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Has your work ever been plagiarized? | kbrower: Yes. I made http://www.filleritem.com about 6 years ago. Copied by many people including Slickdeals.net. Not sure if these people were inspired by my website or simply came up with the idea independently. If anything, it forces you to keep your project working properly. |
How many of you look at http://news.ycombinator.com/newest? | Vindexus: I like to scan the newest page for Ask HN: Review my startup ______ posts. They don't seem to make it to the front as often and I find them immensely interesting.I also scan the newest page after I'd digested all the stuff I find interesting on the main page. I'm on the site a lot so I go to newest to get more of my fix. |
Recommendation engine | Tichy: Check out http://directededge.com - an YC startup that provides recommendations as a web service. |
Review our startup: MovieListr | Frazzydee: Can't register because your email field is too short (30 characters max). |
Please review my start-up - planergize.com | Vindexus: Like others have said it's a bit confusing to figure out what it does right away. I think a demo video might be in your best interest. I read this and it was kinda helpful: http://blog.procasts.co.uk/2009/03/why-screencast-if-a-pictu...You could use Camtasia: http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp
I tried out ScreenToaster as it was free and it works pretty good: http://www.screentoaster.com/I see you don't have an FAQ page. May I humbly suggest my FAQ script side project: http://breezyfaq.com |
Please review my start-up - planergize.com | hackoder: Very nice, I like it. I agree with the others that you could improve the first impression- Have a nice big tagline that captures what you do in one sentence. I can see this as being very useful in lots of domains (think disaster recovery etc). You could pitch it to businesses even (thought the current look is too casual for businesses) to use this as part of their risk management process.I stress the point of businesses because you have more money-making potential there as opposed to individual plans. |
Please review my start-up - planergize.com | listic: Why did you decide to use Facebook authentication? Do you have plans for symbiosis with Facebook? Why have the user create a Facebook account instead of account in your startup? |
Please review my start-up - planergize.com | Tawheed: You need to rip out your front page and add the following:1) One tagline - "Easy simple way to create repeatable processes"2) A video going through a use case3) Example plans (the end product), featured on the page4) Giant sign up button |
Has your work ever been plagiarized? | nfnaaron: Not my work, but I posted something on a dial up ISP's forum years ago, and a reader there posted it to alt.humor.best-of-usenet. I did a search a few years later, and found it word for word posted on some advocacy site in Washington DC, attributed to a woman who was not me.I emailed the group, made my case with proof, and said I'd be flattered if they kept it up with proper attribution. I don't recall hearing back, but they took it down pretty quick. I imagine the "author" was a little embarrassed.I just searched best-of-usenet, but now it's Google, you know, so I wasn't surprised not to find it. I did find it out on the wider web, so, for historical accuracy, it survives here:http://www.mail-archive.com/law-issues@mylist.net/msg00390.h...(scroll down to You Always Remember Your First) |
Please review my start-up - planergize.com | kyro: This might not a big issue, but I think the phonetics of the name are a bit off. I didn't quite know how to pronounce it, and realized when I clicked through that it's probably meant to be read as planner-gize. This could be a problem for word-of-mouth marketing as people would probably assume it's spelled with two n's. Plannergize.com seems to be taken already, but something like PlannerMake.com is available. |
How many of you look at http://news.ycombinator.com/newest? | GrandMasterBirt: I rarely read newest. I go to /classic usually. |
Has your work ever been plagiarized? | ww520: Yes, I once released a P2P product developed solely by me into GPL license. Shortly after that I noticed another guy started another project copying exactly all the source files, and he put a copyright with his name in every single file even when there's no change in the file. Now I was ok if he wanted to fork the project but damn it don't claim credit for work you didn't do. I contacted him to ask him to remove his copyright and he said he's forking the project and there's nothing I can do. I contacted Free Software Foundation and they said there's nothing I can do. That's the way GPL works. I swore then I would never release another GPL project again. |
How many of you look at http://news.ycombinator.com/newest? | pg: Hmm, I'm surprised that the suspicious vote detector didn't catch this case. I'll have to tighten it up a bit. |
Has your work ever been plagiarized? | jabrams: haha no never |
Please review my start-up - planergize.com | gibsonf1: I just tried connecting via FB and starting a plan - the system seems to hang after I create the plan and won't let me get out of the message to click on the timeline to start. Any thoughts? |
How many of you look at http://news.ycombinator.com/newest? | tokenadult: Every time I visit HN (which is several times a day), I read the main page first, and then immediately go to the newest page. I upvote submissions that satisfy intellectual curiosity, come from sources I trust, and don't duplicate something recently posted here.I also go to the noobs viewshttp://news.ycombinator.com/noobstorieshttp://news.ycombinator.com/noobcommentsfrom time to time, especially right after I have seen what appears to be a noob story that deserves a flag on the newest page. |
Please review my start-up - planergize.com | stevenwei: I agree with the other comments saying that your home page doesn't describe your product clearly enough. I disagree that showing a video is the best solution. As a user, I don't want to waste my time watching a video until I'm convinced that I want to investigate further. Instead, I would put a Top 5 showcase of some great looking plans on the home page. This also gives an incentive for the users to create something that is really cool, so they can be featured on the home page.I think relying on Facebook Connect only might be a bit iffy, unless you absolutely require it for core functionality. In your case, Facebook adds some social elements but the core competency of your website is building plans. I might want to sign up to play with your site without using my Facebook account. If I like it enough to recommend it to my friends, I might be willing to link it to my Facebook account later. |
