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What are some must-dos to maintain sanity of a UGC site
ivankirigin: User moderation is very useful, as are editors. Filtering NSFW content by tagging it and requiring users opt-in to see it makes sense. There are also copyright issues that are important. You want to make it easy and fast to identify copied material and yank it, in case of a DMCA takedown notice.You could a...
What are some must-dos to maintain sanity of a UGC site
vaksel: automate it, suspend posts that gets tagged a lot with "spam!" then give the original poster ability to dispute. It'll cut down the effort on your part big time, since spammers most likely won't bother appealing
What are some of the best Tutorials/Resources on How to Build an IPhone App?
larrykubin: I've been reading the new Pragmatic Programmer book, which is still in beta form. The final printed book will be released in December 2008. It's pretty good, and walks you through step-by-step. I must admit, it's been difficult so far since I had zero experience with Objective C, XCode, Cocoa, etc., but hop...
What are some must-dos to maintain sanity of a UGC site
Harkins: Bozo filter. When you ban someone for posting crap, don't delete their crap, just flag it and only display it to that user. By giving the crap posters less feedback you reduce their ability to evolve new crap-posting abilities.On the reverse side, you must also identify your best posters. It's easy to forget w...
What are some must-dos to maintain sanity of a UGC site
iigs: I'm assuming free-form textual data here, if you're doing something more constrained (like CDDB data) this will probably not be helpful.You can push the problem around with technical features, but I believe this is a meat-space issue and needs to be treated as such.Hacker News (so far) is one of the best run site...
PHP Tricks and Best Practices?
ericwaller: Something that took me a number of projects and maintenance type work to realize is to use "helper" functions wherever possible.For example, a profile link: <a href="/user/profile/<?=$user->id?>"><?=$user->name?></a> Write a simple function: function user_profile_link ($user) { return '<a hre...
PHP Tricks and Best Practices?
texec: If you want to review very clean code you should better look at the Zend Framework. It's very good object orientated PHP 5 Code.
PHP Tricks and Best Practices?
pwoods: Don't look at other frameworks. I did that and found it a complete waste of time. The best I found was to loosely follow the Ideals of a framework you like. I say loosely because frameworks always have the best intentions but they can't be built for everyone. So sometime I've had to cheat. I've seen code w...
ASK HN: How should I set my company up?
qhoxie: To my knowledge, there is no perfect way of transferring a merchant account. Your best bet is the advice Ryan offered: choose the biggest, most prevalent merchant account provider you canAlso, this is not particular to tech or startups, but keeping solid documents will make any sale much smoother. Use someth...
PHP Tricks and Best Practices?
shaunxcode: fluent expressions (when uses appropriately) can be great for constructing DSLs. Also any time you see boiler plate code take the time to refactor to eliminate it - often times figuring out how to do that will make new abstractions apparent. As a matter of practice search for the coolest things you can do i...
PHP Tricks and Best Practices?
DanHulton: I've had trouble for a while now with chained ifs, as in: [CHUNK A] if (chunk a succeeds) { [CHUNK B] if (chunk b succeeds) { [CHUNK C] if (chunk c succeeds) { echo 'yay!' } else { echo 'boo!'; } } else {...
PHP Tricks and Best Practices?
agotterer: You should learn how SPL (standard PHP library) works. Most PHP developers don't even know it exists! In my opinion its one of the most powerful parts of PHP if you can learn to use it correctly.http://us.php.net/splhttp://www.php.net/~helly/php/ext/spl/The documentation on php.net is pretty lacking. Heres a...
PHP Tricks and Best Practices?
rshao: This is a bit of a specific one, but the array_shift function is really slow on large arrays. The workaround I found is to use array_slice and unset the array index afterward.Overall though, I find out about a lot of cool things just from the comments on the php.net site. For example, I learned how to use pcntl_...
