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How do you read RSS feeds? | mbleigh: I use Google Reader, currently subscribed to 68 feeds and get around 250-300 posts per day. I read everything in expanded mode, though most of the time I'll just skim a headline and move on.I have my feeds logically grouped into prioritized groups so that if I start to get a backlog of 500+ posts I will read my favorite blog from a given category then mark all as read to reduce the counts. |
How much traffic from a techcrunch story? | tstegart: http://redeye.firstround.com/2008/01/after-the-techc.html
Not exact numbers, but a start. |
How do you read RSS feeds? | pchristensen: I use Google Reader to read about 200 feeds. But I've ruthlessly pruned anyone thata) took too much absolute time (high volume, long posts - ie big news sites without targeted content)b) too low signal to noise ratio (typically from someone that writes one popular posts that's a little outside their main topics) - Stuff White People like was on this - funny, not that funny, repetitive, too often. If it was once a week, I would have read it.I read (see) probably 50 posts a day - anything more than that and I go back and prune some. I spend maybe 1-2 hours a day reading. It's my equivalent of watching TV. Here are the main categories:Must reads - the Yegges, Grahams, Mosers, etcHigh volume, quick reads - FAIL blog, Seth GodinHigh volume, useful but not always great - SvN, CodingHorror, JoelLow volume - product blogs, occasional bloggers |
What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot? | boredguy8: It probably will. I followed a similar path of another person on here: /. -> k5 -> reddit -> HN.At the end of the day, nothing can stop 50 users up-voting cat pictures except to shut the site down. |
How do you read RSS feeds? | mickt: Sage a Firefox plugin, and sometimes Google Reader. |
How do you read RSS feeds? | darose: Bloglines.129.Read the most important ones, then eventually catch up on the other ones.I'd go mad if I didn't read them selectively like this. |
what language should I learn next? | strlen: There's more to software besides the web. Start off by learning C. Learn enough so that you could understand this http://www.kegel.com/c10k.html - and see the implications of what's discussed there (low-level UNIX system calls, C code) on issues you deal with.Finish learning C, by writing your own C compiler. Yes, really: pick up the dragon book, learn lexx/yacc and do it - it will test your knowledge of data structures and algorithms, automata/language theory and software engineering.Learn Lisp or OCaml or Haskell just to know a functional language. Don't learn it to write webapps in it.Learn Perl - and not just for webapps (although mod_perl is incredibly powerful as far as fast, transactional, web applications go), including Object Oriented Perl. Learn enough to automate your systems administration / operations tasks (being able to modify bugzilla would be a plus too). |
What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot? | pg: I don't think it's as hard to keep a site from sliding as one might think from the examples of previous sites where things went downhill as they got more popular. Slashdot, Digg, and Reddit were all companies. They wanted to grow. Whereas News.YC is a side project. We don't care about growth. It's much easier to do things to keep up the quality when you're willing to sacrifice growth. |
How do you read RSS feeds? | tc7: I use Opera's built-in feed reader. I like it. I have about 20 feeds subscribed, and I obsessively at least skim every article until it tells me there are zero unread.Quite a pain on Monday (I don't read feeds on weekends) to come into work and have 50 new articles on Business of Software and Hacker News :P. Just one of those burdens I bear, I guess. I used to actually click through and read each and every HackerNews article, so I've improved somewhat from there. Little baby steps. |
what language should I learn next? | rmanocha: If I had the time, I would pick up C. I've spent a number of years working with higher level languages like Java and Python, and while they're good and fun and all that, I feel knowing a low level language like C is important to be an effective (insert any computer related task/job).I personally am really interested in learning C and then figuring out how to tie my C code into a Python module - maybe increase the speed of some of my code...That said, I had used some Scheme back in school to write a parser for a stripped down version of C, and while it wasn't the most fun project ever, working with a functional programming language really opened my eyes (up until then it has been OOP/Java all the way). |
How do you read RSS feeds? | silentbicycle: I use Planet ( http://www.planetplanet.org/ ), and only update it once a day, because Y HN is distracting enough! |
How do you read RSS feeds? | hbien: I use NewsFire, subscribed to about 50-60 feeds. I skim through them (hit space) and if anything catches my eye I read them. If I'm not in the mood to read it, I flag it for later reading.Every month or so I go through my feeds and only keep the ones that consistently have posts that catch my attention. |
What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot? | joeread: Extreme censorship. |
what language should I learn next? | CPops: Just to throw my two cents into the mix, some of the best computer fun I've had in recent weeks has involved playing with Processing.http://processing.org/As somebody who normally does a lot of Ruby, PHP, Javascript web consulting working dealing mostly with data and database stuff, it's been fun to stretch my mind and play around with a much more visual programming environment. |
How do you read RSS feeds? | antiform: I'm subscribed to only about 15 feeds through Google Reader, which I refine every season according to signal/noise ratio. I'm also a big fan of Google Alerts, which I've found is a good way to find great articles that you wouldn't find in the echo chamber of most blogs, particularly those about programming.Otherwise, I check HN and a couple other news sites. Most of the good stuff tends to rise to the top, and Google Alerts catches the good articles that don't get on the front page. |
what language should I learn next? | ardit33: I think your next step should be a couple of static languages.