How many of you look at http://news.ycombinator.com/newest? | petercooper: I look at it a few times a week and I consider myself a pretty active member. If there were a "better" (and I can't define what that is) way to monitor new entries without having to keep going back to the page, I probably would. |
How many of you look at http://news.ycombinator.com/newest? | wglb: I check newest when waiting for a compile. Thanks to the speed of today's computers and languages, that check is not a very long one.Also, when I submit something, i check down the resulting page for interesting items.I occasionally have a browser open on another computer on the newest and refresh that if i am out of HN stuff to read.And while I don't ask friends to vote, it is very time-of-day sensitive. If it gets a few votes in the first hour (just guessing here) then it is quite possible for it to land on the front page. Once it lands on the front page, it is going to see a secondary effect, which is more likely to be on the merits as judged by a larger audience.Beyond that threshold (hour? two?) no votes means it will be off the "newest" page, likely to never be seen again.Except if someone else posts the same article, RiderOfGirafefes will find the dup. |
How many of you look at http://news.ycombinator.com/newest? | jacquesm: I read the 'new' page (and new page #2) first, then after that maybe I'll read the main page. |
How many of you look at http://news.ycombinator.com/newest? | hockeybias: Rarely, thanks for the reminder! |
What would you do with 1Gbps to the home? | Locke1689: Download Real Player and turn off the buffer.Seriously, though, if Google were to provide a static IP I would start hosting small web projects from my house. |
What would you do with 1Gbps to the home? | swombat: 1) High-res voice and video over IP.2) Streaming HD movie rentals3) All-services-in-the-cloud - store even my larger chunks of data (like music, movies, etc) on a cloud service.4) Taking this one step further, if the bandwidth really is that cheap and plentiful (and reliable), this may obsolete the concept of having your own media... Why bother keeping tens of gigabytes of music locally when any song you want can be downloaded in a tenth of a second when you want to listen to it? Why keep even more movies when you can download whatever you want instantly?One of the consequences of this would be to make storage a whole lot cheaper by demolishing the demand for it. Only big cloud providers would bother buying hard drives anymore.5) Why not stream the entire OS experience? Turn every computer into a dumb terminal that just displays images sent by a server that never crashes, never has slowdowns, can scale in parallel indefinitely... could make most applications instant. Never wait for a photoshop filter again. It would turn the OS licensing model on its head.6) Obsolete TV for good - with that much streaming content being that ubiquitous, why would even TV stations bother with broadcasting on the air waves? HD content with personalised ads for everyone.Edit: Note that I am assuming a high-quality 1gbps link - i.e., 50ms latency or so. Not some crazy hack with huge buffering in the ISPs that means that while they technically deliver 1gbps, they only do so for static content downloaded by a lot of people - I don't call that a 1gbps internet link, I call it a TV. |
What would you do with 1Gbps to the home? | tdmackey: As it stands, it seems the only real demand for ultra-highspeed (40Gb/s+) is in the data centers of the facebooks and googles of the world trying to shuffle around all the data between their own servers. I don't think the average home user really cares about moving around petabytes of metadata around a network so I can't really come up with any ideas based on exisiting needs for such speed.Other than multiple HD streams and telepresence type stuff I am at a loss for ideas that don't completely ignore efficiency of the traffic. Certainly, I can saturate a 1Gbps link, but I can typically do the same with less bandwidth. You'll probably see a lot more of consumer cloud based computing and such assuming the latency and whatnot is also solved in the process. |
What would you do with 1Gbps to the home? | alain94040: 1) High-res voice and video over IP.Yes. And by high-res, I want fully immersive experience: the feeling of being there. I spend so much time on skype or on the phone talking to people remotely: it's BAD.2) Streaming HD movie rentalsThis only requires 20 Mbit/s tops. It's already available today in several countries. I don't need 1 Gbit for that. |
What would you do with 1Gbps to the home? | boyter: I would do what I have always wanted to do. Write a small scale search engine as a hobby. I have run crawlers before but always ran out of bandwidth long before I could get any sizeable portion of the web.Huge amounts of bandwidth would solve that issue for me. |
is foundrs.com a good domain name for my startup? | maxdemarzi: For what it's worth ($125 a year) founde.rs is available... on 101domains or any of the other international domain providers.Edited to say, having the full name with a foreign extension sounds better to me than eating a letter... YMMV |
is foundrs.com a good domain name for my startup? | vaksel: sounds too dot com bubblish.Just do the usual____founders.BlueFounders, WidgetFounders, FounderMix |
What would you do with 1Gbps to the home? | johngalt: First I'd increase my TCP window size. Otherwise I'd be latency limited :)Being an IT Director I try to think of what I can't do without my local 1Gbps LAN. I'd say a big one is computer re-imaging. With that type of band you could build a good reference OS install and push it anywhere in the world that had a similar band.I'd also turn this around and say "how will the content providers deal with that kind of demand?" Serving thousands of users at those speeds is a non-trivial task. The bandwidth demanded from the server is a multiple of the bandwidth increase to each client. If you solve this, your customers will have big money on the table. Rather than figure out the "what" will go over those links I'd figure out the "how".With the current applications I'd say latency is a bigger issue. 100Mbs at <50ms is more useful than 1Gbps at ???ms. I don't buy the idea of "dumb terminals" AKA "web OS" without less latency. The biggest reason I use RDP, VNC, or Citrix is to trade a bandwidth issue for a latency issue, so why would more bandwidth == more terminal usage? If anything I'd expect the reverse. |
