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How did you really learn a foreign language? | callosum: Language learning is one of my favourite subjects and one that I've been reading up a lot on recently. Here's some more general strategies rather than specific resources, from the notes I've been taking:- Try to get the same sort of input infants get - interactive, highly repetitive and patterned. That's op... |
How to promote Android applications? | digispaghetti: If you feel the app is useful, there are a myriad of sites out there who may be willing to review your app (Phandroid, Android & Me, etc) which is a good place to start. Other sites related to site administration might also be good to talk to.If the tool is free, you could also promote it via it's own w... |
How do you record your thoughts? | dakr: I always carry a small Rhodia notebook in my back pocket. They have very sturdy covers and won't come apart or get torn up. Everything goes into it: todos, ideas, notes about things I've just seen, heard, or read. I also like to keep some of those post-it bookmarks and some stamps stuck in the back against the... |
How to learn about automated trading systems? | iamelgringo: Ameritrade has an api.I've also been looking at the BATS exchange: http://www.batstrading.com/home/ . I don't know how feasible it is to get an account with them. http://www.batstrading.com/membership/ |
How to learn about automated trading systems? | frisco: One of the big bottlenecks here is access to the low latency network connections & data streams. Successful HFT systems integrate information from ultra low latency news wires, trading activity in microsecond timescales, and are constantly testing things like dark pools for private market pricing information w... |
Your Real Life Notebook Tricks/Tips | chaosprophet: I always have a tiny scribbling pad about the size of my palm and a pencil in one of my pockets at all times. So wherever I am, I can immediately jot down any ideas that come to me. |
What is your favorite board game and why? | chaosprophet: Monopoly. I like it because:1. It's a really long game.2. With a bit of creative rule modding you can totally change the game.3. The concept of getting to become insanely rich is very alluring. |
Has anybody here worked with the Connection Machine or the Lisp Machine? | jacquesm: To answer my own question about how these machines stack up against present day hardware: the CM series machines rated about 5 Gflops, a 2008 run-of-the-mill desktop CPU does 70 Gflops!Special purpose CPUs such as the AMD FireStream 9270 can do 240 GFLOPS... |
How did you really learn a foreign language? | jacquesm: I've lived in Poland for a while and picked up some Polish, lived in Canada (which did not exactly help my English).German, French and English are taught in school here as well.Very hard not to end up at least bi-lingual.I have a very hard time studying languages from books but I find it incredibly easy to pi... |
How would you write novels for people who rarely read entire books? | bowman: I wouldn't. To me that is like writing music for the tone deaf. The wrong direction I'd want do go if doing anything creative.Removing content and splitting ideas into bite sized pieces seems the way to go. Also, remember these people rarely buy books but people still buy books for them. You could target the "g... |
where'd my ability to downvote go? | mixmax: I can still downvote, so presumably the threshold has been moved up a bit.Just write a few more insightful comments or submit some good stories and you'll probably be able to downvote again. |
where'd my ability to downvote go? | ionfish: This change was noted in the recent Arc 3.1 release discussion. Based on that comment I think the threshold is now 200 karma.http://arclanguage.org/item?id=10254 |
where'd my ability to downvote go? | pclark: do you mean topics or comments?I can't downvote topics. [3446 karma] |
join YC for a non-US resident | jacquesm: I think that to get a real answer you're going to at least have to tell the people looking at this where you are from, that will make a huge difference in how hard it will be to get you to the USA. |
Are you applying to YC's next round? | jacquesm: This: http://ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html suggests about 1,000 applications per round. |
What is your favorite board game and why? | Jem: Monopoly or Scrabble - tough decision between the two. |
Are you applying to YC's next round? | envitar: Yeah, will give it a shot... |
join YC for a non-US resident | envitar: You'll probably have to go on tourist visa first, if you can.
