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Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread) | frankus: This all sounds kind of lame compared to the other comments, but you asked:- Converted a car to electric drive when I was 20- Was a contestant on a reality show pilot that aired on Discovery- Built a motorized rotisserie out of two old bicycles to cook ~100lb of lamb for my friend's wedding- Built a weight-con... |
Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread) | patrickk: Hacker News > Lists > Most Active Theads > "Ask HN: Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread)"187 Comments in 9 hourshaha I guess everyone's favourite subject ultimately is themselves |
Linode servers not responding. Is anyone else having issues? | gamache: My vps in the Newark facility is cruising along just fine. |
Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread) | razerbeans: * Good friends with the man who was the head of the Missile Intelligence Agency during the Cuban missile crisis. He also worked with Von Braun on the Saturn V rocket. (Interesting story, by the way.)* Turned down a potential offer to Westpoint.* Achieved the 99th percentile in Standford Achievement Test eve... |
Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread) | RiderOfGiraffes: Strange life experience: I've juggled 5 balls on the flight deck of a 747 while 35000 feet in the air over India. |
Best technology for web development | hoffmabc: Javascript. Learn it asap. HTML obviously and then use what you know already for SQL and Java/C++ to code the backend. You already have a lot of the framework for it having done application development. |
Best technology for web development | patrickk: Not sure of your level of knowledge, but the LAMP stack is a good place to start.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAMP_(software_bundle)For the scripting language, you won't go far wrong with Ruby on Rails (pleasure to use) instead of PHP (potentially heartbreaking).Also, it's considered good etiquette to have yo... |
How do I get the word out on my data mining report | kalendae: thanks guys i kinda gave up after seeing no comments at first, but im glad i checked back. I will write several versions of it as articles and hopefully it will be worthy of showing up somewhere. |
Best technology for web development | Roridge: If you have Java experience it is a small jump to JavaEE technologies.Check out Servlets and JSP technology. It's bascially the same as LAMP but with a J instead of a P (and often a T instead or as well as an A). |
Is this a scalable idea? | Roridge: You don't need to assemble the team.You can build a web site as a one or two person company, and the idea with enough traction you out source each part to oDesk or similar (as your team of technical people). |
Linode servers not responding. Is anyone else having issues? | Travis: My dallas VPS seems fine. |
Linode servers not responding. Is anyone else having issues? | commx: You may wish to open a support ticket for assistance if you're experiencing issues. |
Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread) | chrischen: * I used to take shits in an outhouse and swim in the river where that same shit was dumped in. Though I didn't do this for long--eventually we got a toilet.* Appear in the background in a movie scene with Judd Nelson (John Bender from the Breakfast Club). |
Where to stay in San Francisco? | ochiba: There's a lot of good info in these old threadshttp://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive#t... |
Is this a scalable idea? | apsurd: Your model makes the assumption that "people of the world submit ideas" and "vote". Gaining a userbase, even nonpaying, is at minimum - half the battle. |
Where to stay in San Francisco? | _delirium: While it's possible to stay in San Francisco, the YC stuff is all in Mountain View, I believe, which is about an hour away from SF by car or train. It's also cheaper to stay in Mountain View or elsewhere in the Valley than in SF. |
Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread) | Mz: I kind of feel like no one here will care/be able to relate, but these are some of the things I am proud of:* I graduated high school as STAR student and a national merit scholarship winner -- while missing 18 or 19 days of school every year and dragging myself to school sick much of the rest of the time and also b... |
Where to stay in San Francisco? | mschaecher: check out YC funded Airbnb |
Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread) | vusal-zeynalov: * I know 7 languages. (5 of them I speak perfect)* Everyday I read 300 pages (book & articles) of writings, and scan (eye scanning) 300-400 articles online. Pro day.* Now I study my second university. First was 6 years medicine, second is also medicine, I am in 4th semester and I am 23 now.* I went 5 ye... |
One startup at a time? | Mz: A) I would be concerned that the one with all the money will turn out to be a lot better at raising money than at creating something. In the long run, you cannot borrow your way out of debt. So if they can't produce something, they would eventually go bankrupt.B) If at all possible, in the same situation, I would... |
