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How do you test your web applications? | erlanger: I use QUnit to test my JavaScript and whatever's on hand to test backend code (unittest in Python, Test::Unit in Ruby). I'd use Selenium for point-and-click-style testing but I haven't gotten to it. |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | gizmo: Life is a game. The objective of the game is to make money. The person who has the most money when he dies, wins. |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | ErrantX: In order of importance:- have a great family with someone awesome- financial independence so I can take my family great places and pursue my own projects (several million or more would be great; see next point)- spend any "fortune" I get on fixing some specific problem(s) in the worldI suspect quite a few people have a rough variation on this. |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | maxklein: I think there are some people who can only find happiness in always striving for something. Sort of like an explorer - he does not explore to find a better place to live in, he explores because it's the exploration that is what makes him happy.So for the people for whom the search is happiness, it will look from the outside like they are never satisfied, but they were satisfied already when they went from nothing to almost nothing. |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | Tawheed: FREEDOM - having the ability to do whatever I want, whenever I want. |
Will you buy an iPad? | mortenjorck: I'm going to wait until I can at least play with one at an Apple Store. I'm probably most interested in using one to experiment with tablet-targeted web UIs, but I can also see it working as a good motivator for me to continue learning Obj-C. |
Will you buy an iPad? | c1sc0: Not before I've made 500$ or so off iPad apps ... label me frugal. |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | javery: James Truslow Adams coined the phrase "American Dream" in his 1931 book Epic of America:"The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."The American Dream has never been about someone owning a car or house or even being happy, its the simple idea that in a society based on equality guys who drop out of college can go on to form some of the most important and most valuable companies in the world. |
How do you test your web applications? | cschneid: Testing is a vague term. There are lots of types of testing, which other posts go over quite well, but I'll give a rundown.* Requirements testing - take the napkin you scribbled your idea on, and mentally run through it a few time. A feature that is 100% correct code but does the wrong thing, is still a "bug".* Unit testing - low level, typically at the database and business logic level. Does this function return what I think it does?* Integration / Frontend testing - automated scripts that run through and 'click' on elements, and verify content. Webrat and Selenium are a great tools for this.* Usability testing - throw some real users at it, find bugs in your design and workflow.* Penetration / security testing - attack your site from the outside. Alternately, audit the site from a code-level point of view. Find security holes, figure out ways that people will abuse your site.* Load testing - once you get a site up, will it stay up after traffic hits. This is a rather deep topic in and of itself.You get the idea. There are probably more that I didn't hit. But basically every step along the way to having the final app can and should be tested.Testing is more than finding bugs, it's finding flaws in thinking. Whether it's the 'business analyst' aiming for the wrong target, the designer having a hard-to-find button on the mockup, or a coder using the wrong import() function override. |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | huherto: I had plans to retire at 45. Today, I want to have sufficient financial independence to be able to choose what I work on.Love, family and friends are now more important than they used to be. |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | NEPatriot: Freedom to explore the world and do what I want.
Wanting to solve problems for other other people.
Have a family. |
Will you buy an iPad? | pavs: No. Apple have this habit of leaving out no-brainer features from first iteration of their new products. The one that I can think of is Video/Camera. Also, I don't know if I can use my existing collection of PDFs and other ebook formats on iPad, if not, this thing has no use for me.I will wait for 2nd/3rd generation iPad, when all the kinks will be fixed and price will come down. |
Will you buy an iPad? | MikeCapone: I'm not yet decided. Waiting for more reviews and videos of it in action.I'm in Canada, so I'd have to wait anyway. |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | mcantor: My "American Dream" is to be free to do the following things as often, and in whatever proportions, that I please:* Learn and improve myself* Contribute to and improve the world around me* Spend time with friends, loved ones, and interesting people* Travel the world, because the three prior goals: self-improvement, world-improvement and socializing; seem to be different everywhere we go, and I think the variety would be enlightening in many ways.I view this as a goal that will be achieved gradually, rather than in one fell swoop. While I still have a 9-to-5 job, I make time to improve myself--physically and mentally--by reading, drawing, fencing, and lifting weights. I endeavor to contribute to my surroundings by volunteering when I can, and always lending an ear to someone who needs to be listened to. I use the money from my 9-to-5 to pay for gas and plane tickets so I may visit friends and they may visit me.My financial goals are mostly to get out of debt (I have $30k in student loans; I never carry a credit card balance). I make less than $60k/year and live quite comfortably on it, even paying $600-$1,000/mo. in student loans. In the 2 - 8 year term, I plan to save up a buffer of 1 year's living expenses so I don't need to worry about unemployment. In the longer term, I plan to start some form of business that will generate "passive income" (ugh, I hate that term) to the extent that my living expenses will be taken care of, and I no longer need to concern myself with employment to stay afloat. That will free up massive chunks of my most important asset: time.In terms of "stuff"... I would eventually like a place where I can have a studio and fitness room, but I endeavor to have as small an amount of "stuff" as possible, as I find clutter exhausting. |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | nfnaaron: What makes me happy, short term: - Laughing with my son (12 years old).