Try C first (and object-c) and create a iPhone app, perhaps. Then try Java. I know, it is not popular around here, but it is good knowing one of the most used languages in the world.With Java you can do server side programming, or even better do some mobile programmin (J2ME app for a phone, or an Android app). |
what language should I learn next? | Zak: It is not difficult to build a database-based webapp using Common Lisp. Hunchentoot, CLSQL and something to generate HTML (CL-WHO and HTML Template are both good).Clojure is really interesting, and may be my new favorite language. Parallelism is one of those things in programming that is rarely trivial in most languages. Clojure makes a lot of parallel problems easy and it has access to all of Java's libraries. |
What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot? | foulmouthboy: I read all the answers, and I'm now convinced that there's nothing keeping this site from eventually going down that same path.Death. Taxes. Gentrification. |
What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot? | azharcs: I think just not compromising is good enough to keep the quality of the site. I don't see HN doing any deals with NY Times or getting a ad deal with Google. They have kept it simple, just pure news and it is surrounded by smart bunch of people who want to keep it that way. |
What application would you create around "digital printing"? | mechanical_fish: See how many editors it really takes to turn bloggers' open content into a viable weekly magazine, nonprofit or otherwise.In other words, reinvent the NYT or Newsweek, but start with zero employees and move up rather than starting with hundreds and struggling to figure out who to cut.There are lots of smart bloggers writing things. There are, for at least the next thirty years, lots of relatively rich, politically connected people who grew up with print, prefer print, and instinctively trust print. I've always had a feeling that one should be able to make something out of that situation, and the NYT printers have the numbers I would need to do the math and see if it seems feasible. |
How do you read RSS feeds? | GilbertErik: I think the key for me is subscribing to more posts than I could ever possibly read, and giving myself permission to not have to read all of them.Much like I used to read a newspaper, I've turned google reader into my information aggregator. It alerts me to daily podcasts, local/regional/national/global/financial news, interesting articles, etc... I read what's interesting, throw the rest away, star whatever I may want to revisit or leisurely read on the weekend, share whatever I want people to see on my blog, and 'mark all as read' when I start my weekend.I skim whenever I'm waiting on a build or have a spare minute between meetings, but I separate out into categories things I'd like to read and things I may read if there's extra time. I spend about 2-3 hours a week in google reader, but much less time wading through comments and ads for a net gain. |
what language should I learn next? | mdasen: This is going to be unpopular advice, but I would suggest algorithms in C. You already know how to make web applications. Any reason you want to know how to make web applications again? Will Lisp or C web applications make you happier or more productive?What will help you is probably a better understanding of algorithms/programming and I personally like C for that job. C doesn't hide stuff like higher-level languages do. It makes you think about how the computer processes the information and uses memory. I'm not suggesting that you ever use C for one of your webapps. I'm suggesting that knowing C and good algorithms will make you a better programmer in higher level languages because you will understand more. |
What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot? | jon_dahl: The most important thing, besides the general desire to keep the community positive, is this: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.Reddit, on the other hand, has the following guidelines:Submit a link to anything interesting: news article, blog entry, video, picture...The HN community is built around a particular standard. Reddit's official standard is the lowest common denominator. If the lowest common denominator is "Impeach Bush" and "Funny pic [nsfw]", then that's going to dominate.Unfortunately, I've already seen Hacker News change over the last year (less programming-related content; more general business news). I'd love a gentle nudge back in the hacker direction. But it's still the best social bookmarking site at the moment. |
Anybody outsource their startup? | DanielBMarkham: Thanks for the advice guys. I've put the job up on both oDesk and RentACoder. Perhaps it will be useful to report back and tell everybody how it went? I'm really wary about trusting anybody else with "my" baby, but at some point I think it makes sense to offload non-value-added things. I really appreciate the feedback. |
What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot? | acousticiris: I think there are a few things going on here that differentiate it from Digg/Reddit (I'll leave out Slashdot for the moment, because I think they have different concerns).On Digg and Reddit, there is no "focus". Digg started out as a tech news site and degraded slowly until they opened up the doors to include all news, which brought what you have refered to as posts on Obama's latest news and pictures of their cats.On reddit, the day I stopped reading was the day I saw a post on the front page encouraging folks to not post political stories on the politics sub-site because they don't get enough attention that way. That would imply that both sites have a problem with "activists".To me, that sufficiently explains why the front page of HN "works". What I can't figure out is why the comments on this site tend to be so civil. The HN community seems to lack the hostility that plagues virtually every other site of its kind. Is it fewer angry people? Older, or more mature audience? Maybe it's migrants from the three sites you mention who were fed up with the poor behavior exhibited there? |
How do you read RSS feeds? | DrStrngeluv: I just started using Google Reader about 3 weeks ago. I'm currently subscribed to approximately 30 feeds, and I tend to skim the headlines on the busier sites, and then read whatever might catch my eye. On the slower sites, or blogs from folks that I know, I tend to read the whole article, or give up after I decide that I'm just not interested.
