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Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? | k0n2ad: I've used Adderall, Concerta (Methylphenidate, like Ritalin) and Modafinal when I was in college. Adderall, which I would bum off my friend's prescription, pretty much gave me a rush of focus power and euphoria, which I usually squandered on things that weren't my schoolwork (guitar playing, wikipedia surfing a... |
Sales Letters | ErrantX: I've personally never been a fan full stop - we get quite a few sales letters a week and most go straight in the bin (we will find you). All that gets noted is the product and the name.Anything over 2 pages is just ignored entirely here. A single page with a simple bullet list of what your trying to sell will ... |
Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? | maukdaddy: I'm not trying to sound like an ass - but really?! Why do we (mostly Americans) always want to turn to drugs to solve problems? Too lazy to eat well and exercise - pop a cholesterol drug! Too lazy to motivate yourself and study - pop some "performance enhancing" drug.Here's an amazing thing I learned in c... |
Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? | lallysingh: Frankly I'd go after the motivation/procrastination problem. If you're 21/EE, then you're probably hitting close to burnout.I spent many years of undergrad & grad school drinking to vent stress, but eventually it wasn't doing it for me. I got a motorcycle and I picked up a martial art. I haven't been hap... |
Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? | joel_feather: Find people to compete against. Start with the bottom of the class. |
Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? | edw519: "Naturally, for my convictions, I ran the other way. I myself used to be the one who would vociferously debate against these drugs (on the line that if I'm unhappy, then it's for a reason - something happened to me, a certain natural chain of events... getting at the problem with chemical changes to the body so... |
Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? | asciilifeform: Required reading:(1) http://radian.org/notebook/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/brain-...(2) http://yarchive.net/med/nootropics.html(3) http://yarchive.net/med/lifestyle_drugs.htmlNo. 3 is for understanding why most of the prominent naysayers in the field don't have your best interests in mind. No. 1 and 2 wi... |
Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? | avinashv: Take it from someone who just finished a degree—you sound like you aren't enjoying your major. I entered college as an engineer, and found that after some time, I was in your position. Your lack of motivation might be because you—like me—are underwhelmed at what the program offered you.Obviously, it's a life-... |
Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? | barryfandango: I languished in my computer science degree in much the same way. I graduated with good marks but it was like pulling teeth. I questioned whether I had chosen the correct path.Now that I'm a programmer in the real world though, I love my job and I've learned more since entering the workforce than I ever... |
Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? | charlesju: For the first three years of college I was in your exact same position. I had no idea how to do well in school, constantly blamed myself for "sucking", and this was a pretty awful downward spiral.Then on New Year's Eve, approaching my final year in college, I decided to shape up and just suck it up. My GPA f... |
Most efficient way to test if a string contains a word? | bladeaod: So by the nature of the app, the string I am checking will often increase by 1 letter, and then I check the string again. Right now I save a list of strings I have checked, because it is quicker to see if a string in in that small list than in the dictionary, then once I find a word I clear the list of strin... |
Most efficient way to test if a string contains a word? | mbrubeck: Just to be clear, is this a valid example of the output you're looking for? longest_word("oteuhbicyclentehut") => "bicycle" |
Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? | randallsquared: If you can achieve your goals without drugs, I'd recommend that. Drugs are rarely precision fixes; taking the drugs we have now is akin to fixing a clock with a hammer: even when it works, something else is probably broken now. |
Most efficient way to test if a string contains a word? | ajuc: I'll use radix tree for dictionary, to speed up testing.For words (son, sun, so, sunny) it would be: root -> S -> O -> .
\ \-> N -> .
\-> U -> N -> .
\-> N -> Y -> .