- Seeing my son happy and positive.
- Being "in flow," engrossed in a task and making progress.
Long term goals: - To see my son's independent life unfold in a positive direction.
- Making a secure living, however and wherever I choose.
- Being secure after I choose not to work (or can't work). |
review our startup - Tweetsworth | mortenjorck: Ok, I get it now. :) Why not wait until Thursday to launch, though? |
Will you buy an iPad? | pg: After it has a camera, probably. |
Will you buy an iPad? | arnorhs: I'm in Iceland, so I'm not expecting it to reach us for the next years. It's been 3 months since we first got the iPhone!!!Some people have had luck with importing the iphone from the US and then cracking it, but it's not a very enjoyable experience |
review our startup - Tweetsworth | lazyant: Nice idea but first I'm suspicious when something is "100% accurate", especially when it's done with a made-up algorithm, where accuracy doesn't make sense.Second, I don't need to be insulted three times: "Do you really have to inform the world each time you sneeze?" "Hopefully you've got more friends offline, though we're not counting on it" "Your retweets are so boring our algorithm fell asleep." |
Will you buy an iPad? | pcestrada: Yes. It's going to replace my laptop for surfing the web when lounging around the house. |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | chasingsparks: I wrote about something similar on my blog a few months back after realizing that persuit of money for the sake of money is dangerous.http://pathdependent.com/2009/11/11/money_isnt_everything/Also, to be precise, our "inherited national charter" made no promise of happiness, merely the pursuit of it. |
Will you buy an iPad? | gbookman: Yes.The interface looks so intuitive and just plain fun. Plus the battery life and 1.5 lb weight is fantastic. I can see myself spending the vast majority of my non-coding time on the iPad.Being able to use my bluetooth keyboard with it is also a big plus. |
review our startup - Tweetsworth | patrickryan: I'm getting a worth of $0.00 for every Twitter username I input. Even when using twitter users with over 1 million followers. |
How do you test your web applications? | tptacek: Since I do this professionally, I have a lot to say about testing web apps, but I'm going to keep my recommendation short and precise.Go here: http://portswigger.net/suite/
Drop the $200 or so for a copy of Burp Suite Pro.Burp is the industry standard tool for testing web apps; probably more than half of all web app penetration testers use it. It's like Firefox Tamper Data on steroids; it gets between you and your request, breaks out all the parameters for you, and gives you tools to manipulate and replay the requests.You in particular want to understand the Burp Intruder, which is Burp's fuzzer. The fuzzer takes a request, tries to figure out where all the parameters are (you can help it with that), and then feeds malicious inputs through them and records the responses.You want to fuzz every page in your application at every code drop. We've seen entry level QA people trained to do this, so delegate the task if you're not sure you can make yourself do it reliably. You want to collect every error response, and you want to grab your application logs and look for every exception or abnormal event. You want to know how the responses are different from the last run each time you ship a new version of the app.Burp is so extremely effective that I'm amazed every web dev team doesn't already have a copy. I think it's because it's billed as a "security" tool. But it's obviously more than that.Webdevs have a lot to say about unit testing and cloud testing and integration testing and test-first development. What I can tell you is that I've seen no correlation between test methodology and pentest outcome. The TDD teams fall just as fast as the seat-of-the-pants teams. I want to strongly recommend that you don't waste time strategizing on how you'll test or validate architecture or whatever. Burp is a no-BS tool. Get it, run it, and you will find bad things. Work out your effective bill rate and the amount of time it takes you to adopt or extend a test suite, and it's the cheapest quality enhancer that's probably available to you. Do whatever you want on the testing side, but do Burp first. |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | pw0ncakes: I'll follow up with you on this by email, probably tomorrow night when I have time, but I think the quest for money is based on 5 stages:1. Basic needs: food, housing, essential security, and the ability to