I have it configured to purge already read posts, so I just page down the busier blogs until I finish, or stumble upon something I like. I also tend to use the mark all read after the weekend or a day or two off, since I don't have the time to sift through too much detritus from not servicing my feeds. I think with news/social news sites like reddit & slashdot, which I had subscribed to, and subsequently unsubscribed to, have too much noise to lend themselves to reading in an RSS feed. |
How do you read RSS feeds? | place: Reading 20 feeds with newsbeuter (http://synflood.at/newsbeuter.html)Fast, simple, console-friendly, familiar keybindings and gets the job done without any distractions.What more could you possibly wish for? |
How do you read RSS feeds? | pauljonas: NetNewsWireHave embarked upon a quest to break it — up to ~1000 feeds, and although it stalls out my MBP during huge updates, it's held up very well. Tried Google Reader but at about ~200 feeds, it crapped out and the whole AJAXy UI became totally unmanageable (plus, frequent bouts where the server never returned) — Google Reader issues may have been rectified, but at time I experimented with it, it was unwieldy.I need to do some housekeeping to NNW — presently, I sort by feed source, and just fly through/ignore about half the feeds (especially the ones with frequent updates). It seems the more frequent the update, the less the quality fare, though HN is an exception in this regard. Really need to set up folder buckets to bury those that I might want to read, given extra time.I scan and can flip through titles and first few paragraphs rapidly (3 pane view).It really is a more efficient reading experience that magnifies your news/blog coverage, but you need to refine, and dispense with the ones that don't add value or at least bury them.There is a dichotomy in reading experience via RSS vs. the Web that I will write an article about at some future point and lay out all my thoughts — lots of good stuff out there that has no RSS or content that RSS is not sufficiently capturing the content (some titles only or less than a sentence in body, or web site styling that enhances the viewership experience).OTOH, the big benefit of RSS is getting to read without the extraneous, tarted up graphic fare in a font size/style more suited to reading text on a monitor. |
What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot? | reazalun: Limit the number of news submission per user in 24 hours. I suggest max 5 news/24 hours. That way, we can guard HN from spammers. |
How do you read RSS feeds? | soldarnal: I consume feeds (ten in total) in two different ways: my iGoogle Homepage and the Opera Feeds reader.For the iGoogle Homepage I have HN and /. feeds. These feeds are updated so frequently that I don't want to subscribe to them in my reader (and have the unread ones pile up). These I read selectively - only the titles that interest me.The Opera Feed reader I use for blogs that get updated at most daily. For the most part, I read every entry, skipping only the ocassional esoteric post. I used to read these ones in Google Reader; but once I discovered Opera's reader is much faster, I haven't gone back. (It would be nice if their synch system did feeds too, though.) I like to use the reader for these because it helps me keep track of what I've read, keeps all my daily/weekly reading in one place, and for feeds that include their content since they load considerably faster without the overhead of their site (e.g. Dilbert Blog). |
How do you read RSS feeds? | EastSmith: Bloglines, about 150 feeds.I use about 10 categories: must read, local, off topic, certain topic, like say Python, Javascript, etc.It was a big problem before I started leaving unread categories for a couple of days. Now it is great. Read couple of categories on daily basis, then the other, when I have time, or sometimes mark them all as read (I hate myself for that later).OT: Since when Bloglines became so unpopular? Or is it just HN trend? Does Google Reader rule the blog readers world now? |
Best books/source to learn about investing? | jakewolf: For all you who love playing with math check out
Option Volatility & Pricing: Advanced Trading Strategies and Techniques by Sheldon Natenberg |
How do you read RSS feeds? | zitterbewegung: I use safari's built in RSS reader or Google Reader. I usually read the whole feed unless it is quite large and then I skim them or read the first 10. |
Best books/source to learn about investing? | Prrometheus: After you've read a few books that were recommended here, but before putting down any real money, be sure to pick up a copy of Taleb's "Fooled By Randomness" to make sure you have a healthy amount of skepticism. |
Best books/source to learn about investing? | ca98am79: my favorites: http://www.uglychart.com/?page_id=1534 |
How do you read RSS feeds? | Kilimanjaro: Google Reader for all feeds except slashdot, digg, reddit and HN which I visit directly in my browser. |
What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot? | adambard: As a fellow Digg->Reddit->here refugee, I think we're the problem. Judging by the fact that you didn't defect from Reddit sooner, it can be reasoned that you enjoy a dash of offbeat humor, politics, and funny pictures with your programming (and in this case entrepreneurial) articles and news. In other words, you're like me, and the rest of the early majority.We go from social news site to social news site, dragging down article quality with our penchant for less-than-total fact saturation and off-topic posts.The only responsible thing is to get your hacker news here, and your funny pictures elsewhere. Refrain from contributing posts or articles and let the people that make this site great continue to make it great.Wait, crap. Except for this post and that post. |