Or student - if you are |
Are you applying to YC's next round? | matt1: On a realted note, any word when startup school will be this year? |
where'd my ability to downvote go? | neoclassical: Downvoting is pointless. It encourages mass retribution against unpopular but valid topics.As someone else said, if a topic is broken -- spam, stupid or otherwise useless -- it should be flagged appropriately. My two cents, or probably about six cents worth 1 cent in 1987 values. |
Why are images used to indent comments? | noodle: if i had to guess, i'd say that its just less resource intensive or easeier. much easier to just print it out with an indention instead of parsing results into a tree and then printing. |
Why are images used to indent comments? | yannis: I guess if it ain't broken don't fix it.All the threads live in nice tables and gifs are the appropriate technology to accompany them! Enough to give any CSS or SEO evangelist apoplyxia! |
Why are images used to indent comments? | tdavis: Because the code that generates HN pages was written in the laziest and least-accessible way possible. |
Why are images used to indent comments? | nickfox: I assume they are using single pixel gifs and playing with the width to indent. That is old school, the way it was done before css. Maybe they just never quit. I still prefer to use tables to structure some types of content, it won't win me any awards from the css crowd but it's just easier. Why make life diff... |
Why are images used to indent comments? | imok20: I've got to say, the markup for the comments page is pretty ugly. I'm not going to diss the one who designed it, but I think it could really do with an overhaul. It wouldn't be difficult at all - just cascading, nested divs with incrementally increasing left-padding.Unless there is a reason for the tables, they... |
Why are images used to indent comments? | TallGuyShort: I think one of the main reasons some web design techniques are "bad" are because they don't sufficiently separate layout and design from content. The problem is - on a site like HN, you're primarily catering to a crowd that just wants a really simple, straightforward design that's easy to use to fast. We ... |
Why are images used to indent comments? | bouncingsoul: I'd guess it's simply that PG codes html the way he learned years ago.Not snark – you have to justify throwing out your table + spacer.gif knowledge to learn how to do things with div + css. Maybe he doesn't see a huge benefit.Also (http://www.paulgraham.com/arc0.html):Arc embodies a similarly unPC attitu... |
Why are images used to indent comments? | nathanb: Because it works. |
Which tools do you use to optimize your webapps? | adatta02: * in Photoshop - "save for web" and let it figure out what it thinks is optimal* YSlow for Firebug to see if anything is really loading slowly / being gross* Like you mentioned, YUI Compressor to minify/compress CSS and JS* We use Symfony so the Symfony dev toolbar to profile slow SQL queries and generally se... |
Which tools do you use to optimize your webapps? | idlewords: I've found YSlow very useful in identifying problems.My lazy, three-step optimization process:1. turn on gzip encoding in apache2. verify that caching headers (Etag/last-modified) are being set3. tail -f mysql-slow.log |
How to learn about automated trading systems? | loltrader: Well, it really depends on your experience and available capital. All major exchanges these days are electronic, so you don't have to worry about which provide APIs, because it's highly unlikely that you'll working directly with them (at least until you're bankrolling some decent change). Interactive Brokers... |
Why are images used to indent comments? | TweedHeads: Lack of CSS understanding. No excuse.Once you know your tools you can do wonders you'll be amazed at how easy it was.I bet a hundred CSS experts here can give you some interesting ways on redesigning comments.Show us your best. |
Why do relevant and non-objectionable links get killed | icey: If enough people flag a submission, it gets auto-killed. My assumption is that it has to be compelling enough to convince an editor for it to be un-killed. |
Which tools do you use to optimize your webapps? | patio11: 1) The YSlow presentations.2) YSlow itself.3) Cheating creatively. For example, the front page of Bingo Card Creator has one middle-weight screenshot on it, which links to a hefty full-sized version in a lightbox which accompanies some text exhorting users to download or sign up now. I want opening that L... |
Which tools do you use to optimize your webapps? | kineticac: For images, I haven't found a better solution than to fire up Photoshop and do batch process on all the images and save for web. The quality looks the same, and the images are WAY smaller.I've used pngcrush before, but just for png's, and it didn't come close to what Photoshop was giving me as a result.Phot... |
Which tools do you use to optimize your webapps? | mbenjaminsmith: I do the following:1. Use a python profiler and look for problems, which usually means rewriting db calls to tradeoff storage space vs CPU time and/or front loading tasks so they're heavier on write than read2. Write memcache layers wherever possible3. Optipng or cut the backgrounds out of gifs4. Clean ... |
Which tools do you use to optimize your webapps? | techpeace: Google Page Speed is also worth a look. It will point out problem areas and recommend best practices to speed them up. |