procreate (which means the ability to afford housing in which it's possible to raise children, and to pay for their education).2. Leisure: books, music, sports, travel, sexuality, the freedom to choose more interesting work.3. Comfort and time: maids, doormen, business-class air travel, professional autonomy, and other provisions to make life a lot less annoying.4. Social status: expensive art, trophy real estate, invitations to (and the ability to throw) ridiculous parties, five-star hotels, private jets, AmEx black cards.5. Power: this is the level of the rich people who have no strong political drive but run for political office (Forbes, and to a lesser extent Romney) or otherwise strive for influence.I differentiate the last two levels because the 5th is usually observed in billionaires who don't have to answer to anyone, nor to prove themselves, so they tend not to care about social status per se (it comes to them) but still strive for high levels of power and influence.Achieving #1 is so difficult in our society (due to the outrageous prices of housing anywhere worth living, plus healthcare and education) that a lot of people bypass it and shoot for #2; this is the "hipster" movement-- young people who are rich at level 2 but poor at level 1 (because it's impossible for them to achieve security). It's relatively easy to be happy on a low income if you don't plan on having kids and actually can, unlike most people who are just aping a cliche, "live in the moment" instead of worrying about healthcare, family (in the future) and retirement. Whether this is reckless or enlightened is a matter of opinion.Money is happiness-producing at levels 1, 2, and most of 3. Where people get tied up and end up miserable, despite ridiculous levels of wealth and income, is when they end up chasing #4-5. These concerns can easily lead to overspending, "golden handcuffs", professional unhappiness, and general malaise, because it's not straightforward to "buy" social status, as nouveaux tend to find out the hard way. When people have their basic needs taken care of and choose to focus on social status in a major way, they become childlike.However, what we take for granted, as elite technologists, is the possibility of filling out levels 1-3 (basics, leisure, comfort) without having to muck around in the bottomless need pit of #4 (social status). Except for very smart technologists and entrepreneurs, it's literally impossible to reach an income sufficient for level 3 (~100-400k, depending on geography and family size) without getting involved in the social status lemon party. We're lucky in that we don't have to. |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | yan: I have no idea.What will make me happy is to realize what I actually want. |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | nickpp: You cannot be happy due to biological reasons. Happiness is a transient state, a peak, like an orgasm.Knowing that, pursuing happiness is akin to pursuing highs: a futile endeavor.You can only be comfortable. Financial comfort, emotional comfort, physical comfort. However, comfort makes you weak. Avoid it.The rest is bullshit. Consumerism & earth saving crap have NOTHING to do with happiness. Just brainwashing. Avoid that too.However, considering your field of interest and how you formulated the question, I venture to guess that is the main substance you work with. You came here not looking for answers, but just for affirmations of the things you are already thinking. |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | grosales: I have many dreams, not one specific goal has determined what I do in my life. It's a juggling act though, to work hard so some of them become reality, and hope that other people will take on the rest of my dreams (because I also know I won't be able to do it all myself). Regarding American Dreams, as an immigrant to this country, strangely I have none. I have learned so much while living here, I think that is an undeserving gift to me. My american dream is that America can evolve and find new ways to prosper, innovate while never forgetting the real reasons their founders fought for. The same way, many things can make me happy:just seeing a sunset or a sunrise or just the clear clouds after rainy days or seeing that my cousins learned something after a turbulent programming class. |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | thibaut_barrere: Here we favor:* have good time together as a family and as a couple* work on things that make sense (useful end-goal + way of work that makes sense)* intellectual open-ness (learn