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
run4yourlives: As both someone who has been hired, and someone who has hired, I have no problem with resumes that are 1+ pages, provided there is relevant content. Nobody else I know would expect everything to be on a single page.This is especially true in IT, where I want you to explain the projects you worked on, you...
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
ilamont: Paper resumes are fading. Most employers now read them on a screen, either through an online job service, LinkedIn, or an email attachment.As someone who is in the process of hiring two people, I think the on-screen equivalent of one page is too short. I can handle scrolling down for another page or two, but a...
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
nostrademons: Mine's two pages and seems to be generating interest at the places I've sent it to.My sister does recruiting for ConocoPhillips (admittedly, a very different industry) and also ran a resume-writing workshop when she was in grad school. She was adamant about not going over 2 pages. The reason is that you...
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
qhoxie: It depends on a lot of factors like duration and type of experience. I would say that people are moving toward a don't cut out important details school of thought. One approach I have seen and enjoyed is compiling a common single page resume and then having a second/third page as deeper explanations of past p...
PHP Tricks and Best Practices?
auston: Have you looked through this: http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/ ?It has a lot of a lot, so you don't have to write so much native PHP. Even Rasmus recommends it as his "framework" of choice (although he does not "like" frameworks).
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
DanielBMarkham: I've been many times on both sides of the desk.What I found as a resume presenter is that the readers, many times technical folk, (at least once you get through the gatekeepers) always want detail. Lots of detail. Except when they don't.So I gave up on one page resumes. Instead, page one has a bullet li...
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
yummyfajitas: 2 pages is fine. Just don't try to puff it up with irrelevant crap to inflate the page count.Awards:- Math genius prize at University- ...- 8th grade spelling bee champion <- FAIL
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
raffi: I had lots of interest with a 2 page resume but found restricting myself to 1 page forced me to hit the high notes and focus on what message I want to send.I found this necessary when an employer put me through a 5 hour interview for a web developer position. I thought I was applying for a research position but...
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
browser411: Brevity is the soul of wit.I think a 1 page resume is essential. Even Gates or Jobs could have a kick-ass 1 pager.Exceptions include a need to list technical details like published papers/books, patents, etc.
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
nickmolnar: I have a 10meg PDF resume (4 pages with lots of pictures, hyperlinks, and partial nudity). It has gotten positive responses about 60% of the time, but they are generally very positive. Having a resume that doesn't please everybody, and stands out from the pack, is valuable. Even the 40% who didn't like it w...
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
wheels: People in general spend about 30 seconds looking at your resume. One page or not, it has to be skimmable. Use bullet points and bold to bring out the important stuff. Use lots of white space.Lots of detail doesn't impress me. Your place for that is in the cover letter where you write about the one or two th...
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
notauser: The best application I saw in a recent round of hiring was in four parts:- Short cover letter in e-mail.- Longer cover letter signed and scanned as PDF.- 1 page concise CV.- 4 page detailed employment history.HR handed out the right bits to the right people and everyone was happy with the level of detail they...
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
cperciva: Pages? What are those?My CV is 214 lines long, and each line is up to 78 ASCII characters. (Before anyone asks, yes, my CV is nicely formatted with clear sections and bullet points within each section.)
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
timr: How long should it be? The premise of the question is flawed -- nobody is going to shoot you if you don't submit a one-page resume. There's no law against it.But if a resume is little more than a marketing tool, then brevity is your friend. One page is better than four, even if your career can fill ten.(One not...
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
iigs: Been doing a few interviews lately. Here's my take:The following things values are logarithmic or exponential (depending on the case), not linear:1) Page count -- One page isn't a hard limit anymore. Your resume has to go through keyword systems and spends most of its HR/recruitment life as a .doc file. The compu...
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
speby: In general, 1 page is still the norm, for several reasons, not the least of which when you print it out (for any reason) you don't have to staple or keep multiple pages together.Secondly, there is very little reason that your resume (not the totality of your experience) can't fit on one page if you tailor it spe...
