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Do you vouch for the accuracy of links you submit? | pclark: Obviously. What I submit reflects upon me, and as a founder of a startup I don't want to be known for submitting junk on one of the largest startup communities. |
Do you vouch for the accuracy of links you submit? | unalone: Yes. I rarely submit; when I do, I only submit things that might actually provoke interesting conversation. |
Do you vouch for the accuracy of links you submit? | mechanical_fish: HN guidelines strongly discourage editorializing in the titles of submissions, and these titles can be edited after the fact by site editors.Without the power to editorialize in the title, I don't think there's a good way to distinguish between submitting something that you agree with and submitting something that you would like to discuss, even though you disagree with it.This is actually one reason why the anti-editorializing guideline makes sense. We really don't want HN to clog up with links to bad arguments that need refuting. There are far more bad articles than good ones, and the readers just don't have the time to sort them out for themselves. That's what HN is supposed to be doing for us! So we encourage people to submit only quality links, or suffer the consequences to their own reputation.I think it's important to remember that HN isn't designed to replace blogs. If you want to start a critical discussion about some piece of content, write a blog post that criticizes it, then submit that blog post. That's what I would do. |
which OS (win, OSX, linux) works best on 64-bit edition? | safetytrick: I've had a lot of problems with 64 bit Linux and no problems with 64 bit Windows or OSX (to be honest i did come late to the 64 bit Windows game, after many problems had been resolved). OS X is good but not if you have to pay the Apple prices for ram, or for a Mac Pro that can support more than a piddly 4 or 6 GB's. |
Do you vouch for the accuracy of links you submit? | vaksel: I submit stuff that I think will be interesting to others.But I don't endorse it as being accurate or truthful since most times I just skim the stuff.And yes a lot of my stuff have "bait" titles, because I use the quick-submit that just uses the original post's title. You know:javascript:window.location=%22http://news.ycombinator.com/submitlink?u=%22+encodeURICompon... |
What tools do you use to monitor your servers? | pclark: GetExceptional for rails apps & pingdom for everything else. |
The best way store thousands of Images on a server | pclark: http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/ |
which OS (win, OSX, linux) works best on 64-bit edition? | listic: I'm a Windows person, and I don't want to switch away from XP. When I recently built a new PC with 4 GB of RAM I had to switch to 64-bit and I had a bit of unpleasant experience with it. Windows XP 64-bit is built upon the codebase of Windows Server 2003 (Vista is Windows Server 2008) and it shows.1. Some hardware may not have drivers for the OS. While on 32-bit system you can connect any device form a decade ago and it will possibly work (with drivers that were also written a decade ago), with 64-bit there's additional possibility of breakage. My printer, HP LaserJet 1015, is manufactured in 2004, but alas, it doesn't have drivers for XP 64-bit. I can get away with installing un-working driver and substituting the driver with LaserJet III's which kinda works. HP's support can recommend nothing better too.2. Same with system software; something might break too, most likely if it is system-related. I have used SwitchIt, a keyboard layout switcher, for a long time. Its last version is from 1996, but it worked fine for me. In 64-bit, it doesn't. (there's a beta version now which kinda works, but what if there wasn't one?)3. Not 64-bit related, but Windows related one. I came to like Hibernate feature in Windows XP, but it stopped working for RAM >= 4GB. It's a known issue: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888575 I guess, the person who wrote it left long ago and they can't figure out how to add support for files>4GB, or addressing RAM>4GB at boot time. Seems like other OS folks don't have this problem. |
What tools do you use to monitor your servers? | barredo: I made a tiny script on my server that get's all the numbers that I want (http connectios, mysql connections, cpu usage, etc) and put them on a txt file.The only thing I got to do is check the file online whenever I want.You could do this and also add email alerts easily. |
The best way store thousands of Images on a server | mqatrombone: A smaller web server like lighttpd or cherokee may be a better choice if all you are serving is images. |
The best way store thousands of Images on a server | kierank: MogileFS might be what you're looking for:http://www.danga.com/mogilefs/with an nginx or lighttpd frontend.The documentation is a little sparse though the mailing list and irc are useful for help.Also it would somewhat depend on your traffic profile. If you've got thousands of random reads (e.g. thumbnails with dozens per page, ssds might be better; specifically the Intel X-25).Otherwise MogileFS with an array of fast drives would probably do the job. Mogile can also do load balancing based on drive I/O because each image is replicated across different files/machines.EDIT: Make sure you've got browser caching set up correctly (though admittedly that's a tiny bit harder with Mogile)If you can use a expiry time that's far in the future.
Also don't send a Last-Modified nor an ETag Header.