How do you read RSS feeds? | patrocles: rss2email -- rocks for blogs where you don't want to miss a single post (friends and other high S/N feeds)In general thought, most news actually isn't news. It's just data and we need to model what we actually care about, and then monitor for that.E.g. I don't really care that there's a war in Darfur, I care that the world has more armed conflicts now than last year. So write a script to keep track of them (scrape wikipedia) and when the number goes up, email yourself to write a check to UNHCR. |
What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot? | jlouis: The main difference is very simple, yet effective: HN has a specific goal. It is not a place which will just flow with whatever is posted. Some things are allowed, and some things are not.Hopefully, the choice of content will keep people interested in that kind of content, and remove those that don't. They already got reddit/digg/foobar for their stories.Comments would take more time to moderate, if we think of users up/downvoting as a differential equation that slowly is moving towards the "intelligence of the masses". So in time, the level of comments will degrade. The way of keeping that from happening is, of course, to mercilessly kill bad comments and keep them out with overpowering ;) |
What & how do you code on your Mac? | alnayyir: aw come on. Someone has to have an answer to this, I'm quite curious. |
What & how do you code on your Mac? | yan: I have a MacBook and a MacBook Air (both fine laptops for coding) and I use mostly vim running inside iTerm (far superior to OS X's Terminal imho) for my IDE and C and Python are my languages of choice.When I write Objective-C w/ Cocoa, its X-Code all the way. It has a lot of excellent features.Socket programming with C would be no different than writing it in FreeBSD. I had some network daemon that I wrote under FreeBSD that compiled and ran under OS X with absolutely no modification. You have a full GCC build chain on OS X either by default or with the X Code package, don't remember exactly. That same code will probably also run under Linux, with slight or no changes; and those changes will probably be only about including the right headers.I love coding on my Mac. I generally used to code under FreeBSD at home (MacBook is my current `everything' computer) and currently code in Linux at work. Feels fairly similar between environments since I have a full screen terminal most of the time.I didn't quite gather what you wanted to do with virtualization, but Parallels and VmWare Fusion work great. You can also get a qemu frontend.If you have any other specific questions, don't hesitate. |
What & how do you code on your Mac? | shutter: I'm not really a "Mac" developer, since I don't (yet) code for the Mac APIs, but I'll respond anyway:I primarily code in Python and Javascript, but also some C/C++ non-GUI stuff. I tried a few different cross-platform Python IDEs, but nowadays I just use TextMate. I use iTerm for the terminal.TextMate's a great app for a lot of different things... Markdown, Python, C++, Javascript, Mail... it has a lot of plugins to help write code and text in different languages. That's great, and it allows you to be really productive. My only gripe is that it hasn't been updated substantially lately; while it's a great product as-is, I'd like to see a few improvements to the interface.My network programming has been mostly just from Python, but I haven't run into any problems with OS X's sockets. I'd imagine it'd be nearly identical to BSD systems, and I'd also suspect that it you would not encounter much difficulty shifting between OS X and Linux compiling. Someone else might know more specifics. |
What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot? | nazgulnarsil: Don't make your posts too entertaining. Don't make your posts too short. A community of people who post large chunks of dense text about esoteric subjects will keep the horde out. |
What & how do you code on your Mac? | s3graham: My oft-repeated slightly OT 2cents: don't code on any notebook (including an Air) for extended periods of time: they're very unergonomic. |
What & how do you code on your Mac? | evgen: If you need to do Linux-specific coding and I do mean _specific_, like using libraries or kernel apis that are Linux and not "unix" (e.g. epoll() or inoitify()) then you will probably want to compare VMWare and Parallels and pick one for your virtualization engine. This will also give you access to windows, which can be useful at times.Otherwise, you will find a Mac to be an very nice BSD box. Get macports and you will have access to just about every open-source project and library you might want.For editing I use Emacs for Erlang, Eclipse/PyDev for python, and Coda for web/javascript. Textmate is also highly regarded, especially in the Ruby community. The only language that you will find yourself lacking will be c# and other CLR variants, but if you really need them you can try Mono or run Windows in VMWare/Parallels.The only other suggestion is less of a Mac tip and more of a coding on a laptop tip: get a more ergonomic keyboard and a larger monitor that you can use at your primary coding desk. It really makes a difference for long coding sessions. |
