet. (And of course that it has some merit of it's own, which Apple certainly has) Once it goes mainstream they will start looking for something the new thing.I see this happening to Apple right now, the opinion leaders are starting to move on because apple products are becoming mainstream. This is a major issue that Apple will have to address: if they continue their growth cycle they will become main-stream and cannot keep playing the cool-card in their marketing.If I knew what would replace them though, I wouldn't comment on HN, but sipping champagne on a tropical island with a russian supermodel and a good book. |
Another Brand To Beat Apple In The Future | satyajit: I am sure its possible. Apple has the right combination of marketing, technology and design to make what they are today. Having said that, its a recent phenomena - several years back, we all thought SGI made the mean machines, where are they now?But I wish Apple comes up with something more killer product, diversify even more ... like you know, may be a car audio player. That will have the same wow factor of iPod/iTouch - somewhat internet enabled. So you can directly download/buy music into your car audio, and play online media ... and of course, it can double up as a iPhone and map device. Much of its out there already, but still its a scrambled market. Apple need to lead the way in usability. I'm sure Jobs can turn this into a multi-billion dollar franchise. |
Ruby on Rails host? | pclark: Slicehost or Amazon Web Services.I personally use Joyent, but they're rather pricey. |
Ruby on Rails host? | pclark: oh, and this is a good resource for hosts for rails : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=272031 |
Ruby on Rails host? | gtani: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7mnbi/ask_reddi...http://stackoverflow.com/questions/251418/who-are-good-web-h...usual suspects: slicehost, linode, rails Machines, engineyard, rimu, |
Ruby on Rails host? | ionfish: Someone at work linked me to Brightbox yesterday; haven't used them myself so I don't know how good they are. http://www.brightbox.co.uk/Of course, there's always Heroku: http://heroku.com/I have nothing but good things to say about Slicehost, but getting Rails up and running requires more work than a dedicated Rails hosting setup would (the upside, of course, is greater flexibility). |
How to you create and manage passwords? | yan: Here is a post from an earlier comment on how I manage my passwords: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=384658 |
How to you create and manage passwords? | jmah: I use 1Password (for OS X and iPhone), which lets me generate random passwords for different sites. It can't auto-fill on the iPhone, so you have to go into the app and write it down somewhere (or remember it) temporarily. It's got syncing and stuff too. http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password |
How to you create and manage passwords? | maneesh: I use SuperGenPass, which hashes the domain of a website with a Master password, so you only need to remember one password. Then, every time you log in, you just enter in your master password, it automatically hashes it, and you get a new password for logging in like af49AgsdU8EDIT: here's the link http://www.supergenpass.com/ |
How to you create and manage passwords? | mixmax: I take a layered approach.One password for all the stuff that isn't really important like sites I visit a few times and then leave.One password for sites I trust and use on a regular basis, but where a compromised password isn't the end of the world. HN is in this category.Seperate and strong passwords for stuff that matters, like netbanking, gmail, etc. To remember these I have a system set up so that the passwords are similar in a non-trivial way, like [first words of sentence][number I remember]. One password derived from this could be tqbfjotld!1249057, easily derived from "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog!", and 1249057 which is the serial number for the motor in my boat. This way I only have to remember a phrase and a number I already know for entering secure sites.Using this system I don't have to rely on potential unsafe software, or writing down passwords that may be compromised. |
How to you create and manage passwords? | markessien: The system I use is this - I use a fixed combination of letters that never change (4 letters), and then I follow it up with an 8 digit series of numbers, ending up with 12 digit password.I have a contact on my phone where all the passwords are stored as phone numbers (just the number, not the letters). If I ever forget the password, I just look it up on my phone. If my phone is ever stolen, the thief will never figure out that a particular contact happens to be having my password as their phone number, and even if he does, he does not know the fixed letter combination I tack on.And I change this passwords every few months, and when I first change it, I use my phone to remember it. Furthermore, I split the passwords into 3 categories - important, not so important and the password I share with family. |
How to you create and manage passwords? | wallflower: The first or second letters of the words of motivational quotes with a few letter substitutions (e.g. 0 for 'o', 3 for 'e') and some random symbols work well for me as easy to recall and strong passwords. Plus when you type it in, you have to think about the quote and whether you are applying it.w3tm0mccab1ca$@hvh1faa0n3tac)&"What ever the mind of man can concieve and believe, it can achieve" -Napoleon Hill |