ASK HN: How are you becoming a better programmer? | revorad: I'm only a beginner but one idea which stuck with me was that of changing my domain of work ever so often. This is what Richard Hamming suggested to keep doing great work and this is what Eric Drexler recommends to get a good understanding of Science as a whole. If you think of programming as a tool for solving problems, then you could sharpen the tool by applying it to different types of problems every few years. |
ASK HN: How are you becoming a better programmer? | cmallen: I continue to get better, and I'm almost to the 4 year mark. I've improved more in the last year than I did in my second year. (First year programming professionally remains the largest leap, although perhaps the least significant.)As to how I become better, I am an obsessive generalist. I don't like not understanding the stack that makes my projects tick. I don't get into wasteful/unproductive levels of implementation detail, but I do my best to grok the things I'm working with.(I'm capable of patching django core for custom purposes if I need to, for example.)I was pretty clueless on CSS until recently. Now I'm very slightly better than clueless. (I have a better grasp of display and position now, for example.)I continue to use tables where they're (probably) inappropriate but for my users, it doesn't matter. Too many IE users and not enough mobile users to really care.I just keep learning unfamiliar things and re-integrating what I learn into my daily grind. Everything I've ever learned about computers and programming and front-web web dev makes me a better Python programmer. |
ASK HN: How are you becoming a better programmer? | hga: For me it was the stroke of luck in my first programming experience being punched card FORTRAN IV (but more like a II, no logical IFs) on the IBM 1130 in the fall of 1977.I realized there had to be a better way and so I went straight to the library and read up on the software engineering of the time ("structured programming").Since then I've read a lot on the practice of programming and applied it to my programming. And kept reading and applying stuff; the key here is to never stop learning.Studying good software was probably the other major way. Back then, it was learning the UNIX V6 kernel with Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code plus reading the sources of all sorts of things and working on some of them.If you haven't read The Pragmatic Programmer, AntiPatterns: Refactoring Software, Architectures, and Projects in Crisis, something by Gerald Weinberg and something by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister (Peopleware is pretty much required reading), and The Mythical Man Month I strongly recommend them.The recent Coders At Work is really good, although at a somewhat higher level.My other recommendation is to get serious knowledge of other domains that have useful ideas and metaphors; for me that would be science in general and biology in particular.Hmmm, reading a lot of classic SF (from the '40s on) and studying nanotech also helped. You want to have a big bag of problem solving tricks.It also helps to gain a top to bottom understanding of how it all works. There are many approaches and books for this, I like The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programming (SICP) for the higher level stuff, but also be sure to study some EE, digital design and low level architecture. And operating systems.And if you're at all good with your hands, build (assemble) yourself a computer and get UNIX/Linux running on it. Design and implement a network with routers and static IP addresses or something like that. Etc. |
ASK HN: How are you becoming a better programmer? | aristus: Lately I've been trying to get into performance profiling research. Also, statistics.I've been programming full-time for, uh 15 years now. Holy shit. If anything programming gets harder but more enjoyable as time goes on. If it doesn't you're stuck in a local maximum.Always try to work for people smarter and more experienced than you. Spend N years/months immersed in learning something new while helping them get their work done. Once people start calling you an "expert", spend N/2 to N time teaching others. Repeat. |
ASK HN: How are you becoming a better programmer? | cousin_it: I feel I was a pretty good programmer to begin with, and everything I ever learned only added to my knowledge and professional sanity, not to my raw skill. Metaphorically, I don't seem to run faster every year, but I do get better at choosing the path. |
iPhone Push Notifications using Urban Airship? | idan: Hey there. I've used Urban Airship with client projects, and have been extremely satisfied. I don't work for UA, but I do know one of the founders, in the spirit of full disclosure.UA's API for push notifications is best described as the API Apple should have provided for APNS. At first blush, it doesn't seem to add a lot of functionality -- but once you spend some time with the API, you realize that the UA folks put a lot of engineering effort into making your life easy. Feedback service? Much easier. Push to a group of devices? Yes. Device tagging? Yes. Scalability? Not your problem. Easy-to-use control panel for debugging during development? Yes. Getting started with UA literally took me all of five minutes from installation of the python UA client library to first device registered & notification sent.Given how little they cost (recently lowered prices, too) and how much potential headache they take off your plate, I would warmly recommend them. I briefly considered a "build-it-myself" approach, but scalability questions made it an easy decision. The first 250k messages are free (IIRC), and if you get to the point where you are actually sending a million messages a month -- you probably have enough revenue to cover the $1-2k in UA fees. There's no contract, so there's nothing preventing you from DIY when it makes financial sense to leave UA.To top it all off, the UA team is friendly and responsive.I haven't used their in-app purchase framework yet, so I can't speak to that.Hope this helps! |
ASK HN: How are you becoming a better programmer? | davidcuddeback: One thing that I find to be very valuable is to perform self assessments after significant milestones. I consider what I did well and what I could improve upon. Then I consider how to improve. Always exposing myself to new ideas and trying them on toy projects amplifies this technique, because it gives me a source of ideas for the "how." |
ASK HN: How are you becoming a better programmer? | csomar: Blogs and sites* Joel on Software
* Coding Horror
* Paul GrahamYou don't have to agree with them all, but knowing others' opinion help you make yours.I also hang on Hacker News and StackOverFlow a lot, HN gives varieties of news and StackOverFlow programming related. The interesting in those communities is the user base (smart developers), so you can learn a lot from them.Try to browse the HN archive and read it. Use googlesite:ycombinator.com "Ask HN" or "Ask YC" +a keyword.This will give you discussions on niches you want to know about. |
