instruction stringlengths 4 105 | output stringlengths 8 56.7k |
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Importance of a Confirmation Email | ericwaller: I know that when I pay for something online, I want the merchant to know my email address -- I'm expecting a receipt, shipping confirmation, etc.You may consider using help text to indicate that they'll receive an order confirmation at the email address they provide, just in case they may not immediately re... |
Fireball in the sky | gojomo: Didn't see your fireball, but your description sounds a lot like the streak of the space shuttle in its reentry before landing that I saw a few times from Texas in the 1990s -- went from horizon to horizon rather quickly, like a glowing jet contrail in the night sky. |
What's the platform of the future? | blasdel: It's sure as fuck not going to be Java on the desktop. Sun was one of the only companies that could have made crossplatform desktop GUIs work, and they fucked themselves over repeatedly. The only crossplatform GUI that's succeeded has been the Web.For desktop apps the present and future is native: Cocoa on is ... |
Importance of a Confirmation Email | ScottWhigham: I got into a situation a few weeks ago like this. I downloaded trial version, liked it, and then wanted to buy. I registered for an account and was told that I could continue to purchase once my email was confirmed. Well, at the time we were on a shared hosting mail server and apparently it was about 5 ho... |
Fireball in the sky | robg: I'd bet heavily that it was a meteor of some kind. The different compositions will produce different colors and they can enter the atmosphere at many different angles. But there may not have been a report because you may have been the only one to see it! They happen so quickly and you have to be looking up at jus... |
Accept credit card payments in Europe | WarTheatre: I've setup a hosted payment solution (i.e. the customer is redirected to the provider) for a minor e-commerce so I have some experience on the matter.My recommendation would be to select a provider that:
1. is based in Germany. Having a provider that has the same business hours as you and to whom you can ac... |
Do social sites with karma need a decay function? | pg: Not if they're growing. |
Do social sites with karma need a decay function? | vaksel: well reddit haa a daily/weekly top 10 growers list on top of all time
http://www.reddit.com/stats/ |
Do you tell other people about HN? | beaudeal: As far as telling other people goes, I find that HN comes up most often when I tell my friends about the interesting stories I find here. The reaction from non-technical people is usually something to the effect of: "Where the hell do you find this stuff??" The reaction from technical people is usually someth... |
Do social sites with karma need a decay function? | lpgauth: A better option would be giving/removing non constant karma point (not always 1).So something like +- 1/(1 + karma/2500). |
Do you tell other people about HN? | WarTheatre: I'm also cautious about writing about HN on various communities I visit simply because I fear it would attract the wrong crowds, e.g. spammers, trolls and your average eternal septemberists.Right now HN is a great community for startups, Internet businesses, developers, designers, and entrepreneurs. The sig... |
Do you tell other people about HN? | jsmcgd: I tell people about it but most people aren't interested. I think they're happy to let me be their geek news filter, or perhaps they're just humoring me. Either way I think the aesthetics of the site go a long way to keep out wrong people. |
Do you tell other people about HN? | pg: Yes, I tell smart people. If their friends' friends submit stuff that's offtopic, the editors just kill it. Though in fact I think our strongest defense against idiots is to look boring to them.Incidentally, the broken windows story isn't offtopic. News.YC isn't just about hacking, because good hackers aren't on... |
Do social sites with karma need a decay function? | WarTheatre: This is only a problem if there are very strong mechanisms in place that encourage/force people to actively compete for karma so that they don't risk losing their status. For instance, if high karma people are given more exposure or special benefits (early access to content; free stuff, etc.), you can bet t... |
Do social sites with karma need a decay function? | PieSquared: I think a good idea would be to treat karma the same way that tennis rankings are counted: Only the past 52 weeks are counted. So if you gain 1000 karma in a year, then don't participate, your karma will be 0.That will encourage continual good behavior. |
Do social sites with karma need a decay function? | mechanical_fish: Given that I have fairly high karma, it's hard for me to claim that I'm unbiased...... but this is a bad idea. For one thing, decaying karma is devalued karma. Why should people work so hard to gain something that is crumbling into dust all around us?But the bigger problem is that absolute value of kar... |