How to you create and manage passwords? | DaveChild: I use this: http://www.angel.net/~nic/passwdlet.html |
How to you create and manage passwords? | dguido: http://www.bugmenot.com FTWIf you can't remember all the passwords to the accounts you have, one solution it to create less accounts. |
How to you create and manage passwords? | mikeyur: The way I create passwords is to make an algorithm that no one else would know - which creates unique passwords for every site I use, but I can never forget the password since the algorithm stays the same. Example:initials + last 3 characters in domain of site + year of birth + random sequence you know.my + tor + 91 + e72BQo -- HN
my + igg + 78 + abwBs$ -- DiggAgain, just examples. It works for me and I never forget my passwords as long as I remember the algorithm. |
How to you create and manage passwords? | jackowayed: I use a different pass for basically everything. The strength depends on how much I care about my account at the service. I've been known to do stuff like "<servicename>sucks" when I really don't care about it. Everything somewhat important is longish, with some capitals/numbers/special chars.I have FF remember all of my passes basically (on my own computer with a good password on it.) I make fairly heavy use of "forgot pass" functions to make up for forgetting some passes. |
How to you create and manage passwords? | projectileboy: For sites like this one, I use one of two or three easy to remember passwords. For banking sites and such, I create strong passwords, which I keep written down (the Bruce Schneier approach). |
How to you create and manage passwords? | epi0Bauqu: Random username and password for each site, generated by http://duckduckgo.com/?q=pwI keep them in an encrypted file on an encrypted disk. I let my browser remember them though, and I have the frequently used ones (ssh, gmail, etc.) memorized. |
How to you create and manage passwords? | fhars: For web sites I don't want to access from my phone, I use the PasswordMaker plugin for Firefox, which generates site specific passwords from a single master password that never gets saved anywhere (except maybe swap space, I haven't looked into that). The only problem I've run into were overzealous input sanitizers on some sites that refused some of the characters in the generated passwords.For really important passwords I use strong random passwords with a security copy on paper stored in a safe place. Depending on the password and how often I need it that may be the safe at work, a binder with all the important related personal documents, or that place all people use to keep valuable small pieces of paper, the wallet in my pocket (there usually without a full domain name).Then I use old safe passwords which I no longer use for their original purpose but still remember as passwords for situations where PasswordMaker is no option. |
How to you create and manage passwords? | makecheck: The Mac's Keychain Access program (Utilities folder) is pretty good for this. Most programs I use directly support it, e.g. Mail passwords, and web site passwords in OmniWeb. You can also add your own passwords or secure notes without having a program "support" the keychain.Sync of keychains is possible, but only if you pay for MobileMe (nee iTools/.Mac).Unfortunately, Firefox uses its own password manager on the Mac instead of a keychain. |
How to you create and manage passwords? | shizcakes: I'm actually quite surprised at the lack of mention of KeePass in this comments thread: http://keepass.info/I've been using it for years at this point, and I love it - it's very well supported, and is fast and straightforward to use - both for creating new accounts and recalling old accounts. In fact, I don't know my password to the majority of sites that I am signed up for, and instead use a randomly generated string.That helps my peace of mind in cases where sites like monster.com get hacked - I don't need to change every password on every site, only that one.[Edit] - By the way, Version 2 is written in Mono-compatible .NET, which means that it is accessible as a cross platform application. (It's not quite Python or Perl, but it works for me) |
How to you create and manage passwords? | arc: Not extremely sophisticated from the generation side but SecretBook for Mac is really pretty clean. iPhone version as well.http://bookshelfapps.com/ |
How to you create and manage passwords? | r11t: KeePassX(http://www.keepassx.org/) is an excellent free cross-platform password manager for storing user names, passwords, urls, attachments and comments in one single database.The database is encrypted either with AES (alias Rijndael) or Twofish encryption algorithm using a 256 bit key. |
How to you create and manage passwords? | juliend2: I use http://passwordsafe.com to manage my password. Its good enough for me. |
How to you create and manage passwords? | dattaway: I use passook. Its a perl command line generator for pronouncable passwords of selectable strength. Quick and dirty. |
Teaching a non-programmer web development? | iamelgringo: I wrote this a while back in response to that question.http://iamelgringo.blogspot.com/2008/05/teach-yourself-you-t... |