is foundrs.com a good domain name for my startup? | dylanz: I don't mind the missing 'e'. People still use Flickr. |
ASK HN: How are you becoming a better programmer? | patio11: Make stuff. Make new stuff. Make the old stuff better. Find people who are good at making stuff. Make stuff with them. Get them to tell you why your stuff sucks. Make your stuff suck less. Find stuff you like. Study how that stuff was made. Make stuff like it. Do not read stuff or listen to stuff that does not help you actually make stuff. Realize that making stuff is easy but making the right stuff is very hard -- optimize efforts accordingly. |
How many of you look at http://news.ycombinator.com/newest? | mickt: Never.I use a RSS reader rarely browse the site. I also don't see a RSS feed for http://news.ycombinator.com/newest . |
ASK HN: How are you becoming a better programmer? | chipsy: 1. Good/difficult programming books, the more theoretical the better. Blogs are full of windbags and echo-chamberism; after a certain point, you'll just waste your time reading them. I've kind of exhausted what I can read from my local Borders just sitting in the cafe, unfortunately, and it gets fairly expensive to buy niche stuff.2. New languages, new application domains, new concepts. This could mean "closer to the hardware," or "further from the hardware." They both have uses. I have a lengthy list of languages I want to get around to learning...but have no compelling immediate use for, which is a strong discouraging factor. Hence application domains - if you're doing coding for small embedded processors, you're forced down to a few language options. If you're doing web apps, another set of options. If you're doing compilers, a third set of options. Et cetera. Find the app that lets you learn the language.3. Cycling between "research" coding(a tool, algorithm or data structure that might do something cool and useful) and "production" coding(bang out the app). If I did only the latter, I probably wouldn't learn anything! But the former lets me lay down a strategy for "this time, I'll be more efficient by doing x...." and then I try it and find out if x worked.I would also note that commercial programming work is likely to limit your growth unless you're working at a hardcore tech company. (I'm unemployed at the moment, going into indie game development, and I've been consistently emphasizing the use of technology to automate more, tighten the iteration cycle, and wring out more quality in less time, so I have few limits other than "make it good enough to pay the bills.") |
iPhone Push Notifications using Urban Airship? | sil3ntmac: Rolling your own solution isn't too tough, provided you have a server somewhere that has the correct ports open. Just takes a bit of work: regenerating device profiles and setting up the PHP script (there's some code floating around out there that will do what you want), but once it's setup, it's not a problem to maintain. |
ASK HN: How are you becoming a better programmer? | evlapix: Browse Hacker News daily and remind yourself how little you actually know. |
iPhone Push Notifications using Urban Airship? | jasonlbaptiste: check out apppush.com My best friend is the cofounder and the tech behind it is beautiful. They're currently privately beta testing. if you want in, just email me and ill gladly make the intro: j@jasonlbaptiste.com |
On what sites shall I register to reserve the name of my business? | nreece: Do a http://namechk.com |
ASK HN: How are you becoming a better programmer? | dmoney: For me, it really helps to have external structure in which to learn. I had fooled around with computers, but I don't consider that I really learned how to program until CS 101. Getting a job and learning what a big disgusting mess software can sometimes be was another big step. Finishing projects I start on my own is a lot harder.I started composing a longer response to this, but it's getting too long for a comment one thing from it. Maybe I'll post it when it's done. Here's a paragraph from it:One thing I continue to learn is how bad I am at estimating. I think the key to estimating how long a software project will take is not to lie to yourself. It's easy to be overly optimistic about your ability to keep things on schedule by working extra hard or being extra smart (step 1, step 2, ... and then a stroke of genius happens... step 4: profit!!!). Software complexity (and hence development time) grows non-linearly with feature set. When you're thinking about squeezing in one more little waffer-thin feature, you have to trust your gut when the little exclamation point or question mark appears over your head.Also, estimating (and re-estimating) takes time. Giving estimates off the top of your head is a recipe for disaster. |
What would you do with 1Gbps to the home? | dnsworks: Synchronous or Asynchronous? Honestly I don't have use for more than 10mbps or 20mbps downstream. I'd kill for 100Mbps upstream, though, so I could either back up all of my media on a remote server, or just store all of my media on a remote server or (sigh) "the cloud".My camera currently generates raw photos that are 22MB in size, and if I get shutter happy, it's not too difficult to fill up a 16GB card, especially at a concert or a big event. Keeping my media reliably backed up is pretty difficult, and currently involves two hard drives, one of which I bring with me to my Seattle datacenter whenever I can. And forget about Video, I have 2TB of high-res home video just waiting to be lost in the event of a dual spindle crash.The other thing would be to use some sort of telepresence service for chatting with my daughter, who lives with her mother. All of the normal video chat systems (skype, yahoo, google) are pathetic imitations of what popular science promised we would have had 20 years ago. |
iPhone Push Notifications using Urban Airship? | jdg: I created Boxcar (http://boxcar.io), which has sent out 58 million push notifications. I've talked to every push notification provider out there, and the guys from UA are the best at what they do.Without a moment of hesitation, I would strongly recommend choosing them over rolling your own. They're great guys, know what they're doing, and are having fun doing it. |
Is Andrew Warner using fake accounts to falsely promote his content? | pg: There's nothing statistically fishy about them. I think his interviews are good enough that they could well draw lurkers into creating accounts to post such comments. I've been interviewed a lot, and I was surprised how thoughtful his questions were. |
