instruction stringlengths 4 105 | output stringlengths 8 56.7k |
|---|---|
The GRE subject test | apgwoz: I would definitely take it, and make sure that you do very well giving your relatively low GPA. You'll also want to do very well on the normal GRE too, since most schools look at that first and fore-most. The subject test is almost never required except for in the very elite schools, but a good score definitely... |
Is my little tool doomed to obscurity? | noelchurchill: Add a yahoo link count for each domain name so you know how many links are already pointing to the domain name. |
A legal career helping start ups? | DenisM: Whatever you do, learn to respond quickly and when you can't proactively notify your clients and offer a referral to someone good but less busy than you are. Just this thing alone will put you head and shoulders above most other lawyers out there. |
Is my little tool doomed to obscurity? | sh1mmer: Maybe if everyone on HN that like it bookmarks it.I think you've highlight the core issue yourself though. You approached us and got some interest. Unless you engage with communities getting love back is unlikely.You should be actively looking for people with this problem and giving them the solution. The more... |
Is my little tool doomed to obscurity? | eterno: I think distribution is the key. You built a good product and ppl like it, that does not mean they will start using it. (Welcome to the real world, by the way).To make it very clear, there are only 4 things you can do to tackle distribution.1. SEO - Will not work in your case because it typically works best wer... |
Best way to implement natural language commands for todo's, reminder etc | graham: parsedatetime (http://code.google.com/p/parsedatetime/) is a fantastic Python library for parsing natural language date / time strings. |
Is my little tool doomed to obscurity? | arihelgason: How about making the search more user friendly by offering a simpler search option in addition to the regexp search?Many potential users may struggle to figure out regexps. |
Anecdotes about the current job market | jgrahamc: I'm hiring for a new start-up in central London and we are having a hard time finding very good people because many candidates are deciding to hang on to the jobs they have. Most seem afraid to leave for something unknown when the economy seems to be tanking. |
Anecdotes about the current job market | prakash: I am helping a couple of my friends in India get a job, mostly Bangalore, some Mumbai & Delhi. Most of the companies have a hiring freeze, quite a few are laying off people (but don't publicize it), only a handful are hiring, those are all startups. |
Anecdotes about the current job market | truebosko: Here in Waterloo, Ontario I still see a lot of hiring going on. RIM and other big names are still posting job listings. Small companies in areas like Montreal and Toronto are cutting, but others are hiring so it seems like a mixed bag. |
If I bootstrap, does my current company own the IP for my work ? | yeti: hey, i was in your situation (actually i had started a lot of work on my website before i started panicking about it)i actually made friends with the company lawyer and asked her informally about it first. i suggest you can try first. if the work contract. then it's not unreasonable to ask for a letter from the... |
Anecdotes about the current job market | plinkplonk: Here in Bangalore the big outsourcee companies (Infosys, Wipro) are cutting back/ going slow on recruitment. Companies like Yahoo are still hiring. It is hard (but not impossible) for folks just out of school to get a job. |
Is my little tool doomed to obscurity? | streety: As other people have said you should be able to boost your income with affiliate offers. Pool, enom and snapnames all have programs. Where domains are registered with network solutions you may want to default to snapnames. For all other domains try some A/B testing and go with whatever pays the most.It has ... |
Anecdotes about the current job market | byrneseyeview: I recruit for some mid-size software companies, and they're getting really great people without trying too hard right now. Trying to get in touch with some startups (I convinced the higher-ups at my company that it makes sense to accept a portion of the recruiting fee in equity rather than cash). |
Anecdotes about the current job market | time_management: Most companies that are not publicly laying people off or frozen are still "hiring", but they are extremely selective and conservative in their hiring practices. This is true of all major US markets. It's a decent time to be an established programmer, but it's probably utterly terrible for a 22-year-ol... |
Anecdotes about the current job market | kumpera: Hiring is getting harder here in Brazil. Too many openings and too few available professionals.Most companies, even the ones on consulting, have an increasing number of openings and it's only getting harder to find qualified people.Quite a few companies will take English speaking only professionals, just in ca... |
Anecdotes about the current job market | gaius: Not odd at all - hedge funds thrive on volatility. |
Anecdotes about the current job market | known: Start-up jobs in India
http://www.venturewoods.org/index.php/venturejobs/?cp=all |
Anecdotes about the current job market | darose: Here in NYC I'm seeing a tough market all around, but especially with large companies, banks, brokerages, etc. Most of the interviews I'm getting are with smaller companies and startups. |