Teaching a non-programmer web development? | russell: HTML first. Do it yourself HTML is better than using web design software or prepackaged templates. Hand coded HTML gives you an understanding of what is going on. Start first with a static web site to limit complexity. CSS is next, but it can be a major conceptual leap, particularly with browser incompatibilities, so I would suggest that you create some simple style sheets, and let him experiment with it.JavaScript is the next step. I recommend JQuery as a fundamental library. He should concentrate on simple aids for the user, until he gets a feel for it. JS is a bigger hurdle than HTML.On the server side, I am a Python fan, but since you know Rails, that might be a good way to go, if you are into helping him. PHP is relatively easy, but it encourages really bad code. I would recommend against it.Photoshop is a huge monster. Unless he needs it, it's a distraction.As far as learning resources, there is lots online or get highly rated books from Amazon. |
How to you create and manage passwords? | twopoint718: I have a mix of methods. For sites that I rarely visit or are of no real consequence if the password were compromised I use a memorable one for them all.For sites that I care about the security I generate a random password with something like this: dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1 count=12 | uuencode -
then store that in psafe (http://www.hep.wisc.edu/~dan/psafe/) with a master password that I remember. This way if some site's password does get compromised, it doesn't translate to any other site. I suppose I could also carry around the encrypted psafe file with me on a USB key, but I've found that I don't really need to log into these sorts of sites when I'm out. |
Teaching a non-programmer web development? | mixmax: I have a background in business as well, and decided to learn programming around 1½ years ago. So my situation is probably similar. Looking back at my experience here's my two cents:- Start by learning HTML to get the basics straight. This isn't hard once you grasp the basic concept.- PHP is a good place to start, since you can almost always find help in the huge PHP community. I used www.w3schools.com for reference, and google would always point me to an answer when I had a stupid question.- Do a real project, it's the best way to learn. I did a HN clone just to learn how stuff worked, how to deploy, etc. (www.deloghersk.dk)The one thing I missed was a real person I could ask whenever there was something I conceptually didn't understand. Google isn't very good at answering these questions. Seems like our friend is in a better position here :-) |
How to you create and manage passwords? | DenisM: Shameless plug follows:Our product Memengo Wallet http://www.memengo.com is a password manager that can be used in three different ways: 1. Store your passwords on the iPhone app (Windows mobile phone also supported). Encrypted with AES-256.
2. Store your passwords on the web site (AJAX). Encrypted with AES-256 within
the web browser - plaintext never leaves your computer.
3. The iPhone and the web site can be synchronized. There is a sync button in the iPhone app.
I can answer any questions. We also answer all support questions submitted from the web site (with a return address).FAQ:1. Q: The web site makes me uneasy. What if you decide to change your program to fish out the encryption key form the client? A: The web site does not add to the problem - any password mamanger app on the iPhone can phone home without your knowledge. |
How to you create and manage passwords? | njharman: Password Safe http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/I believe it is a security risk to reveal password usage/methodology and so must politely refuse to elaborate. |
How to you create and manage passwords? | travisjeffery: 1Password is __teh__ shit. |
How to you create and manage passwords? | jseifer: I use 1Password from Agile Web Solutions. It's great -- it imported all of my passwords from Firefox and I just save new ones that way. It also does work on the iPhone as a password filler if you use the bookmark. If you use Dropbox you can keep your password keychain in there and update it among all of your macs. It would be ideal if Windows and Opera were supported but maybe some day. For now I just go between Safari and Firefox. |
How to you create and manage passwords? | hachiya: For over a year I've been using a GPG-based "password wallet" through a shell script based on this Linux Journal article.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9861I just run wallet.sh -e and enter the wallet password, and then vim (or editor of your choice) opens up with your passwords. It can be handy to store other important data in this GPG protected file as well. When you exit vim, the file is re-encrypted automatically.I keep automatic backups of the gpg encrypted wallet file for safety.The nice thing about this approach is that you can view and edit the file in whatever way you are comfortable, e.g. with vim. No GUI needed, so you can access it over SSH quickly (and yes, you could use the GUI solutions with SSH forwarding, but nothing beats a text editor in terms of speed).Also, for generating passwords, you can use a Vim keymapping