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
noodle: one page, with major points extremely visible (larger, bold, etc). well-designed and easy on the eyes. and you should modify your resume to each specific job you apply for.why? two reasons (this is information i've obtained from HR personnel that i personally know, it isn't simply heresay):most resumes go th...
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
Locke: The goal of a resume / cover letter are to land an interview. It's not an autobiography.I can say from personal experience that one does not completely read hundreds of resumes. When I was hiring I would get just as much info from a short resume as I would from a long resume. The key difference is that with a...
PHP Tricks and Best Practices?
gearslips: Some of the stuff you've mentioned is really good old-school stuff, like list and sprintf, that's fallen out of vogue.With regard to suggestions to check out Zend Framework, my advice is: Don't.
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
makaimc: One of the Booz & Co. partners I recently talked to said he has two piles of resumes: 1 page and 2+ pages. He reviews the 1 page resumes for good candidates and puts the longer resumes in the garbage without looking at them. A resume's purpose is to get you an interview- not describe your life's story.
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
speek: 1 page.Simple.Eye-catching.
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
dfranke: dfranke@feanor:~$ wc resume.txt 99 620 4016 resume.txt
best/most popular hosted server monitoring services?
run4yourlives: This was the first result in google for "uptime monitoring": www.uptimesoftware.comGiven that they have a free plan, why don't you just sign up and see how reliable they are for your self prior to buying?
ASK HN: Hacker Bibles
yan: Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman (or anything else by Feynman is very relevant)Understanding the Linux Kernel is surprisingly thorough not just in its coverage of the Linux kernel, but also architecture and OS design in generalThe Design and Implementation of FBSD book now covers 5.3, which is much less dated than...
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
misterbwong: A general rule that I've read is that two (maybe three page) resumes are OK but the most important information MUST be on the first page.In essence, if I were to take a multi-page resume and the last pages were ripped off/somehow went missing, the first page would still be strong enough to make the applica...
Review my Weekend Project - VotetheSite.com
KrisJordan: I would love to see a live, updating vote count on the front page.In the next election cycle it is probably worth getting this out earlier though not sure how to keep driving traffic over an extended period of time without content that keeps you coming back. As a voter it'd be neat to see how other people's...
best/most popular hosted server monitoring services?
aaroneous: We've been very happy with pingdom.com. Plans range from $10-$35, they have a lot of options to verify your machines are actually up (APIs, ping, string matching, https, etc).
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
rcoder: Mine is plaintext, and probably 1-2 pages when printed. Anything that doesn't make the cut for the first page or so goes in the cover letter, or is already somewhere on my blog or in Google, so I don't sweat it.I actually used the layout of a UNIX 'man' page for a while, which got lots of chuckles, but no offer...
ASK HN: Hacker Bibles
yan: Also a decent list of books: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogCreekMBACurriculum...
ASK HN: Hacker Bibles
qhoxie: Applied Cryptography - Schneier
ASK HN: Hacker Bibles
run4yourlives: 1. Peopleware: http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-S...2. Pragmatic Programmer: http://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-Journeyman-Master...
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
huherto: The number of pages will depend on your experience. If you are just out of school one page is fine. I have almost 20 years (ouch!) so it is hard to make it fit in three pages.
PHP Tricks and Best Practices?
kwamenum86: Write your own collection of object oriented php classes or use someone else's. This will speed up your projects a ton. I tend to stay away from frameworks unless it is commissioned work that involves a lot of boiler plate code (forum, blog, etc.).
How to get out of a startup cleanly to start a startup?
cperciva: Talk to the experts in the field -- that is, experts in the field of web hosting, not experts in the field of startups. I'm sure people over at webhostingtalk.com will have a much better idea of what your company is worth than anyone here.
How to get out of a startup cleanly to start a startup?
noodle: why don't you use your ownership income to hire someone to replace you? that way, you won't have to sell your stake at a price you don't like, someone can still be doing the necessary work you won't be doing, and you'll still have a passive income stream.just my uninformed $0.02.