Only send Expires. |
Do you vouch for the accuracy of links you submit? | justlearning: I don't submit(not yet!). I take fancy to the comments here. I read the comments in depth and skim over any articles submitted.I think, even a 'dumb' article gets decent conversations thread.Accurate or not, it's the crowd that discusses that makes a molehill of a mountain or otherwise.PS: I used to think, I should comment on something I think I can talk about. But now, I think on reflecting my opinion on my understanding. I don't care about karma (points) as long as I express clearly what I 'thought' reading thru.. |
Do you vouch for the accuracy of links you submit? | swombat: Most of the time, I submit things that I believe are worth reading. Occasionally, however, I do submit things that I believe are worth discussing, rather than reading (i.e. I don't agree with the point being made, but I want to read the discussion of that point).Usually, in the latter case, I get involved in the discussion too. |
Do you vouch for the accuracy of links you submit? | tokenadult: For the record, I have submitted articles whenever I thought they raised a factual issuea) that would be of interest to hackers,b) that hasn't been discussed from that point of view recently (I tend to search for previous submissions to HN before posting),andc) that is subject to illumination by further discussion from people of differing points of view.I definitely do NOT only post links that agree with my personal point of view on issues. But based on how mechanical_fish and others replied below, I think I'll impose a higher quality screen on future submissions from my keyboard, agreeing with several replies here that there are A LOT of links out there that are junk. |
Advantages of immutable variables besides concurrency | mooism2: It means you know where the variable's value came from.It also makes sharing common parts between different data structures easier. |
The best way store thousands of Images on a server | blurry: Check out this Stanford presentationFacebook - Needle in a Haystack: Efficient Storage of Billions of Photoshttp://www.flowgram.com/p/2qi3k8eicrfgkv/ |
Do you vouch for the accuracy of links you submit? | rksprst: To an extent. I think that the seriousness with which people take submissions are a result of "peer pressure"/"crowdthink" and that some might even be afraid to submit an article if they aren't sure its "on-topic" because of karma/comments of other users. I have no proof, but I think that this happens too much and interesting articles are not summited out of fear of not conforming to the views of this community as a whole. |
Carnegie Mellon or Stanford | trickjarrett: Wow, that's a tough call. Congrats to you for having the choice of which to go to.I'd probably recommend Stanford overall. It's very highly ranked. Though if you're looking for CS academic work, you might go with Carnegie Mellon. |
Do you vouch for the accuracy of links you submit? | raganwald: Does every link you submit come with your endorsement of truthfulness and accuracy?Absolutely not! Every link I submit comes with my endorsement that I have actually read it and found it interesting. I have very low standards for "interesting:" If there is one valuable thing in a post or article, that is enough for me.http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/10/how-to-use-blunt-instrum... |
The best way store thousands of Images on a server | soult: I recommend gatling: http://www.fefe.de/gatling/
It's the fastest httpd I know of.You might also want to try thttpd: http://www.acme.com/software/thttpd/
I heard all the porn sites use it to host their images.With only the http server for the images running it should work quite well to rely on the filesystem cache. |
What tools do you use to monitor your servers? | Tangurena: Current employer uses WhatsUp. Previous employer used SiteScope. |
Advantages of immutable variables besides concurrency | catch23: depending on your language, modifying an immutable variable may throw a runtime/compiletime exception, giving you insight into your bug (potentially) |
Carnegie Mellon or Stanford | catch23: It might be too early to decide, but if you take the entrepreneurial route, stanford is the better choice given its affinity to the valley. cmu is possibly a better choice for academia if you enjoy paper & proposal writing. |
What tools do you use to monitor your servers? | iuguy: Munin and Monit, mostly.And it's a PITA to set up but Puppet is incredible, especially when combined with git. You can automatically redeploy your infrastructure pretty much at the drop of a hat. |
Advantages of immutable variables besides concurrency | eru: Yes. It makes composing larger programs out of smaller programs easier. Especially if functions have to be real mathematical functions, and can't have any side-effects."Composability means that you can put two bits of code together and important correctness properties will be preserved automatically. This does not mean, of course, that the composition is automatically correct in a wider sense, but it does mean that you don’t introduce new bugs merely by sticking two things together." (http://paulspontifications.blogspot.com/2007/09/composabilit...) |
which OS (win, OSX, linux) works best on 64-bit edition? | skwiddor: xp64 - works fine, some diver issues, some apps don't work
linux amd64 - works fine, some driver issues, some apps don't work
OSx64 - not used it |
The best way store thousands of Images on a server | iuguy: How about Publicfile? - http://cr.yp.to/publicfile.htmlSuper duper secure and very, very quick, especially for smaller files.I'd try and run some tests against it, thttpd and your existing apache setup. |
Carnegie Mellon or Stanford | rms: Stanford wins because of the weather |
which OS (win, OSX, linux) works best on 64-bit edition? | urlwolf: @safetrick: good point about mac prices for a mac pro! The office one, work would pay, but then sooner or latter I'd have to convert at home too, which is no joke. Now, how is Mac OSX for VNC/remote desktop stuff? And how hard it is to do a hackintosh? |
Good online magazines, anyone? | unalone: New Yorker. The Atlantic. Harpers. Slate and Salon are a rung below that. Wired doesn't always totally suck. I'd mention Pitchfork but there's a lot of hate against them.Online-only I could only name the ones I read, namely Smashing Magazine and I Love Typography. |
How to Hire Hackers | ALee: For Fun-Anti-rockstar thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=255587The ultimate secret to hiring:
http://www.netjeff.com/humor/item.cgi?file=hire.txt |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | keltecp11: TapInko is the online Market Place for Traditional Media, we were a DreamIt Ventures company last summer and have spent a considerable amount of time understanding the 'offline' advertising world. Though this is the first version of the product, we have many features in the works. I will be giving an online WebEx tutorial this Friday at 3:00 pm (est) and invite anyone to watch. If you are interested please shoot me a message.Thanks,- Pete Groverman -
Pgroverman@tapinko.comSome things about the venture:1) We have an executed agreement with The Greater Media Group of Freehold NJ, they have begun creating profiles for their different outlets2) We are based out of Philadelphia3) Our goal is to make advertising...easy4) Buyers of Adspace can use their same account to also become Sellers of Adspace (ie. a restaurant desires to place an advertisement but also sell advertisements in their menus)5) How We Differentiate from Google Print Ads:
http://www.phillypreneurs.com/2009/02/david_vs_gooliath/6) If you have a publication or outlet that you would like to sell advertising on (even as a sticker on the back of your computer) please feel free to make a profile.7) Business Model: No setup costs, no annual subscription fees, we charge only 7% per completed transaction to the seller. This charge includes all banking fees and credit card costs. |
How to Hire Hackers | ALee: Puzzles:We've been told to give simple puzzles during the interview (intro CS) and to not make puzzles a requirement to apply. Nevertheless, here were some prominent ones we found- Justin.tv puzzles: http://jtvproblems.weebly.com/ (problems for
flash developers too...)