Then - for each character in given string I'll make pointer pointing at root of dictionary tree... |
Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? | bokonist: Your brain may be signaling to you that doing well in class is not actually a good use of your time. You should listen to your brain, and figure out goals you actually believe in. The motivation then follows. |
Most efficient way to test if a string contains a word? | Xichekolas: EDIT: Revised running time and added code (in Ruby)Build a Trie out of your dictionary. Then plug your string into and record depth/chars where it deadends. Repeat for you string with the first char removed. At the end you should have the longest substring.Minor optimization would be to stop plugging things... |
Review our app ReSubj.com | erikwiffin: I think you're on to something here.At work, a short comment in an email can very quickly build up into a large and complicated discussion. Lots of branching, occasionally hitting reply instead of reply-all, really a nasty mess. Part of the problem could be that I'm used to gmail and at work I have to use o... |
Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? | donaldc: I've isolated the problem to be with my will power - I never take initiatives, and I keep procrastinating on doing homework.Drugs will not fix this problem. You need to improve your willpower and your study habits. |
Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? | mping: Dude, the purpose of effort is to gain skills and confidence, not just getting things done. Start small. Progress slowly but steadily.Taking drugs to solve your problem seems to be a way of solving the symptoms, not the root cause. If you don't want to take drugs for your whole life, you are better off going to ... |
Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? | jonshea: When it comes to sports I always say that I’d rather have exciting sports than fair sports, and I’d rather have fair sports than clean sports. I’m a fan of pro-cycling, so doping news is in my life a lot. My favorite comments on intelligence doping come from the Becker-Posner blog:http://www.becker-posner-blog... |
Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? | GHFigs: Habit and conditioning beat willpower and discipline almost all the time. Drugs won't change that at their best, and at their worst they represent a shining example of it. |
Review my Startup (Idea) | TallGuyShort: >> Obviously these interactions would have to be fleshed out a little bitWhen I first read your idea I thought "Hmm... This is to reputation what OpenID is to usernames and passwords". And just then a little light bulb appeared above my head: If you tracked this by OpenID, than any site using OpenID could... |
Theoretical innovation to actual company? | run4yourlives: Do.Stop talking and theorizing and just do. |
Review my Startup (Idea) | grandalf: I think this is a good idea. I've actually thought of something similar myself. Why not have each person's reputation be based on a variety of attributes -- discussion forum insight, financial reliability, technical expertise, etc.This could eventually replace the credit ratings infrastructure of experian, ... |
Review my Startup (Idea) | menloparkbum: It's too meta.It's also impossible. HN and Digg and Reddit are not going to implement your universal reputation system.This has been tried before by at least a half dozen companies and you've never heard of them because they all failed.Lastly, Twitter and Facebook already solve enough of this problem with... |
Theoretical innovation to actual company? | skmurphy: Talk to prospective customers, see what they would pay for which capabilities before you write any code. The risk is not whether you can write the application, but whether you write an application folks want to use and pay for. |
Review my Startup (Idea) | icey: Will you call it whuffie? |
Review my Startup (Idea) | joshu: It's an interesting idea. There are a lot of details that you would have to flesh out.What is reputation? How would you explain it? How does it aggregate?Draw some pictures - what might it look like, what might it be integrated into a site? Etc.In my mind, reputation is the summary of a series of transactions. E... |
Recommended way to receive customer payments when just starting up? | ScottWhigham: When I started http://www.learnitfirst.com/ originally, we only accepted PayPal. I did it this way because getting a merchant account seemed like a big deal+hassle (at the time). After we integrated PayPal, we added Google Checkout which was a collosal waste of time. We now accept credit cards directly.I'... |
Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? | fburnaby: I just finished my EE degree. I did well, but it certainly wasn't by getting lots out of lectures (though going to them probably is a good idea).The trick is to have friends to study with. I always had a hard time focusing on the coursework by myself. It's dry, at least as presented at school. Study with frie... |
last.fm for classical fans? | ScottWhigham: I wasn't/am-not a lastfm person so I can't say - but IIRC doesn't lala.com have something similar? Perhaps they are better for classical? I don't know.And I'm a classical "fan" but I have my favorites. I would not likely listen to anything other than a recommendation engine's suggestions at this stage. |
Recommended way to receive customer payments when just starting up? | noodle: i don't like paypal much, so i'd probably use amazon's FPShttp://aws.amazon.com/fps/ |
Recommended way to receive customer payments when just starting up? | Travis: In my startup (http://industrialinterface.com), we started by manually creating invoices in Paypal and emailing them out. That got lukewarm response.I'm the lead dev, so I buckled down and figured out the merchant stuff. There can be 1-2 weeks worth of delays in getting your merchant account, but our admin gu... |
Theoretical innovation to actual company? | ScottWhigham: Are you a geek too or are you the business person?Advice #1: Be wary of what you read on these boards. A lot of folks will tell you that you need to do "x". Well, what they aren't telling is that they think "x" will work for you but what do they really know about your idea? Zilch. "x" might have worked fo... |
Finding Top Talent | icey: The same way talent finds top jobs - by being active in the community. |
Bug? | icey: I noticed that as well, and wasn't sure why his comment (in the Iran thread) got [dead]-ed. |
Bug? | paulgb: I've noticed a number of other non-spammy comments being killed lately for apparently no reason. Granted a lot of them aren't what I would consider excellent comments, but it would be nice to know what criteria is used for killing comments. |
Bug? | pg: Somehow his account got banned, but I'm not sure how. It may be a bug. |
Finding Top Talent | russell: People you know. People you know who know. Fellow alumni.