to shell out and run something like apg or spassgen to generate a random password.I typically store website account info like this:hotmail.com:hachiyamail@hotmail.com:passwordor for more verbose account information:americanairlines.comhachiyamail@hotmail.comPassword: flyamericanairlinesMother's Maiden Name: SmithPIN: 2342 |
How to you create and manage passwords? | m0sh3g: clipperz.com FTWThey also have community version that you can install on your own server |
Teaching a non-programmer web development? | mechanical_fish: Send him toward a toolkit that's ostensibly usable by "non-programmers". Have him put up a Wordpress blog. Hand him a copy of Using Drupal (but certainly not Pro Drupal Development yet, unless you want to scare him witless).The advantage of these things is threefold. First, getting a basic Wordpress or Drupal installation up and running is excellent practice in the boring but essential skills of web development: Knowing what a server is, renting a shared host, using SSH and FTP, editing text files, debugging, searching Google, learning how to find and question your local guru, appreciating how much work it's all going to be and why it's going to take you years to learn. ;)Second, there's always the chance that one of these toolkits is all the guy needs. These systems are actually used to build production sites. They have logins and stuff! They have nifty looking themes that look like real websites! That makes them more rewarding for a beginner with business aspirations than some primitive-blog-in-fifteen-minutes demo app. It's even possible that the guy will find that he doesn't need to learn to build an entire site from scratch in Django. He might be able to figure out how to assemble his site from open-source components -- or, once he learns about the existence of the components, he might rather spend time coming up with new business ideas that leverage those, rather than spending time learning Python syntax.Finally, it's generally easier to tinker with an existing toolkit than to write a webapp from scratch. And, even if you really are better off writing your webapp from scratch, it pays to understand why you're doing that instead of building on top of a toolkit. Which in turn requires some experience with toolkits. |
Ruby on Rails host? | the_hack: No question - Don't pay a dime. Use Heroku Garden for free, then you can upgrade to paid if you need to.I have my main app on a Dreamhost shared server, but I had to move my blog because it kept getting shut down for using too much ram.Heroku is great because you can develop online or off and use git if you want to |
Another Brand To Beat Apple In The Future | nailer: Do you really think most consumers define Asus, Lenovo and Dell as 'not a Mac'? I think it's a deficiency of Vista's part (and age on XP's part) that pushes some people to Macs.But perhaps Windows 7 will stop pushing people away.I also doubt that most computer geeks either own Macs or define cool. |
How to you create and manage passwords? | izak30: As per a post on Joel on Software, I've started using PasswordSafe (SWT..the java one) on all my machines, and sync the datbase with dropbox. It's great. |
How to you create and manage passwords? | chris11: I probably need to use more passwords. I make them by creating simple geometric patterns on my keyboard. It's easy to remember, and they aren't common words. |
How to you create and manage passwords? | xenoterracide: here's an article I wrote on creating them, and having them be recoverable. http://xenoterracide.blogspot.com/2008/04/making-secure-reco... |
Which accounts (twitter, gmail, etc) should I secure? | RobGR: Every new facebook, myspace, webmail, etc creates another namespace. It's not necessary to have your name in all of them, and can be a bit of distraction to focus on that.I second the recommendations of gmail and twitter, although I don't use twitter. If you are thinking of having an SMS interface, especially if you want to beta test that without much infrastructure investment, you might want to also look into www.textmarks.com. |
How to you create and manage passwords? | yason: I have a single password and a mailinator address for anything that requires login or registration. Fake name, fake password?Then I have different, good passwords for my login and Gmail. These are easy to type and generated from a passphrase so they look nothing like dictionary words and yet there is a good way to remember them when they're new and my fingers haven't learned them yet. These are about 10+ characters long but those that are easier to type are favoured.Old passwords from the previous category are often reused for middle-level services such as HN, Reddit, Slashdot, FaceBook and others where I have a long (or expected long) residence and high correlation with my privacy or personality. This is mostly for convenience since my fingers have the kinetic memory for about 6-7 such passwords: something I've typed for months or a year as my login password is something I'll also remember the following montsh or a year as my reddit password. If I forget, I try all recent password patterns that my fingers can remember. Has worked so far.Online banking login + passwords are nowhere but my head. In fact, I don't know them if someone wanted me to write them down. Instead, my fingers remember them. The login + password are set by the bank. I also have to look up a code from a pad of one-time PINs sent to me by my bank in order to successfully log in