Ask HN:switching careers from Supply Chain to SAP consulting? | jay888: Now is a bad time to switch careers into SAP consulting. Due to credit crisis, companies are postponing/canceling SAP related projects. So demand for SAP consultants (and consulting rates) are down. Most of consulting companies in North East have lot of ERP people on bench.As supply chain functional consultant,... |
Anecdotes about the current job market | coliveira: Add Google to that list. |
That "window focus" problem | yan: Simply Alt(Command)+Tabbing into a window should do the trick. Remember, in OS X, you can do Cmd+` to switch between windows of the application.If your focus is already on, let's say, Firefox, you can hit tab a few times for the focus to land inside the browser rendering area and then your shortcuts should work ju... |
That "window focus" problem | jamess: Click to focus is not (historically, at least) the only focus model nor necessarily even the best. It used to be the case that most environment used focus follows mouse. My personal preference for focus scheme is focus follows mouse, click to raise since raising the window under the mouse can get irritating.If ... |
How do I get to that next level of traffic? | icey: Well, if your site is technically solid and you aren't spending a ton of time writing the software any more, you should be spending your time talking about it every chance you get, everywhere you go.You should start by putting your website in your profile at the very least. |
Anecdotes about the current job market | pjharrin: What hedge funds are hiring? I would love an internship with one |
How do I get to that next level of traffic? | ConradHex: It sounds like the problem isn't "getting enough traffic", it's getting people to stay, or to come back. Are you focusing on that? |
How do I get to that next level of traffic? | jchor: I have a few theories and quick ideas on this..For starters, are you partnering with any other companies? I think the synergy of having working relationships with other companies are a great asset since they will actively promote you while you promote them and so on.Secondly, do you have any viral aspects / pro... |
How do I get to that next level of traffic? | rokhayakebe: Can you share the site URL? |
How do I get to that next level of traffic? | enomar: What about apps for the iPhone and Android? |
How do I get to that next level of traffic? | papa: In some ways, building the product is the easy part. Getting traction is the really dicey problem.Check out some of the SEO/SEM sites like seomoz. SEO is very important. Link-building is also important. Look at getting some reciprocal links or at focusing on a specific niche within your site and really trying to ... |
How do I get to that next level of traffic? | siong1987: The first thing to do is at least tell us your link here in HN, please. |
How do I get to that next level of traffic? | mahipal: Well, I think I know exactly the site you're talking about, but I won't blow your cover for you. I saw it on Reddit just a few days ago and there's a suspicious Facebook icon in the corner that wasn't there a little while ago... so if this is your site, shoot me an email (in my profile) because I found a few s... |
How do I get to that next level of traffic? | wwsculley: I think the question you need to ask yourself before - How can I increase the net traffic to my site? - is: Why do I want to increase traffic?Building out a customer base for the sake of increasing numbers leaves too many open questions. Building one for a specific purpose, however, (e.g. increase ad revenue... |
Anecdotes about the current job market | kaens: I am currently working for what could be considered a startup based in the UK (I am in the US). It's a fairly interesting problem, but not normal "startupish" stuff.I have no formal education, no credentials (other than code).I landed this job by doing what I had been doing for a while: going to the bottom-of-th... |
How do I get to that next level of traffic? | TobiasCassell: I joined and roamed around a bit, its really beautiful. I very much admire the minimalist style. But I think it is possible the very thing that makes the site such a joy is what makes it hard to gain traction, and that is the lack of content/information outside of the actual music. Users need to be getti... |
How do I get to that next level of traffic? | netcan: This is a post about tracking the increase of active blog readers. I think it can be taken as a broad parallel to active users.http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/11/blog-metrics-six-reco...By measuring well you may find some insight that'll help.The jist of the examples is that readers (apply to users) are acq... |
How do I get to that next level of traffic? | petercooper: our growth rate of active users isn't tremendously highYou have two options. Work on more traffic or, and this is FAR easier, work on your conversion rate. Get more of those fewer visitors to sign up and you get the same result. |
Should you hide members-only features for non-members? | ruddzw: 1. My view would be that I wouldn't mind being directed to a sign-in/up page upon clicking, as long as it was clear why I'd need to be signed in to do so. If I'm on yahoo.com, and I click on mail, it makes sense to ask me to sign in. But I certainly want to know that once I'm signed in, I'll be able to have m... |
How do I get to that next level of traffic? | mattmaroon: What does your Facebook app do? Does it have a strong viral component? Those almost never are able to direct much traffic back to your site, but they can often do what your site does, possibly better, and spread faster. |