Local meetings: Python, Java, Ruby, entrepreneurial groups. If none, start one.
Craigslist? I find clients there. I dont know how good it works the other way.Talk to other entrepreneurs. Maybe they have good candidates that didnt fit.Does telecommu... |
Recommended way to receive customer payments when just starting up? | aaroneous: You can seamlessly accept credit cards and use PayPal as your backend processor. To your customer, it looks like you jumped through all of the hoops of a merchant account, but you're really just interacting w/ PayPal's API.They also provide a virtual terminal so you can accept credit card payments via phone/... |
Recommended way to receive customer payments when just starting up? | jbr: It matters a whole lot what sort of payments you need to take. Is your payment model a sale (one-time transaction) or recurring billing?If you're going to take credit cards and/or do recurring billing:I've built two recurring billing payment systems (braintree and paypal express checkout) and maintained a third (... |
Review my Startup (Idea) | Milansoc15: I like the idea, i'd allow something like that on my website. |
Technomading? | outscape: I've been doing this for 8 years now. First mostly in south america, then since 2006 in asia, mostly in China.The first few years were fine - I enjoyed being in a totally different place. But eventually I missed having other hackers around. My social life took place mostly online.Earlier this year I finally l... |
Recommended way to receive customer payments when just starting up? | codemechanic: http://www.codelathe.com/blog/index.php/2009/06/14/a-brief-c... |
Recommended way to receive customer payments when just starting up? | jwt: PayPal is by far the most cost-effective way (in terms of % rates) to get up and running - compared to the time and costs involved in setting up a merchant account/payment processor.As Aaroneous mentioned- Paypal Website Payments Pro allows you to process paypal payments and credit card charges invisibly in the ba... |
Recommended way to receive customer payments when just starting up? | oomkiller: I would work on a relationship with a bank, and get a merchant account. There are many providers that offer low enough rates for a startup. One that I heard of was Merchant Plus. Just get someone that supports authorize.net and you can't go wrong. This might take a little time, so I would recommend using... |
Recommended way to receive customer payments when just starting up? | jbr: Another note if you're doing recurring billing: Check with your payment provider if you can get your customer payment data out ever. At my previous startup, we were locked into PayPal because they wouldn't release the consumer CC#s and it's never good for business to have to ask your customers to input their paym... |
Technomading? | rdl: The way I've been doing something similar is to take deployed defense contracts which last 3-9 months at a time (Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.), and make enough during that period to live for the rest of the year (and a couple additional years).I've also been working on startup projects in my spare time, since I have go... |
Technomading? | gexla: As I mentioned in another thread, I'm a U.S. citizen doing web dev in the Philippines. I would like to start checking out other places soon but for right now I'm still trying to get used to my first move to a new country.There are a ton of people doing this and writing about it, so just do a search on the net. ... |
Best Rating System: Reddit-style or Amazon-style? | imgabe: I think it depends on what you want to do with the rating information. If you want to show the most popular sites/books, a simple liked/dislike system is probably sufficient.I think the 0 to 5 scale is more helpful if you want to be able to recommend similar products. You can do that with the like/dislike syste... |
Best Rating System: Reddit-style or Amazon-style? | mattmcknight: The Amazon style is potentially better because it is naturally normalized by the number of raters. It is useful to augment it with a number of raters so that there is some weight given to sample size (4.5 stars by 2 raters might mean less than 4.12 stars by 283 raters). I actually enjoy seeing the full d... |
Best Rating System: Reddit-style or Amazon-style? | Travis: Don't forget that Amazon also allows you to rate the ratings, with their "Was this review helpful to you?" link. While it doesn't affect the "score", it is very helpful to bubble up/down people's reviews to show. |
Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? | peripatetic: I disagree w/ a lot of what is stated here about: "don't cover up the problem" or "get your life in order then try medication."I got a lot of the same bad advice and I wasted years flagellating myself to try to get my life in order first. Well, turns out that I have a "real" problem. The 2nd or 3rd day on... |