Do you tell other people about HN? | Alex3917: None of my friends would like it. As unscientific as the Meyers-Briggs test is, I really do think this site appeals mostly to a small subset of XNTPs. And there aren't that many of those around. |
Do you tell other people about HN? | ig1: Have a look at the comments on the broken window theory post, a lot of them are about the applicability of the theory to online social sites, something which is very on-topic on HN. Just because an article isn't inherently startupish, it doesn't mean that it's not relevent to HN. |
Do social sites with karma need a decay function? | mseebach: It would seem that the Slashdot system of capping karma at "Excellent" is s means to this end, but Slashdot isn't a better place for it.I'd say, that if anything, down-voting should count proportionally to your karma. If you've got 5k karma, you could go on a flaming-spree for days, and still have more karma ... |
Do you tell other people about HN? | pavelludiq: Conversation with a friend:friend: "You don't look good, whats wrong"-I: "I haven't slept that well, i was up all night"friend: "WTF were you doing all night"I: "Lurking on HN of course, and reading the old Dilbert strips"Maybe i should try this "noprocrast" feature, but i don't know what to do about Dilber... |
Do you tell other people about HN? | zitterbewegung: First rule of hn. Don't tell others about hn. |
Do you tell other people about HN? | kiplinger: I heard about it from my friend at work. |
Do social sites with karma need a decay function? | iamelgringo: I don't think that the karma decay function would work or be helpful. Most people on the leader board, got there from hard work and dedication to make this site a really cool place.I know that my participation in this board was a deliberate exercise in community building. I worked my tail off in trying t... |
Do social sites with karma need a decay function? | Xichekolas: No.I have been here since fairly close to the beginning (for the public anyway), and have moved around in the rankings quite a bit. Since I quit my job in May, I have sunk from 64 to 100. (I don't spend several hours every morning reading HN with my coffee, since I'm rarely up in the mornings now. ;) I can ... |
Do social sites with karma need a decay function? | epoweripi: I'm just thinking out loud.Elders a.k.a old people in a normal society are respected because they have been in the 'system' longer, irrespective of their accomplishments.
That to me is one form of karma (Age)Also, ppl who have accomplished a lot irrespective of age are looked up as role models in the societ... |
Is relying on scribd's API a big mistake? | WarTheatre: If scribd went out of business tomorrow, how long would it take for you to get a solution working? How much would it cost?No, I don't think you're making a mistake, but this is a high risk decision. Personally I would at the very least look into using one of scribd's competitors as an emergency solution in ... |
Is relying on scribd's API a big mistake? | kogir: You already called out the problem: you can only be up as often as all of your critical partners are up.If you care about uptime and reliability, you can only partner with well established, reliable players for core functionality. For example, Google Maps is a pretty safe partner.Also, what would you do if they ... |
Is relying on scribd's API a big mistake? | mechanical_fish: I'd figure out how to backup the scribd documents so that your users' data won't get completely lost if and when scribd disappears. You want to make it possible to recover from the loss of scribd, even if it's inconvenient.Most likely the right answer is to launch now and work around scribd later. If y... |
Fireball in the sky | h34t: I saw something just like this from Orlando, Florida (I live in Alberta but was there for a trade show) on Tuesday, the same day as the police cam.The one I saw didn't make as huge a flash at the end, but it was still the most incredible thing I've ever seen in the sky. I was with a friend (who didn't see it) and... |
Do you tell other people about HN? | markessien: The first stage of a community falling apart is when it starts getting meta. When your prayer group start discussing about how right their prayer group is, and how wrong other groups are; when K5 started getting lots of articles about K5; when the IQ club starts talking about how IQ makes them different.Tha... |
Is relying on scribd's API a big mistake? | echair: The likelihood of scribd suddenly disappearing seems small, whereas the value of speed in developing new services is large. So seems like a good bet. |
On building a Social News site and its tools for moderation | pg: Rapid banning of trolls seems to be an effective troll guard. It also works well with spam.Trolling and spam are both self-perpetuating problems. Users are ruder on sites where everyone else is rude, and spammers are more likely to submit links to sites they get traffic from. So you can prevent both problems by ... |
