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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... |
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 jus... |
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: br... |
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 vocabula... |
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... |
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 ... |
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 Fac... |
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 ge... |
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 cybersqua... |
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... |
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... |
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 ever... |
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, di... |
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 dedicate... |
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.... |
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 stuf... |
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... |
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.w3tm0mccab1... |
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 + to... |
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 reme... |
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 sanitiz... |
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, b... |
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'... |
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 incompatibili... |
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 sto... |
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 sta... |
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-... |
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 you... |
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 stor... |
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... |
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 ... |
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 ... |
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 ... |
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... |
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 a... |
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... |
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... |
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 d... |
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, an... |
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 uniqu... |
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 D... |
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 w... |
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 metric... |
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... |
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... |
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 ... |
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 r... |
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 c... |
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 i... |
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 ... |
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 h... |
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 info... |
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 - inste... |
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