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Review my side project: Sqrt(2) | asciilifeform: I have been sporadically working on a site quite like this one, but with a very different puzzle type. Congratulations on bringing out a working first! |
Using open source platforms for web app development | knieveltech: Choosing a closed source development platform specifically for web app development generally isn't going to increase the difficulty involved in reverse engineering all or part of your feature set so it makes sense to go with a framework that is well supported and works well with your infrastructure & current workflow. |
Emacs users on OS X, what's your setup? | zitterbewegung: Carbon emacs package (latest) Aquamacs is unstable at least the last time I used it. Anything.el makes emacs feel like quicksilver (which is AMAZING!!!). I use redshank (hacked version for scheme) + quack.el + paredit.el for my main environment. I have been trying to use darcs and the wiki page for notes but I haven't gotten into it. |
What sucks about snow shovels? | greatreorx: The fact that after a certain amount of snow depth, you have to use your back to lift and throw the snow.I was doing some Googling on this out of curiosity and ran into this...http://www.wovel.com which I feel like I've seen before but didn't really understand the advantage. Without seeing the video of it in use, it looks just like a shovel attached to a wheel. But the wheel gives you different leverage points so that you can use your body weight to throw the snow. That wasn't obvious without seeing the video. |
Using open source platforms for web app development | russell: I don't think how easily someone can duplicate your site is a reason for concern. If they can duplicate it in a weekend, you probably don't have much of IP value. If the proprietary system makes it easier to develop, then it may be of some value. If it makes it harder to develop, then you have shot yourself in the foot twice.Someone trying to reverse engineer your site probably wouldn't use anything of yours. They would start fresh with their own set of tools.I am pretty much biased towards open source, because it's cheaper, evolves faster, and you can mix and match. |
Have a Product idea (H/w) Best way to start? | astine: It might help if we had some ballpark estimate of what the product was. Is it a computer accessory? An router of some sort? A wireless device? A new kind of computer?If it's fairly simple, you could probably get away with just buying and assembling the parts to make a rough prototype, and using some free-software (ie, linux kernel) for the initial firmware.Once you've got the proof of concept going, you should be able to get some funding for the project and hire the folks you need. |
Using open source platforms for web app development | fauigerzigerk: I think there's a good general rule when it comes to this "build v buy" decision, no matter if the price of the software you're considering to buy is 0 or 10 million:The thing that is at the core of your product you must build yourself. Otherwise you're always going to be hampered in your effort to make it excellent. The problem is not that others can copy it, the problem is that your product is going to be shit, regardless of whether or not it is copied.Everything that is not at the center of your product you must buy, as building it will only distract from what you actually need to do.I know this is very general, but I don't know much about you or your ideas. I'll still try make this more concrete:If your product is software or a service that depends on the quality of software, then don't touch CMSs. Build from scratch (not including the operating system)!If you are a teacher or a tax advisor who creates great content for his clients, just set up and customise your joomla and publish your stuff there. Don't bother to build software! |
Have a Product idea (H/w) Best way to start? | vinalk: Well you can call it a netbook it acts as an accessory to a primary device. So i doubt that it can be assembled easily. :) |
Should you include extra features only if you can remove code elsewhere? | russell: Adding features at customer request degrades nearly anything. The requests usually add very little but clutter at the expense of a clean design. You should consider customer requests as you evolve your site, but don't be driven by them or by your own inclination to add features. Think of all the baggage in MS Word or the W3C specifications. |
Using open source platforms for web app development | astine: If you can purchase a proprietary solution, so can the competitor. In terms of competition, I think you're better off focusing on end product value rather than obfuscation. Obfuscation may make it more difficult to duplicate your effort, but it also may make further effort more difficult, hurting the product in the long run. Adding value not only give more for competition to duplicate, but also allows you to charge more and garner more customers. |
Anyone want to help clone election.twitter.com for a local election? | collint: Hey, this sounds interesting.send me an email: collintmiller@gmail.com if you want to talk about this. |
Emacs users on OS X, what's your setup? | saikat: Bill Clementson has a nice write up on his setup that has more to do with how not to get hurt using Emacs that I have found very helpful. Not necessarily specific to OS X, but he has a few suggestions that seem helpful for OS X (like making the right apple key your meta key):http://bc.tech.coop/blog/041024.htmlhttp://bc.tech.coop/blog/041029.htmlhttp://bc.tech.coop/blog/060116.htmlhttp://bc.tech.coop/blog/060131.html |
Have a Product idea (H/w) Best way to start? | ejs: It would heavily depend on what % of the product was hardware dev time vs software dev time. It might be worth having someone else build the hardware?Or if you can cannibalize some other hardware/dev boards it saves a great deal. |
What sucks about snow shovels? | bbuffone: Being that I used a shovel just this morning, I can think of a couple things:1.) Snow falls of the end of the shovel.
