instruction stringlengths 4 105 | output stringlengths 8 56.7k |
|---|---|
Black bar? | abstractbill: I think it's an online version of the black arm band that's often worn to acknowledge the passing of a great figure in a community. |
Black bar? | nuclear_eclipse: I assume it got added at the same time the HN footer was added to the bottom of comment pages.... |
Simplest email setup for slicehost-ed domain? | oomkiller: Google Apps is a good way to go, but personally I prefer Dovecot and Postfix for my email servers. |
Are macros still an enormous edge in the power of a language? | pg: Yes. It's part of good Lisp style not to use a macro when a function would suffice, and yet the source of HN is full of macro calls. If you want to see examples of modern uses of macros, that would be a good place to start.http://ycombinator.com/arc/arc3.tarIf you want a single, self-contained example, here's one... |
Simplest email setup for slicehost-ed domain? | nkohari: If you're only interested in receiving email, Google Apps for Domains is great. If you need to send it (for example, as part of your service), you should check out AuthSMTP (http://authsmtp.com/). |
Review my startup | GeneralMaximus: I skimmed the text for a moment, didn't get what the service was about, and left. And I'm a HN reader who is actually interested in stuff like this.Think about the reactions Facebook/Twitter-using students with 10 second attention spans are going to have. |
Does religion have a future | catfish: The only hope is evolution. Religion is rooted in the wetware, and resides physically in the brain. As we evolve a percentage of the population is born with ever shrinking god regions in the wetware. Those who cannot feel or understand faith, or do not sense an external force, do not participate in religious c... |
Are macros still an enormous edge in the power of a language? | apu: Are macros still at the "top" of the features pyramid?In http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html , PG argues that Lisp is more powerful than other languages because it has macros. However, in the 50 years since the invention/discovery of Lisp, is there now some language that has a new feature X that lisps don't have (a... |
Are macros still an enormous edge in the power of a language? | ggchappell: You might be interested in what John Wiegley had to say on the subject (in particular, Haskell has no macros; is this bad?) a couple of months ago:http://www.newartisans.com/2009/03/hello-haskell-goodbye-lis...The comments below the article also have some interesting and relevant things to say. |
What's a startup and what's a web app? | daleharvey: if it is to make money, it is a startup.
if it an application on the web, its a web app.it can be any combination of true or false for either. |
What's a startup and what's a web app? | vaksel: To me a startup is something which is built with hopes for it to eventually be profitable. A web app is something that you build that you don't really expect to make money from |
What's a startup and what's a web app? | sgrove: I think the webapp/startup line blurred together in the funding frenzy of the past few years where revenue-less webapps could be acquired profitably for the founder.But the line is growing more distinct starting as revenue regains its importance in the scene. Startups are projects with clear revenue goals, and ... |
What's a startup and what's a web app? | IsaacL: I think a lot of "startups" would be better off calling themselves projects. There's nothing wrong with being a project: Wikiepdia's a project, GNU/Linux is a project. But neither of them ever expected to make money; the same could be said for many (by no means all) web apps that call themselves startups. |
What's a startup and what's a web app? | rokhayakebe: A web app is a product. A startup is the structure that monetizes/wants to monetize the web app. |
Are macros still an enormous edge in the power of a language? | smoofra: Haskell can do almost everything people generally use macros for without them. But there's always some things only macros can do, so for that you have template haskell. |
What's a startup and what's a web app? | patio11: Arguing about the definitions of words is productive if you're a lexicographer or a lawyer.For the rest of us, it absorbs time which could be used to separate customers from their money by selling them things they want. |
What's a startup and what's a web app? | speek: I always considered a startup as an incorporated legal entity and a web app as an application on the web. |
Simplest email setup for slicehost-ed domain? | alexmacgregor: Google Apps definetly. As mentioned, the interface is great and search functionality is offcourse excellent. (Not to mention storage) |