Do you tell other people about HN? | run4yourlives: The broken window theory article wasn't off-topic, the discussion immediately evolved into how it related to online forums and was very interesting. |
Do social sites with karma need a decay function? | Shamiq: I don't participate for the karma points. It's more of a measure how much non-conformists agree with me. Which sounds kind of ironic, doesn't it? |
Do you tell other people about HN? | cookiecaper: Yes, I tell others about HN, but only those that I know will be valuable and interested users. |
Do social sites with karma need a decay function? | run4yourlives: To be honest, I think the up/down notion of karma is the problem.I'd prefer to see words being attached to comments instead of numbers. "Funny", "Insightful", "Accurate", and their opposites could be the method of rating, with "leader boards" showing the funniest, most insightful etc.The notion of me as ... |
On building a Social News site and its tools for moderation | grag: I interviewed a bunch of reddit users for my senior thesis. One thing I found was that the karma system really encouraged participation (not too surprising but worth considering if your building a social news site).Check out http://www.thesixtyone.com. It's a great example of how you can instill a social media si... |
Do you tell other people about HN? | IsaacSchlueter: My least favorite HN content, by far: Bitching about HN and its content.Srsly, folks, just don't vote it up if you don't like it. It really is that easy.This isn't "startup news" or "programmer news", it's "hacker news". It's news that is interesting to hackers. And it delivers quite well.As it happe... |
Do social sites with karma need a decay function? | grag: While you can probably improve a karma system with decay or a more complicated algorithm, there's something to be said for having a system simple that your users understand. I'd make a wild guess that karma wouldn't be as interesting to users if they can't figure out how their actions directly affect their score. |
Do social sites with karma need a decay function? | bayareaguy: The answer depends on what problem you think the karma-delay function is intended to solve and whether or not there is evidence that this problem is real.I think the only place a decay function makes sense is in providing historic views of the leaderboard. |
Do social sites with karma need a decay function? | axod: One thing I've thought about in the past is should an upvote/downvote result in a percentage gain/loss instead of absolute.The thing is, if you've only got 3 karma, and someone downvotes you, that's a big deal. But if you've got 3000 karma and someone downvotes you, it's not. Maybe a vote should result in a 1% ga... |
the most amazing python script you ever wrote ? | omarish: I wrote a websnapr equivalent one time. I needed thumbnails of every website on the internet and favicons wouldn't do.So my script:1. connected to a database and found a list of sites it needed images of2. checked the image table to make sure there was a recent (< 1 day) snapshot3. if there was not, it would s... |
Do you tell other people about HN? | vizard: I am bored of all these posts that talk about HN. I am not on HN to talk about HN itself dammit. |
On building a Social News site and its tools for moderation | dmix: Do we really need another social news site?1) The market is saturated with well funded companies doing the same thing2) Theres nothing significantly wrong with Digg/reddit3) You need a large audience for it to be useful4) The crucial early adopters that you would need have a thousand other social sites trying to ... |
Do you tell other people about HN? | paulgb: I'm more disappointed to see "10 Totally Stupid Online Business Ideas That Made Someone Rich" on the front page than broken windows or a meteor. Being on-topic doesn't make up for bad content. |
the most amazing python script you ever wrote ? | thorax: I've written a lot, but none I'd characterize as funny or amazing. I've enjoyed most writing the wrapper classes for embedding Python in Counter-Strike: Source, but there's nothing amazing there.If you want to cut your teeth on some fun little challenges, you might try codegolf:
http://codegolf.com/competition/... |
Do social sites with karma need a decay function? | walterk: I would just hide (not remove) karma entirely. Submissions, comments, and users. That removes the incentive to game for karma and mitigates against the bandwagon effect, while the karma system still determines placement of submissions and comments within their respective threads. And I'd argue that high pla... |
Do you tell other people about HN? | siong1987: My approach is to tell only startup founders about HN. You will be surprised that many founders do not know about HN at all. But, it becomes less and less now.And, my approach to meet smart people is to check out how many karma points those people have in HN. |