2.) Can't use the shovel to clean up the car. Need to get a snow brush and if the snow is deep it doesn't work well.
3.) When it snows a lot you need to throw it farther.
4.) Doesn't always get down to the pavement.
5.) The shovel that does the driveway isn't that good for the front steps.
6.) Snow shovels break when you use them to remove ice. |
What sucks about snow shovels? | hotshothenry: how about a heated shovel? |
What sucks about snow shovels? | pg: For me the biggest problem with the classic snow shovel is (was!) that it's not good with ice. It assumes powder. It also assumes a flat surface. So it's good for shoveling newly fallen snow off a concrete suburban driveway, but lousy for clearing a Cambridge sidewalk.Maybe you could design an urban snowshovel. It could be narrower and heavier, like a regular shovel. |
Emacs users on OS X, what's your setup? | toffer: Question for everyone who binds the Caps Lock key to CTRL:If you use the Caps Lock key as CTRL, then it feels pretty awkward for me to type some key combinations (like ctrl-x or ctrl-c) and still keep my fingers on the "home row".Do you just get used to this? Do you type ctrl-x with your pinky and ring finger? Or, do you shift your hand away from the home row and type ctrl-x with your pinky and middle finger? |
P2P Wireless | wmf: This is called mesh networking; the Google will turn up plenty of information, disinformation, products, research, etc. Right now it's pretty immature IMO, with a price/performance that is 10x (or more) worse than point-to-multipoint wireless. Technically, mesh is very cool because there are plenty of interesting problems yet to be solved, but practically I think point-to-point or point-to-multipoint wireless is better for rural Internet access. |
What is your Lipson-Shiu type? | ewiethoff: HTML head:<meta name="description" content="Interactive spoof of corporate personality tests"> |
Where should I buy an SSL certificate for my site? | BlueSkies: I started my search by looking at the providers that offered certificates accepted by Firefox and Internet Explorer. My next level of filtering was to look at cost and the ability to try the certificate for free during a trial period.I settled on Comodo (instantssl.com). The evaluation period went perfectly. At the end of the period, I paid (I seem to recall $99) for a one year certificate. They required a couple forms of indentification (driver's license, utility bill) and the process went smoothly. I am using the certificate now at bigtweet.com. |
Review my side project: Sqrt(2) | tokenadult: I've thought about this for a long time. (I've been an online moderator since 1992, on a variety of networks.) I would prefer a system of testing people on specific knowledge of specific subjects, and giving them visible badges to show other users they know about, for example, economics or education policy or computer industry issues. Then use the people's knowledge badges to weight karma scoring (and introduction to moderation privileges) behind the scenes. If you program it, I and my friends will visit the site. |
Review my side project: Sqrt(2) | tokenadult: You have to let users see the site first to get them interested. Logging in should be for posting privileges, not just for viewing.See my other comment in this thread about why I prefer specific knowledge tests to puzzles. Puzzles neither screen out the people who most need screening out nor draw in the people who can add the most value to the site if drawn in. |
What sucks about snow shovels? | pedalpete: not sure if you've seen the wovel (wovel.com) combining a wheelbarow and a shovel. No longer original, but something you might want to work into your design as it seems a very effective tool. |
BrightKite/Loopt/etc Developers? Your take on Google Latitude? | volida: This is the wrong question. |
What sucks about snow shovels? | comatose_kid: Random thoughts:1) Pulling is generally easier than pushing. Perhaps this could be helpful in designing a variation.2) Turn shoveling into a game. Perhaps a small lcd display that keeps track of how many pounds you shoveled, how many calories burned, time spent.