useful things etc)* financial independence as much as possible (along the lines of http://evolvingworker.com/2010/2/3/alternate-wealth)We (my wife and I) don't care much about having a lot of money (although we appreciate jaguars and classy houses, if we could afford them), but we care a lot more about our freedom.We've been reducing expenses to ensure we're able to go live in the country side of France next month, as well :)Hope this helps, and nice topic! |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | gyardley: I don't think what would make me happy is all that different from the traditional American dream. I want to be wealthy enough so I can provide well for my current and future family - I don't want my parents, my wife, or my children to want for anything. I want the freedom and time to be able to teach my children my own values, without interference from others. I want both the ability and the right to defend what's mine, what I've achieved, and the people who are important to me from outside threats. I want stability in the outside world, so that the likelihood of these outside threats are minimized. I want to grow old beside the woman I love, surrounded by my descendants. Beyond that, I want to be left alone.The purchase of material things are an important aspect of this dream - it's not at all a 'consumeristic nightmare' to want to provide well for your family.Today, I'm happiest when I'm spending time with my girlfriend, my family, or a few good friends, enjoying good food or a good beer. I'm also pretty happy when I'm doing something intellectually stimulating and lucrative. I'm delighted that over the past few years I've gone from paycheck-to-paycheck to quite comfortable, and as an immigrant to America I do feel that I've been living the American dream. |
Will you buy an iPad? | bjplink: I own a Kindle AND an iPhone and I broke down and ordered a 16GB iPad last night. It's going to be used mainly as an on-site input device for some industrial clients I have. It will be used with a modified version of their intranet I'm going to be developing. The main use will be for hard counting inventory. |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | pinoceros: satisfying my needs is happiness. simplify: skip the bars and the drama, ditch the time-sucking girlfriends – and the time-sucking guys, too, quit the day job, learn to cook "peasant food" from every part of the world. within two months of making the above changes, i went from spending to saving, eating better, coding better, and playing better.Then there are some seasonal things that increase my joy:Winter through spring
* average five hours of snowboarding a day
* average five hours of programming a daySummer through fall
* average five hours of surfing, kayaking, hiking, and/or fishing a day
* average five hours of programming a dayI try to block my days into ten hours of activity. Figure eight hours of sleep a night, that leaves me with six hours I can spend however I want. Some of that gets used up getting to snow and surf spots, or (blech) on-site, but a lot of it is spent doing small things that lead to happiness: such as yard work, house cleaning, chatting with neighbors, teaching my old dog new tricks, strolling, making music alone or with others. |
How do you test your web applications? | BornInTheUSSR: IMO Biggest bang for your testing buck - cucumber with webrathttp://railscasts.com/episodes/155-beginning-with-cucumber |
How do you add to your programming toolbox? | sophacles: I typically have a backlog of things I would like to do. When I go to conferences, or have boring meetings where I only need half an ear to the proceedings, or whatever, I do those things. Usually they are toys or side projects and what-have-you. They are usually doable in some form that 'I've been meaning to learn'. They are usually fairly easy as well. Then I just combine all the above factors. If I want to learn some new vim thing, (or generators or ...) I do the extra task (which is easy) with a focus on using what I'm trying to learn.It doesn't always take, nor do I expect it to. Even if I get just one small technique to "stick" and become regularly used, I do this enough that I fairly rapidly gain new skills and tools.HTH |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | alexro: I think happinies isn't "a dream", its a state of mind. You can either be happy or not, you can't plan for that or even understand the required elements of it. |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | itfrombit: "We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about."