How to get out of a startup cleanly to start a startup?
jd: Trying to get as much money as you possibly can fits the definition of greed, but that really doesn't matter. You want to get as much money as you can without feeling guilty.There are different ways to determine the worth of a hosting company. One way is to look at revenues + growth in revenues + number of customer...
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
sctb: I have submitted a 2 page CV with a 1 page personalized cover letter in the past. I have signed reference letters as well, which are handy to bring to an interview. That being said, with all of the jobs that I've received offers for, the employer knew who I was and had a good idea of my background before ever rec...
How to get out of a startup cleanly to start a startup?
mseebach: I read somewhere that a reasonable measure it to consider the invenstment. If you were to buy your share, you'd have to put $X down to get a return of 45%*profit(not salaries)/year. Calculate backwards to get the interest rate on various down payments, and see what makes sense.Considering that the 100k is pro...
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
neilc: One interesting idea is to format your resume as a mind map[1]. You're likely to get either very positive or very negative responses, but I'd be curious to know if anyone's tried it.[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map
How to get out of a startup cleanly to start a startup?
tptacek: There's no ironclad rule of valuation, but a normal way to go about this would be to set the whole company valuation at N x forward revenue, where N is a function of how much value is locked up in the company due to its youth and lack of sales, marketing, and distribution.Two benchmarks:A solid services compan...
How to get out of a startup cleanly to start a startup?
astrec: You should consider having your business audited and valued - a valuation could be as high as 4-5 x EBIT. In terms one partner acquiring the interests of another, a (significant) discount would normally be applied.
How to get out of a startup cleanly to start a startup?
Kaizyn: Hello Edb,I agree with noodle's comment(s) below. Your best bet is to hire someone to replace you and retain your stake in the company. The cost of an employee will definitely reduce your annual income, but then you won't have to worry about being cheated out of your share of the company's value.
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
hs: ZEROresumes never win me any job offers, neither does schooling; however, past projects and works doon topic, my 5? years old lost resume was 1 page long
ASK HN: Hacker Bibles
cubix: W. R. Stevens: TCP/IP Illustrated Vol. 1-3, Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, and UNIX Network Programming Vol. 1 and 2.
How to get out of a startup cleanly to start a startup?
symptic: I would try to sell 60-70% of my share and use the remaining bit to outsource the work in maintaining the work I was doing, then sit on the $1-2k coming in every month as a safety net to pay the bills and give me the full purchasing price to invest in my start up (though I'd advise investing much less to keep ...
How to get out of a startup cleanly to start a startup?
johnrob: 1) Agree on ownership (you own 45%?)2) Your partner needs to start taking a salary - negotiate the amount.3) Pay partner's salary directly from the profit, and then split the remaninder according to equity.What's complicating matters is that you are splitting the company profit and avoiding salaries.
PHP Tricks and Best Practices?
andreyf: Cool PHP trick: write a compiler from a better language to PHP and write your code in that ;)
ASK HN: Hacker Bibles
tapostrophemo: Working Effectively With Legacy Code - Michael C. Feathers
ASK HN: Hacker Bibles
jaydub: Computer Architecture, Fourth Edition: A Quantitative Approach - John L. Hennessy, David A. PattersonThe Black Swan - Nicholas Nassim Taleb
How to get out of a startup cleanly to start a startup?
gojomo: If he's offering $70K for 45% ($1555 per 1%), would he accept $86K from you for his 55% (a smidge more per share)?That's one way partnerships can deal with a situation where one or the other partner wants out or to go solo: have a put-up-or-shut-up binding bidding process, where whoever offers more per share ge...
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
skmurphy: I have hired more forty people--a mix of employees and contractors--as a manager in technology companies. One page and a cover letter/section (perhaps 100 lines total) is the most that will get read before a hiring manager decides to give you a call.Or not.Tailor your experience to the position you are applyi...
Passed the first selection for YC 2009? Share your joy and your project
satyajit: Nope, we didn't make it. Just saw the email. But we are NOT depressed. We still are believers!