Why do relevant and non-objectionable links get killed | chanux: In your case I guess it's an Apple fanboy problem :) |
How to learn about automated trading systems? | nailer: Foyle's bookstore in London has a financial section larger than a lot of bookstores, including a wide variety of books on statistical modelling for financial instruments.In terms of keeping up with the community, zerohedge.com provides valuable advice and recently provided the full PDF of 'an introduction to hi... |
Which tools do you use to optimize your webapps? | kcro: Since the YSlow recommendations and practices are almost universally used, wouldn't it be possible to automate the process? Could someone write a servlet filter that incorporated the optimization rules and automatically applied them to outgoing content on the fly? And you could make this an Apache module so that ... |
Which tools do you use to optimize your webapps? | agotterer: - Host your CSS, JS and images on a CDN
-- Serve them from a different domain. Otherwise every element request requires cookies to be sent in the headers. Waste of overhead for end users.- Combine as many JS and CSS files as possible. You will also want to compress them.- Use memcached to cache backend elem... |
Anyone have hacks for focus & concentration? | kashif: I love planning and time management and the like. But once I started my startup, I realized things often didn't turn out the way I wanted. This happened because I either got distracted or estimated incorrectly. After trying to fight this for a long time, I just gave up and decided to go with the flow.My conclus... |
Anyone have hacks for focus & concentration? | hop: I would love to enlist in a start up bootcamp. You layout everything that needs to get done - maybe a week out, then someone with a bayonet keeps you on task. And makes you run 5 miles too. |
Anyone have hacks for focus & concentration? | nostrademons: I probably shouldn't talk since I'm posting on HN instead of doing my work right now...But I find it helps to break things down into tasks that'll take no more than 2-3 hours, and then pick 2-3 tasks I'll do for the day. Once I'm done with those, I'm officially done for the day, though if there're some o... |
Anyone have hacks for focus & concentration? | firefoxman1: I found some awesome pages that help with concentration on LifeHacker:http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/10-tips-for-ra...and here are some brain exercises to improve concentration:http://www.egodevelopment.com/10-exercises-for-better-focus-... |
Which tools do you use to optimize your webapps? | nir: A little trick from FLOSS Podcast's session with John Resig: instead of serving jQuery from your domain, use the Google hosted one: http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3/jquery.min.j... - you get to benefit from Google's CDN, and there's a fair chance it's already cached in the user's browser. |
Anyone have hacks for focus & concentration? | dryicerx: Use a scratch pad or notebook next to you (a real paper one). Use this as a braindump, just what ever comes just jot down, todo's, ideas etc. This way you can concentrate on the task at hand and throw anything else in here.Think of it like a swap space for the brain.And at the end of the day/task, make a note... |
RSS Reader Specifically for Comment Feeds? | davecardwell: I use Google Reader and on my to-do list is to hack together Perl script using WebService::Google::Reader [1] which is based on the "unofficial Google Reader API" [2]It would look at my subscriptions tagged with "discussion" and where the difference between now and the "published" date was over a certain ... |
Should high school gifted programs be banned? | TallGuyShort: >> Have you gone through such a program?Yes>> Do you regret it?Very much so. My middle school was a small charter school, with about 60 kids in each grade, and 2 classes going on at any one time. One day out of the blue they announced that some students had been selected to participate in some gifted clas... |
Should high school gifted programs be banned? | spooneybarger: Number of wtf questions:"putting a huge amount of effort into such a program is a huge waste of time that is better spent on startups."what startups would those be? tech startups? how about the gift kids who couldn't care less about tech? maybe they just want to become authors? who knows. startups?"Moreo... |
Should high school gifted programs be banned? | timwiseman: A properly handled honors/gifted/advanced high school course can be a great benefit.You seem to assume that those who would be in such a program want to start a startup. Most people simply do not want to do that at all. Startup founders are a very small percentage of the population, and while it is growin... |
Should high school gifted programs be banned? | tokenadult: Another crazy question. The short answer is, no, I wouldn't want any kind of specialized program DESIRED BY LEARNERS AND THEIR PARENTS to be banned, unless there was irrefutable evidence that the program was actively harmful. (And if we are going to ban something for being harmful, let's start by banning th... |
Anyone have hacks for focus & concentration? | Mz: My son recommended that I listen to music (stuff without lyrics) while coding my websites. He had some theory about engaging different parts of the brain or something to help me stay on task. It did help.I also get up about once an hour or so at work and walk around. When I find I can't concentrate anymore, phys... |