Best place to get someone to do a Wordpress theme? | pierrefar: Lots of crowdsourcing sites as you rightly noted.Here in Cambridge (UK), we have quite a few mailing lists and meetups of hackers/designers/coders and so it's quite easy to just tap those. I bet you can find similar things locally near you.Also, if you are near a university or college, then you have access t... |
Tech trade show (OSCON) advice? | brk: I've done many tradeshows (as an exhibitor) with various budgets.People are going to walk around and surveil your booth from a distance before moving in to talk. Spend the money to get some decent size displays. Have some demo loops or videos with VERY BRIEF text that deftly articulates what you do, and your val... |
Why does the iPhone/iPod touch use the shake gesture? | ram1024: because quirky is apple's "style" |
Why does the iPhone/iPod touch use the shake gesture? | icey: For the same reason people used to use the blink tag. It was novel, and people like using novel things. Eventually people will get tired of doing input via accelerometer, and you'll see such heavy use of the shake gesture fade. |
Which page is your entry to HN? | ScottWhigham: /classic |
Which page is your entry to HN? | icey: I start with the "front page", then hit up "newest". If there is something in the top 10 or 15 on the front page that I don't understand the popularity of, I go to /classic to see if it's just me or not. |
Why does the iPhone/iPod touch use the shake gesture? | johnnybgoode: Because it makes some people go, "Ooooh!" when they see it in an ad. |
Recruiters who request SSN over the phone | msngroups: No I would not give my full SSN for submitting just a resume. There is every chance of misusing. Microsoft vendors never asks full MSN for resume submission. Only last 4 digits. |
Do you have to pay for the iPhone SDK for each developer? | ujjwalg: on the same lines does anyone that how it is possible for a developer to be able to do everything from downloading the development kit to creating provisioning profiles and certificates, binary and uploading it without being able to access the contracts/sales/finance report? |
What makes a programming language fun? | jawngee: jrockway makes programming languages fun! |
Using Django with PostgreSQL schemas | olefoo: You could patch your models to execute "SET search_path 'schema_name';" before emitting generated SQL.This will work fine until you need to do a cross schema join; at which point you will need to write SQL.It looks like support is slated for Django 1.1 (maybe)
see http://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/6148That s... |
What web/desktop apps do you use to manage your startup? | stumpy124: We use http://www.helpspot.com |
Do you have to pay for the iPhone SDK for each developer? | MaysonL: The iPhone 3.0 SDK is available for free from Apple's Developer Connection. I just downloaded it this afternoon. |
Using Django with PostgreSQL schemas | brutimus: In any situation like this I've been in and tried to attempt django, it's turned out to be a complete failure. You need an ORM that knows how to construct SQL properly and map existing tables. Go with your second option: SQLAlchemy. Use that with SQLSoup (an extension), mapping tables on the fly is a breez... |
Using Django with PostgreSQL schemas | jerryji: Yes.And to anyone who does not care about a fancy admin interface, I'd serious recommend Pylons. |
Using Django with PostgreSQL schemas | lacker: If you have an existing database it's easiest to skip Django's ORM. I don't know about SQLAlchemy but I have heard good things, so I think your plan sounds good. |
What IDE does John Carmack of id Software use? Visual Studio? | SwellJoe: This is like saying, "I want to be funny like Johnny Carson, does anyone know what brand of tie he wears?" |
What IDE does John Carmack of id Software use? Visual Studio? | vorador: The ide is just a tool.Concerning learning 3d programming, NeHe is a good place to start with : http://nehe.gamedev.net/ . |
What IDE does John Carmack of id Software use? Visual Studio? | davidw: He uses cat to write stuff directly to /proc/kcore |
What do think of this idea? | ErrantX: Firstly you would need some cracking names to be able to achieve a $99 asking price.Secondly your purchase vs sale ratio would probably be bad. As your not pitching super popular domain names you have to buy a LARGE pool of "good" domain names to stand a chance of selling some.And finally your target market is... |
What do think of this idea? | gizmo: What are you really selling -- your originality, or your monopoly on the domain name?If you were really selling your originality, why not let people fill in a form, you do the brainstorming, and then find a domain name that suits the buyer's needs. Then you'd contribute real value.But in the scenario you're desc... |
What do think of this idea? | peterhi: This sounds like plain old domain squatting. Think of it from the "customers" point of view. I think that prettypinksnowflake.com is just the domain that I could use for my project only to find you have already registered it with no intention of going anything with it but squatting on it until a buyer comes al... |