- Albert Einstein |
Will you buy an iPad? | hajrice: NO WAY. I don't find it worth 400. |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | frogstarr78: I can't answer that question. I live in SC and haven't registered. j/k |
Will you buy an iPad? | csomar: No. For many reasons:- doesn't run multiple apps at the same time. Seriously, this is a must feature, I want to be online (facebook for example) while reading or playing.- Writing is harder with a screen.- My netbook (same price), has same weight and is yet more powerful, can run windows 7 and Android. And it has got a camera for video chat. |
What makes you happy? What is your American Dream? | HeyLaughingBoy: In the long term I do want to own my own business. Don't care about making millions: as long as I can pay the mortgage and afford good food, upkeep the house, keep the kids fed & clothed, I'll be happy.In the short term I focus on making the most of what I have right now. Like you said, it's easy to get suckered into "I'll make a ton of money right now so I can relax later" but later never comes! Much like it's easier to fix your own faults instead of blaming others, I find it's easier to make the most of the present instead of pipedreaming the future. You can still plan for the future: just remember that live turns on a dime.As far as your comments about the Maker movement: I have always loved to make things and I was really perplexed that it's now a "movement." I've been reading magazines about crafts, boatbuilding, metalworking etc. and been surrounded by people making things for so many years that I guess I just assumed there were Makers all around us :-) I wonder if the "movement" is really just among knowledge workers who weren't aware just how many of us still actually create with our hands? |
Aussies, put your hands up | shib71: Sydney |
Does this exist? "Click to support my cause" | faramarz: What you're describing is a lot like www.change.orgThere, individuals take it upon themselves to contact their local representatives. A user can volunteer personal information as well, and it will go towards building a collective petition or pledges.I'm not sure if the venture is non-profit or for-profit.. |
Aussies, put your hands up | ajt: Brisneyland |
Will you buy an iPad? | frankus: Yes. I have a 3GS but kind of need a second device with a compass to test a game I'm writing. The only alternative would be a contract-free 3GS, which costs a lot more. |
Aussies, put your hands up | abdulla: Melbourne here. |
Aussies, put your hands up | dmharrison: Brisbane, hi!Recently moved to Brisbane from Canberra and starting knowtu. Looking at ilab and will make it to opencoffee sometime. Are there any good Brisbane entrepreneurship/tech groups someone could recommend? HN meetup? |
Best tools for standing coding | Mankhool: I've got several of the sit/stand desks where I work. Like the Biormorph, but one surface. There are several manufacturers of these kinds of legs (Steelcase and Linak). Check your nearest large town's office furniture retailers to see if they have a used department - that and auctions of office furniture. |
How's the biotech industry in the Bay Area? | subud: "The industry remains strong, Lem said, but it has seen waves of layoffs largely because of company mergers such as Switzerland-based Roche taking over Genentech in South San Francisco."http://www.mercurynews.com/search/ci_14508960 |
Will you buy an iPad? | rms: No, I'm going to buy a Google Chrome PC, possibly in tablet form but probably clamshell. |
Aussies, put your hands up | spohlenz: Currently living in Clare but I'm in town often enough to say I'm from Adelaide. |
Aussies, put your hands up | dreamtime: melbourne |
Aussies, put your hands up | gbc: Canberra. Rails. Hi. |
Aussies, put your hands up | ryszard99: sydney!! |
Hackers in LA? | fjabre: There are and I've been to a few but I'm guessing it doesn't compare to a meetup in San Fran or Boston. Anyone else care to comment on this..?5 hours on the 5 to SF and 4 hours to Palo Alto isn't that far =) |
Best Phone Number Area Code? | samratjp: Depends on who your audience is. 404 is pretty amusing :-) |
Anyone ever used jQuery ThemeRoller for a project? | taitems: Shameless self plug of something that I released yesterday that is REALLY relevant to your needs: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1227712Overall I think that ThemeRoller is good at making themes for "coloured" designs like Mint (soft green), eBay (big and yellow) etc. I think that you could produce something that would match SIGTB easily, because your gradients are big and soft. You will never get something as crisp as Aristo or Ace without getting down to a pixel level and incorporating images.Check out my other post for how we I use jQuery UI @ work. http://tumblr.com/xjl8127l8 |
Hackers in LA? | cheez80: i'm in LA -- i've been trying to attend meetups that interest me. they're mostly out in the westside, though -- i'm in arcadia. getting out there is difficult.there isn't a specific event to attend, but i signed up for startup weekend, which is coming up. hopefully there will be some cool people there :) |
Hackers in LA? | boots: Just moved to Pasadena myself. I'm hoping to go to a Mindshare event soon, my friends rave about them - http://www.mindshare.la/ |
Hackers in LA? | ApolloRising: I'm in LA but it really does not compare to startup scene in SF. |
Hackers in LA? | jamesshamenski: I work in Altadena @ AdventureLink. i'm happy to arrange for a light meetup at my building most anytime.