ASK HN: How are you becoming a better programmer? | scorpioxy: Well, to make a muscle grow you have to subject it to increasing values of resistance(i.e. weight training).From what i understand, the brain works in a similar way. So you need to challenge it with new stuff, harder stuff.So, if you always work in C, try some higher level stuff. If you always work on web technologies, try some assembly and so on....For me, I am trying to learn about newer fields. So re-learn my math skills, learn more about electronics and stuff like that.I am also trying to shock my brain into becoming better(not necessarily faster since age slows you down) by changing the field i am learning every once in a while. So electronics, then math, then computers....Note that i know that this is bad if you're trying to become an expert at something. I'm not. I am just doing this for fun and self improvement.(and because, apparently, I'm a geek) |
Free shell hosting with compiling? | rogermugs: i could have done with a free one though.
even 5$ a month I have to use 5$ worth... sometimes I want to use 5$ worth, but a lot of months i just want to forget its there...i'm an exceedingly light user. |
Cloning a US startup for a european country ? | david927: It happens all the time and it's a great business model.There have been a lot of successes with this. I'm shocked it doesn't happen more often.There's no moral imperative saying it's "bad". In fact, quite the opposite. Just don't violate copyright. |
Cloning a US startup for a european country ? | medianama: Go for it. Just make sure you are not violating the copyright. |
Cloning a US startup for a european country ? | jkaljundi: Go for it, just do it! If it's an useful service, you'll make people in France happy. They are your customers. No reason to feel bad because the US services don't want to provide their services locally in European countries (and no, translation does not equal localization). |
Cloning a US startup for a european country ? | pkirk: I often think about that many times. But I believe the best solution is to get in touch for a collaboration. |
Cloning a US startup for a european country ? | forcer: It can work but you need to evaluate the local market and see the differences. I had a few projects were this strategy failed because the market was different and I ignored it because was so convinced it must work. Also, I have one project which I still think will work but will take time (maybe years) before it can start to be profitable as the market is not mature enough. |
Cloning a US startup for a european country ? | 3KWA: watch Fabrice Grinda at TedXParis http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJK3_vpfoQc (in French) - implementing ideas taken from one country into another is what he does for a living. |
Cloning a US startup for a european country ? | revorad: Please clone mint.com :-) |
Cloning a US startup for a european country ? | antirez: I (and a friend of mine) cloned digg/reddit (it's something like a mix between the two) about 4 years ago, as there was nothing alike in the Italian market. It worked very well and the product (called Oknotizie, http://oknotizie.virgilio.it) did a successful deal with Telecom Italia. |
Cloning a US startup for a european country ? | sgdesign: I'm french too, and currently involved in "cloning" (although there will of course be some differences) a US concept, so I just hope it's not the same one! |
Cloning a US startup for a european country ? | fbailey: Go for it, some will view it as bad but just ignore them.Interestingly enough we thought about offering localization services for international startups, the complete set (marketing, strategy, translation, management, sales, partnerships)as a package to get started at least far enough to make the market entry for clones unviable.Any thoughts on that? |
Cloning a US startup for a european country ? | _delirium: It's probably fine as long as you stick to mainly cloning the idea or functionality, ideally perhaps modifying or extending it to fit your understanding of the local market.The main place people go wrong is also cloning the look-and-feel, or making the name be an obvious pun/derivative/translation of the original. Not only for legal reasons (though it matters for those too), but it can make the clone feel too derivative, like it's a generic-brand knockoff instead of a product in its own right. |
Review my app - Notification Service | mcxx: Yes, thank you! I've wanted this for a long time, just didn't get to creating it myself. |
Review my app - Notification Service | kamme: Great idea, but as I suggested on your website, you should have a favicon. It's part of the identity of a website. If you don't have it, it feels like something is missing. |
Review my app - Notification Service | jporta: nice idea. I specially like the sugestions made by the chatbot based on keywords. |
Review my app - Notification Service | f_sav: Overall good idea, but I'd say: obviously I wouldn't use this for my regular feeds, only for some specific ones for which I want live notifications. So maybe some basic filtering options would be good (by keyword, by author...).(Or maybe it's implied people would use existing services for filtering?) |
Review my app - Notification Service | f_sav: Oh, and having tried it a bit with a twitter search feed, maybe you could have some options for formatting too (with replacements like %t for title, %u for url etc.).(But of course both these suggestions break the simplicity of it, which has its appeal.)EDIT: also, I'd add the basic instructions (STOP, START etc.) at the bottom of the front page. |
Cloning a US startup for a european country ? | gizmo: Cloning a concept is fine, but cloning the (entire) interface is not.As with all things moral, the moment you have to ask if it is moral, guess what, it isn't! |
Review my app - Notification Service | olalonde: Very cool app.! I was going to build it myself but you beat me to it. Now, can someone build a feed for HN submission comments/comment replies? And why not a feed for StackExchange answers/comments ? |
Please review my start-up - planergize.com | zarski: I like the design of the landing page and the main graphic. I am getting tired of seeing the standard "browser screenshot" graphic on landing pages. As for the copy on the landing page I also couldn't discern quickly what the application was about. |
How many of you look at http://news.ycombinator.com/newest? | zarski: Didn't even know about /newest. I am going to checking it now. |
What would you do with 1Gbps to the home? | pasbesoin: Real time, FULL, non-PITA offsite backup from the home office.(Some of my artistic endeavors can generate a lot of data quickly. Upstream is slow, and I could exceed my bandwidth cap in the course of a month.) |
Review my app - Notification Service | daok: Some questions:
1) How to unsubscribe?