If you play an instrument, which is it? | icey: I play guitar very poorly. When I'm stuck on a problem I'll run scales for awhile until the answer hits me. |
If you play an instrument, which is it? | actually: The AXiS49.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9-OSCl7kOcIt's like cheating at music. |
If you play an instrument, which is it? | mixmax: I used to play saxophone - but I sucked. I also play a teeny little bit of piano. |
If you play an instrument, which is it? | ScottWhigham: Guitar - jazz and blues. I used to play pro and then "found" computers :) |
Should high school gifted programs be banned? | Senethior459: amichail: You posted a link to this on AskReddit, but not a link to AskReddit on this.If anyone wants to read the responses over there: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/989zz/should_high... |
If you play an instrument, which is it? | TallGuyShort: Piano - I really like how versatile and consistent it is. If I were to learn another instrument, it'd definitely be guitar. |
If you play an instrument, which is it? | cperciva: Violin. I could have gone professional, but decided that I'd enjoy it more if I kept music as a hobby, and that computing/mathematics paid better for less work anyway. |
If you play an instrument, which is it? | stonemetal: piano and saxophone(not at the same time :) )
Though recently I have been thinking of taking up bass guitar. |
If you play an instrument, which is it? | brk: I don't play any instrument, but wish I could/intend to try to learn something.I do however do custom guitar pedal effects and mods, and have done some various bits of studio hacking/engineering work (when I still lived in Detroit I helped a well known artist get his first PC-based/digital mixing board up and runn... |
If you play an instrument, which is it? | alanthonyc: piano, guitar...not well |
If you play an instrument, which is it? | cmos: guitar hero! |
If you play an instrument, which is it? | paul9290: Play piano and guitar; try to sing too as I write music and someone needs to sing it. |
If you play an instrument, which is it? | bdmac97: Expert Rockband drums... that counts right? |
Which tools do you use to optimize your webapps? | nreece: WebPageTest.org is pretty good - almost YSlow/Firebug-like, but hosted. |
If you play an instrument, which is it? | neoclassical: Weekend shredder here. |
If you play an instrument, which is it? | weaksauce: I play the guitar. |
Should high school gifted programs be banned? | srn: This is a troll, right?FYI not everyone who's smart wants to do computer science or a startup.I went to a gifted boarding school and it is my best educational experience so far including college.http://lsmsa.edu/You have to apply to the school to get in. Yeah you didn't go if you don't want to go to college. That... |
Anyone have hacks for focus & concentration? | kirubakaran: I practice single-tasking, with the aid of http://smacklet.com/ Not only do I get more done, I am more relaxed as well. |
If you play an instrument, which is it? | humbledrone: Electronic drums, banjo, guitar, piano, trumpet -- in order of increasing skill (not that it increases to any significant level). |
join YC for a non-US resident | jacquesm: I found this in the HN/YC FAQ (linked at the bottom of the page):Do we have to be US citizens?No, as long as you can get here for at least three months. We've funded several startups founded by non-citizens. |
Recommend a domain-name registrar.. | oomkiller: I use namecheap.com. Never had any issues with them. |
Recommend a domain-name registrar.. | ccheever: For small little projects, I've used Dreamhost with some success and also done hosting there (cheap, easy, not super performant.)I've also used 1and1 for things that need more configuration, etc. It's reasonably cheap and they don't keep trying to upsell you all the time like GoDaddy does. |
Recommend a domain-name registrar.. | NonEUCitizen: I started using internet.bs recently. Very happy so far. Also, look at this related thread:http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=708640 |
Recommend a domain-name registrar.. | bearwithclaws: NameCheap all the way. Great usability. Be sure to grab a coupon here before purchasing: http://www.namecheapcoupon.com/ |
Recommend a domain-name registrar.. | chipmunkninja: gandi.net. they're not the cheapest, but they're extremely reliable, your data are protected by strict local privacy laws (company is french), and it just "works". never had a single problem in the some years i've been using them. |
Recommend a domain-name registrar.. | 8plot: moniker.com is my favorite. |
Recommend a domain-name registrar.. | rms: I'm glad to hear no one has recommended Godaddy. They are not good. They raised their prices and they try to upsell you and autorenew you for services constantly.I have used Namecheap for the last 7 or 8 years and have been very happy. But they have also raised their prices. Nearlyfreespeech.net is just about the ... |
Recommend a domain-name registrar.. | ahpeeyem: I have been using powerpipe.com without any hassles at all for about 8 years; their .com domains pricing is now $6.88/year. |
Recommend a domain-name registrar.. | Derrek: I'm a fan of 1and1.com. They give free private registration, and I haven't had any issues with them over the past couple years of use. |