- FB Puzzles: http://www.facebook.com/careers/puzzles.php
- Meebo puzzles: http://www.meebo.com/jobs/#web
- ITA Puzzles: http://www.itasoftware.com/careers/puzzles07.html
- ICFP contests |
How to Hire Hackers | ALee: Interviews- two resources we found here:http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=89615Joel Spolsky's Guerilla Guide to Interviewing Developers:
- Version 3.0: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing...We honestly don't know what were great interview questions or were terrible ones. For example, google asks "can you teach us something?" while James Hong of HotorNot said once that he would have loved to asked the question "If you had to rob a bank, how would you do it?" |
How to Hire Hackers | ALee: Selling It-Joel Spolsky's Field Guide to Developers (or what a developer wants)
- http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/articles/Field... |
How to Hire Hackers | ALee: Dealing with Resumes:Joel Spolsky's Sorting Resumes
- http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/SortingResumes.html |
How to Hire Hackers | ALee: Best places to post- Aside from the HN startups, so far, we've found the biggest pickup to be from Craigslist, Snaptalent, Startuply, Startupers, and JobScore. Others have said we're likely going to work off referrals (our personal networks). |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | nikron: It says I can't see go to the webpage because I'm not using a supported browser. I'm using Firefox 3 on linux. However, I can see the webpage if javascript is off, but not much is there. |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | auston: Your UI needs a little work.The results to be specific, they don't tell me much without reading for more than 10 seconds, try showing ad rates, available slots, etc. |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | spoiledtechie: Awesome Idea. |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | samueladam: FireFox on Debian (IceWeasel) is not recognized as FF3 and I'm being asked to upgrade.Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008122010 Iceweasel/3.0.6 (Debian-3.0.6-1) |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | shizcakes: Being asked to upgrade from FF3 B4 Pre. Fail. |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | brianlash: This is a really timely product given the recent discontinuation of Google Print Ads system. Nice effort.My only recommendation: I'd like to see what the My Inko control panel will look like before I decide to sign up for an account. |
Supplement for a CS degree? | jlees: If you're looking for what a CS degree would involve, why not check out a curriculum/lecture course list? (e.g. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/0809/CST/ - the one I did, a fairly theoretical high-level approach).I'm not quite sure on your meaning though, it sounds like you're doing a BS in CS and want more..? |
Supplement for a CS degree? | GeneralMaximus: Here's a very brief overview of a few fundamental CS topics. It's by no means complete, but this is what I'm going to focus my energy on in college:1. Programming (duh) - choose a dynamic language to begin with. I'd say Python or Ruby, whichever suits your aesthetics. Play with it for a while, and then learn C. With (Ruby|Python)+C, you're ready for anything your learning process might require of you.2. Discrete Maths - not required if you just want to be a desktop/web programmer, but it helps in understanding more advanced topics. I'm not a mathie, so I don't know where linear algebra fits into all this, but I guess it's a part of discrete maths. Whatever. Learn discrete maths and linear algebra.3. Data Structures - you might not need this knowledge if you're going to spend most of your time dealing with Python/Ruby, but it helps a lot when you drop down into C or when you want to optimize your code. Some of the more advanced data structures are also helpful when you need to come up with elegant abstractions for managing data in a program.4. Algorithms - very important. Don't call yourself a computer scientist if you aren't familiar with big-O and some basic algorithms.5. Object Oriented Programming - OOP principles are very handy when you're working in teams. Throw some design patterns into the mix.6. At least one purely functional language (Haskell is pretty popular), one purely OO language (Squeak Smalltalk, maybe) and one stack based language (Factor is awesome). This will teach you how to look at problems from different perspectives. Of course, you don't need to master any of these languages unless you're truly interested in them.7. One "enterprise" language. Java, C#, anything that gets you a job. None of these languages are especially difficult to master, and will act as a backup in case nobody wants to hire a Ruby God.Besides all that, you might want to dabble in computer graphics, data mining and information retrieval, programming language concepts, compiler design, virtual machines, OS design etc. Your pick. |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | bemmu: If I wanted to advertise in the US, I would probably use this to get ideas on what kind of ad spaces are available and what their ceiling prices are. Then I would call them and try to negotiate. In my limited magazine advertising experiences I've found that list prices can be a multiple of what you'll get after a bit of haggling. |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | jimboyoungblood: Good idea, but the site is a bit busted. The registration lightbox wasn't dismissed after I signed up.It would be nice to be able to easily compare the rate cards of different publications. |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | bbuffone: The UI is kindof cramped.When I see the screen there isn't any statement containing information about the site. I see the info in the browser's title but not on the page.The page doesn't fit in a 1024x786 monitor. Site gets an F(37) in yslow (too many files). Not a big fan of inner scrollbars when clicking on a state, it would be better to utilize the browser window's scrollbars. No easy way to go back to the map unless I click home again.The login bar clutters up the screen. Might be better as a popup dialog. |