to the online services.Anything else that is either important or rarely used (Amazon, online stock brokerage service etc.) are stored in a file encrypted for my private GPG key. I open it with Emacs, type in the GPG passphrase, let Emacs decrypt the contents and edit the file as usual. Saving will automatically encrypt the data before writing to disk. Looking up a password is a matter of decrypting the file to stdout from the command line and piping it to less. The private GPG key is protected with a passphrase that is about 50 characters long. It is not written anywhere. The passwords in this file are generated by a Perl script I wrote in the 90's. The output of the script is 16 bytes of random characters and numbers.It seems that I rely a lot on my memory. Most of them are memorised in my fingers rather than the lexical part of my brain. I have maybe ten passwords that I need every week or month, and those are in my head, probably because I can keep them there. In addition, I have several PIN codes I must remember, and I do. (Cell phone PIN, two bank cards, SecurID user PIN, door lock code...)So, go figure how to hack me. |
How to you create and manage passwords? | GiantCrayon: I just finished reading a book on this very topic, and recommend it highly._Perfect Passwords_ by Mark Burnett, available at:http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Passwords-Selection-Protection...It's full of great analysis, as well as a fun table of the 500 worst passwords of all time. :)(Note: I am not connected with the publisher or author in any way.) |
How to you create and manage passwords? | asnyder: I use KeePass (http://keepass.info/), it's free and open source. It stores all your passwords in addition to being able to generate passwords with a myriad of options. You need only remember a single password to get in. They also have a bunch of plug-ins for various different uses. |
How to you create and manage passwords? | grouchyOldGuy: I store all my account URLs, user IDs, and passwords in a text file that is inside of an encrypted TrueCrypt volume. The TrueCrypt volume appears as an ordinary file on my computer, and the password to decrypt it is stronger than any password inside the file (13 characters, mixed case with some numbers and symbols mixed in).For non-critical accounts, I use an old Kerberos password from a long-expired ISP account that I used to have. It's burned into my memory as strongly as my own birth date. For more secure account needs, I have s stronger and longer password that I use. When I need to rotate passwords regularly, I use three characters of the month, a symbol, two digits of the year, and my old Kerberos password all concatenated together. It's easy to remember and difficult to crack because it's eleven characters long, and mixed-case alpha-numeric. |
How to you create and manage passwords? | tannerhiland: Roboform (http://www.roboform.com/) sounds similar to some of the password managers here, but also does form filling. There's also a Robo2Go app that let's you tote your passwords on a USB drive.The browser integration is really nice in that login fields can be prefilled as you visit different sites.Also there's a password generator than can be customized for special characters, upper, lower, numbers, length, etc. |
Teaching a non-programmer web development? | hs: ordered by importance:touch typing: 10 fingers + numbersa decent editor: vimhtml+cssjquery (i guess it's the lispiest framework)server-side: lisp / schemeunix command: piping, awk, grep, find, xargs (a 'mapping' equivalent)gimp: script-fu (tiny-scheme) and imagemagick of courseos: openbsd (i find it easier -- altho more stern -- than linux) |
How to you create and manage passwords? | urlwolf: For me it's lastpass.com.
They do it right: they remove the passwords they (easily) find on my HD. The problem is still the master password, I agree. |
How do I gracefully accept one offer over another within the same company? | cperciva: I think the phrase "I think I'd fit better with team #1" is probably what you're looking for. When you get right down to it, "fit better with" just means "I made the decision based on personal factors", but the phrase implies that you're considering how said personal factors would influence your ability to do useful/good work... which is at least slightly deeper than merely picking the people you like the most. |
An instant personalized info dump for the web. | timf: So input requires knowing unique URL -- what about if the retrieval did too instead of it being behind a login?If interested, see: "What's a private pastebin and how do I get one?"http://pastebin.com/pastebin.php?help=1 |
Is PHP more scalable than Ruby or Python? | icey: Any mainstream language you choose will be scalable enough.Spend some time reading online rails and django documentation. Either one will be fine for you to learn.My personal opinion is that Python is easier to learn for a beginner, but not by much. Ruby has http://hacketyhack.net/ which is a fun way to learn, and Python has http://www.diveintopython.org/ which is a tremendous (and free!) resource.I say flip a coin and roll with it. They're both great languages and both frameworks are great for learning.[Errr... The submission changed after my response was entered, sorry if it seems a bit off-topic.] |