What & how do you code on your Mac? | ljlolel: I was very excited to buy a Mac Mini the other day. I was very disappointed to learn over several weeks that, despite what Paul Graham and DHH and others say, OS X sucks for hacking.I experiment with a number of languages, I pull in many different libraries, I use various different tools and scripts and programs from the command line. Frankly, installing any one of these things onto a Mac is a pain.In Ubuntu, I simply do apt-get install. On a Mac, I have to download a tarball and compile it (their package management systems have many fewer packages, many of which are out of date). If I wanted to compile things, I would use Gentoo. Actually, Gentoo is much better since I think the portage package management system is very well-developed, up-to-date, large, fast, handles dependencies brilliantly, and has the option for some binaries.As for the general use of the Mac: if you want to do anything that is not the default, good luck. Learning all of the different ways you can do something non-standard on a Mac is like learning black magic. You have to Google around to find out the secret incantations. For example, to ask for the boot menu, you must psychically know to hold down ALT as it boots. The other day, I wanted to test out how well my site worked with Flash off, only to discover I couldn't. I found a site with some complicated instructions about how to go about disabling Flash on OS X. I just gave up and rebooted into Ubuntu.Basically, hacking on OS X is exactly like working with linux 5 years ago, when I had to be an expert on esoteric systems to do what I want.Just do what I do: dual-boot into Ubuntu. I boot into OS X when I want to use iTunes, watch TV/movies using the cool Mac remote, or develop iPhone apps. |
What & how do you code on your Mac? | bprater: Aside from software others have mentioned, I find myself using Coda frequently.When I'm working on a variety of different websites via SFTP, and it allows me to quickly log into a website, make a few changes, hit save and be done. No fiddling with another client or syncing.You can create a preview pane to the right of the code, so when you hit save, it auto-refreshes the website. That's snazz-tastic.For all out quick changes, I haven't found anything that beats it.It has a great CSS editor, too. (If you haven't played with it, give it a serious try. I like to hand-edit CSS, too, but for playing with pixel perfect alignments, it can be quicker.) |
Best books/source to learn about investing? | SkyMarshal: Start here:http://www.bogleheads.org/ (long-term investing)http://www.tickerforum.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?post=5033 (day & macro trading)http://wilmott.com/categories.cfm?catid=11 (quant finance & algorithmic trading)The single most important rule in investing or trading: don't lose money:http://infraredpress.com/http://www.rule1investor.com/http://safari.oreilly.com/9780132213080http://market-ticker.denninger.net/2008/03/pump-pump-pump-up...Some additional sources:http://fooledbyrandomness.com/http://finmath.com/Finally, 90% of finance books you can read at Borders or Barnes & Noble and not need to buy and keep as a reference. Do that, rather than spend hundreds on them, and buy only the ones you think you'll want to reread or keep on hand for reference. |
What & how do you code on your Mac? | geuis: My toolset is Firebug for Firefox and Smultron for my text editor. Photoshop for visual aspects of design. For software dev, a LAMP dev environment running on an EC2 instance connected to my local SVN repository. |
What & how do you code on your Mac? | falsestprophet: emacs via ssh |
Why shouldn't I drop out of college to do a startup? | tonystubblebine: Totally agree about the work. My theory on CS work was that as long as I was learning something on a computer it didn't matter if it was for class or not. That ended up being a good theory that's served me well.When I was at Odeo we did a survey of the office to see who had degrees. I'm pretty sure it was just me and the other middle manager. That's pretty sad, since the fun part of a startup is either being the decider or the doer. Of course both of us went on to start companies, so maybe it doesn't really matter.Yeah, that's what I want to say. It doesn't matter in a general sense. What does matter, and I've found this to be very true as a founder, is to do things your way. There's no one set of magic advice so you just have to figure out the things that work for you. If school doesn't work for you and startup success is more important than the college social life, then drop out and go for it. If you're more methodical (like me) then graduate, join a startup, learn some lessons, then found your own company. |
Why shouldn't I drop out of college to do a startup? | gaius: As someone else on this site said once, getting into college in the first place is actually more influential on the rest of your life than graduating. You can always go back.Then again, college is to a certain extent what you make of it. You have opportunities there that you're unlikely to get again. Another option you should consider is changing majors. Astronomy or Egyptology or something that's just interesting with little or no direct practical application. After all, you've already got the skills you need to earn a living. |
Why shouldn't I drop out of college to do a startup? | antiform: Having done what you're thinking about doing, I could probably write pages on the pros and cons, but I'll boil it down to probably the most important reason:It's hard to go at it alone.I say that if you don't have a solid cofounder who has your back, an idea and implementation that you're willing to bet your career on, or an extraordinary opportunity that won't be there when you graduate, you should get your degree first and hack in your spare time until then. If you don't have connections, a job with your name on it, significant coding experience, a compelling product, or funding, you're going to have a hard time finding work or even in convincing people to work with you.That said, programming jobs and startups are much more forgiving in the education category than just about any other job. If you've got the skills and have something to back it up, then you've definitely got a shot.It's not impossible to succeed, but if you don't have a way to support yourself, it's that much harder. Just know what you're getting yourself into. While you will learn a lot if you drop out and do a start up, know the opportunity costs of what you are going to do. |