Is anyone doing any significant work with the play framework? | daveturner: Have you taken a look at another Java-based framework www.scooterframework.com? All your experiences in Rails can be found there: ActiveRecord, associations, routes, named sql queries, i18n, ajax, etc. I particularly like the one-click routes link. I think Scooter's routes which is based on Rails is much be... |
Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread) | jacquesm: Built an off the grid house. |
Who's hiring? (march 2010) | pjharrin: I think this happens every 90 days, the last one was 41 days ago |
Who's hiring? (march 2010) | macros: We currently have 7 positions open in San Francisco in technical, community, and product roles.http://www.wikia.com/Hiring |
How do you evaluate a lawyer? | pinksoda: If it's a US or Canadian lawyer try searching for their name on http://www.talkburst.com/ - anyone with a name can be reviewed now. |
How do you handle battle between self-doubt and hope/persistence? | anigbrowl: Set goals and triggers (warnings) on different timeframes and levels. Not too many, so you are able to keep track of them mentally and don't spend much time administering your list. Get advice from friends and/or your romantic partner (if you're in a serious relationship) about what should be on that list. H... |
How to datamine grocery stores? | Kliment: Grocery store websites tend to show very, very little of inventory. The typical grocery store considers the data a trade secret, and are unlikely to tell you if you ask. You could walk around the store with a camera mounted to your hat (seriously) and then work from the images. You are more likely to get data ... |
How do you evaluate a lawyer? | bragen: It's really tough if you aren't one (probably akin to the often-mentioned difficulty non-technical folks have evaluating programmers).But there are a few places to start. First, Martindale-Hubbell is a respected reviewer of legal talent and provides ratings.Second, if your lawyer happens to be a "SuperLawyer" y... |
Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread) | marcamillion: Not that this is something to 'Brag' about:I died at age 5/6 (am now 26)...well...technically I had a cardiac arrest and my heart stopped beating for 15 - 20 minutes. |
Blog options and experiences? | jarsj: I wonder what no comments from last 7 hours mean, either people here are bored of blogging or answers to your questions are too obvious. |
How to datamine grocery stores? | Predictor: I wonder how many receipts could be acquired from the ground or garbage cans outside the store? It would be a biased sample, possibly, but it is hard data and free of cost. |
How to datamine grocery stores? | ig1: Tesco offers an API (still in beta until later this year), although it's poorly documented and all the examples are in Microsoft languages... |
Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread) | fara: I brew my own beer |
Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread) | peterwwillis: * I've been to 5 high schools
* Went through 9th grade twice
* Dropped out of school entirely
* Self-taught everything I know about computers and technology
* Work for a large media company doing the job I set out to do for a decent wage
Technically i've achieved all the [other] goals I set out... |
MySQL expert anyone? | lsc: Each item on this list is largely unrelated to the others.1. turn on your 'slow queries' log. read it. tune it down so that it becomes more sensitive.1.5 add indexes. use 'explain' to figure out what is slow about your slow queries. Indexes can quite often make those things less slow.2. buy more ram. Buy a de... |
Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread) | toddt: * I was hit by a bus while walking on the sidewalk in Brazil* I'm a scratch golfer* I speak portuguese and spanish fluentlyAfter reading some of these I feel that I haven't done much with my life :( |
Experience with Protocol Buffers | jokull: This has just been posted on HNhttp://msgpack.sourceforge.net/Make sure you benchmark simple JSON. It might be enough. |
Using vague metaphors as job requirements | yesbabyyes: I would assume that the people you would be working for are kind of corny, FWIW. |
Experience with Protocol Buffers | jbooth: Check out Avro, too. With both Protocol Buffers and Thrift, it's really hard to evolve schemas because you won't be able to read data written with an earlier version of the schema. Avro has the speed of binary while being flexible enough to read older data with later versions of the schema. |
Experience with Protocol Buffers | pwpwp: If your data layout is fairly static, PBs are good.What I did for an app was encode a kind of JSON in PBs:http://pwpwp.blogspot.com/2009/08/storing-json-as-protocol-b... |
Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread) | egb: * I wrote WebRPG back in the Java 1.1 days, with a very thin distributed object graph for all communications, and it mostly worked :-)A highlight of that experience was having Gary Gygax hang out in our booth at GenCon - http://web.archive.org/web/19980205004902/www.webrpg.com/?li... |
Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread) | nekopa: Wow, I now have to upgrade all my goals :) As I always find myself becoming a teacher no matter what job I do (I finally gave in and am now an English teacher) my proudest moment was during my technical training for the US Air Force as an enlisted man (Computer maintenance and telephone systems engineer, which ... |
Experience with Protocol Buffers | MichaelGG: We were using .NET's WCF messaging system, but wanted a faster/smaller format. http://code.google.com/p/protobuf-net/ let us keep our code the same, while using protobuf for the wire format. Worked quite well.Another approach to consider is using a text format (XML, JSON), then running it through fast compre... |
Blog options and experiences? | imp: Yeah, I think other forums might be better suited for talking about blogging in general. Here are previous discussions about blogging platforms on HN:http://www.google.com/search?q=blogging+platform+site:news.y...For my two cents, I've been using Wordpress a lot, but I'm currently working on switching to custom b... |
Blog options and experiences? | adrianscott: I am now using posterous (even though I'm not blogging heavily). I can have a domain name working with it, multiple blogs from one account, I can set up a favicon, and more. I like their approach better than wordpress.com, and I'd rather focus on other tasks than set up my own wordpress install, adding plu... |
Books to get started on Angel Investment | gyardley: The Definitive Guide to Raising Money from Angels, by Bill Payne. http://billpayne.com/definitiveguide.htmlYes, the site looks like godawful direct marketing spam and yes, it's written for entrepreneurs looking to raise from angels. But there's a ton of useful info in here about 'how angels work'.EDIT: Ther... |
Using vague metaphors as job requirements | coryl: Copy written like that are probably from younger companies/startups with less care for rules and being formal. They're just describing the type of people they want and are looking for. Nobody wants someone "proficient in CSS", "experienced with PHP". If the applicant is uncomfortable describing themselves as wiz... |
Legal advice for Web developer | hga: I don't know UK law, but passing a bad check is certainly illegal in the US and would give you immense leverage against him, at least to prevent the lawsuit. But I'm pretty sure you have to be careful in using that (i.e. talk to a solicitor before making any threats WRT to criminal prosecution).On the other hand,... |
Copy protection? | hga: If you're serious and "cost is no object", you probably want something dongle based: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dongle#Copy_protectionNote that the objective probably isn't something you can't break, but something that raises the bar high enough it's not worth it for any/many of your customers to pay someone to ... |
Using vague metaphors as job requirements | tiffani: I don't see anything wrong with it if you actually know what all that (being a supposed "rockstar" in a field) entails. It only annoys me when I hear it thrown around in general conversation by folks who have no clue what a "insert-programming-language-or-framework-or-markup-language here" rockstar really is ... |
Copy protection? | fragmede: Depending on how much 'cost is no object', hardware dongle's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dongle) are very much still used for copy protection on larger, professional software packages. http://www.safenet-inc.com/ and http://www.marx.com/ are two that I know of.Another method I've seen is to lock the softwar... |
Experience with Protocol Buffers | JoelPM: Protos will work fine. Thrift will also work fine. ________ (insert other binary format) will also work fine.As long as there are libraries for the languages you're using it's not a big deal. I'd recommend solving the problem and moving on - in the serialization format wars the real victim is productivity. |
How do you do your Market Research? | bgnm2000: I used to use my schools' database connections, but lost them upon graduation. Oh the joys of being an adult. |
Review my FB app, Photo Memories | coryl: Clickable: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=384777439272... |
Legal advice for Web developer | nudge: For the love of god, talk to a real lawyer, not HN! You might be able to get the advice free at the citizen's advice bureau. Or try direct.gov.uk, maybe.Out of interest, is it as crazy as you make out or does he have some way of presenting these events so as to make it seem like he might not be totally insane? F... |
Experience with Protocol Buffers | joeld42: I've used this for some projects, with much success. In one case I used it as a data interchange format between a C++ app an some Python utilities. It worked very well for that and the generated API's were easy to work with, albiet a bit bulky.In another case, more of an experiment, I used them to serialize ga... |
How do you recommend getting a basic understanding of the law? | mikecane: Both the Copyright Office and Patent Office have sites that can give you the 101.http://www.copyright.gov/
http://www.uspto.gov/If you are ever thinking of living in the U.S., especially in NYC, then there's a whole set of laws you should understand regarding the rights of tenants, if you rent:http://www.tena... |