2) I can sent RSS feed to account that is not mine? (Spam?)Those 2 questions can block some new user to try the service I think. |
What happened to CO2Stats? | Shamiq: It's become that "Green Certified Site" logo instead. |
Does anything like this exists? | Scriptor: I think Google Products (http://www.google.com/products?hl=en) is pretty similar to what you're looking for. I'm not sure if you can purchase the products through it. |
Does anything like this exists? | mbrubeck: I think the Google Base Data API[1] can give you access to the price information from Google Product Search[2]. But I'm not clear why I would go to your site instead of just using Google Product Search directly...[1]: http://code.google.com/apis/base/[2]: http://www.google.com/products |
Software Development Opportunities on Craigslist | lukev: Even a great idea is worth nothing compared with the work of implementing it. And my guess would be that the ideas you'd find on craigslist are more along the lines of "build a twitter clone only MORE SO" than any genuine insights.Even if you do think the idea is amazing, only engage in such a deal if you get to keep 90% of profits. Development work requires hundreds of man hours. Ideas can come while in the shower.It's the difference between "Dude, I should learn to play the guitar" and practicing an hour a day for five years. |
Cloning a US startup for a european country ? | klozetgeek: This has been in my mind too, in another european country not France. |
Software Development Opportunities on Craigslist | Mankhool: Like everything else in life - it's variable. I'm an idea person who found a highly qualified iPhone developer in the SF Bay Area, who was interested enough in doing dev work for me part-time (he's a FT iPhone dev for a large corp) that he only asked for $2500 plus 3% equity. I'm in Vancouver. I found him on CL. Also, although IMO they mean nothing, he was happy to sign an NDA. It was a good experience. |
Startup Data Security Survey | Travis: completed! |
Review my app - Notification Service | Concours: looks great and simple, is it just a for fun or do you plan to make money with it? if so, how? |
Review my app - Notification Service | gipsygipsy: Good to see you build this app. I actually created a similar app some time back just to get notified on few feeds I am actively following. It is on appengine http://enginebolt.appspot.com/ |
I just don't care anymore. Any advice? | patio11: If you're underchallenged, dropping out will make you underchallenged and unemployed with no prospects of securing gainful employment in the immediate future. People who are both better credentialed and better skilled then you are also looking for work right now. You do not want to compete against them on the basis of "I was something of a PHP hotshot in high school."Your classes are not the only avenue you have in life. Phone it in for the CS classes if you have to. (I did that for I think the first two years of my undergraduate degree, because even at a quite good school that was mostly "We'll teach you Java syntax! This is how you do a variable assignment! Study that for the next week and we'll do complicated stuff like doing two variable assignments!") If there is nothing in the department worth studying (which I kind of doubt), transfer to a better school and apply for loans.You're probably a good candidate for a double major in CS and a field which will teach you something useful. This is a good strategy for future employment prospects and, trust me, you can find something interesting and challenging. I did Japanese and it changed my life.Your college classes are not your sole outlet for personal growth, by the way. Society has agreed to give you 21 hours a day, five days a week, for the next three or four years, free of any expectation that you have to show up anywhere and put in eight hours of work. Use that time well. Think you know programming? Build stuff. You'll find out how much you have yet to learn. |
I just don't care anymore. Any advice? | melling: Study math or physics. You should be able to get a programming job out of college, if you still want to write code. I knew a really good programmer who studied Latin in college. Getting an entry level programming job with another degree shouldn't be too difficult. |
I just don't care anymore. Any advice? | pedalpete: Expanding into non-CS fields I believe is a great idea, as CS is a science, lots of great cross-polination of knowledge could be amazingly helpful one day. Pick something you find interesting and go for it. Even if it is not science related, many fields are in need of good programmers to move them along to the next level, and the more you know, the more valuable you may be.However, you mention that you aren't getting the high 'A's anymore. If all your classes are so trivial, why not? I assume you've spoken to your professors, or the dean of CS? If not, i'd do so. They may be willing to bring you into some more challenging environments if you show an interest and the capabilities.I dropped out of Uni, and have absolutely no regrets. But you sound like you would be really into it if it were more challenging, so maybe stick with it.Is there a local tech company that you find is doing interesting work? If so, before dropping out, you might be able to work a program where they bring you on as a co-op with the University. That way you get the challenge along with true work experience, the business gets a deal, and gets to see how you work, and the university gets... I have no idea what the universities get, but in Canada, co-ops are pretty common, I assume they are in the US too. |
I just don't care anymore. Any advice? | noodle: if i were in your shoes, this is what i would do:1) do the due diligence and research to determine if the CS classes got harder. see if i can test out of or just generally skip some of the classes, if it isn't too late. talk to your advisor.2) consider taking on a double major while you're wading through the terrible CS classes. math, physics, engineering, philosophy, etc.. something that interests you. if CS ends up getting harder, you can always trim it back to a minor.3) do more stuff on your own time. college affords you tons of free time, especially if you're coasting through easy classes. build a startup. start a business. contribute to open source projects. |