What do think of this idea? | chaosmachine: better idea: create a marketplace where people can resell their domains for $99. sort of like a fixed-price version of sedo. |
ASK HN: What about Facebook fund? | davemc500hats: The 2009 fbFund REV incubator program currently has ~25 startups, and the average funding amount is $25K (note: a few of our startups are non-profits, they do not receive funding).In general, almost all of our startups have already built out a prototype prior to applying for funding. While we wouldn't r... |
What do think of this idea? | ideamonk: I think its Domain Squatting 2.0 |
What do think of this idea? | ideamonk: Think of this - a great domain name comes into my mind, I go to checkout if its available, and I see that your service is selling it for $99, how pissed off would I be, thinking "one moron spends his 24 hrs buying all the goody domains and selling back for $99, I have to pay $89 extra for all the creative thi... |
What do think of this idea? | satyajit: How about calling yourself domainsquattr.com (still available!)? |
What do think of this idea? | patio11: #1: Your pricing is at the worst possible point on the curve. You charge ten times more than what the inveterate cheapskates want to pay. You charge ten times less what a middling domain name is worth. You are opting to do business with a lot of "pathological clients" this way -- they will want the moon and... |
What do think of this idea? | diN0bot: what makes domain picking and selling so interesting and popular? quite a few startup ideas/implementations pass through the hacker news front page, which is why i'm wondering. |
What do think of this idea? | sos: I don't think it's domain squatting, because I can see the service you're selling is coming up with a good name, something I've struggled to do myself. Not everyone will see it that way, but that's ok because some will, as long as the website emphasises the creative aspect, searching by topic, etc. It's like pay... |
What do think of this idea? | radu_floricica: Make up 10 domain names, buy them and sell them on ebay or various sites. If you sell more then 3, it's worth a shot. |
Could you please share your Skype ID. | ErrantX: It's somewhat hard to trust this idea if the OP hasnt shared theirs :o |
Could you please share your Skype ID. | hunterjrj: And while you're at it, A/S/L?? |
Could you please share your Skype ID. | aarongough: Isn't that a fairly odd thing to ask a group of extremely savvy and security-minded programmers. Unlikely at best. |
Could you please share your Skype ID. | hvs: I get enough spam on Skype already, thank you. |
Could you please share your Skype ID. | metatronscube: erm?! |
What IDE does John Carmack of id Software use? Visual Studio? | stonemetal: 20 seconds in google turned up an ask slashdot from '99 where he claims to use msdev because of intellisense and edit-and-continue. He claims to spend time regularly in each of the big three oses. And that the bsp code for doom was written in objective-c(so more than likely not written in VS.)Here recently... |
Could you please share your Skype ID. | abyssknight: I don't use it much, but I think mine is abyssknight.btw, karma check seems to indicate a trusted source. |
What do think of this idea? | midnightmonster: I wish good domains did coast $99--then there wouldn't be so many squatters. I don't think you're providing much value, and I do think you'd make much money at it, but I wouldn't be terribly offended if I found you had registered a domain I wanted. Having recently spent hours and hours trying to find a... |
Canadian Registrar? | hunterjrj: Reg.ca |
Could you please share your Skype ID. | spoiledtechie: Just go on IRC instead. |
Canadian Registrar? | Jem: namecheap.com do .ca |
What do think of this idea? | pbhjpbhj: Suck it and see. The cost to you is pretty low financially. Buy up 10 domains, perhaps in a related field, do your magic on them and see if you can sell any ... when you sell one buy 10 more. Rinse, repeat. |
What do think of this idea? | gamache: You would be just another dirty domain squatter, yes. (And as such, I would wish the universe to burn fire upon you and your distasteful little enterprise. I am not alone in this.)I will never give a squatter a dime. If you squatted a name I thought to buy, I would just choose another name. In reality, you... |
Canadian Registrar? | juliend2: namespro.ca |
how do you objectively prove what you have independantly learned | mattyb: http://www.mysql.com/certification/http://www.zend.com/en/services/certification/ |
how do you objectively prove what you have independantly learned | noodle: this is basically the purpose of certifications.other things that work are employment references and code examples. |
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