How do I gracefully accept one offer over another within the same company? | aneesh: Don't worry about it. Manager #2 realizes you have choices to make, and won't take it personally. Just be cordial in your reply, like cperciva said. |
Is PHP more scalable than Ruby or Python? | pstinnett: Just made a very similar thread to this!http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=460456 |
Is PHP more scalable than Ruby or Python? | bharris: Why are you worried about scalability when you're just learning to program? |
Is PHP more scalable than Ruby or Python? | teej: Scalability for web applications has -nothing to do with the programming language-. PHP, Ruby, Python, ASP.net, they all use the same strategies to scale. Three things: cache religiously, index well, and refactor your database queries.Take it from me: I've worked on a Java site with over 2 million monthly uniques. I built a Ruby on Rails app from the ground up that grew to over 15 million pageviews a day. I also helped build a PHP-backed api the handled a few million hits a month.I'm sick and tired of the "X scales better than Y" debate. It's pointless. |
An instant personalized info dump for the web. | mikeyur: What about Jottit? http://jottit.comI'm absolutely in love with it, using it as a simple personal wiki.After you create one the first time you can make it private/password-protected if you wish. Just dump info in, hit submit, done. |
An instant personalized info dump for the web. | timf: How about an input box at the secret URL that sends an email. Someone at work uses that trick for a quick, anonymous documentation feedback option on each doc page footer. |
Is PHP more scalable than Ruby or Python? | mechanical_fish: Don't freak out about it. This is not like getting married.First the easy advice: If you have friends pulling you toward Ruby and Rails... learn Ruby and Rails. Momentum is a good thing. Comradeship is a good thing. Don't worry: If it turns out in two years that we'd all rather be using Python and/or Django, we can switch. It will still be there.Now we begin to edge toward personal opinion: I'd avoid sticking with PHP. Not merely because PHP is often like a parody of a programming language, but because variety is the spice of life. Learn something different. Take a look at how other languages do things.Now, if you really want to stay out of a language war, ignore anyone who goes on about the "scalability" of their chosen language. Most of those claims are just posturing, backed up with no relevant data. [1] If your PHP friends won't shut up about their language's unbeatable super speed, show them the first fifteen minutes or so of Yehuda Katz's Merbcamp keynote:http://www.merbcamp.com/video/katz3.mp4... and once they're done rending their garments and throwing things at the screen tell them to take some data and go argue with someone who cares. You've got better things to do.---[1] Why do most language scalability arguments have such dubious data to back them up? Because, as others have taken pains to point out, languages don't scale: application architectures scale. If your webapp is much more complex than "Hello, World" its efficiency will depends on a host of factors, of which the speed of any particular language construct is usually a tiny one. |
Starting my first web app | siong1987: Every language has its own pros and cons. So, there is always no one solution that can solve all the problems.Anyway, you cannot compare Rails(Ruby) and Django(Python) to PHP. Rails and Django are both frameworks. But, PHP is a language. Maybe you can try Codeigniter if you want to use PHP. |
Don't show points? | staunch: The way it works on Perlmonks(.org) is that you don't see points on a comment/submission until after you've voted. If you want to see the score you can do a "null vote". I definitely think this is a better way to handle it. I really can't think of any reason why you'd want to show score before voting. |
Starting my first web app | callmeed: Not only develop the app locally, but really take some time (a day or two) setting up your dev environment and getting it dialed in if its not already. If there are tools you need to install (mysql, apache, ruby, etc), build them from source whenever possible.As for planning, I like to do mine in a notebook with a pen. I'll outline some basic use case notes and list what I think the db schema should look like. Then I'll take that and use it to build my initial models and migrations (RoR) and start working locally.I generally don't deploy an app to a live server until its just about ready for consumption.Not that it matters, but most of my work is in PHP and Rails. Nothing against Django, I just haven't had a chance to try it (soon, hopefully). |
How to you create and manage passwords? | dbc: "Password Gorilla" is a GPL-licensed, cross-platform password manager. http://fpx.de/fp/Software/Gorilla/ |
Don't show points? | TooMuchNick: I'm honestly not being cheeky, I suppose I'm just slow: Wouldn't it be easier to just not think about the points? I've found the points useful when looking for a summary, takeaway, or rebuttal that earned attention. |
Don't show points? | critke: I would think that people should be able to handle the truth (either way) - painful as it may be. I mean if the Internet stands for one thing, it's transparency. Hiding stuff is not something we should strive for. |
Don't show points? | karim: And what about hiding karma points too ?