I just don't care anymore. Any advice? | boyter: You do realise that college/university isnt so much about being spoon fed information but learning how to figure it out for yourself.Keep up your grades (they will be worth more to you then you think later on) and start reading the papers your professors are writing. Ask them about them. Understand them. Doing this will open up all sorts of doors. I landed a job writing code for a Doctoral student by doing this.Not only will you be learning more you will stand out in your professors minds because you took the initative to learn what they do outside of teaching students "for loops". This is the point of being there. Learning for learnings sake, not just to get a piece of paper at the end. |
When to stop obsessing over conversion | patio11: I've read that for web products, maximum conversion rates are around 1%.This statistic needs slaying. It. Is. False. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=930571 |
I just don't care anymore. Any advice? | jeffmould: First and most critical piece of advice. Don't drop out if you can financially afford to stay in. You will grow to regret it later.Second, talk to your professors, adviser, and the dean of the department about your situation. Let them know your skill set so that advanced answers do not come across as cheating.Third, most major universities allow you to test out. I have completed almost 30 hours towards my degree by testing out of classes and using previous work experience to apply for credit. Testing out usually involves either taking the final exam for the class, doing a major project, or a combination of both. I would highly encourage you to talk to your professor.Fourth, the classes will get harder and more challenging. Talk to your adviser, professors, and the dean of the department. Determine what your options are for classes and take the most challenging classes as electives.Fifth, look into a minor that may provide a release from the rut you are in. Even if the minor is something like underwater basketweaving it can provide a break and also provide a way to gain experience in an environment outside your comfort zone.Finally, see if your school offers any independent study programs or credits for internships. It sounds like you have good skills that could be applied to real-life scenarios while at the same time accomplishing your goal of completing your degree. |
I just don't care anymore. Any advice? | kloncks: Transfer. Seriously. I'm in a similar situation and that's what I plan on doing.Go to a better place that you deserve to be at and that will challenge you. Apply for loans if you can't afford it. In ten years, you will be glad that you did. |
I just don't care anymore. Any advice? | roundsquare: 1) Find some research with a professor. Look at their websites, see what interests you and talk to the professor. Make sure you understand their papers and have intelligent questions for them. Make them feel that you'll be useful.2) Look into some of the theory. Its probably quite different from what you've done in high school. There is some fascinating CS theory out there. Algorithms, turing machines, graph theory, etc... are beautiful fields.3) Find a crazy minor. By crazy, I mean non-technical. Film, english, political science, etc... You'll branch out, be more useful to any employer, be challenged and have fun.4) Talk to your dean (someone else said this, but I think its a great idea). Let them know your background and tell them what you want to do.Good luck. |
When to stop obsessing over conversion | jacquesm: You should stop worrying about it when you've exhausted all the avenues that you can possibly think of in improving it.As for the 1%, Patrick already states it's a bogus statistic based on a small sample, here are some more reasons:- conversion rates tend to cluster by industry- the majority of public e-commerce figures pertain to the adult industry, which has notoriously low conversion rates- conversion rate is a function of how well you manage to pre-select your customers through the use of text found on sites linking to you and how much your visitors are in a 'buying mood' when they finally reach your site. If you get a lot of flak traffic that automatically reduces your conversion rate, but I wouldn't worry about it, the number to maximize is the number of people you sell to in an absolute sense. So better to sell to 1% of 1,000,000 people than 100% of 50.- A friend of mine has a relatively small site but sells to - and this is not a joke - a full 75% of his visitors. Plenty of them become repeat buyers, and his whole online store fits in a shoebox. There are always outliers to statistics such as these. |
Small A/B tests impractical? | patio11: Ooh, I think you gave me a good idea for a blog topic.1) You can run multiple A/B tests at the same time without compromising results, if you assume they are independent. Your stats teachers at college will be mad at me for this, but "That is a safe assumption 99% of the time." (Shh!)2) In terms of prioritizing your time, I wouldn't worry about things you think are likely to be marginal unless they're at key areas in your application where a 1% marginal lift would matter to the business. For example: 1% improvement in observed results of the font selection dialog box: worthless to the business. 1% improvement in the shopping cart: heck yes worth it to the business.3) We often underestimate how effective certain changes are going to be. If you throw up a test and get statistically insignificant results, that doesn't cost you anything and you still learn something: oh well, learned that users do not empirically think the difference between A and B is supremely compelling. If on the other hand you say "Eh, this is likely to only be a 1% factor" and it turns out to be a 10% factor ("BUTTON TEXT?! WHO CARES ABOUT FREAKING BUTTON TEXT?! TEN FREAKING PERCENT?!"), you'll get statistically significant results and learn very valuable things. |