Recommend a domain-name registrar.. | behe101: NearlyFreeSpeech. Excellent DNS management, optional anonymising service and they don't gouge you, any extra fees are upfront. |
Did Google Shut Down Your World of Text? | euroclydon: Silly me: I should have searched Twitter before posting here. It's a bug. If you shrink your browser some, it works.http://twitter.com/andrewbadr |
Powered Exoskeletons; What's stopping us? | noodle: iirc, they have. i can't find a link on it though.i imagine the problem is cost. handicapped people can afford a wheelchair, but not an exoskeleton. |
Finding old stories in HN, best practices | uptown: http://www.searchyc.com/http://www.bingocardcreator.com/articles/rails-seo-tips.htm |
Powered Exoskeletons; What's stopping us? | jws: Efficiency: It is hard to beat wheels on hard surfaces for efficiency. Battery life.Stability: Wheelchairs are inherently stable. There are a 1000 ways to fall from a standing position.Cost: Two small motors in a wheelchair. A dozen powerful actuators in a legs only exoskeleton. Simple tubing suffices for a wheelc... |
Powered Exoskeletons; What's stopping us? | notaddicted: (answering without research)Power supplies, i.e. the battery problem. Wheeled vehicles are much more efficient than walking/running.So for an exoskeleton you need more motors, you need big joints, AND you need a bigger energy source, whatever that may be. My guess is that batteries can't meet the cost and... |
What are the signs that you are a Good, Better, or Best programmer? | yannis: Based on a test I ran on a number of people there is a linear correlation between IQ and Programming skills!IQ100->belowGood
IQ110->Good
IQ120->Better
>IQ120->BestYou raise some very good points though. I am not sure about the 'no bugs' though. |
Powered Exoskeletons; What's stopping us? | tokenadult: It seems like it would just be some motors on a frame.My dad was paralyzed for the last six years of his life with a slip-and-fall injury to his second cervical vertebra. He underwent a great deal of expensive physical therapy (illustrating starkly what Medicare DOESN'T cover) and tried out several models o... |
Powered Exoskeletons; What's stopping us? | krschultz: Research on this is ongoing at my college and I've taken a grad class on it/looked into a lot of research on it so I feel like I can comment.It is EXTREMELY difficult. I am in the last semester of undergrad degrees in computer science & mechanical engineering. I have worked on path finding, AI, computer visi... |
What are the signs that you are a Good, Better, or Best programmer? | wwalker3: If your code has no bugs, the problem you're attacking is too easy for you.The best programmers are working on problems that no one knows how to solve yet. |
Review my website www.intelligentcredentials.com | bdmac97: You seem to have a broken image (actually it's an empty img tag) on your landing page. It also looks a bit oddly formatted at least on my Mac w/FF 3.5.You might want to consider adding your site to my new startup, launchly, for additional feedback. It's free - http://www.launchly.com |
Review my website www.intelligentcredentials.com | seasoup: Sounds like a great idea. There is a broken image on your front page. I see links to several social networking sites, but they are of different sizes even though they are right next to each other. Awkward. There should also be the ability to get the resume in word and pdf format... these are the most commo... |
If you play an instrument, which is it? | vabmit: I taught myself acoustic guitar. First, I learned from books and websites. Then when YouTube came out, I found a lot of very good "How to Play Song X" videos on it. I really enjoyed learning to play. Spending 5-10 hours a week away from my computer, and not looking at a screen for most of that time, significa... |
Powered Exoskeletons; What's stopping us? | kevinherron: The Raytheon Sarcos exoskeleton looks promising:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nhj3Z9o6t0g and http://www.raytheon.com/newsroom/technology/rtn08_exoskeleto... |
What are the signs that you are a Good, Better, or Best programmer? | macwarlock: "Best: What's a debugger?"Run for your life.Glad to see that the examples touched on the fact the being a good programmer has as much to do with interacting with people as it does code. Whether you're chained to a desk in the basement or working one on one with clients (or both?), I think the key is the pro... |
Corporation types and "maximizing shareholder value"? | jacquesm: There's a 'foundation' type, they don't have a profit motive.I assume you're asking this from a USA perspectie, the wikipedia page on foundations has this to say:"In the United States, many philanthropic and charitable organizations are considered to be foundations. However, the Internal Revenue Code distingu... |
Entering a highly saturated market with the new business | kynikos: If you're set on foreign markets, and have enough local expertise, it seems like you guys may have better chances of commercial success by partnering with existing telco's or established firms in your target countries. They probably don't have the in-house technical capability to stay competitive with market b... |
HN for science? | mixmax: A subreddit called hardscience was created just the other day with emphasis on submitting scientific papers. I don't know whether it'll fly or not but it might be worth a look.http://www.reddit.com/r/hardscience/ |
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