Good online magazines, anyone? | dkarl: I find that the more magazines I have, the less I get out of them, because I'm able to pass over the "huh? meh" articles in favor of articles I know I'm interested in. It's hard to remind myself that I don't already know what's interesting and what isn't. Easy solution: I subscribe to The New Yorker and The Atlantic in dead-tree form and read them cover to cover (except the New Yorker's local stuff, since I'm not in New York.)I don't understand how someone could consume a dozen magazines a month. I don't have time for more than two (well, plus National Geographic; my Grandmother gives me a subscription every year.) Maybe I read too much in newspapers (like telling time by looking at the second hand of the clock) or on the internet, or maybe I'm just a slow reader. |
Advantages of immutable variables besides concurrency | jganetsk: Allows for laziness, in languages like Haskell.Also, some data structures are simply incorrect when the data is mutable. A hash table with mutable keys comes to mind. Why? Once you insert the key-value pair, and mutate the key, you may not be able to find that key anymore. |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | keltecp11: If you have any interest in being part of a startup and like the concept, we would love to hear from you as well... definitely trying to build out the team and find some 'A' players.Thanks,-Pete |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | natch: Holy crap, that is an excellent idea.Poking around a bit, my only suggestion so far is to make the text font size bigger on some of the text-heavy pages (FAQ) and make the line lengths shorter. Lines of text should be around 65 characters long. |
How to Hire Hackers | swombat: My old article, still somewhat useful, imho:http://inter-sections.net/2007/11/13/how-to-recognise-a-good... |
How to Hire Hackers | suhail: Most startups today (those you've actually heard of) generally do 2-4 phone screens which encompass a technical interview. You can utilize Google docs and watch them code.Take the feedback of everyone who interviewed (your team) into consideration and either offer the position because you feel they are motivated and technically sound or you can fly them in for a 3-4 hour person-to-person after a phone screen or two.This is what Slide, Facebook, Google, etc. do. None of them mandate puzzles, seems like they use them as a way to "Wow" them.In the past, I've seen companies give "quizzes" they can do in a limited amount of time. Generally 10-15 question quizzes as a quick way to judge, without wasting your own time, if they are competent enough but hopefully a resume is enough.Disclaimer: This isn't necessarily my opinion of how it should be done, just how companies that have been around the block do it. |
How to Hire Hackers | Frocer: I feel the economic situation didn't make the hiring process easier, but actually much more difficult. We thought it would be easy since there are tons of talents being laid off from top-notch tech companies, and what happened was the exact opposite -- there are THAT many more resumes out on the market, and it takes THAT much more time to find the perfect fit. Keep in mind because we were still a small team, every hire must has the right balance of cultural fit, technical abilities, and entrepreneurial spirits. Finding good guys who can get the job done is easy, but finding the great guy who can take our product to the next level is much more difficult.After going through thousands of resumes, and conducted probably 100 interviews, we finally brought on-board our first couple of team members. Some tips to share from my experience:1. Don't bother with job boards, such as Craig's list, Dice, etc. In this economy, there are too many resumes floating around, and reviewing them is an incredibly time consuming process when you can spend the time building the product. Negotiate a low rate with a recruiter and outsoruce that process. We wasted over a month using job boards, and got tons and tons of junk resumes. Probably only 1% of the candidates we got from job boards were interview-able. We got fed up, so we engaged about 5 recruiters simultaneously, and within the first week we got the perfect guy. If you really want to use job boards to try your luck, I had the best experience with Startuply though it still didn't result in a hire.2. Be extremely selective, if there's something that doesn't seem right, it's probably your gut telling you he/she isn't the right person. For hackers -- my favorite question to ask is "when did you first started hacking?". I have found most great hackers started hacking when they were very young (middle school to high school time frame). I found most people who started hacking in college is because they were forced to, not because they are interested in it. Of course this doesn't apply to every case.3. Do reference checks. In fact, ask the references for additional references. A candidate can master the art of interview, but reference check may tell a totally different story.Also, I don't recommend technical puzzles. I recommend you to just ask a technical challenge you are facing right now. e.g. How would you architect JamLegend? How do you solve so-and-so problem? etc. While puzzles can test brain power, I think it's much more practical to have them solve a real problem that you face on a daily basis specific to your product.Hope that helps, by the way, if you get referrals from personal network you can probably skip a tons of things I mentioned above, and they are usually the best early hires. Good luck with your hiring process! |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | pedalpete: You've done a good job with simple layout on the main page, but I had no idea what you were all about when I first hit the page.