What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot? | gunderson: I can't believe nobody has mentioned collaborative filtering.Simple collective voting and new/hot/controversial are very unsophisticated measures of how much any particular user will like something.For an example of how powerful collaborative filtering is, check out movielens.orgThe key is to take each user's votes and use them to figure out based on other peoples' votes what stories and comments to display. Then the community doesn't really "grow". Sure you may get some niche communities that grow, such as people who all tend to upvote cat pictures, but the "thinking person" doesn't have to worry, b/c as long as there is a weak (or negative) correlation between cat pictures and your upvotes, the system will never recommend any to you.Imagine rather than one massive community, an infinite number of beautifully overlapping ones. I think the ideal system would consider votes for stories and comments, and show each person mostly content that had a high probability of being enjoyed.The "new" tab might show things with less of a strict filter to prevent false negatives.The research group that built Movielens has some papers on the web and the math isn't that tough. With a properly design collaborative filtering system there simply will not be the digg/reddit degradation where the site gets so big and noisy and low quality. Sure there may be stories that are hugely popular, but as long as the algorithm gets enough quality input (votes) on a variety of things, no user would get too many duds.Ironically Reddit's redesign only increases noise by tending people away from the subreddit niche communities that had existed -- I would more likely click on a weak title if in a quality subreddit than if it's the #4 item on the screen.At the rate it's going, news.yc will surely become the next reddit, and eventually the next Digg. As others have pointed out, we'll all have probably moved on by then to the next site (or hopefully one that implements CF!).It seems odd to me that nobody has implemented a site like this with CF... As with most of my posts, if anyone wants to collaborate to do an experimental site like this just let me know. There are some cool ruby libraries out there and of course gsl. |
Why shouldn't I drop out of college to do a startup? | cmos: Ok. Your in college. In theory, you have more time now than later, when you might need a real job, to start a business.Don't drop out until you have an income from your new business. If you are truly passionate about starting something, and it's obsessing you, you shouldn't need to 'drop out' to get it going.And even then, when you have INCOME from this endeavor, you'd just be taking a break. It's insurance, really. A degree, however not worth it's weight in paper, will open doors for you.But so would a hit startup. You could have the next facebook in you. So make it happen, but try, as long as you can, to hold on to the most unique time in your life, the experience of undergrad.Cherish it and respect it. Leave it when your new venture makes it so clear it's no longer a question you would ask a group.Leave it when it's obvious. |
What & how do you code on your Mac? | dnaquin: textmate. vim.gcc. python. django. it's all good. |
What & how do you code on your Mac? | jsvaughan: So - I code on stuff for my startup (http://www.bionicbooks.com) across all 3 of a g5 mac, an xp pc and ubuntu on a thinkpad. I use java and the major downside of OSX is that you cant use the sun jdk, you have to wait for apple's version which is inevitably at least 1 major release behind (and generally forces you to pay up for the new OS release if you want it). Additionally you have to deal with the odd keyboard arrangement and unconventional home and end key things which might be a hassle if you're not used to them. Package management on the mac is more of a nuisance than ubuntu; installing mysql, php, whatever, is always much more of an effort (of all 3 machines the mac is the only one where i keep notes of how I installed things).I've seriously considered getting a Mac Air but for my stuff I couldn't live with OSX full time, I'd have to install Linux. And if you're going to do that then you might want to look at other SSD laptops; rumor has it that Lenovo are going to launch an X400 based on Centrino 2 (Montevino) which came out this week. Whether they do or not, the X300 is still an option. |
Why shouldn't I drop out of college to do a startup? | brianr: What's the argument(s) against just dropping out now and starting something up?As someone currently on indefinite leave from college to work on my startup... I think you have the order backwards. Get something going first, and when it is going so well that it would be foolish not to work on it full-time, then take the plunge. College is an excellent (and safe) place to throw a bunch of ideas at the wall and see what sticks. |
How do you read RSS feeds? | toxik: /Applications/Mail.appI highly recommend it to anyone on OS X Leopard. Mail doesn't count unread RSS entries as unread mail, so RSS feeds become more of a "you could potentially look at this when you have nothing to do, and these are the entries you didn't read". It's good. |
What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot? | captain-m: If growth isn't a concern why not force people to wait a certain amount of time after signing up before they're allowed to post?That way new users can get a feel for the community before they start posting and you only get users with a real interest in the stories posted here. |
Best books/source to learn about investing? | jkent: No one mentioned Dilbert's 9-point formula?http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7Bbe5...Won't paste it here, but it's worth a look. The first bit of advice is make a will (yes, even if you aren't married - give it to the old hackers home). |