Passed the first selection for YC 2009? Share your joy and your project
greg_helfer: Did you get any questions from YC during the process?
Passed the first selection for YC 2009? Share your joy and your project
ktom: Didn't make it,kind of crushing. I'll admit I am depressed.Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
boucher: I can say that in my experience interviewing potential candidates, everyone I worked with generally hated lengthy resumes, but I was the only one who cared enough to dock people for them.It's not that important, but ultimately, a concise resume reflects on your communication skills. Being able to summarize the...
Passed the first selection for YC 2009? Share your joy and your project
gqwu: Our group submitted 4 apps. We got a PG question on two of them. Still got rejected on all 4, sucks...
Valuation of domain for sale to large corporation?
noodle: depends. if he's willing to pay, i'm sure he could find someone to appropriately value it.i also would say that we could probably help valuate it here.would need info like, how much he paid, how much he's making with it now, traffic it gets, etc..
Valuation of domain for sale to large corporation?
anand: There is a official procedure that companies can use to dispute the domain name if you're trying to hustle them that costs them about $1000-2500. I forget what its called but if you look at past cases you'll see a lot of people trying to hustle corporations and the decisions handed down. I think if Bellog thin...
Valuation of domain for sale to large corporation?
fnazeeri: The key is getting a 3rd party to the table. For example, if P&G were expressing interest... It reminds me of a case from b-school titled, "Up for Auction: Malta Bargains with Great Britain" which is worth a read if you can track it down. Having a 3rd party could mean the difference between getting $10K or...
Valuation of domain for sale to large corporation?
FiReaNG3L: estibot.comKeep in mind that its an automated estimate. But in my experience, it makes very good ones. Of course, it all depends of what the buyer wants to pay...
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
johnb: I'm surprised no one has put a link to http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/02/25/a_glimpse_a... in yet.I've been the technical reviewer on a lot of hires and found Rand's process fairly similar to mine. I think it's good that he views the document as having 2 purposes: the first being to get through all t...
Valuation of domain for sale to large corporation?
ra: Domain appraisal is very subjective.I'd say it's worth looking at namepros.com and dnforum.com where you might be able to get some friendly appraisals. Also have a look around for recent sales history. Try to find similar names that have sold in the past.I wouldn't recommend paying for a domain appraisal. They're g...
Passed the first selection for YC 2009? Share your joy and your project
nolanbrown23: We got a question and thought we offered a pretty sufficient response but no joy.
Valuation of domain for sale to large corporation?
wehriam: And when all else fails, ask Google - http://www.google.com/search?q=domain+name+attorney
PHP Tricks and Best Practices?
senthil_rajasek: More a trick than a best practice, heredochttp://us.php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php#langua...You should recognize this immediately if you have done any unix shell scripting.I use it to spit out large pieces of HTML.
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
arupchak: If you're applying for a specific position, a one page resume highlighting your specific skills and past projects pertaining to the job is a good idea. The time to elaborate on a past project or experience that is not directly relevant is the interview.Remember how your resume is going to be treated (at least...
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
tamersalama: This thread is yet another proof that the current recruitment process (in any and all companies) is flawed (and yes, mine have been rejected before).The reason is it is 'still' a personal taste process. No matter what you do, how you sell, what you write, how you think, it's still up to the personal taste ...
Passed the first selection for YC 2009? Share your joy and your project
bigthboy: Didn't make it but we're still moving forward. I mean, its not like PG and Ycombinator is the ONLY way to make a start-up work. What about those billions of them that came before YC existed?
Good reading material for "mobile" stuff?
rscott: I would suggest any mobile tech related news site/blog/forum out there. Not much good picking up books on something that gets updated every 3 months or so. Mobile engadget, gizmodo, etc. come to mind. Howard Forums is also huge for mobile/cell phone chatter.