Your titles say "advertising marketplace" and "advertising made easy". I suspect that most people visiting a website are accustomed to think online advertising. But you are focused on print. So why don't you actually say 'print' advertising anywhere on the main page.That is my biggest complaint. I have no idea what this is all about unless I dig deeper (which most people won't do). |
Feedback Please - Lit | youngj: This is one of my first Rails apps with the user profiles powered completely by Facebook Connect. I used the Facebooker (http://facebooker.rubyforge.org/) plugin, which was relatively painless to integrate into my app. |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | GavinB: I was a little confused when I first arrived on your site. All of the different words and taglines danced around what it is you really do. It says "Advertise Here," "Advertising Made Easy," "The Advertising Marketplace," etc. The big map could have been from any number of businesses.Since this is the internet and advertising is everywhere, seeing the words "advertisement" don't really tell me anything. Is it online? Print? Billboards? Your home page doesn't say.You need to make it extremely clear what you're selling and to whom--something like "Buy Real-world ads online." |
How to Hire Hackers | arupchak: If you are at the point where you are communicating with people (via phone screen or full interviews) make sure to ask about any side projects the candidate might have. I cannot stress enough how many strong candidates I have seen with this being their leading indicator. Do not directly ask "Are you working on any technical side projects?" because they will know immediately what you are asking for and they will give you something that you want to hear. Phrase it more from the standpoint of what they do in their downtime or even what they enjoy doing other than writing code. That is where you should be able to see what kind of drive this candidate potentially has. |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | mattmaroon: Not sure what the name means. Kinda odd.I looked in my area (Ohio) and you seem to have multiple listings for the same person. The college newspapers and other local rags are a great idea. |
How to Hire Hackers | jdileo: I have hired hundreds of people during the course of my career. In my experience, the most effective way to make solid hires consistently is to a) conduct an analysis of the candidates history of accomplishment and b)evaluate brains.I understand you are currently seeking summer interns, no problem. Today, young people that are proven achievers have much to examine:1) Projects they've built or been a part of--just because they were curious if they could do it.2) What are they passionate about: who have they read/studied in the area?3) Are they aware of market leaders in your sector and can they discuss what they believe is right/wrong in their model.4) Extra-Curricular's (speaks to buy-in of culture)5) How do they define providing value/work ethic?The above represent top 5. Be certain that when you find a candidate you'd like to hire that you can articulate the value proposition you offer to them. Be prepared to demonstrate how being a part of your team will benefit them. Don't bullshit, anybody smart enough that you want to hire can smell it a mile away. Be Good. Absolute best of luck. |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | ckinnan: I've bought a lot of advertising over the years and would use a site like this.Homepage has too much nagging to register without a clear value proposition or explanation of the site's purpose. It isn't clear what the service is from the overly broad homepage taglines: "Advertising Made Easy" and "The Advertising Marketplace". (The domain name doesn't convey either but it is brandable). I'd tighten that tagline into something more specific and compelling.You might want to start by focusing on a specific geographic market (i.e. Philly) or vertical (i.e. political ads) or type of advertising (i.e. print) or even just college papers and expand from there. (I bet a lot of consumer product companies would advertise in college papers if it was easier to do) Newspaper or radio remainders would be good now that Google is exiting.The calenders don't work in FF 3. Also, white text on a black background is tough to read and is unprofessional to me. The FAQ page javascript is an annoying and unneeded interface.Happy hunting and let us know how it goes! |
Feedback Please - Lit | swombat: At the moment, it seems like a vote-blog of short stories... nice, but what are you trying to do? What do you see it growing into? What's your aim with it?It's hard to provide feedback without knowing what you're trying to achieve... |
How to Hire Hackers | DarkShikari: Here's my advice as a two-time former intern at two different places.As a small startup looking to hire hackers, you obviously want the best. You want experienced hackers who already know how to code and perhaps have experience on a project before (e.g. open-source). Of course, you want the brightest.But this is always a challenge because the smarter, more experienced, and more valuable a hacker is, the rarer they are and--odds are--the less likely they are willing to work for you because they're less desperate for an internship; they can afford to shop around, or may even just decide to do their own projects for a summer.So here's how you can try to attract those people.1. Pay decently. A lot of companies like to pay interns nearly nothing these days (or in some particularly obnoxious cases, actually pay them nothing). This of course doesn't mean pay them as much as a full employee, but it does mean they should not feel insulted by the amount of money you're offering. If they could earn more than 5x your pay as an independent contractor, you're doing it wrong. While not all hackers do internships for the money, it's definitely a huge plus. And if you don't think you're going to get enough out of your intern to justify the pay, don't hire them; you should not hire an intern unless you have no doubts about their ability to produce significantly more value through their work than you're paying them.2. Deal with the interns' practical issues with regards to working for you. For example, if they're coming from out of town, deal with their housing and flights. Hackers dislike dealing with bureaucracy--you'll save your intern's time and effort and sanity by dealing with these issues.3. If your interns' time is so much less valuable than your employees' time that you cannot spare significant employee time to helping the intern with what he is doing (in the same way they would help another employee), don't hire an intern.In terms of picking an intern, often you have to actively seek them out to be successful, especially if you're looking for the kind of hacker that doesn't go around applying to every internship he sees. For example, if your company makes very significant use of open source software, you can look through those open source projects for potential interns. |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | dexen: I wish I could access the site with Konqueror. But it redirects the browser forcibly to `please upgrade your browser to' page.You could at least give some way to ACK the message and go ahead anyway, without fiddling with user agent settings. |
Feedback Please - Lit | unalone: Whoo! Always fun to see a writing start-up.The styling is blandly nice - that's a compliment. Reading your words feels nice. It could be better, but then it could always be better. I love the feel of the site.What's the point? What do you offer that other sites don't offer? Right now it's nice but very, very generic. |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | ryanspahn: http://browsershots.org/ may prove helpful to see how others using all the various web browsers are viewing Tapinko. |
Feedback Please - Lit | arthurk: Nice design, but what is Lit? To me it looks like a blog. |
The best way store thousands of Images on a server | leej: dont forget nginx |
Feedback Please - Lit | huhtenberg: The overall appearance of the website is "confusingly similar" to that of typophile.com, which is a high profile and very active online community. If I would've just randomly came across it, I would've assumed it was a typophile spin-off. |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | zavulon: I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.7, which I don't want to upgrade. So I'm just going to join the others in "Please add the 'Try anyway'" link |
Is buying market research worth it? | HeyLaughingBoy: I haven't paid for research data, but just this weekend I used the free summaries given by some of the online market research firms to evaluate my current idea. For me that was all the data I needed to see that my idea was worth progressing with at least to the next stage.Note: depending on the industry you're targeting, sometimes really valuable market analysis information can be found on websites of trade rags dedicated to that industry. |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | huhtenberg: You may want to photoshop the foot of 4th dude out:http://www.tapinko.com/images/thedudes.jpg:) |
Feedback Please - Lit | daveambrose: I like the design but I didn't "get it" when I first landed on the page. After poking around for a few seconds, I saw what you're trying to do.Why not throw up an "about"? |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | cool-RR: Screencast not working for me (Firefox 3.0.8) |
Feedback Please - Lit | kolya3: The sidebar font uses the same blue as the facebook "Log in with Facebook" above.