On building a Social News site and its tools for moderation | pierrefar: Funny you mention spam as I started researching automatic spam detection. What I have so far is this list of publicly available spam and malware lists:1. SpamCop.net's IP address checks:
http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/351.html
2. PhishTank: http://www.phishtank.com/api_documentation.php
3. MalwarePat... |
Web Frameworks for Perl | rgrieselhuber: I don't use Perl but one of my favorite sites (jisho.org) use Catalyst. |
Web Frameworks for Perl | epi0Bauqu: Recent post on this I bookrmarked: http://perlbuzz.com/2008/11/the-evolution-of-perl-frameworks...Personally, I also glue together CGI, DBI, etc., and I have no desire to use a framework. Why do you? Is something in particular cumbersome? |
Web Frameworks for Perl | tphyahoo: concur: catalyst gets the job done.I'm using a homebrew haskell framework now, happs with StringTemplate for the view. |
Web Frameworks for Perl | pfedor: It's probably not even considered a framework, but I had done a lot of web programming a while ago and I loved the Template Toolkit http://template-toolkit.org/ |
Web Frameworks for Perl | dustineichler: if you're looking to do any perl development, use:
strawberry perl and perl moose.http://strawberryperl.com/
http://search.cpan.org/~drolsky/Moose-0.61/lib/Moose.pmforget catalyst at least for a little while. perl moose makes oop perl a little bit easier, however it should go without saying; understand p... |
Web Frameworks for Perl | kingkongrevenge: Catalyst and CGI::Application (or Titanium) are pretty much where it's at with perl web development. CGI.pm is a relic at this point. There are better, smaller, faster core CGI modules if that's all you want. Likewise, consider using a more modern wrapper like SQL::Abstract rather than straight-up D... |
Web Frameworks for Perl | emacdona: I haven't seen Mason (http://www.masonhq.com/) mentioned yet. I was hoping someone else would mention it because I don't feel I can properly represent it. I only played around with it; nothing substantial. But I liked it (for what that's worth).You'll see some names here of sites that use it that you'll recog... |
the most amazing python script you ever wrote ? | icey: A few months ago I wrote a python script that built relation data from a database using only primary key data (all the PKs were GUIDs) to build a mapping of the actual relations from the database. This particular application had grown quite large and no relationships were ever really documented.Then once the rela... |
Which revision control system? | shutter: I use Mercurial, but have been exploring Git a little because of what you noted -- the community momentum seems to be headed that way. |
Which revision control system? | syntax-case: In a "collaborative" environment, if you are working among retards for a PHB, I recommend picking a revision control system that no one else knows how to use or install clients for (darcs may be a good idea) |
Which revision control system? | rmaccloy: Git isn't very good for large files, unfortunately. In my experience large is quite over >100MB, though.I'd love to convince everyone to switch to git, but I want to note that SVN's branching/merging capabilities are at par with p4's, since at least 1.4 using svnmerge and probably in 1.5 standalone. (My curre... |
Which revision control system? | zitterbewegung: I use darcs for personal use and it is very easy to use. |
Which revision control system? | etal: Out of the three leading free DSCMs -- Git, Mercurial, Bazaar -- none seem in danger of going extinct any time soon. Bazaar is the foundation for Launchpad and Ubuntu, almost irrevocably. Mercurial has less buzz than Git for open-source projects, but I suspect it's even more popular in the business world, and its... |
Which revision control system? | rms: Why does Git choke on large files? |
the most amazing python script you ever wrote ? | pshc: Here's a terrible brainfuck interpreter:
http://python.pastebin.com/f3d434dd2I wrote it as an exercise in functional style, and so it has no mutation (other than the tuple assignment in the main loop, which I couldn't devise a functional equivalent for). It is incredibly inefficient as a result. But it all fits i... |
Which revision control system? | zacharydanger: Branching/merging on Subversion has been absolutely trivial since the version 1.5 release. Prior to that it was a nightmare, but now it's ridiculously easy.Can we finally put this to rest now? |
Web Frameworks for Perl | tene: I've really enjoyed Catalyst when working with it in the past. I used it extensively at my previous job, and for a few personal projects.I really like the extensibility of Catalyst. It's a very Perlish framework. It's not opinionated. There are many ways to do things, and if something doesn't work how you wan... |