It sounds like we could actually create a descent local chapter.
shamenski of Gmail |
Hackers in LA? | iphpdonthitme: I'm on the Westside. It's not an HN group, but this group is pretty hackery: http://socal-piggies.org/scpSend me an email at iphpdonthitme gmail if someone actually manages to rope people together brave enough to endure LA traffic. |
How to encourage curiosity in developers | werk: Repetitive coding tasks will burn the curiosity out of anyone. The only solution is to not have "IT organizations". |
Hackers in LA? | nkh: I am in NoHo (lankershim and vineland). I would love to have a local meetup. My email is nkhdev at gmail if anyone would like to contact me. |
Hackers in LA? | christefano: The Dorkbot community is pretty cool: http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotsocal/
There also used to be events called "Geek Dinners" but they were mostly attended by "social media gurus" and the like. Not really my cup of tea.I'm on the westside and am always looking for hacker events. My company is a big sponsor of Drupal events in Boston and Los Angeles and that's where much of my focus has been. |
Do you have experience running an open source web app? | veeti: Continuous integration? |
What problem is REALLY bugging you? | roel_v: How ebooks that are distributed in pdf are so hard to read on small screens, and the lack of properly working pdf->reflowable format (epub) tools. This is a hard problem and I'd pay for a 80% solution. It would have to recognize and properly fix/insert chapter titles, initial caps, tables of content, other leader/footer material, ... It would have to properly insert images in a sensible spot yet remove background images. Also it needs to properly recognize and format paragraphs. Columns would be nice but those are in the 20% I can live without. |
How to encourage curiosity in developers | ra: Yes I'm sorry but large organisations often seem to slowly and inadvertently replace creativity and enthusiasm with processes and procedures. |
What problem is REALLY bugging you? | tomh-: I would pay to outsource the risk of being a PayPal merchant. I want to be able to serve my users with the option of paying with PayPal, but PayPal for merchants is totally unreliable. Especially in the virtual good/currency industry they seem to have the tendency to lock your account for no reasons at all, and you can be without money for over 180 days. |
What problem is REALLY bugging you? | thomaspaine: I want a personal assistant for 5-10 hours a week. Not a virtual one because most of the things I want done are in meat space. Stuff like filling out forms, doing my laundry, waiting in line for me at the DMV, and dropping off my netflix returns in the mail. It sounds petty, but I really hate running errands and filling out forms. I'm considering hiring someone off craigslist. |
What problem is REALLY bugging you? | roundsquare: The fact that people vote for their leaders based on superficial stupidity and not based on issues. |
What problem is REALLY bugging you? | Aegean: Here's what you can't find among a plethora of web design consultancies, cms systems, off-the-shelf website design services, html templates...A small business/startup website solution that is compact, editable, live and clearly describes the product and company.No, its not vague or different every time. It should:1) Clearly describe the product2) Clearly describe the company and what it does.3) Does not look mediocre. (E.g. those static html sites based on those usual narrow rectangular templates with links at the side or top).4) Easily changeable. (i.e. updates on parts of it without much html tweaking)Extra:5) An easy-to-update company blog, ability to upload multimedia content such as embed product videos. A startup is changing quick, and so should the website.Do the first 4, I'll buy it. Then add 5.Examples:http://www.rethinkdb.com/http://pivotallabs.com/I have researched and both have spent considerable amount of time building theirs, and they have all 5. Why not do it off the shelf? |
What problem is REALLY bugging you? | Tichy: How to make money, or rather, how to survive and support a family. |
What problem is REALLY bugging you? | maxklein: I have all this data that I collect and it's very difficult to make sense of it or to break it down into a form that tells me what steps I should be taking next to improve my bottom line. |
What problem is REALLY bugging you? | mstevens: Thought from last night - we need a HN "problem registry".Not that new software ideas are hard to come by, but it'd be interesting to build up a list of specific pain points with eg) email. |
What problem is REALLY bugging you? | nosse: I would need a decent 2D CAD for linux. 3D even sweeter. problem is that dudes who usually code and dudes who usually draw with CAD are two totally different breeds. And that's why we don't allready have a good CAD for linux.I would be possibly willing to pay 200eur for a copy(but I want to see a proper demo first), and I don't think I'm alone.And I don't need anything fancy like Autodesk's "AutoCAD revit architechture visual suite", just basic "draw lines and circles" kind of functionality. |
What problem is REALLY bugging you? | netcan: Teeth. |