Valuation of domain for sale to large corporation?
curiousgeorge: If someone sued me and then wanted me to voluntarily enter into a contract with them, I'd assign a very large figure to goodwill regardless of the appraised price of the asset.If your friend is taking a mercenary approach, a good starting point is estimating what the potential buyer is already paying in ...
ASK HN: Hacker Bibles
bayareaguy: The Algorithm Design Manual - SkienaPurely Functional Data Structures - OkasakiAlgorithmics - HarelThe Practice of Programming - Kernighan & PikeConcurrency Control and Recovery in Database Systems - Bernstein, Hadzilacos, Goodman.Recovery in Parallel Database Systems - HvasshovdACM Turing Award Lectures
PHP Tricks and Best Practices?
sunkencity: if speed of execution is relevant, just use echo (which takes any number of arguments), and single quoted strings (concatenating, or parsing double quoted strings is slower):function user_profile_link ($user) { echo '<a href="/user/', $user->profile, '">', $user->name, '</a>'; ...
Are one-page résumés passé? How long is your résumé?
paraschopra: 3 pages
Valuation of domain for sale to large corporation?
aquarin: Place to resolve such disputes is WIPO http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/
Valuation of domain for sale to large corporation?
astrec: The results from recent auctions are instructive: http://marketplacepro.moniker.com/auction/index.htmlWe used an NYC based lawyer who specializes in premium domain acquisitions to secure a domain for USD$400k last year - if your friend is interested interested I can dig up the name.
PHP Tricks and Best Practices?
haasted: I think it would be a better idea to look at an application than a framework. It will likely match your future work better.MediaWiki has in my experience a very well-written codebase, so I would designate it a good candidate for code-reading.
How to get out of a startup cleanly to start a startup?
markessien: Don't leave. What if your startup does not work-out, what's your backup plan?
PHP Tricks and Best Practices?
thwarted: list() isn't a function, it just looks like one, just like array() looks like a function but isn't. There apparently wasn't enough syntax to spend on making things like this less ambiguous, but now we do have \ as a namespace separator.
What do you think of our new app? FutureTweets.com
davidw: Might it get you banned from twitter if you're not careful?
What do you think of our new app? FutureTweets.com
bigbang: Good idea. Thought of the sameAlthough I thought sendible.com which also does this was more comprehensive in this arena.
Valuation of domain for sale to large corporation?
SBev: Simple its as valuable as he wants it to be. If the company has filed suit and went to court they have already spent $25,000 or more just to file the paperwork. He should ask for the world and slowly go down from there.In a prior job the company I was with renamed itself. The branding consultants and executive ma...
What do you think of our new app? FutureTweets.com
pt: this is neat, i just used it on MAKE for a daily sub code discount. i'd like to have a feature where it can do a count down... for example each day the tweet could say...there X number of days until Y ... blah blahhandy for events and other things i'd use it for.
What do you think of our new app? FutureTweets.com
joshsharp: Nice looking site! However you also have competition from http://tweetlater.com. I hear that's what most people use for scheduling tweets at the moment.
Valuation of domain for sale to large corporation?
patrickg-zill: It is just another line item for them in terms of cost, so don't be shy.Remember that if they are going to use the domain for marketing purposes, they will be spending millions upon millions of dollars in advertising; so even $500K or more for the domain name is not a big deal to them.
Passed the first selection for YC 2009? Share your joy and your project
rodmaz: We didn't make it. We seriously believe we have a strong aplication: experienced people (developers), revenue model, an advanced demo, and already very very good reviews from other people. I am sure now that YC looks at two things basically: -a team larger enough to have at least 2 guys working full-time until...
Passed the first selection for YC 2009? Share your joy and your project
fernyb: How do we know if we made it? I didn't receive any email. Though I did receive a call from a blocked number last night, but I didn't hear it ring and no voice mail was left. Maybe... I doubt it though.
What do you think of our new app? FutureTweets.com
ryanmahoski: "have an alibi..." ...that ends in "sent from Future Tweets."