Books on meta-learning | MaysonL: "Learning How to Learn": Idries Shah |
Why shouldn't I drop out of college to do a startup? | wallflower: Sometimes a decision you make isn't black and white. Remember, you can use logic to rationalize decisions that other parties may see as illogical (e.g. your well-meaning parents). They say if you want to buy something really badly - wait 30 days and then see if you want to buy it. I'd like to suggest the same - wait at least 30 days before deciding.College, in short, is a basic requirement to get a white-collar type job in the United States. If you drop out of college, you are differentiating yourself (in a bad way) from getting hired at a typical company. Startups are more flexible when it comes to hiring.I would have lunch with a mentor who is at the stage where you would like to be in 2-3 years and ask them for their honest opinion. If you don't have a mentor, focus on finding one this summer. You can even email people you don't know but admire for their advice - asking doesn't hurt. |
what language should I learn next? | giardini: Python because it is1. easy to learn,2. has lots of libraries,3. is anointed by Google,4. is anointed by Peter Norvig (http://www.norvig.com/python-lisp.html) .Or go to Erlang. It's concurrency model is untouched. You'll be programming in Erlang someday. |
how do i move 5 GB of photos? | jm4: Hmm... Good question... Bit torrent might be worth looking into. It will probably take forever, but once it gets going you can just leave it for a couple days and it's easy to resume a transfer if anyone gets disconnected.It might even be easier and faster to go low tech. A few DVD-Rs or Flash drives and stamps would do the trick. |
how do i move 5 GB of photos? | brlewis: I have excess capacity on ourdoings.com and no limits yet. I've made a lot of UI improvements lately. Let me know if you encounter anything difficult for non-IT people. |
how do i move 5 GB of photos? | technoguyrob: http://streamfile.com lets you "stream" a file like a movie, so you don't have to wait for an upload to finish. Just zip up the 5GB into 3 packs (browsers won't let you upload more than 2GB), and stream it. Then let it stream until the other party receives it.P.S. Streamfile is written in Erlang, which is kind of cool. |
how do i move 5 GB of photos? | brk: Why not swap photos before you leave and you're all local to each other?Otherwise, I'd say find a $5/mo web server account. Everyone zips up their images, ftp's them to the server, and you download each persons image bundle as a simple link.You'd probably have no more than 100GB of aggregate monthly transfers, lots of options in that range. Plus you'd get email accounts and maybe make your own private forum to stay in touch. |
how do i move 5 GB of photos? | noelchurchill: Why non burn to DVD and drop in the mail box? |
how do i move 5 GB of photos? | zepolen: Here's an idea, make a gmail account that you all have access to and use the gmail hard drive (http://en.seguridadpc.net/gmail_hard_disk.htm) to share between yourselves. |
how do i move 5 GB of photos? | lampy: Microsoft Mesh (in P2P mode, without storing data on server)? |
What & how do you code on your Mac? | rmanocha: Most of my work is in Python as of now - I use MacVim [1] along with a bunch of plugins (see [2]). I was using Eclipse with PyDev for the longest time, but I just got tired of the bloated memory usage, especially when I wasn't using many of the things Eclipse is famous for (I still swear by it when I do Java development).[1] - http://code.google.com/p/macvim/
[2] - http://blog.sontek.net/2008/05/11/python-with-a-modular-ide-... |
how do i move 5 GB of photos? | ycseattle: jgamman can you email me at ycseattle (-at-) gmail.com? I am working on this exact idea. |
how do i move 5 GB of photos? | prakash: fedex? |
how do i move 5 GB of photos? | nickb: 1) Use an embedded bittorrent tracker inside Azureus/uTorrent2) Sneakernet! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet |
how do i move 5 GB of photos? | hollywoodcole: One byte at a time! lolI would sign up a gmail account and upload the photos to it. Then give access to all your friends so that they can download and archive what you all want. It won't be pretty but you will be able to send the account. |
how do i move 5 GB of photos? | joshwa: Do you all need all 5GB of photos? Probably not. I'd venture that:-- the total number of shots can be edited down to the 'keepers'-- web-resolution is sufficient for 95% of the photos being tradedHave everyone edit out the losers, batch process down to 800px jpegs, upload to a flickr group, and then transmit the ones you need higher-res versions of individually via email or mediafire or similar. |
how do i move 5 GB of photos? | volida: rapidshare |
how do i move 5 GB of photos? | bprater: Curious why you head out before you share pictures? If you did it right there, you could burn x numbers of DVDs. |
how do i move 5 GB of photos? | dominik: Flickr and Smugmug both have unlimited uploading for their photos. Both services are user friendly, even to non-technical users. Flickr's pro service is $25/yr and Smugmug's entry level service is $40/year. I personally host over 50 GB of photos at Smugmug.My only other piece of advice: upload from somewhere with high upload bandwidth. |
how do i move 5 GB of photos? | raghus: Flickr etc won't work since.. - actually, Flickr is a great solution. Just get an Pro account for $25/yr which comes with unlimited uploads and unlimited sets. You can even set up Flickr uploading to upload lower res files right from your DSLR biggies and get the whole upload done much much faster. You can tag each others photos and pick the best by favoriting etc. add comments, ask questions etc. There's much you can do with Flickr - I'd definitely look into that option. |