What problem is REALLY bugging you? | mstevens: Something I was looking for recently (slightly UK specific).I like to buy FSF-level free hardware and software - ie no binary blobs, free software bios if you can get it, no binary only video drivers.I couldn't find a store clearly focussed on selling this to me in the UK. Existing linux related online vendors often provide software that requires binary drivers, and don't clearly indicate the details of this sort of thing.Existing stores like kd85.com are in the direction of what I'm thinking of. |
What problem is REALLY bugging you? | zackattack: Why is your target demographic HN users?Try to maximize
# of customers * $ revenue per customer |
What problem is REALLY bugging you? | tomh-: I would like a linux distro which runs photoshop, as good as windows with equal performance, out of the box |
What problem is REALLY bugging you? | nudge: Right question, wrong place.Ask teachers, dentists, gardeners, councillors, vets (both the animal-doctor and the ex-military kind), fish owners, fish eaters, mechanics, little old ladies who don't know whether to trust their mechanic, landlords, concierges...You're more likely to get responses you would never even have considered.Look at it this way. It is often said that the best teams / startups are formed of people with different backgrounds, different thinking styles, different worldviews. So you're not going to add much to yourself by asking people (broadly speaking) similar to yourself. Find people totally unlike you. Think of a business you've never even encountered. Does it suck to own a fast food franchise and be totally at the mercy of the brand? Who knows? Maybe it does. Maybe you can help a little. Is it tough to be a guitar teacher nowadays when I can sort-of learn from youtube? I bet it does. Can you help them stand out?Ask your friends about their friends. Who do they know who is in a weird business or industry you're unlikely to know anything about? Maybe they do something hardly anyone knows anything about? I met someone who told me about a friend of theirs who works as a food arranger. For photographing food for cookbooks. She's not the photographer. Or the cook. She's just really good at arranging the food. I had no idea that even existed as a job.So step outside HN and the other places you might frequent online. You might just be able to fix a problem no-one capable of fixing has ever even heard of. |
What problem is REALLY bugging you? | mstevens: Another problem I'd be very tempted to pay money to solve right now:I'm taking lessons in French. It's pretty cool. I'd like to find ways to improve my French at home. I'd love a site that would make it easy to find someone to video chat with eg skype with some (possibly minimal) teaching skills so I could practice conversation. |
How to encourage curiosity in developers | keefe: With the speed at which technology is advancing, there's really no excuse for this attitude. It's also a common, general personality failure. If a person has no love of knowledge by nature and the fear of competition cannot engender it, then what use is such a person? |
What problem is REALLY bugging you? | clintavo: I need a way to add a simple white label site search feature for my customers. We run a service that hosts thousands of websites. We would like a service with an api that allows to have a site indexed and add a search box. Sort of like a google custom search engine but all with api access for each site. We looked a Lijit, but they don't allow searches without advertising (our customers don't want that). And with all that my team has their plate we really don't want to try to run our own search (ala Solr) ourselves. |
What problem is REALLY bugging you? | 1Place: I need a software solution to model best legal outcomes and other options for people to help become aware of their options:
(i) If law is based on Acts of Parliament which are written in a tree structure;
(ii) Then Information can be placed into software complying with the tree structure in (i), so we can dynamically model the outcomes possible? Else
(iii) Information is missing to complete the modelling of outcomes. What information is missing?This would aid with the understanding of the law and clients/individuals would be more knowledgeable and prepared for the options available.My preference would be in the area of IP law such as copyright, patents, trademarks etc since we can model these areas of law more easily with yes/know answers.I place this need on my blog recently: http://1place.com.au/wptest.php |
What problem is REALLY bugging you? | ig1: Better online take-away service, I used justeat at the moment but it leaves a lot to be desired (have to enter credit card everytime, lack of details, poor search, food reviews, etc.)Instant online quotes/price comparison for taxi services |
Hackers/Founders in Munich/Germany | Artemidoros: Here is one Hacker from Munich interested in having some beer :) |
What problem is REALLY bugging you? | jcnnghm: Quickbooks. Quickbooks is the single worst piece of software that I have ever had to deal with on a regular basis. I want to be able to reliably pull in all the financial transactions that occur for my company, and categorize them as quickly as possible. Quickbooks does this, but it fails on the reliably, all, and quickly aspects.I also need to be able to import invoicing information from my billing software, and match that to bank deposits and credit card settlements. |