What's a startup and what's a web app? | jack7890: They aren't mutually exclusive. |
What's a startup and what's a web app? | arasakik: "A startup is a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty." -Eric Ries |
Simplest email setup for slicehost-ed domain? | pert: If you're looking to configure mail from your slicehost and you do go with the Google Apps option (that's what I use), you might like to have a look at this guide to getting sSMTP working with Google:http://wiki.debian.org/sSMTPI can't recommend sSMTP enough to anyone that doesn't want to maintain a mail server. ... |
Are macros still an enormous edge in the power of a language? | zandorg: In 2006 over 2 months, I wrote an OCR (optical char recognition - turning images back into text) system in Lisp using macros.First it finds all 'features' by traversing a 1-pixel wide representation of the text character's image. Then you describe which features you want to look for, in a macro language.So (in... |
Are macros still an enormous edge in the power of a language? | russell: I used macros a lot in C to initialize structs and arrays with constant information, like keywords for a parser. It would still be useful for languages, like Java, which do not have literals for initializing objects, maps, and arrays. Another use would be DSL's on top of a language like Python. Sure you can... |
Are macros still an enormous edge in the power of a language? | justin_vanw: Personally, I think compiler macros are far more interesting than 'regular' macros. I would love to see compiler macros even in mundane languages such as python.Example, in pseudo code:<code>
defun regex_find(some_string, regex)
return regex.compile().find(some_string)def compilermacro regex_find(some... |
What's a startup and what's a web app? | mahmud: A startup offers services or products, some of which could be web apps.A web app is another form of software distribution, via the web. |
What's a startup and what's a web app? | jmonegro: They're independent from each other. A startup is young company/business offering a product or a service. A web app can be the service that a startup provides, which is why you see many web startups as web apps.I can create a web app without making it a startup/business, and vice-versa. |
Simplest email setup for slicehost-ed domain? | mc: If you do go with Google Apps for your Domain, you can use the following script (in Ruby) to automatically configure the appropriate DNS entries on Slicehost:http://github.com/postpostmodern/slicehost-dns/tree/masterRun it from the command line and it'll setup everything for you. |
Simplest email setup for slicehost-ed domain? | ericb: In the latest Ubuntu, mail setup is much easier. Might be worth checking out. It isn't fancy out of the box, but it might be good enough and you can iterate and extend later.http://ubuntuserver.wordpress.com/2009/02/13/an-improved-mai... |
Are macros still an enormous edge in the power of a language? | Hexstream: I couldn't live without iterate, a very intuitive, lispy, simple, mostly "backwards compatible" replacement for Common Lisp's clunky, unlispy, ugly loop iteration facility.http://common-lisp.net/project/iterate/doc/index.htmlhttp://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/06_a.h...In a language without... |
Are macros still an enormous edge in the power of a language? | prodigal_erik: Sure, working with code in someone else's domain-specific language is hard. But not as hard as working with a lower-level translation from a domain-specific language which only exists in their head. Even if Clojure were only used for one project in the world, I'm still better off learning Clojure than tr... |
Are macros still an enormous edge in the power of a language? | gruseom: Macros expand into other code, so in the literal, obvious sense, there isn't anything you can do with them that you can't do without them. The question is whether you can do it as briefly, as clearly, or as composably.Here's another example. I work on a spreadsheet app. A spreadsheet has many operations that a... |
Are macros still an enormous edge in the power of a language? | stonemetal: Note the reason discussion on programming languages.http://gmarceau.qc.ca/blog/2009/05/speed-size-and-dependabil...Lisp and scheme do pretty poorly on the power scale. Even going back to the original data neither finish in the top 10 and Lisp gets beaten by java. |
Review My App - Alchitect | timzon_dot_com: Great Job on the short installation manual video, it seems pretty straigforward to get started.
A Demo of what Alchitect can be used for would be great. Also, I couldn't find the other Video Tutorials mentioned in the introduction.