I just don't care anymore. Any advice? | barkingcat: I was in your shoes years ago. I dropped out of computer engineering and ended up getting a degree in english literature - and I kept improving and learning programming and systems design. Now I am a literature nerd who can also code. That is a tremendous advantage for me since I meet and work with people from all walks of life. The pay is lower outside of the pure CS / programming disciplines but I don't regret it one bit. Hope this helps. Stick with school and maybe think about why you are in that super boring course when you could either go all the way and test out of it / talk your way into upper year courses, or learn something unexpected/unknown. |
I just don't care anymore. Any advice? | yannis: Being more than twice your age I can assure you of one thing. You will get these feelings in College, in your job and in your business. Even with your partner wife etc. You need to find a method that works for you to cope.During College I got terribly bored of lectures and was quite ahead of my class mates - and wouldn't be surprised some of the lecturers. I decided to infrequently attend lectures and studied for exams and assignments only. Piece of cake really to sail through. My social life improved by 1000%. I loved and love learning. I would go into the library and borrow all sort of interesting books from anthropology to physics (even dated one of the librarians). I was fortunate to study in London. Visited all the museums - the patent library (amazing). I worked part-time in a fish-and-chips shop (was a great experience to learn customer service). It was like physically surfing. I even took diving classes and went diving in a reservoir in Scotland. Really if you want not to be bored is easy. Refocus - you are there to earn a degree that is your target. Learning is a different and solo activity.It is much more difficult if you get these feelings in your work. Again you can channel energy into other activities, you can put research into areas of your job that others consider routine. Changing a job would merely put you into a similar spot once the novelty wears out. Divide your efforts into - must do
- this is my life things
The must do you do for survival and you handle them as best as you can. In the this is my life things you add the variety. |
I just don't care anymore. Any advice? | binspace: It depends on what you want to do. The college CS curriculum typically is good for teaching students to become professors. If that is what you want, stick to CS.If you want to go more toward the software engineer approach you have a few options. You can stick with CS, but try to work on actual projects. For example, you can contribute to an open source project or start a company. The main thing is to work on projects that aren't cookie-cutter tasks, such as the ones that are common in school.Switching majors so you can learn something new is also a great option. What are your other interests? If you do go with the school route, you will probably learn more about problem solving by learning a new field. You can still use your programming skills with many majors.Another option is to get a job. Frankly, I think college is overrated. School is good, but there it is not the only route. You could probably get a good position at a startup, and will probably learn more than in school.I didn't get interested in programming until I was a sophomore in college. I graduated with a BS in Engineering Physics. I'm glad I didn't major in CS, and I was still able to pursue software development. You will have plenty of opportunities in school to try new things. I have to say that I have learned more about problem solving (at a faster rate) while in the workforce, than in school. |
I just don't care anymore. Any advice? | keeptrying: Have you talked to the faculty about this? If you can show your professor that you know everything he is teaching, I'm sure he will help make it challenging for you. Ie either by giving harder assignments where you'll learn more or he wont take your attendance and let you sit in on some other advanced class which you'll find more challenging.Do NOT leave school. There's no other place where you'll find smart people who are paid money to teach you the stuff that you want. And those grades will make a huge difference in your income and how your viewed when you go in for a job.Ask for help with your problem from the sources available to you and you will get it. It might take a few attempts to get to a professor who understands your situation but it will be worth it. |
I just don't care anymore. Any advice? | mos1: A large part of what a college degree demonstrates is that you're willing to complete 4 years of crap, only some of which was fun / challenging / etc. Not many people want to hire a "whiz kid" who has already demonstrated that he'll quit on you if he feels bored for a year.Also, someday you might find yourself interested in a masters or doctoral program. That's gunna be a tough sell if you weren't able to complete a Bachelors.Suck it up, do your work, and find some other way to amuse yourself until the coding classes get more interesting. |
I just don't care anymore. Any advice? | ajuc: For me the best thing you can get from university is the people you can talk with. Many smart people with good ideas. Ignore stupid/incompetent profesors, learn from the smart ones, talk with smart people and try to do sth great with them, later you won't have time to try new things.If there is some students' educational club (I don't know how to say this in English - students teach students about what interests them) - go to it, ask if you can help, start new class about functional programming or what interests you, if there aren't any - you'll learn much more from trying to teach others than you could learn by reading the book.I've met many great people that way, and made connections so in my 5th year of studies I got programming job , becaus people already working there knew I was good.PS - if you become used to "B"s then "C" will come, etc. I was "A" student without effort at first year, and have great difficulties later because I got used to having "A" with no effort. |
Don't you have anything you want to discuss with Mozilla? | sushi: Yeah I want to know when are they going to make the design a little more compact sans the unnecessary statusbar in Firefox. Just provide more real estate and also try to make installing extensions as painless as possible just like Chrome.I don't think Mozilla is capable of making Firefox as fast as Chrome (for at least few years or so) so let's just leave on that. |
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