Which revision control system? | s3graham: Personally, I use Git and hg at home and for small work projects.But, for the main work projects (console games: lots of code, but also many large assets), none of the alternatives to p4 are reasonable. (Yes, I'm well aware Perforce has vast and sundry problems too).Might be worth doing some testing on hg, if... |
Why use semicolons to terminate statements in modern JavaScript or ActionScript? | illumen: they allow copy/paste with other C syntaxish languagesedit: Sorry, I forgot to include caps, and full stops for that first sentance. |
Why use semicolons to terminate statements in modern JavaScript or ActionScript? | shutter: Two areas that I can come up with:1. Minification -- If you want to minify your JS, you might run into problems if you don't insert all necessary semicolons.2. Convention -- If you wrote js code with no semicolons and then showed it to other JS programmers, you'll get a funny look, a slap in the face, or a fre... |
Which revision control system? | artificer: A valuable resource comparing major scm's that I point people to when they ask me is the FreeBSD project's wiki page:
http://wiki.freebsd.org/VersionControl
Hope it helps. Regarding specifically SVN versus GIT, be sure to look at the VCSWhy link at the bottom. |
On building a Social News site and its tools for moderation | h34t: I wish I could help with your questions, but I'm more on your side of the coin (about to build a Django site with some social functionality) and so I have some questions of my own for you, if you don't mind.. :)How have you found Django for building your site? How long did it take? Were there any specific tools /... |
Why use semicolons to terminate statements in modern JavaScript or ActionScript? | sh1mmer: Minification has already been mentioned, but I wanted to re-iterate as it's such an important point. You can reduce size over the wire by as much as 30-80% by minifying and obfuscating (something like YUI or Dojo compressors do this).Not having semi-colons risks a lot of code breakage. Doug Crockford's JSMin h... |
Which revision control system? | sh1mmer: I really love Bazaar.I love that it's distributed and I can version a local folder with a single command. I love the simple integration with Launchpad.net (which is annoyingly mediocre). I love that it's a single command which has all the inline help built in. I love the conflict management.However, people wit... |
Feedback on my startup and advice for the big pitch | lowkey: Our startup is preparing to pitch at StartupCampMontreal3 this Thursday and I am looking to the HN community for some feedback and advice. We are a bit of an odd duck since we are not a web app but I have taken some marketing ideas from the web2.0 world to use to our advantage.Our company mission is to bring th... |
the most amazing python script you ever wrote ? | habnabit: http://paste.pocoo.org/show/91848/ |
what to do with a colocation contract? | lowkey: Sounds like a startup opportunity. Ebay for sublets. Then again, everyone is going virtual these days so it might be a still born opportunity.As for you specific situation, I would eat the 3 months and be done with it. But perhaps someone else has a better idea. |
Why use semicolons to terminate statements in modern JavaScript or ActionScript? | bdfh42: Explicit statement termination is all about speed - ensuring that JavaScript interpretation is as rapid as possible. Terminating a statement implicitly requires additional processor cycles - and we still need to husband those cycles to maintain a responsive user experience. |
Feedback on my startup and advice for the big pitch | markessien: It's unlikely to work. People don't like their light texture to change - because it's what they are used to. LED light has a different texture from normal light, and this is a bit jarring.So, unless you can make something cheaper, the only way to gain traction in the light market is by massive marketing - a... |
Why use semicolons to terminate statements in modern JavaScript or ActionScript? | axod: Leaving out semicolons leads to errors. Ambiguity etc...return[1,2,3]What should that do? Should it return, or return [1,2,3]?
There are many other examples. Use semicolons and there is no debate over what should happen. Making them optional in javascript was a ridiculous idea. |
Which revision control system? | ryanbooker: Do not go from Perforce to Subversion. Whatever you decide. That is a massive step backwards. |
Web Frameworks for Perl | zby: I've used Catalyst in the past, now at work I am stuck with CGI::Application and it seems rather OK, but still a little step back. At least in Catalyst it is natural to have multiple classes (each for one controller) - while the app being developed here ended up as one huge application class.But really the more i... |
Web Frameworks for Perl | known: Slashcode uses http://www.slashcode.com/docs/INSTALL.html#requirements |
Web Frameworks for Perl | ohmy: All of our recent projects use Catalyst (commercial and personal).