Or you could have challenges - eg, shovel 10 times in the next 20 seconds. etc.3) Could you use an accelerometer to determine if the shoveler had bad posture? |
Emacs users on OS X, what's your setup? | adoyle: I run a vncserver (from MacPorts) on my MacBook. Then inside there I do all my coding with Emacs, generally two frames side-by side. I access it via Chicken of the VNC. I set up the same vncserver setup on all the machines I do work on, and can access each one from any other without losing context. I rarely find the need to cut/paste from the OS X desktop into/out of my vnc windows, but it can be done. |
How to market an iphone math game for kids of 2-7 | siong1987: Off-topic: How many 2-7 kids own a mobile phone in US?(Not iPhone)I am not sure about in US. But, you are definitely targeting the wrong market in my country Malaysia. |
Emacs users on OS X, what's your setup? | tlb: I've been using Emacs for 20 years, and fully converted my desktops to Mac last year.I like Aquamacs OK with option->meta and caps lock -> control like you have. With that setup, it's a bit of a twist to get my pinky finger onto meta, but it's tolerable on my Microsoft Natural keyboard.The biggest nuisance is that I can't figure out how to bind function keys. I liked having F2 = goto-line (rather M-g g) and F3 = compile.After 20 years of Emacs, I've actually started to like Cmd-c and Cmd-v rather than C-k and C-y.Also, the scroll wheel on the Mighty Mouse works pretty well in Aquamacs. Though you do have to clean the scroll wheel (by rolling it around on your pants) every few days. |
Emacs users on OS X, what's your setup? | tsetse-fly: I use Carbon Emacs because Cocoa Emacs has a black square in the center of the frame for the visual bell. Also, there's no visual separator between windows when you have your scroll bar/fringes turned off. Aquamacs is too exotic. |
What sucks about snow shovels? | ivankirigin: I wouldn't try to change the shovel. It works just fine. Maybe it could use a robot attached to it to automate the process, but both perception and mobility in snow are hard problems.I would try to solve the snow-elimination problem. What the hell do you do with it all?I think something creative with Fresnel lenses, charcoal powder, and thin films would work well. |
Favorite board games? | ardell: Risk, Settlers of Catan, Puerto RicoSomeone just set up an Atlanta startup community board game night where we get startup-minded folks to play strategy board games like these once a quarter. |
Favorite board games? | seregine: Modern Art is pretty fun, and since it's auction-based you end up thinking about negotiation and valuations.I'm learning to play Go, and it really appeals to me in the same way Lisp might - simple, elegant, but with endless depth. |
Favorite board games? | geuis: Robo Rally |
HN Gathering in Silicon Valley? | ktharavaad: Considering how anti-social most hacker-types are, maybe its better if you make it a session with a "purpose" instead, such as perhaps a gathering where each person gets to show everyone something you are working on.. (etc). Otherwise, gathering just for the sake of gathering doesn't sound appealing enough.But if the event does go down, I'd be willing to show up. |
Favorite board games? | fbbwsa: backgammon.started playing it recently when i got a new job and the guys at my new firm play it. fun as hell. |
Emacs users on OS X, what's your setup? | wfarr: Stay away from Aquamacs. It is for all intents and purposes, Emacs, but with all the useful stuff watered down in an attempt to make it fit in better with Mac OS.My config is here: http://github.com/wfarr/dotfiles/ |
Favorite board games? | icey: It's rather silly, but I seriously love "The Farming Game" (http://www.farmgame.com/).Maybe it's the whole running a business aspect, or just that I really like tractors. |
How do you determine which project you should work on? | rubentopo: I don't know how many of you will read this, but i thought of posting this new finding that has helped me.I read Joel's functional spec article some time ago and decided to give it a go. I started writing functional specs for three ideas i was thinking of working on (but obviously i don't have the time to work on all three).I had a terrible time writing the spec for one idea,one idea was right in the middle between and there was the one i was truly passionate about(not obvious at first sight though).Writing these functional specs helped me find which of these possible projects was the most interesting and promising.Hope one of you finds this useful.Here's the link to Joel's article:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000036.html |
HN Gathering in Silicon Valley? | skmurphy: We do four Bootstrappers Breakfasts a month ( see http://www.bootstrapperbreakfast.com ) in Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale and Milpitas you are welcome to check out for the price of your breakfast. This Friday's in Palo Alto is full (Eric Ries is a guest speaker) but the others all have seats left. We've been doing them for several years and have had a number of HN folks show up even though most start at 7:30am (Mountain View starts at 9am).Jonathan Nelson ( http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=iamelgringo ) also puts on a http://www.hackersandfounders.com event every few weeks that's good and get HN folks. |
How to market an iphone math game for kids of 2-7 | ram1024: one problem with your game app is there's no centralized character. you're not going to gain market share without a mascot or lead character.it's dora teaches math, or build math skills with bob or blue's math clues or something, that's what gets parents to buy for kids in the US. it's about reputable franchises. |