(1) This makes me think that clicking these links will ask me to log into Facebook
(2) Overall feels like you're phishing for my Facebook username/password. You need to explain what your site is before anyone will feel comfortable logging into Facebook via your site. Furthermore, WHY would I log into FB through your site? Are you going to pull in my friends list and send them spam on my behalf? Are you going to post in my activity feed? These are all questions that a user will have and you need to be very clear about upfront. |
Feedback Please - Lit | unohoo: Convey to the users what the site is about. After a few minutes of trying to figure, I just didnt bother further. |
Can someone please explain the logic of Google vs Newspapers? | barry-cotter: Newspapers provide facts and opinion. The facts can't be copyrighted so anyone can repeat them. The opinion and the bias of any particular newspaper are noise not signal from the point of view of increasing the actual information you have. Its the internet killing the newspapers, by unbundling what most customers want; entertainment, celebrity gossip, sports reporting, from what "serious journalists" go into journalism hoping to do, investigative reporting, political reporting, policy analysis, etc. Most people don't give a damn about any of this, but the institution of the newspaper means the advertisers who pay the salaries of everybody on the newspaper get the (large) audience of people who buy the paper for gossip and sport and the (small) one who buy it for policy wonkery, so there's a cross-subsidy. There are also bloggers who are much better than the vast majority of what you'll see in the papers. The average quality is lower, but the sample size is enormously bigger, and the variance is really rather large so the opinion niche is also threatened. And some people will do it excellently for free.So the newspaper business model is dead. Facts can't be copyrighted, opinion is available for free, cross-subsidisation is no longer viable, and across the developed world the newspaper reading population is trending down. There are bright spots, like India, but most 1st world journalists are screwed.So an entire industry is thrashing around with two choices;(a) die (b) Find an alternative business model. As the biggest, most profitable pure play internet company, shaking Google down is a better choice than resigning oneself to death. As such if you're looking for someone to get mad at, someone to negotiate with as if they're the Internet, they're the best bet. |
Can someone please explain the logic of Google vs Newspapers? | Tangurena: Newspapers print paper. They aren't in the business of making websites. Just like buggy whip manufacturers, they're a relic of the past.Associated Press, which is a collective of newspapers, is in the role of MPAA/RIAA, because they believe that they have ownership of facts. This isn't the first time they got into trouble about their business model:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press_v._United_Stat... |
Can someone please explain the logic of Google vs Newspapers? | gry: It started because the newspaper industry is looking for new ways to mitigate declining revenue, IMHO. If the newspaper industry was doing well, we _probably_ would be hearing about how they're giving away news to drive eyeballs to sites -- much like how they operated as a newspaper, not a news organization who publishes to the web.Craigslist and eBay are the two standouts who rang the knell.http://news.cnet.com/Report-Craigslist-costing-newspapers-mi...My understanding is for years, the newspapers gave news away for near free, subsidized by advertising and in the black because of it. Take out the classifieds and you've removed a valuable service to the community and a major revenue source. Now, they're reduced to news organizations. Their revenue has been declining. Aggregators are the current scapegoat and one of the potential revenue modes.Fifteen years ago, I had five choices for daily print news. My two local papers, the USA Today, NYT and the Wall Street Journal. Today, each of them compete against themselves and a litany of other "print" news. CNN, ABC, CBS, and your local TV stations are now "print" publishers too. The competition is even more fierce.The news industry as a whole changed with the internet. You no longer need presses and trucks or 100,000 watt transmitters to distribute news. The sour economy only expedites this shift. Some will come out as agents of change. Others will fight to maintain what they had. These are the ones who are trying to plug something that started long before aggregators.edit: good read --
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=506483 |
Are there any good books on statistical quant analysis? | sebg: Some good ones that I would check out are 1.) The Econometrics of Financial Markets (Campbell, Lo, MacKinlay) and 2.) Time Series Analysis (Hamilton). Note that I would check these out from a library before buying them as they are pretty advanced.That said, it really depends on what types of assets you are looking to trade. At the risk of stating the obvious if you are doing any type of derivatives, you'll need pricers and data for those.As a start, look for what is the easiest way to obtain a near complete data set and go from there. Good luck! |
Is buying market research worth it? | raquo: We once purchased estimated telecom subscriber data for many regions, then when we started to analyze it (growth rates, variances, etc) it turned out that the data was not as granular as expected - for example, growth rates were clearly estimated for several regions at once (i. e. all regions in the same macroregion had the same growth rate)So make sure you're buying real data, not researcher's assumptions which you can assume yourself. |
Is buying market research worth it? | bgnm2000: Over the past 6 months I was working on my startup with a private equity investor. One of my consistent responsibilities was gathering market and industry data. Even though we could afford it, it was something we never paid for. My mentor/boss was always of the opinion that it all existed for free, and it was just a matter of finding it yourself. That said, market research is beyond valuable, but nothing is more important than customer development. |
Good online magazines, anyone? | HalcyonMuse: http://www.economist.com/ and http://seedmagazine.com/ have great reputations... at least in my book. They have a very high ratio of signal to noise, in my opinion. I often enjoy http://www.physorg.com/, though it's frequently a little over my head... at the same time, I appreciate that they don't pull the punches, so to speak. |
Carnegie Mellon or Stanford | krishna2: Both are GREAT schools and consider yourself lucky to have a choice. I did my masters at CMU (and have lived in Pittsburgh for 4 years) but for the past 8+ years have been in the bay area.The cost of living is very very cheap in Pitt, no doubt.