The best thing is that it prevents us to repeat each and every simple functionality that we previously had to write with CGI or CGI::Simple.
We can totally concentrate on the actual work we want to do without spending much time on groundwork.From ... |
Which revision control system? | babo: I should recommend either mercurial or git, but the learning curve of git is steep. |
Feedback on my startup and advice for the big pitch | paraschopra: What is it? Am I the only one who cannot see a thing on the homepage? |
Feedback on my startup and advice for the big pitch | swombat: Big nono: I've been looking at your page for 5 minutes and I still can't figure out what it is that you make (other than that it's related to LEDs) - I'm not gonna watch a video just to figure that out. |
Web Frameworks for Perl | draegtun: Catalyst is certainly numero uno in the Perl web framework world. Here's a list from the Perl5 wiki... http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl5/index.cgi?web_frameworksDon't think u can go wrong with any of the established ones on that list. However two new kids on the block thats worth casting your eyes over ar... |
Why use semicolons to terminate statements in modern JavaScript or ActionScript? | timknauf: Thanks for the responses, everyone! Sounds like - regardless of what I might think of semicolons personally - the reality of the current crop of minifiers and JavaScript engines makes a case for their continued use.Now, how about ActionScript? This has a compilation step, so the Flash VM is not dealing with y... |
Which revision control system? | mseebach: Would it perhaps be practical to pull the binary files out of SCM and build a small tool that figures out denpendencies and downloads the relevant files from the build server?It sounds like that might ease your constraints. |
Which revision control system? | vegai: Darcs!I mean mercurial!No, git!(Aww, these computer science problems are so hard!) |
why not just use Eclipse? | dmaclay: I like Vim, so I use Netbeans with the jVi plugin when I need an IDE.
I would use Eclipse because of its more extensive language support, but there are no decent plugins that offer vi style navigation AND code-completion. |
Why use semicolons to terminate statements in modern JavaScript or ActionScript? | danw: I highly recommend you use JSlint to pick up on things such as forgotten semi-colons to improve the quality of your code. |
Feedback on my startup and advice for the big pitch | hikari17: I work for the fiber-optics division of a multinational electronic/optical connector firm. We're very interested in solid-state lighting as an area for near-term strategic investment. I'm currently monitoring several startups in this area and will add yours to the list. Good luck with your pitch at StartUp... |
why not just use Eclipse? | ErrantX: I generally avoid IDE's fulle stop - and I find eclipse to be a complete pain to work with :(I work in Python, PHP, C++, Perl and Html (if that last one counts ;)) so I find that a text editor (NP++ - win32 only sadly - is my current fav) and a LAMP/Py server setup work well.It costs more in setup time but I f... |
why not just use Eclipse? | gaius: ActiveState Komodo does it for me. Linux, Solaris, Windows and Mac. |
the most amazing python script you ever wrote ? | paraschopra: I wrote a genetic programming system in python. http://paraschopra.com/sourcecode/GP/GP.zip |
why not just use Eclipse? | jasonkester: Wow. It's amazing to find people who still write code in a text editor. It really says something about the sad state of IDEs for most languages.I understand that many people from the PHP, Ruby, Python, and to a certain extent, Java communities may have never seen a really good IDE such as VS.NET in actio... |
Feedback on my startup and advice for the big pitch | epi0Bauqu: Put a little more on the front page. Either a one sentence (with a link to more) or an actual picture example of what it is. |
why not just use Eclipse? | Hates_: IMHO nothing comes close to IntelliJ. Whether it be Java, Grails, or Rails. It's a pleasure to use. I did a stint of using Textmate (which is a brilliant texteditor), but just lacks the refactoring tools that IntelliJ provides. |
Web Frameworks for Perl | onyrac: From my (admitedly limited) web frameworks experience (django, grails and catayst), catalyst indeed shines by the extreme level of freedom in the choice it leaves up to you. If you're willing to invest the time necessary, it is indeed a great way to get separation of concerns without commiting to a specific way... |
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