Good start... |
Black bar? | pmikal: From a design point of view, I think it makes the page easier to read.... |
Are macros still an enormous edge in the power of a language? | sedachv: I used to like arguing over the Internet about this subject. There are many good technical and management/organizational arguments you can make for and against macros. What I've come to realize is they're all pretty much irrelevant.The entire point of programming is automation. The question that immediately co... |
Review My App - Alchitect | gizmo: It looks like Alchitect is a PHP MVC-style web framework, but I had to click around quite a bit to figure that out.Why not make the first sentence on the front page something like this:"Alchitect is a MVC web framework written in PHP that does [ whatever it is that makes Alchitect special]" |
Review My App - Alchitect | JimmyL: You may want to play with the name a bit, but it could be too late in your development for that - the first thing I thought of when I read "alchitect" was a site that I could tell all the kinds of booze I had in my closet, and it would give me some interesting mixed drinks (alcohol + architect). But that may ju... |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | johnnybgoode: Here is the comment you're referring to: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=645316I want to add that even if you personally don't feel inferior about it, you'll probably still feel something when you know someone else is judging you for it.And of course, sometimes it doesn't even matter how you feel. You... |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | rgrieselhuber: I saw both threads and I think that you're probably wasting useful energy by dwelling on this (true or not - I don't spend much time analyzing it).At the minimum, if you feel inferior because of something like this, try to find a way to turn it into a challenge to succeed at whatever you want to do in sp... |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | jerryji: I only feel inferior when I haven't done enough to maximize my potential. |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | anigbrowl: No, but I have felt inferior for not going to college. For a variety of mostly personal reasons, it didn't seem like a life-enhancing decision at the time (~25 years ago, in Ireland). |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | J_McQuade: Well, it may be a little different in the UK due to our many-tiered higher education system (Oxbridge, redbricks, ex-polytechnics and a moderate spectrum in between), but I'll chip in my two copper pence either way.Actually, this is a question I've thought about a little too much, I'd wager, because, as a pr... |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | tptacek: I barely went to college at all. I wonder if I feel better about my situation than does someone who went to Grand Valley State instead of UMich CS. |
Are macros still an enormous edge in the power of a language? | magice: The issue of macro is that it is, by itself, not a power. It's like how knife by itself is not food. However, knife can make you food. That's the main point.Imagine this Christmas, Perl 6 is out with some killing features. Now, your language (Python? Haskell? ML? Whatever) does not have these features. What wou... |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | edw519: Never.I don't know what doors were never open to me because of my college.I do know that for every door I did enter, it was only a matter of time before the only thing that really mattered was demonstrated performance.If more people would just forget about B.S. like "pedigree" and focus on delivering value to t... |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | Dilpil: Indeed I do. MIT grads are automatically understood as smart. I can often convince people after a few minutes of conversation, but I do not always get those minutes. |
Behind every great fortune lies a great crime? | osipov: "Balzac was on to something 200 years ago, but to be fair to modern day multi-millionaires, the only real way to accumulate wealth prior to the 18th century was to steal it, or tax it,"Will we ever go back to the economy where the only way to accumulate wealth is to steal it or tax it? |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | NoBSWebDesign: I usually try not to compare myself to others too much (too many variables in life experiences make such comparisons difficult anyway). But if anything, I feel superior for having accomplished what I have with graduating from a "no-name-brand" school. |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | gabriel: I was recently re-reading the "regrets" pamphlet by n+1 magazine (link at bottom) where the premise was to get a round-table discussion of some "intellectuals" and ask them what they regret about their education in order to provide a guide for current students in ideas of "literature, philosophy, and thought."... |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | lief79: Well, I choose public rather then Ivy, but it's not far behind. I generally feel better because I choose to get a similar education without going massively into debt. I figured I'd be going for a masters, at which point it wouldn't matter.At some point in time, I'm still thinking about getting a masters ... b... |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | GavinB: It never ends. Even at a "Name Brand" school you're still looking up at Harvard-Princeton-Yale. If you're there, you're looking up at the Rhodes scholars, valedictorians, and the "stars" of each department.You have to remember that once you go to some top-rated school, you're suddenly in an environment where e... |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | jpwagner: I invented ___ is way more compelling than I went to ____. |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | udekaf: I feel inferior reading this article instead of coding. |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | alexgartrell: I go to a "name brand" college (Carnegie Mellon, you can disagree if you'd like) and there are LOTS of CS majors who don't know anything. Likewise I've worked with people from state schools who know exactly what they're doing. Anyone who associates eliteness with where an undergrad degree was obtained i... |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | zaidf: I hardly goto an inferior college(UNC-Chapel Hill). But I am studying what is considered an inferior major(communications).I love it! When I tell my friend of my major, they roll their eyes in disbelief. But then I tell them of all my classes with the basketball players and they are quickly envying me:) That asi... |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | tdavis: No, and I'm not even from a non-name-brand college. I am confident in my abilities and seem to be adequately respected among my peers who know me. That's good enough for me. |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | grandalf: It doesn't matter at all where you went to college, or even if you went to college.Sure, graduating from Harvard offers some short-term advantages, but if you're motivated you can take the lead.Consider how much time in college is wasted studying minutia for a competitive exam that has no impact on learning.C... |
list of companies, and business models? | gasull: Interesting, but nslookup businessmodels.com returns NXDOMAIN. Also, please submit with the working link and put the comment in the home page of the wiki instead. |
Review My App - Alchitect | DTrejo: Zelphyr, make sure that you have showdead turned on in your HN profile, as there is a comment by JimmyL which may be helpful. |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | RobertL: Name brand colleges are a joke. It has taken the world a while to figure it out but it's finally happening. |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | ellyagg: I compliment colleagues and friends who have CS degrees, and deprecate myself about it out loud, but I secretly don't feel the least bit inferior. In fact, I kind of enjoy the drop-out hacker makes good story. |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | gambling8nt: I wouldn't say I've felt inferior. I've occasionally felt significant regret over my collegiate decision. But then I remember that most such people wind up paying $200k more than I did to go to college. Going to an MIT or Harvard might have gotten me somewhat better connections and opportunities, but it... |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | ideamonk: I have stopped to. Thought I don't get excellent facilities, or a good geek crowd as name-brand colleges have here in India, I've started to believe in myself... ever since I did some freelance web design last year, and got myself into computer security related intern this summer, I've been more confident ove... |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | xenophanes: A more important question than whether you feel inferior is whether you are inferior. The answer to that one is "no".If you feel inferior, but aren't inferior, then the problem is your feelings. Change them. |
Review My App - Alchitect | apsurd: I like the premise: To help non-coders make modern websites.My project is similar in premise.