How do you recommend getting a basic understanding of the law? | timwiseman: Particularly on laws regarding the internet you may want to look at: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/about/readings especially Free Culture by Lessig. |
How do you recommend getting a basic understanding of the law? | subud: Nolo press publishes a lot of good books for people who want to learn about various laws:http://www.nolo.com/ |
Review/Seed My First Web App | MrSafe: It's a simple app I built to help me prepare for programming interviews. This is a very early version but if people like the idea, I'll continue to develop it. |
How do you debug your rails applications? | jeffy: I use the Netbeans IDE debugger. It can get hung and crash your rails app if you put breakpoints in certain places, but it's pretty good for simple debugging. |
How do you debug your rails applications? | jrallison: the ruby-debug gem has always worked for me. |
How do you debug your rails applications? | seven: I use the ruby-debug gem.Quote from a co-worker: "If you need to use a debugger, your code is too complicated. :)" |
Review/Seed My First Web App | keefe: down site is down :[ |
Using vague metaphors as job requirements | ploppybob: I read that kind of thing as "only those suffering from severe Dunning-Kruger syndrome need apply". |
Durable Earphones Wanted | anigbrowl: Sony MDR-7506 for about $100. I have over a decade's experience as a professional sound engineer, score in the 98th percentile in clinical audiology tests, and use >$2000 microphones. All other headphones are junk.Also, noise-cancelling headphones are a tool of the devil. Consumer earbuds were invented by on... |
Durable Earphones Wanted | chris11: Unfortunately, I can't really help you with a decent pair. I too go through headphones really fast.But if you don't care about quality, I'd suggest that you buy a really cheap pair. I am currently using a $4 dollar pair (eh 220 earhugger). Sound quality isn't great, but they work well for audiobooks and are o... |
How do you evaluate a lawyer? | pseingatl: Look for a local firm that has an office overseas. Then, the local lawyer will be ultimately responsible for the work done there and you have recourse in case something goes wrong. Big law is pretty much fungible these days, there is really very little difference between one firm and another. If you have a c... |
Please review my side project | duck: It wasn't clear what was being compared until I tried to add an item and see that it is length. I would of assumed area based on the current design. |
Durable Earphones Wanted | brandonkm: I would check out the Bang & Olufsen A8 earphones. They run about $160, but the sound quality is amazing and they will last you a lifetime. |
Please review my side project | nzmsv: I'm really confused as to when the top/bottom item is replaced. |
Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread) | rick_2047: * I am the Webring master of IEEE student branch of my college. (first freshman to do so).* I am the webdev for the alumni committee of my college (the first freshman to do so).* A turn to man for circuitry for the robotics club.* Beat MTech Students in debates and Treasure Hunt in a recent techfest at our c... |
Please review my side project | mattm: I like the font and layout. It's very slick. I'm not really sure of the purpose but it kept my attention for a few minutes trying to figure it out. I'm not sure how China is equal to only 1.03 Great Walls of China |
Review my FB app, Photo Memories | coryl: Dang, getting a review is tough. |
Where I can find the latest security exploits? | cperciva: Wrong sort of hacker. We build stuff people want, not break it. |
Online Video Speed Dating through Facebook | yesbabyyes: Something like http://faceroulette.net/ or http://apps.facebook.com/globeroulette/?None of them seem to have that mix of some selection, some chance that you suggest. |
Are you trying to steal my contacts? | eagleal: I couldn't find anything on the Clickpass (YCS07) website about the actual data accessed. Not mentioned on the privacy policy neither[1]. We should ask Clickpass or PG (he implemented it on HN).[1] http://www.clickpass.com/docs/privacy-policy#pp1 |
Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread) | herval: hah! No big feats to brag about here, but I'll join the game anyway :-)* started my first 'gig' translating books/magazines, printing them in a borrowed dot-matrix printer and selling around the town (at age 9). Also wrote original pieces about videogames and stuff (sold around 100-200 copies, heh)* got my firs... |
System administrator (to be or not to be) | hga: Yes. I got unceremoniously dumped out of my college path by finances after my freshman year and started out with a sysadmin job that eventually had some serious programming.Can't advise on the "how do i prove my worth", I found the job by networking and by virtue of being one of the very few at the time (1980) wh... |