Personally, I like having four different seasons - so weather was not a big deal for me. If you want consistent weather and clear blue skies, palo alto, it is. YMMV.In CMU, you are very close to a whole lot of other big cities and universities - so travelling is lot easier.So all that said, now to the important part: the important decision will be based on what your interests are.
CMU is very strong in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence
fields of study. Similarly, Stanford has its big specialties as well. So if you already know that you might major in Computer Science, try looking at the profiles and research interests of the computer science faculty at each school. Give yourself as much flexibility as possible here, because what you think/know now will be lot different in 2 years, 4 years and 6 years from now.If you are entrepreneurial and you want to do a start up, then just close the circuit and take the shortest path - the bay area.Or if you still want to do that, but take the road less taken, come here via CMU.In anycase, read Robert Frost's "Road less travelled" poem. :)Good luck. |
How to Hire Hackers | eyao: Here's my personal advice. While there are plenty of companies hiring strategies to look at to get ideas on how to accomplish getting the "best person" I would first take a step back and evaluate on what's important to you and your team and then filter based off that - be creative if you have to in order to get what you want.While Frocer touched upon a majority of what we did, I'll throw in my interviewing experiences. We are partly in the video game industry so my #1 requirement was the applicant MUST have video game playing experience (of the 'core' variety) and the more the better. I just couldn't see anyone who only played Wii Sports or Bejeweled on the iPhone could comprehend what we do and therefore unable to help the team in any sort of discussion beyond the technical. So that was what was most important to me and that was what I filtered on and not surprisingly, I had a good feeling immediately after each interview on whether or not I wanted them.My interview consisted of no stupid puzzles or whatever cause it was of no use to me. Show me you are technically proficient (of which a lot were, otherwise why waste time applying for the job) and then show me you understand video games by carrying an intelligent conversation with me about let's say your favorite xbox 360 game, which smash bros was the best, or why world of warcraft is both the greatest and worst game ever, etc. You'd be surprised on how many people couldn't do that.Also I'm seconding the reference/portfolio thing. The more you can find about their past, the better the idea you will have about their future. |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | latortuga: "Select a state or search below to advertise:"
Where do I select a state? Typing NE in the giant search box didn't yield Nebraska search results, however I then spotted the state drop down (not on the home page!)"Search returned 1 results:" takes up a TON of screen real estate relative to the total area allocated for search results. Using the back button breaks search results filtering (at least state-based) - look at how Mint elegantly handles this use case.Something about the spacing or presentation of the search results is irritating to me but I can't put my finger on what. The resulting pricing pages, by contrast, are quite nice and present the information in a coherent way. |
What tools do you use to monitor your servers? | hedgehog: Munin + some shell scripts that make sure the web server is rendering pages that look reasonable. |
How much documentation is enough? | pmjordan: I've found that when I write documentation as I go along, I tend to document the wrong things. It's a bit like premature optimisation: you're in the thick of it, hyper-focused on whatever seems the hardest part of the problem at that stage. You document what's on your mind. As with optimisation at that stage, you're usually wrong.So I've found you need to try to develop a sense for the sweet spot: the point in time where things have settled down a bit and you're seeing more of the big picture, yet it's all still completely clear in your mind and your memory hasn't been diluted by the muddy waters of time.I suppose for a startup, the key here is the time where things have settled down a bit. I have no startup experience to speak of, but the impression I get is that that time can be a long way out. Almost certainly longer than you expect, as you iterate again and again and try to figure out what it is that users really want.The other thing you need to ask yourself is why you're writing the documentation in the first place. Is it for potential future developers? The documentation isn't going to replace digging through the entire code for them. Most if not all documentation that I've encountered which attempted to serve this purpose was woefully inadequate and basically redundant. If the code is well-written, it usually documents itself, and if it isn't, you need to read it anyway because it's probably impossible to encapsulate all its subtleties in prose.So internal developers are out. Who else comes into contact with your tech? Well, maybe you have non-programmer cofounders/employees who need to generate data in certain formats. You'll need to document those, no doubt, once the formats start to stabilise. Better still, get users of the docs to write them for you or with you. This sounds lazy, but actually their thought process is different, and future users will think more like them than you. Of course, check over the result for errors and inaccuracies.Another group of people that will need documentation appears if you have some kind of outside-facing API. These people will usually not have the opportunity or inclination to trawl through your source, so as with the file formats example above, to the intended readers of the docs, the docs are the only source of information. I guess this one is really obvious, but I'm going to point out that the design of your API will be more important than nailing the docs for it. Iterate. An elegant API requires little introduction.So these days I worry more about the quality of the code than the documentation, and I write docs only for those who won't come into contact with the code directly.(NB: you can probably tell I've given this sort of thing a lot of thought, and have had extended discussions with other developers about the subject. Take all of the above with a grain of salt - many people will vigorously disagree with a lot of it. I'm also working on a project off-and-on that kind of explores this space; unfortunately earning money to stay alive is consuming my time at the moment) |