I admit I haven't installed your framework but here are my thoughts.I think you either are a coder or you aren't. I don't think its beneficial to have a middle road. Things like dreamweaver are said to allow anyone to... |
list of companies, and business models? | ScottWhigham: Interesting? Yes. Able to make the proprietor money? Doubtful. I can't figure out who would pay for the site - subscribers or advertisers/sponsors? Who is the target market - MBA students? Enterpreneurs? I'm not sure and, since I don't know who the users are, I don't know how it makes money. If I can't fi... |
Behind every great fortune lies a great crime? | ScottWhigham: Why is this "Ask HN"? This is just submitting an article. |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | quellhorst: I feel superior for not following the system and even going to college to rack up debt to get a piece of paper.People rarely ask what college you went to. A name-brand degree is just a pissing match that doesn't matter.4 years of outdated assignments won't much of a difference further out in your life. The ... |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | michaelawill: Sometimes I feel inferior to those that went to school at all. But then it passes and I realize I have no loans to pay back. |
Ridiculous Coding Practices by companies you have worked for | ralph: I had to set lots of `visible?', `touch sensitive?', etc., flags based on Boolean expressions. I ended up with things like foo->vis = a || (b || !c && (...)) && z;
Coding standards, and the arbiters at code review, insisted on a nested set of if-then-else statements comparing, e.g. a == TRUE, rather than ju... |
Review our iPhone App | sarvesh: It seems to me like you are expecting people to buy this app so that they can see what a color blind person would see with sample images. But who cares? You seem to have identified that parents or relatives of colorblind would be one likely demographic. Although it is big but paying for it would be a hard for ... |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | jamesbritt: What do people find when they Google your name? |
PHP vs Rails vs obj C vs scala | dem0o8: PHP + CakePHP frameworkas one of the commenter pointed out about bad programming habits with PHP, a framework will give you guidelines on good coding practices. It'll also help you develop faster and it's also quite easy to integrate with the front-end. CakePHP is like Rails framework but for PHP |
Review My App - Alchitect | pedalpete: I personally think your installation demo would lead directly to a no sale.
There are a few reasons.
In your demo video
1) The first thing you show is an error. I understand why you do this, but saying to somebody 'here's the error that comes up when you first start' isn't a great experience.