Is anyone doing any significant work with the play framework? | agentcurry: I ran across play a couple of months ago and I love it (wrote article on my initial thoughts back in Feb - http://www.agentcurry.com/2010/02/15/the-power-of-play).Like a couple other commenters, I come from the J2EE world and always found the MVC frameworks overkill for most non-enterprise apps (even some e... |
Online Video Speed Dating through Facebook | marknutter: Sounds pretty awesome. I could get behind this. |
Is anyone doing any significant work with the play framework? | rufugee: Has anyone come to play from Rails (as I have)? Is there anything you miss from Rails? |
System administrator (to be or not to be) | hga: Here's another career possibility, given that you can program, but don't want to do that.(Note: DO NOT BECOME A SOFTWARE TESTER: No respect, no upwards career path to speak of, deadly boring. Only do this if starvation is the alternative.)Anyway, there's the specialty of software building. Someone needs to set t... |
Where I can find the latest security exploits? | hatchack: If you're really interested in security and not just looking for 1337 5ki11z, start here:http://www.google.comhttp://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1http://cve.mitre.org/ |
Please review my side project | roundsquare: The site is a bit confusing to use. The first thing I looked for was how to put in whatever items I wanted.How does the text box and the something random button work? Quite confused... |
Serious 2010's Ruby on Rails vs Django opinions? | tomkinstinch: There are still more Python libraries out there than there are Ruby libraries. |
Serious 2010's Ruby on Rails vs Django opinions? | mtarnovan: I don't know about Django, but take my advice and don't use Rails 3 just yet. It's not ready (for development mind you, albeit for production). |
Is this true? | gaius: Are you hiring a CTO or a sysadmin? |
Is this true? | ihodes: I think that's BS. While I'm not a professional as either, I do both and enjoy both – I didn't have the resources to hire my own sysadmin, but now I've found that I enjoy it. I think to enjoy doing either requires many of the same qualities: problem solving, patience, innovation, curiosity and vigilance.Then ag... |
Is this true? | delano: That certainly used to be true for the most part. The lines have started to blur:http://jedi.be/blog/2010/02/12/what-is-this-devops-thing-any... |
Is this true? | jk4930: Mostly true. Tautologically because programmers specialize in programming and server guys specialize in running servers. Different problem domains with different ways of thinking, tools, problems. And we are talking about real programmers and real sysadmins and not some young hobbyists, I guess. |
Is this true? | paraschopra: No offence but you why are you calling the position CTO if he is expected to code and do sysadmin work. Why not simply call him/her an engineer?Just curios on the choice of title. |
Is this true? | jeromec: True. It's about specialization. You could also ask if programmers make good database administrators. Highly capable/experienced programmers that develop for the Web (like many on HN) will have some level of knowledge of all facets of the network computing experience, including how routers and browsers work. H... |
Is this true? | madair: I think it's worth realizing that it's tribal behavior as much as anything else. Corporate fiefdoms develop. Staff protect their turf. In my opinion many people are unaware of the likeliness that this is the result of evolutionary biology.That said, the value of some level of specialization clear. We have to co... |
Is this true? | viraptor: When you don't expect much at the start, one person can do programming or sysadmin job first - if you're just hosting your own page without any special features. If you get to the situation where you have many servers to take care of (5+ let's say), then sysadmin simply becomes a full-time position that needs... |
Is this true? | snom370: At a certain point you're talking about SANs, FibreChannel routers, HVAC systems, UPS, virtualization, etc etc, and keeping up to date on all of this knowledge is a job in itself. So a guy spending most of his time doing "big IT" sysadmin stuff might not have the time to become a really great programmer.That ... |
Where I can find the latest security exploits? | ig1: Bugtraq and vuln-dev for the more whitehat side, irc and zeroday forums (often invite only) for the blackhat side. |
Is this true? | kogir: I've found that the best sys-admins know enough programming to automate their jobs and debug application issues. They don't have to be the greatest programmers, but they're fantastic debuggers.The best programmers know all the system settings, services, and behaviors that can affect their apps and thus have to ... |
Is this true? | anigbrowl: True IMHO. Get a server guy, that's where the rubber meets the road. Ultimately your business succeeds or fails on whether your service is secure abd available. |
Is this true? | thaumaturgy: It depends on what you mean by "good" programmers or "good" server guys. Up to a certain point, yes, there are plenty of people that can do both well enough to get most jobs done.However: unless the guy you're hiring happens to be an active developer for the operating system that you're expecting to him to... |
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