HN Gathering in Silicon Valley? | catch23: You should checkout superhappydevhouse. They have hacker parties that alternate between the bay & city. Also, some of us are trying to create a hacker space in the bay:http://hackerdojo.pbwiki.com/I should note that I met my 2 cofounders at SHDH. Hackers aren't the only attendees. |
Review my side project: Sqrt(2) | travism: Nice to see that I'm not alone in trying to build a better social news site as a side project. And by the way, when you say "we", we all know there's only one of you. And forget about scaling. Learned that long ago myself...My side project is at http://mushpot.net, and I think the goals are similar to sqrt(2):- multiple votes- make it harder to game the system- give more productive members more influence over the contentBut instead of having users solve puzzles, on Mush Pot, the amount you get to vote depends on how many votes your submissions have received. And since I'm already started, here are some of the other ideas behind it:- long posts, not just links (posts can have hyperlinks)- there's no difference between top-level posts and comments..anything can appear on the front page- make users provide a reason for downvoting (or pile onto a reason given by another user)- tags, ability to weight your front page using tagsAnd it also lets you login with Facebook and post your submissions back to your Facebook feed.Wow, I'm impressing myself with the length of this feature list, although I have been building the site for quite a while. Now, everyone, at the count of three...click...HERE!: http://mushpot.net |
Favorite board games? | TrevorJ: Another vote for Settlers, also axis and allies is good. |
Favorite board games? | avinashv: I enjoy Backgammon and Checkers, Scrabble and Monopoly.My current affair is with Rubik's Cubes, though--but that's not the exact question here. |
How do you think about programs? | lyime: Omni Graffle and Mindmaps. Pen and Paper works too. |
Favorite board games? | dantheman: Civilization (out of print)
Industria
Carcassonne
Pueto Rico |
How do you think about programs? | pbrown: I started with post-it notes, but kept losing them too. Now I use Freemind, and have a really big whiteboard (of the manual variety) on the wall in my office.You mentioned you're having a problem with big apps. I'm the same way. At the risk of sounding condescending (which I'm not) break the big app down into a bunch of small apps (features). I find this works for me in two ways. 1.) I can code the small apps easier (and then ideally put them together into the big app). and 2.) If I find I'm getting feature creep, it's easier to dump 1 or 2 "small" apps rather than rethinking the whole project. |
Emacs users on OS X, what's your setup? | alexott: There are small differencies between my Emacs setup for Mac OS X & for Linux.
You can find my configuration at http://xtalk.msk.su/~ott/common/emacs/_emacs.html, and macosx-specific configurations at http://xtalk.msk.su/~ott/common/emacs/rc/emacs-rc-local-flas... |
Recommend science experiments and videos for unfortunate school students | d0mine: Google give some good results for "interactive physics" http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=interactive+physicsFor example:http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_edu/physites.html |
Recommend science experiments and videos for unfortunate school students | chris11: I'm not quite sure what you would want to do for experiments, but Walter Lewin has a pretty good set of introductory physics video lectures on Open Course Ware. He's somewhat famous for his physics demonstrations.MIT link: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-02Electricity-and-Magnet...Youtube Link for promo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Zc9Nuoe2Ow |
Recommend science experiments and videos for unfortunate school students | acangiano: I don't have much more to add to the other comments. I just wanted to say THANK YOU for doing this. |
Recommend science experiments and videos for unfortunate school students | jacquesm: Awesome initiative. If I had to teach physics on a shoestring budget I'd go back in time to the 1700's or so, take the methods and principles as discovered then and teach science as a method instead of physics specifically.Use physics as an illustration of what goes in to good science with the relatively simple devices of that age and you're laying the foundation for more education later on.For example, your '4', heat: I'd use a simplified Stirling engine for that, it wouldn't take more than a bunch of clothes hangers and tin cans to make a working heat engine, which gives you all the hooks you need to go from Boyle to Carnot. |
Recommend science experiments and videos for unfortunate school students | Moogler: Youtube has some really interesting material, let me know if you want me to make a course for 5) The Universe. |
Recommend science experiments and videos for unfortunate school students | RiderOfGiraffes: Get them to play with toys that demonstrate scientific principles. It's amazing how much they absorb. Then you will have a solid basis from which to say "How does this work? What do these have in common?"I found this link some time ago here on HN:http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/toys.htmlPick two or three, make the toys, play, then ask "What did you see?" and "Why is it so?"I don't know your experience in teaching, but your willingness and enthusiasm are fantastic.Good Luck! |