Imo, the problem with karma is that people try to get more karma, per se. |
Is a team of work-at-home employees realistic? | ctingom: Telecommuting can work well for established teams who have a history working together. But if the team doesn't have any history together, you might consider getting office space for 6 months to bond a bit and then do the work at home thing. |
Don't show points? | markessien: The points provide information about what others think about the submission, which is useful in guaging the status of the comment. It does not have to affect your opinion, unless you let it. |
Is a team of work-at-home employees realistic? | quoderat: This is only tangentially related to your post, but why does corporate America have such an aversion to telecommuting?I was by far the most productive employee in my group at the large bank I worked for previously. I outproduced others, even while taking the hardest problems -- and we had a pretty good metrics systems, so I wasn't just gaming it.But when I asked if I could work from home when I'd decided to move, the answer was an emphatic, "No."So, they'd rather lose their most-productive employee who also would've been far more productive at home and then have to hire a probably-inferior replacement?Makes no sense at all, yet so many companies are like this. |
Don't show points? | kyro: Sometimes I'll just upvote a submission on the 'new' page with 0 points to trigger group think because I might think the article will spark interesting debate, or to help prevent an 'ask hn' or 'rate my startup' submission from falling, which keeps other users here from seeking advice from the community. |
Is a team of work-at-home employees realistic? | jacquesm: My personal experience is that this can work great, but not if you're talking 'ordinary' employees, you'll have to do a good bit of screening to get people with the right mindset. Some are stellar at it, others will not be able to handle the freedom. For those individuals that can not handle the freedom it is better to have a per-job style payment. |
Is PHP more scalable than Ruby or Python? | jacquesm: Scaling software has much more to do with the architecture of the software than with the language.It is possible to write software in any language that scales poorly as well as to write software that scales very well.Right now I'm working on a site that pulls in about 1/2 million uniques daily written in Java (chosen by the programmer before me), before that that same site was written in PHP.Ruby, perl, PHP they're all just different hammers, a good programmer should be able to write scalable web applications with all of the above, but will find a matter of personal preference (or historical accidents) to make the decision.In the beginning it is probably smarter to learn how to program in a language for which there is a market, not to focus so much on scalability issues because when just starting out getting paying work is probably more important.Another issue when learning how to code is to learn how to write clean code, I know I'm showing my age here but you could do worse than to have a look at the source code to the GNU utils package, there is a ton of 'good' code in there that will help you to develop a legible style. That will come in handy in any language, scalable or not :) |
Don't show points? | jacquesm: Points have their uses in making it easier to zoom in on the important parts of a discussion (or the best contributions), it's helpful if you have a limited amount of time to spend and you want to make the most of that.Unfortunately they tend to turn in to a goal by themselves.Points are the root of all evil ;)It's a classic case of influencing the system that you are measuring, same with google pagerank or a volt meter with a low internal resistance. |
Time tracking | brusqe: Presumably this is for http://www.minuteglass.com/? If you are after any significantly large sample data to base some usability/design decisions on, I'd recommend Amazon Mechanical Turk. |
Don't show points? | wehriam: I'd much rather deal with the ramifications of "groupthink" than wade through dozens of banal comments.Vote counts give me more information. While that may affect my understanding of an idea, it's for the better.Points may have an inherent bias towards older posts or well known authors, but I value what they represent. |
Don't show points? | mighty: Completely agree, and said as much not long ago:http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=447563I tend to find myself influenced by the karma count more than anything else. I have to log myself out after commenting to increase the cost of checking the change to my net karma.I'm a strong advocate of hiding the karma counts entirely (for users, submissions, and comments). That greatly reduces the conditioning effect, not to mention karma-related drama and groupthink (as Surowiecki argues, crowd wisdom is best procured when evaluations are performed independently). Submissions and comments can still be ordered by net karma over time, as they are now.Whatever you choose to do, I think there's a strong argument in favor of experimentalism. Especially since the site isn't a commercial undertaking and can deal with the occasional disruption.(Um, and yes, that user is me. I locked myself out of my account to keep myself from compulsively commenting and visiting the site. Apparently I still wanted back in.) |
Is a team of work-at-home employees realistic? | gojomo: Teleworkers appreciate terseness. |
Is a team of work-at-home employees realistic? | scorpioxy: I don't have any experience building a team like that, but i recently moved from a full time work-at-home freelancer to a part time work-at-home freelancer when i took on a full time job.I can honestly confirm that my productivity has decreased by more than 50%. One part of it is because of the wasted time in getting to the office and back. Another bigger part is because programmers work in an open space plan. Some other parts would be office politics and so on...Working in a home office was so much better than i often ended up working 16 hours a day prior to a project deadline and not mind(i used to enjoy what i do).We used to communicate all the time via IM, via email, and via skype. And of course make full use of collaboration tools. Also, me being in a different time zone helped the process a lot.So yeah, some people will take advantage of this situation. But then again, bad people will try to take advantage of any situation. It is up to you to recognize those people and stay away from them. |