How much documentation is enough? | russell: What you are doing sounds like the right level of detail. When I take over a project, I like to have an architectural overview so that I have a context to work from. Detailed but wrong is worthless. One important piece that I often find missing is a short narrative about each table in the database.I write short architectural papers as I go along, mostly to get feedback from interested parties. I do the "official" documentation at the end. |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | kbrower: post a username and password so we don't have to sign up? |
Review My WebApp - Recipe Puppy - Search recipes by ingredients and/or keyword | kbrower: to try out the account features
username:what
password:what |
Carnegie Mellon or Stanford | joshu: I went to CMU (BS ECE 96) and now live in the Bay Area. The weather in Palo Alto cannot be beat.I get the sense that CMU will work you a bit harder. |
Review My WebApp - Recipe Puppy - Search recipes by ingredients and/or keyword | vaksel: you should probably pick a cuter dog(golden retriever or something) + one that at least looks happy/excited. |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | ecommercematt: Good concept, and an impressive, if glitchy implementation. When I switched tabs in my browser and came back later, it reloaded the home page, rather than displaying where I left off.Also, you misspelled "Worcester" in the description of "The Towers" at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. |
Feedback Please - TapInko.com | halo: Nice idea. Reasonable implementation. Ugly design.Poor colour choices, inconsistent fonts and poor and inconsistent layout decisions preclude it from looking professional. It all feels a bit 90s and clunky, frankly, and would put me off using your site.Grey buttons in the top-right look incredibly tacky and don't match the rest of the site. The entire black-to-grey gradient strikes me as a bad idea, especially as white-on-black text isn't something business websites generally do. Navigation and how people use the site is generally poorly thought out (although the map is decent enough), and relies too much on clunky search functionality with poor usability, especially when you have so little content. The use of overflow: auto for the results instead of letting it go down the page is a poor design decision and that, combined with the "register" popup, reminds me of a spam site rather than a legitimate company. I'd have a serious rethink about most aspects of the design, with a combination of looks and usability in mind.As others have commented, using browser sniffing to block access to your site is extremely bad form, not least for the simple reason that you'll never be able to keep up with browser variations and end up with annoyed users. I remember the problems it caused 10 years ago with the browser wars. Get rid of it, support the 5 major browsers and assume that everything else is out of your hands.When you visit the site, you've got a lot of space going "Advertising made easy", "The advertising marketplace" and even "Register Today!" text, but what you really need is a box summarising exactly what your service actually does rather than using vague slogans. The fact I had to click through to understand fully the purpose of the site is a bad sign. |
Good online magazines, anyone? | chris11: I really like the New Yorker, especially the comics, but that has already been mentioned. Harvard Business Review (hbr.com) has some well written free articles. Makezine.com has interesting projects to work on. |
How worried do you get over bugs in your code? Is this a mental health issue? | jmtame: Might want to stick "Ask HN: " in front of the title. I thought this was an article at first, hesitated to click.http://paulgraham.com/start.htmlWhat it means specifically depends on the job: a salesperson who just won't take no for an answer; a hacker who will stay up till 4:00 AM rather than go to bed leaving code with a bug in it; a PR person who will cold-call New York Times reporters on their cell phones; a graphic designer who feels physical pain when something is two millimeters out of place. |
Review My WebApp - Recipe Puppy - Search recipes by ingredients and/or keyword | systemtrigger: I like how it prompted me to add more items to the filter which updated the search results which seem to come from all over the culinary web. I can see how this is already a useful service. Forgive my ignorance, Are you the first mover in this space or are others already doing recipe search by ingredients? I was a little frustrated with the search result display: I had to scroll down a page or two of whitespace but I assume you'll work on that in good time. I'm also feeling unloved by the way each search result appears because the list of external links makes me feel like I'm on a parked site. My frustration was that for every recipe I still needed to visit the grocery store to get more ingredients - that said it may be because my cupboard is too bare. I wonder if for the paid service it might work a bit better if you approached the whole site from an ad-free perspective. What if the search results didn't drive away traffic to the source sites but revealed the full recipes on your site? Only your paying customers would get to see the entire recipe while freeloaders could see just the list of ingredients? Or you could give away some recipes in their entirety for free while making a percentage of the search results opaque to all but your customers. If you're wanting to flip this maybe you could sell or license to a foodie site. I don't know what restrictions the sites you're getting these recipes from place on their APIs (which is I assume how you're getting the data) but these are my initial thoughts based on a cursory visit. Good v1, I think you should keep working on it. And don't listen to me too much, you might well have an ad model that works. |
How worried do you get over bugs in your code? Is this a mental health issue? | redleader: Isn't worrying about bugs just a more narrow version of worrying about making mistakes? |
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