Recommend science experiments and videos for unfortunate school students | hotpockets: I always loved this guy, julius sumner mills. I still love him and his enthusiasm for physics. I would definitely check out his experiments.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCcZyW-6-5oHere's his one on heat energy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhQEVR_Tsiw&feature=relat...Also, physics for future presidents is a cool video lecture series at berkely. The first lecture is on heat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ysbZ_j2xi0 |
How do you think about programs? | jacquesm: I outline first, then turn the outline into the program. Items on the outline are 'actions' or 'data', data goes to the top of the outline, actions follow.I hope that's clear and that it will work for you, it works like a charm for me, even for very large projects.Outline editors are a dime a dozen, not sure which ones you could use on the mac though... |
Recommend science experiments and videos for unfortunate school students | collision: As a high school physics student, the experiments that I feel would be most educational/enlightening are:
- Measuring gravity using a pendulum (using T=2.pi.sqrt(l/g))
- Measuring the resistivity of wire
- Measuring values for specific latent heats, specific heats of fusion etcWhen doing experiments, I always found the ones where we were trying to calculate a known value experimentally (g, specific heats etc) to be the best. |
Recommend science experiments and videos for unfortunate school students | Herring: Saturday morning science, experiments on the ISShttp://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/crew/exp6/spacechronicle... |
Recommend science experiments and videos for unfortunate school students | cool-RR: I can think of two wicked experiments right now. I don't know if they're relevant to you, but I'll describe them and you can decide for yourself.1.
You tie a string from the wall to a motor. Ideally you should be able to control the frequency of the motor, but if you don't have this equipment, it's okay. The string will vibrate rapidly. You then close the lights and put a stroboscope on the string. You tune it, by trial and error, to the same frequency of the motor. Then you see the string frozen in a wave form. You can change the freq slightly to make it move slowly. You can have the kids touch the string at the proper places to make standing waves.2.
This one is really simple to do. You take a small object (like a soda can) and tie it with a string to the ceiling. (Let's say the string's length is about half the height of the ceiling.) You pull back the can and release it, making it swing from left to right (Without a circular swing.) Then you hand out "half-sunglasses" to the kids. It could just be a piece of dark film, or a partly opaque glass. As long as it's a bit dark and you can see through it. You put the film on one eye, you see the can going in a circle. You put it on the other eye, you see it going in a circle the opposite direction.This happens because the eye with the dark film gets a lower refresh rate. The image on that eye is of the can in a slightly retarded position than the other eye. This messes with the 3D analysis that the brain does, and makes it look like the can is getting closer/farther from you. |
Recommend science experiments and videos for unfortunate school students | trekker7: What kinds of computer concepts will you be teaching to the kids (Word/Excel, basic programming, data structures and algorithms)? Do they have access to any computers outside of class, like in an Internet cafe, or even on a cell phone that can be hacked to accept code? |
Emacs users on OS X, what's your setup? | jwr: I use CVS builds of GNU Emacs, they work great. Just check the source out from CVS and './configure --with-ns; make install' will produce an Emacs.app for you to drag to Applications.The only problems I have is a bug where if you resize your window at least once, it will cause annoying flashes during redraw (but I almost never resize my emacs window, so that's not an issue) and that I would like more integration with the OS.On the latter front, I already started calling NS services from Emacs (ns-service-Things-add-item-as-Note). This is very cool. What I'd like is more of an ability to customize what Emacs does when it is called to open a file.I remap Caps Lock to Ctrl. |
Recommend science experiments and videos for unfortunate school students | RK: You can do a lot for 2) with Slinkys or other long springs and a stopwatch to help understand waves, frequency, etc.There's also a cool outdoor experiment you can do to measure the speed of sound by clapping pieces of wood/books together in a constant, even rhythm such that you hear an echo between each clap (so you hear clap - echo - clap - echo). By measuring the distance to the wall, and timing the sequence for a set number of claps/echoes, you can get a good estimate of the speed of sound. You can also make a game to see which "team" can get the best measurement. It's a very cheap demo, but it utilizes a lot of concepts of physics and physics experiments. |
How do you think about programs? | karim: "Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it."René DescartesI break the program in functional parts that are easier to grasp and I assemble those parts only after having written tests for those parts. |
Recommend science experiments and videos for unfortunate school students | revorad: Awesome stuff. Thanks for doing this.What age are these kids? What's the local language? |