2) I suspect ... |
When to release? | dejan: I am always for launching as soon as your thing is operational. Real users and critics need to shape your startup and technology, and nothing can replace that. |
When to release? | aditya: That depends on what you're trying to build. For most startups, getting early users (not a full launch but a limited alpha/beta) is key in developing a good product.Sure, given more time you could just keep perfecting the product to your standards, but if you don't have a good idea of EXACTLY what you're buildi... |
When to release? | jmonegro: Common creed I've read around the startup world seems to be "release early, upgrade often", but I've always thought you must have a strong (note: strong doesn't mean many) set of features before launch. |
When to release? | bjclark: I think you should launch as soon as your service provides enough value to someone that they should care. If no one cares, it doesn't provide enough value (for whatever reason). If people do care, then you know your on to something.If you launch before you provide enough value, no one will care.If you wait to ... |
When to release? | dsil: One of the advantages you have as a start-up vs. larger corporations is that you CAN launch something before it's "ready". Getting feedback quickly and early is essential to evolving your product.It's common knowledge that the earlier a bug is found the cheaper it is to fix. Same goes for problems in UI design,... |
When to release? | rg: One thing to consider is to what extent the user will be depending upon the quality and comprehensiveness of your specific product. A product used for recreation or convenience may be very partial and/or may fail frequently without causing much disappointment, and users may be happy to have it early. In contrast,... |
When to release? | lunaru: There's no rule of thumb when it comes to launching. Everyone recites the rhetoric of release early and iterate often, but that can lead to releasing a premature product.Your product only has one reputation, so more important than "when" is "how". You'll want to make sure you have at least a differentiating fea... |
When to release? | uptown: Depends on whether what you're building is free or costs money. Each results in different expectations on what you provide at launch. |
Why do airlines still use "black boxes" ? | mreevery: Redundancy is cheap.Keep the present system and add a second automatically jettisoned flash memory copy of all data that is designed to float if at sea. It would also transmit a signal that would include its GPS location if possible.Jettisoning could be set to occur at a given altitude, a given set of data va... |
When to release? | chaosmachine: Is your product good enough to blog/tweet/tell friends about? If so, you're probably ready to launch. If you think it'd get bad reviews, keep working. |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | joeycfan: No. Do you think math is different at Yale or something? |
When to release? | smokey_the_bear: I think it depends a lot on what your service is. I'm working on a startup for hikers (trailbehind.com) and we were live from day one. But most of our traffic comes from searches, and we've gotten more and more traffic from searches as we've gotten better and more popular. We've also had some hard core... |
Hack through Power source | eli: Huh?Well, if you have control over the power, you could probably launch some pretty effective DoS attacks. |
When to release? | richcollins: I like the minimum viable product approach:http://venturehacks.com/articles/minimum-viable-product |
do entrepreneurs serve as pawns for economic development? | 3-: I think you're generally along the right lines. I can offer a different explanation. Most of my own thesis comes from reading Eisenstein's "Ascent of Humanity", though I've put a little of my spin on it.The basis of civilization - the good and the bad - comes down to our concepts of money and property. I'm only goi... |
Hack through Power source | sorbus: It's possible (but extremely improbable). By which I mean, if anyone has the capabilities to do that, they're just as likely to extract whatever information they need from your brain, or rewrite your mind to make you want to give it to them.Or realize that they have better uses for their time. |
do entrepreneurs serve as pawns for economic development? | swombat: It's quite extreme and overly simplistic...The danger, as always, is that there is some truth to what you say, but that truth is stretched and blurred in various direction so as to be mostly meaningless.Almost every high-reward human endeavour, from drug dealing to movie stardom or stock trading, generates lar... |
do entrepreneurs serve as pawns for economic development? | johnnybgoode: You can think of an "entrepreneur" as someone who has chosen to take higher risk for the potential of a greater reward. People should of course be free to choose a lower risk pursuit, but the potential reward is also lower.You're saying many entrepreneurs fail and that this sucks. But your post kind of as... |
do entrepreneurs serve as pawns for economic development? | brk: What do you guys think about it?I think your theory is without merit.Most entrepreneurs fail because they take on an endeavor they are not cut out for.Additionally, it is not like the government randomly selects people and tells them they must go try to start a business.Generally speaking, entrepreneurial types go... |
Hack through Power source | brk: In the sense of "take control", not really.In the sense of "monitor various actions/activities", then yes (at least in theory).There have been some studies and experiments where you can determine what a CPU is doing or executing by monitoring very finite changes in the current draw of the power supply. To do this... |
When to release? | keefe: One important factor to consider is scalability. A lot of people like to launch with a relatively immature server that only supports a relatively small # of people in a beta with the idea that they will expand it after that # of people come in. I think this adds an extra risk of someone absorbing your ideas and ... |
Have you ever felt inferior for not being from a name-brand college? | brl: As somebody who has never regretted dropping out in high school I find this whole conversation pretty amusing. |
Review My App - Alchitect | Zelphyr: Great suggestions! Thanks all! |
Gmail feature you just can't live without. | pt: Unlimited email addresses for my Inbox with a pattern such as myid-*@yahoo.com (e.g. myid-ycombinator@yahoo.com). Great for spam protection when registering on little known websites, etc. This is provided in the Address Guard feature in Yahoo email. |
Hack through Power source | bayareaguy: Ordinary networking attacks could work if the system in question uses EOP (ethernet over power). |
are non-compete agreements just for suckers? | sharpn: In my experience (IANAL etc.): If you're being hired solely for your expertise &/or experience, there should not be a non-compete clause in your contract. If you are expecting to some extent to be trained in an emerging field then a non-compete clause may be justified.
Juristiction plays it's part too - I've 'a... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.