Would free copywriting assistance appeal to you? | Frocer: This would be extremely appealing to us. We actually hired a marketing copywriter but had to let her go due to price. How could we reach you? :) |
how do i move 5 GB of photos? | grimoire: I'm with the whole DVD thing. Never underestimate the bandwidth of a box of discs in a postal van. The ping time on the other hand... |
Would free copywriting assistance appeal to you? | nickb: I'd love to hear what you'd say about what we're working on. |
Would free copywriting assistance appeal to you? | davidw: I'd love it if you wanted to have a go at one or more summaries on Squeezed Books ( http://www.squeezedbooks.com ). I'm currently running a contest where the winner gets a free book, which isn't much of a prize, but might be some free publicity, and isn't a lot of work either. |
Would free copywriting assistance appeal to you? | Alex3917: This is a really good idea. I keep sending the product description for my YC app to people and asking them to help wordsmith the value proposition, and I keep getting emails back with marketing ideas and questions about logistics. This has happened three times in the last week. |
how do i move 5 GB of photos? | albertcardona: Don't understimate the bandwidth of of a truckload of hard drives. I.e. fedexing hard drives is the easiest and fastest.[There is a file sharing society in Japan, by invitation only, whose members ship encrypted hard drives to each other. Not just for bandwidth reasons.] |
how do i move 5 GB of photos? | callmeed: Get an Amazon S3 account and use an S3-compatible client to upload/download the files.You can also set permissions on the files so that people can download them directly. |
Yahoo spam filter, is it possible to get through? | ssanders82: Can I ask which changes were necessary to get through Hotmail? Gmail isn't a problem, but Hotmail occasionally is for us. (Same situation - registration confirmation, etc.) |
Would free copywriting assistance appeal to you? | yan: Great idea and thank you for offering your services.I've always wondered if we can just pool the talent available here, with people advertising what they're good at. For those that aren't deeply involved in their own start ups, this can almost be fun. If someone has a good idea of something they want to hack up, just try to pull a few
people from this ether of talent, and try to build something very quickly. I'm talking about maximum of a few days of highly-parallel work.If it grows into something above an assignment, there's your tiny start up. If not much comes out of it, the experience of being part of a small team working on something together can be worth much more than the time spent on it. Creating worth that is more than the sum of its parts.And this post highlights that it's not just hackers/coders that can contribute. Illustrators, d
esigners, copywriters, law students, etc. There is very little limit because of little hierarchy. |
Would free copywriting assistance appeal to you? | boucher: Seems to me like you should just pick a company you'd like to work for who you think is in need of your skills, and then prove it to them by doing exactly what you suggest. Why wait for them to come to you? |
how do i move 5 GB of photos? | ulvund: Wuala, a distributed filesystem, make a group. |
Yahoo spam filter, is it possible to get through? | alex_c: Call Yahoo and scream your heads off (politely).I'm serious. Hotmail was willing to work with us to help us get things working. If you've already jumped through all the silly technical hoops, have a legitimate case for sending the emails, and comply with their terms, try to get through to someone at Yahoo. They have no vested interest in keeping legitimate emails from their users' inboxes. |
Would free copywriting assistance appeal to you? | radu_floricica: I looked hard for something like that (in Romanian, not English). What I found was either freelancers who offered to work for free (the job was small) but ultimately bailed, or big companies who didn't even want to talk to me. I ended up writing my own texts and feeling better for it. Anyways, I just want to tell the OP: if you're good AND professional, you should be rich soon :) Or at least too busy to care about money. |
how do i move 5 GB of photos? | newt0311: Um... Since nobody has suggested it yet, open up an ssh port on a computer and use sftp. |
Seeking a personal spam filter (an actual person) | eisokant: I think it doesn't exist because of the privacy implications. Imagine someone reading all your emails! |
Professional Python IDEs? | breck: I have minimal experience with Wingware, but have found it impressive and am spending more time with it. Previously I've done all my Python in IDLE and Textpad.I'm also going to give Fedora a shot. As bloated as it is, free is nice. |
Would free copywriting assistance appeal to you? | jwesley: I'm in a similar position to the author of this thread. I can hack well enough to set up and customize sites with open source CMS, but my strongest skills are copywriting and marketing.I would like to collaborate with people with complimentary skills. Email or ping me at johncwesley@gmail.com, I'd love to hear about what you're working on and offer marketing advice if I can. |
Professional Python IDEs? | jcl: Komodo is supposed to be pretty nice, although I haven't used it myself (happy with vim):http://www.activestate.com/Products/komodo_ide/feature_showc... |
Seeking a personal spam filter (an actual person) | breck: Sure, I know of a service. It's cheap too--only one dollar per month. But you have to have a large net worth to become a member. Preferably in liquid form in online banks. |
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