How do you think about programs? | lallysingh: I've tried a lot of systems (omni* and a few others), but here are what stick with me:Emacs Org-Mode for the day-to-day stuff that I want to keep in front of me when I'm writing code. It's essentially perfect for it. Using the tables with pasted-in code is utterly fantastic (hint: replace-regex '^' with '|> ' and it'll keep your indentation before you hit tab and tablify the code).Org mode does tables, outlines, todo lists, agendas, mostly everything a programmer's going to want day to day.For higher-level planning, I leave the workstation. Get a cup of coffee/soda/juice/who-are-we-kidding-its-coffee and a table away from computers. A moleskine (the squared one, with the grid layout) and a good pen (I like these $4 pilot extra-fine vballs) is what I use. Relaxing music in noise-canceling headphones FTW.Do yourself a favor and begin with the habit of writing the date on a page when you start writing on it. It's useful for you to see your progress over time, and it can be helpful later in patent disputes.As for the thinking process itself, here's my heuristic:- Small apps are mostly driven by a framework you just use (probably some MFC/DI garbage). Keep your code clean & organized, and work a little to keep the expected chaos from working with always-mysterious frameworks contained. E.g. don't ever trust the framework to handle your model code for you. Use proxy classes, multiple inheritance, whatever to firewall yourself from that chaos.- Medium apps have enough internal structure to get past the cognitive mass of the framework. There, you end up with a top-level abstraction that structures the app. Be it a pipeline, a set of command objects, or a data structure you maintain, there's one big one and the app is structured by it.- Large apps have a few of these. They're independent subsystems and you firewall their interactions the best you can. Unless you've got the time/labor for large-scale refactoring, you generally just try to keep the abstractional dams from breaking. In those cases, I usually try to get some middleware in there, so I can easily handle stubs, testing, and interactive use with each. If you've got a REPL, you can avoid it, but in C++/Java, it can really help. |
Recommend science experiments and videos for unfortunate school students | paraschopra: Which area of India does this school belong to? Your initiative looks interesting |
Recommend science experiments and videos for unfortunate school students | ced: I'm in a similar position, but I'm in a Tibetan refugee camp. The children and teenagers here already get (limited but sufficient) food and shelter, so it's a good place for potential teaching.Got an email address? Also, it'd be nice of you to tell us how it went afterwards. |
Emacs users on OS X, what's your setup? | dannywoodz: I use Emacs on Windows, Mac and Linux, so I generally like the normal Emacs keybindings on everything. That way, it's equally alien/consistent on all platforms, and I just start 'thinking in Emacs'. I use Carbon Emacs on the Mac.I keep my .emacs and a tree of elisp files (things like ecb, magit, slime, etc.) in my git repository, which I update and sync across the machines I use: this gives me a great deal of consistency across platforms.One alteration I make on all platforms is to remap the caps lock key as a second control key: caps lock is useless, and the number of times you have to reach for control in Emacs makes it worthwhile making it easy. |
Rate my webapp: commandlinefu.com | cubicle67: Looks useful.You might want to consider a means of flagging dangerous/mis-titled scripts. I see you've already got a destroy everything ("best line eva") and a fork bomb. |
Favorite board games? | spyrosk: Risk, Talisman, Arkham Horror and Android. The latter two are really good, but they could be a bit frustrating if you've never played anything like them again. Once you get the hang of it though they are really addicting. |
Rate my webapp: commandlinefu.com | ph0rque: Minor nitpick... the color scheme hurts my eyes. |
Rate my webapp: commandlinefu.com | TrevorJ: Good idea. From a design standpoint I have seen successful designs use the black/green pallet, but the white border on your site makes it too difficult to pay attention to the text.Green and black is bold, white and black is bolder so it is pulling the eye to an element that should be a background element.Other than that, nice idea. How about providing a bookmarklet people can drag to their browser bars? |
Recommend science experiments and videos for unfortunate school students | mhb: The Exploratorium Cookbooks are expensive, but full of lots of great ideas:
http://store.exploratorium.edu/browse.cfm/4,19.htmlThe Exploratorium Snackbooks are also very good.The Exploratorium Quarterly magazine was also great. Although it is not published any more, I see that you can buy copies at abebooks. You should search for anything with Exploratorium in the title. It is probably worth buying. |
Rate my webapp: commandlinefu.com | jsmanger: I'm viewing it in Firefox, and the content area at the top is blank, while the sidebars ("What's this" etc.) appear. The content area (Command-line-fu alpha) appears all the way at the bottom, once all the sidebars finish. |
Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | mechanical_fish: Of course I would pay $5/year for HN. I lose more money than that every time I compose a new comment. Time is money, after all.That doesn't mean it's a good idea, though. I think it almost certainly isn't. It sends entirely the wrong message, it's a much bigger pain to implement than it's worth, it might work all too well at cutting the volume of submissions and comments (if you think a crowded HN is bad, fork HN -- the code is open source! -- put it up on your server, and see how exciting that is)... and it won't work. You really think a troll won't pay five bucks a year? I think you severely underestimate the entertainment value that a troll derives from trolling.If, in fact, HN eventually declines to the Reddit level, the solution will be the same as ever: Some of us will head off into small invite-only groups (note that invite-only is distinct from for pay), and the rest of us will migrate to a handful of other new social news sites which will thrive for a while until they succumb to the same problem, or to an entirely new problem, after which the cycle begins anew. As someone has said in the past, it's like restaurants, or music clubs. They flare up, grow, shrink, and die out all the time. |
Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | mdasen: No.Basically, part of the value (most?) of HN is that there are other people here. Charging $5 would mean less content submitted and fewer comments. If the NYTimes or WSJ tries to charge, it doesn't significantly change the content of their sites since they're both created top-down by paid writers and editors.When you're trying to monetize user-generated content, you can't try to do so in a way that will mean less user-generated content. This is the same problem that Facebook has - their value is that you have so many users and content from those users, but if they start charging they won't have so many users and people will find another site to replace Facebook with. Sure, one could make the argument that here a $5 fee could keep out some of the less desirable people, but it would also eliminate many of those who make the site desirable. It's not that the content doesn't have enough value to be worth $5 to me, it's that once you start charging money, the value of the content drops as many won't pay for it. |
Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | vaksel: the problem is that a lot of people refuse to pay on principle. To many people it doesn't matter if its $.01 or $99, the whole process of paying is a barrier to them |
Rate my webapp: commandlinefu.com | dhimes: "This site has temporarily exceeded its connection limit. Please try again in a few minutes."Dang. |
Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | d0mine: Metafilter has a one-time $5 fee http://www.metafilter.com/newuser.mefi |
Rate my webapp: commandlinefu.com | axod: "This site has temporarily exceeded its connection limit. Please try again in a few minutes."I'd move it from nearlyfreespeech.net to linode/slicehost/etc to start with. The bandwidth pricing on nearlyfreespeech is tons ($1/GB) compared to linode ($0.10/GB).Once I got in, very cool, bookmarked :) |
Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | pauljonas: No.Hasn't experience over the past 10+ years answered this question been already?1. Audience shrinkage — less readers and posters would mean less garbage, but it would also denote less of everything, including quality…2. Less of an attraction even to one subscribed with the subtraction of public visibility (outside search engine scope).3. Already a tried and failed proposition — look at NY Times, WSJ, etc.…The genie is out of the bottle and their really is no way to stuff it back in and cap it again… |
Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | tptacek: Yes, because what Hacker News needs most right now is a bigger sense of entitlement among its users. |
Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | stewiecat: This is what MeFi and Kevin Smith's forums do. I believe Smith donates the money to charity, but his aim is to keep the crap out.I'd pay $5/yr for this. Hell, I'd pay $10 if it went to a tech charity. |
Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | ilamont: Metafilter has a one-time, $5 signup fee, plus restrictions on new users to post content:http://www.metafilter.com/newuser.mefiUnfortunately, by raising the bar to participation, a lot of people who would be an asset to the community are prematurely excluded.My suggestion for dealing with trolls and flames is applying a "three strikes" rule: If a new user's average comment rating drops below negative two, their account gets frozen for a set period of time. Or, you could apply some sort of "three strikes" rule (three comments -4 or below result in a freezing). |
Rate my webapp: commandlinefu.com | leftnode: Definitely love the usefulness of this so far. I've already implemented the grep for stuff script ignored .svn directories. Been looking for how to do that for months.I would make it totally non-registration necessary. For example, I'd like to upvote some scripts but I don't like that I have to be signed in to do so. Its a great idea for a site, but I don't see it becoming a huge community where people trade scripts, rather a place where someone posts a small script they find. Thus, I'd like to be able to post scripts and vote on them without being a member. Or, make it only possible to downvote scripts by being a member.I'll definitely be using this to learn some new command line stuff. Great idea! |
Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | jimfl: No, but I'd pay a $20 one-time fee. The reason for this is that I find recurring costs to be a hassle to worry about. |
Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | Retric: I might pay 5$ a week for HN as it i now, but I think you would lose a lot of users at 5$/year. At which point the site might not be worth 5$/year. If you want to make money off of a website the most proven method is to use advertising or to have a basic free site and then add a premium tier.This means finding a feature that adds 5$ a year in value but is not needed for the rest of the site. Which is not as hard as you might assume. One obvious option for HN would be the ability to bookmark and follow users. Even a simple table with timestamps of last post, and the numbers of posts in the last hour, day, week, and lifetime might do it. |
Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | andr: Make it $5 per HOUR. That would be the perfect noprocrast. |
Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | jacquesm: No, and not because I can't afford it but because I think that any site that charges $5 for people to contribute content is misunderstanding the beauty of the web.Everybody can contribute, even those for who $5 would be a very large expense, and you'd be surprised how big a portion of the world that would be.Some Indian, Latin American, Chinese or Russian hacker would - even if capable of paying - find themselves locked out because they can't pay by card, either because they don't have them or because the IPSP won't allow them to use it. |
Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | wheels: Only if it would stop posts like this.We're not in charge of HN, we can't set up a billing system; we can't make Paul's decisions for him and he asks for input when he wants it. As such, these musings are just killing time and taking up space on the front page where actual hacker news could be. |
Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | kirubakaran: I'll give you one data point that you may want to consider:When I was a high school student, it would have been difficult for me to participate in HN. $5/yr was a significant amount of money for me then ($5 = INR240). And I wasn't even poor.Many people I know totally couldn't have afforded $5/yr when they were students. I am sure there are countries where US$5 is even more unthinkable. |
Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | marksutherland: kuro5hin.org did more or less exactly this and it pretty much killed the site. Growth reversed, and the trolls and spammers turned out to be willing to pay. Personally I'm in favour of enforcing strong identity so that folks reputations follow them around.That being said, it does seem to have worked for Something Awful. |
Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | adnymarc: I would definitely pay (whether $5 or $50 doesnt matter) a year but feel that paying just to post/comment would merely serve to limit the number of people committed to quality contribution without offering added value to the core community. Essentially you would have to pay to help other HN users. What if the stories remained public but viewing/participating in the discussion required membership (at a cost)? |
Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | inklesspen: Something Awful Forums charges a $10 one-time fee (plus add-ons), and it doesn't seem to impede people from doing truly stupid things, as you can see with a simple glance at their Lepers Colony: http://forums.somethingawful.com/banlist.php |
Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | electromagnetic: I love the community here at HN, but I don't want to discourage new users from joining this environment. I do believe that good moderation by long-term users will keep the environment stable, but eventually HN is likely to burn out like an old candle and charging any amount of money is just hurrying up the process that will lead to the end of HN. |
Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | ratsbane: My first thought was absolutely yes but then I began to wonder whether that would do anything for the quality of submissions. $5 isn't very much; why would that discourage low-value comments any more than high-value ones? I assume you mean that reading would still be free but you would have to have a paid account to post?Counter-proposal: make it easier to tie someone's HN name to a real identity. Perhaps require email address confirmation and a waiting period for new accounts before allowing a first post?On the high-ratio orange-username thing: neat idea but comment karma depends so much on how early in the life of the thread a comment is posted. Readers who check in less frequently and respond to longer threads are less likely to score high regardless of comment quality. (Also, I'm sad to not be orange.) |
How do you think about programs? | rubentopo: No one method works all the time, this depends on the paradigm of the target language. At least i can't use one method.One thing that makes it much easier (at least for me) is trying to use dependency injection, otherwise i get lost.Misko Hevery said it better.
http://misko.hevery.com/2008/11/11/clean-code-talks-dependen... |
Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | juliend2: I don't agree with the idea, but if it was required, i would definitely pay this amount to stay in the community. I dont visit Digg anymore since i know HN! For me it's an evolutionary step.HN means a lot to me. |
Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | yawniek: have users with a certain reputation in and then charge a fee for new ones or just forbid commenting for users without reputation?! |
Would you pay $5/yr for HN? | CalmQuiet: If the charge served to reduce the chaff from unvetted commentators, then I'd have no problem with it. Depending on...How smoothe (and trust-worthy) is the credit card payment process. If it makes registration/payment more of a hassle then the time/trouble cost would personally be a barrier when the $5.00 would not. But that's just me. |
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