Aussies, put your hands up | Aidan: Melbourne! |
What problem is REALLY bugging you? | froo: I know this might sound odd, but I'd like a "privacy policy" and "terms and conditions" generator that doesn't suck.I'd be willing to part with cash for something where I just tick off the various things I want and it would generate those documents for my site.Better yet, it would be nice if it was able to make these documents be localised to be legal in whatever jurisdiction (of my choosing) at creation time. |
Feedback on Genie Timeline 2.0 Please | ComputerGuru: Genie-Soft - a Jordan-based startup I'm currently working with - has just released Genie Timeline 2.0 Free, which is a comprehensive backup solution for Windows.I'm not sure if anyone else has had a similar experience, but before working with Genie, I could never find a free backup product that didn't suck to recommend for family and friends that don't realize the value of backups enough to shell out for a backup program.I'm really excited about GTL2 because it takes many queues from version control systems. It actually monitors your system for changes to protected data in realtime, and queues the files for backup. The nice thing about it is, you just configure it and forget it, it'll perform automated near-realtime backups on its own. You only use it when you need it: to revert changes and undelete files.Anyway, I'd really appreciate any feedback you guys can give on the product. There's a lot going on behind the ostensibly simple UI, and sometimes focusing too hard on the core means missing out on the big picture. Any feedback/critique fellow HNers can give would be very much appreciated!I know giving feedback on a software product is a lot more involved than doing so for a webappp, but it's very much appreciated. |
Should I create one website or many? | po: This absolutely depends on the nature of the content in the site. Is it user generated? Are the users of the different sites the same people?In my opinion, you're not giving out enough information to get back valuable advice. |
Would you use a service like this? | sushi: I'd like to use a service like this. It sure sounds interesting and somewhat similar to http://builtwith.com/ which is only about frameworks that are being used on one particular website. |
Anyone know how bluecoat mess up with https? | tshtf: BlueCoat documents this fairly well here: http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2006/07/think-your-ssl-traf...When the SSL Proxy intercepts an SSL connection, it presents an emulated server certificate to the client browser. The client browser issues a security pop-up to the end-user because the browser does not trust the issuer used by the ProxySG. This pop-up does not occur if the issuer certificate used by SSL Proxy is imported as a trusted root in the client browser's certificate store.The ProxySG makes all configured certificates available for download via its management console. You can ask end users to download the issuer certificate through Internet Explorer or Firefox and install it as a trusted CA in their browser of choice. This eliminates the certificate popup for emulated certificates...Edit: Transparently pushing trusted CA certs to end-users in a typical corporate environment is easy with group policy settings. |
How to make the switch | nfnaaron: Possibly a startup or even established company whose focus is related to your mechanical engineering knowledge. You might be more valuable as a subject matter expert who programs, than as a beginning programmer.If not an ME-focused company, then one that uses your peripheral skills, e.g. a trading company that needs good mathematicians (who code). |
Aussies, put your hands up | benkant: Perth repping. |
ODBC driver using websockets? | bdfh42: OK - perhaps dumb question - but what is the problem with AJAX and a web service to return the SQL query results in (say) JSON format? It is pretty simple and works very well.The concept of an ODBC driver being run directly from Javascript if not to something like a "sandboxed" instance of SQLight is a bit worrying on security grounds. |
I need a brainstorm on how to collect several thousand quality RSS feeds | IgorPartola: I wonder if you could use services like StumbleUpon and XMarks to find financial blogs that users have ranked and then just grabbing their RSS feeds. |
I need a brainstorm on how to collect several thousand quality RSS feeds | jacquesm: Spider feedburner ?wget -r google news and see what their sources are ?http://www.feedage.com/categories/News/1/4 |
Where to buy a desktop PC? | arithmetic: I would get the parts (from Newegg, Fry's etc.) and build one on my own - it turns out to cost lesser and lets you control what goes into making your PC. That, and there's always the good feeling of building something from scratch for personal use :) |
I need a brainstorm on how to collect several thousand quality RSS feeds | willwagner: Bloglines has a pretty decent feed search.http://www.bloglines.com/search?q=finance&t=f&ql=en&...plus a top 1000 feeds:http://beta.bloglines.com/topfeeds |
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