Time tracking | mkuhn: For me its something I normaly do at the end of my workday. Fiddling with a stopwatch mode throughout the whole day would be somewhat to much effort for me. |
Is a team of work-at-home employees realistic? | jjs: To make this work, you need frequently-measurable goals, even if the measurement is subjective.This isn't a matter of trust, it's a matter of motivation.It can be something squishy like, "Let me take a look at what Bob's checked in so far this week", or something more quantifiable, like, "Bob has closed n tickets today".[Even if you don't have a hard number of how many tickets someone should close in a day or week, you can generally eyeball it and if there's a discrepancy, look at the descriptions to see how hard the problems were].It's best to make this as transparent as possible to all members of a given team, and provide a system of rapid feedback and especially fast positive feedback for all progress.Try and keep communication focused on whatever channel everyone actually likes using. If you're using a wiki, trac, and basecamp to keep track of overlapping items, quickly ditch whichever ones nobody actually uses.If you can keep everybody motivated, communicative, and measurably productive, then you will actually be far better off than large traditional companies that rely on the ass-in-chair visibility metric to determine whether "work" is working. |
Is a team of work-at-home employees realistic? | geoffc: Absolutely this can be done and in my opinion is the best way to build a great software team. I am the CTO of Openair.com and this is how we have always operated. We have a dozen developers, about half in the Boston area and the other half spread across the US and we all work from home. Using this approach we have built a successful startup that has steadily and profitably grown every year for the last decade and we are now the dominant vendor in our space.I believe that this approach creates a work environment that allows us to attract and retain great developers. The kind of developer that really likes to write software and has the maturity and discipline to manage their own time and decisions.Some implementation notes:1. We release a new version every two months, the continual releases keep everyone on track with constant customer feedback.2. We all see and read the check-in diff's, absolutely the best way to know what someone is doing and how well they are doing it.3. There are great developers outside of the traditional Valley/Boston/Austin areas and a telecommuting team lets you find them and hire them.4. After about 6 months it becomes very clear who can handle the telecommuting setup and who can't. |
Is a team of work-at-home employees realistic? | gordonguthrie: Yes, it can be but it depends on your circumstances. My shop has done it very successfully for 16 months.But there are a number of critical issues to consider.The physical organisation of a workspace is a function of communication. Place those people who communicate a lot physically together because informal conversation is a lot cheaper than formal conversation.When you are writing software you therefore have to have the specifier and the coder co-located. Open Source projects work very well because (in the vast majority of cases) they are copying existing software. So sitting at home working on a clone of Microsoft Word - the specifier (a copy of Microsoft Word) is sitting next to the coder.When writing original software where the specification/product development is the core task this will be much harder - it may be impossible unless your specifier is an expert business architect, software architect and designer and can produce build-able specs and your team are capable of reading and implementing them on sight.You must also choose your toolset correctly to generate a high volume of informal communication, so:
* central SVN
* centralised mailing list (no point-to-point e-mails)
* continuous build with statusesEssentially on the software development side the complete open source software development stack is optimised for this stuff, so its a doddle - your work has an observable daily heartbeat. For other sorts of work (say sales, order fulfilment, HR, finance, etc, etc) it is much harder because the core stack doesn't exist - you will have to create it.The final thing you will have to do is be rigorous on formal comms. You will need to have an all hands call every working day. Sometimes 5 minutes, sometimes 35 minutes. You will need to organise face-to-face meetings regularly, Xmas dinners, launch parties, drinks and stuff.It can be very effective at reducing costs but it is a considerable management challenge and you need to think of it as such. If you adopt a "hey we don't need no steenkin management bullshit, we're way tool techies, hey!" you're probably doomed anyway. |
Is a team of work-at-home employees realistic? | swombat: That's how we're running our start-up (which, admittedly, is still quite small). We (the "active shareholders") meet physically once a week, but have no central office.As for the development team (3 people), one of us actually lives in the States most of the year, so we don't meet physically very often - instead, we have iteration meetings 3 times a week on Skype. Tasks are broken down so that they fit into 2-day chunks of time to make it easier to measure progress.There are certainly challenges, but I think if you're in the same geographical location they're not too hard to overcome. Good luck! |
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