Should you hide members-only features for non-members? | SingAlong: It depends on the kind of service your webapp is offering.If it's possible to use your app to create/enter data and then save it later, let your users do it. If the user is logged in, save it if not ask them to sign in and save it or signup. This would give your first-time visitors a demo of your app too.Sig... |
Options to Add Classifieds to Site? | Shooter: Several companies have come out with what you describe (and variations thereof), but I don't know of any companies that have been able to achieve enough success that they were able to maintain a business doing it for very long.As with almost everything else, there are a few companies that own US patents that c... |
How do I get to that next level of traffic? | grag: You could work on integrating with the twitter api. Look how much linkage blip.fm is getting on twitter: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=blip.fm |
Should you hide members-only features for non-members? | yeti: Hey, we faced the same for our site.. imho:1. Show the features, so people have some anticipation of what they get if they register / upgrade. Suggest you mark them differently graphically so people get an idea that this is "pro" or "vip" only.2. Haha..we agonized over this for a full 5 mins! We settled for "Si... |
Facebook Connect, Own User Sytem, or Hybrid User System | yeti: If your website is better suited with real usernames (eg - not a entertainment virtual world or game etc) then suggest go solely with Facebook Connect.It will simplify development for you and make it clean for your new and existing users.If Facebook changes the policy, you can always adapt at that time (as will l... |
Translating your website? | pwim: Right now this question is far too broad. Are you looking for help from a technical perspective (i.e., a localization framework) or someone for a translator? If you need technical help, is it a static or dynamic website? If it is dynamic, what framework/language do you use? |
Translating your website? | theantidote: Because this is a service most places online will give you quotes for free. Just run a standard google search (http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&...) and get quotes from the top couple results. I haven't personally used any of these services.If you're lucky find a friend/family member wh... |
Translating your website? | vaksel: you can take a page out of Facebook's book and let the users do it for you. |
What was the first blog/site/newspaper that covered your app/site? | patio11: I sell my product primarily to parents and teachers (mostly teachers).A 4th grade teacher with a web page, we'll call her Mrs. Smith, picked up my first linkbait and included it in the paper and virtual version of a list of resources she sent home with parents.Mrs. Smith is now in the good company of several s... |
What was the first blog/site/newspaper that covered your app/site? | thomasswift: Mashable |
What was the first blog/site/newspaper that covered your app/site? | aaroneous: techcrunch |
What was the first blog/site/newspaper that covered your app/site? | Raphael: HN(Sorry. Someone was bound to write it.) |
How do I get to that next level of traffic? | ujj: you could try using Google friend connect launched recently. Definitely adds viral functionality as people can invite their friends and you can push their activities on your site to open social containers to which they belong. For example id love if you could push my reviews on your site as my updates on Orkut (so... |
What was the first blog/site/newspaper that covered your app/site? | hbien: Tuaw - the only one so far =/http://www.tuaw.com/2008/10/28/actiongear-simple-yet-powerfu... |
Customer Service Ticketing Software | makecheck: I've used Trac, which is pretty customizable and does a nice job (though it is a bit more project-oriented).I have also heard many good things about Bugzilla. |
Customer Service Ticketing Software | brk: Let me know what you find. Every time I've tried to look into this I hit dead ends as well. I ended up writing a "hack" about 6 years ago that has turned into a fairly robust system that I've used at 3 different companies now. I would share it, but it's 2000 lines of perl with about 6 comments :)RT always seeme... |
Customer Service Ticketing Software | bdfh42: How about FogBugz from Fog Creek software (Joel Spolsky)at http://fogcreek.com/FogBugz/ You can set this up to run on your servers or use the "cloud" version. The bug tracking covers the bases nicely and you can also use it to manage your projects.There is even a free online trial. |
Customer Service Ticketing Software | Hates_: http://www.userscape.com - Not open source, but might be worth a look. |
Translating your website? | grosales: I might be able to help you out (I wouldn't be doing the translating, but I know a couple of hispanic college students who are just starting their winter break and might be interested). Send me an email at grosales at gmu dot edu |
Customer Service Ticketing Software | stumpy124: I'd check out HelpSpot: http://www.userscape.com/products/helpspot/ |
What was the first blog/site/newspaper that covered your app/site? | thorax: Digg (front page for bug.gd ) |
What was the first blog/site/newspaper that covered your app/site? | matthewer: BBC |
How often should you redesign your site? | DanielBMarkham: I redesign my blog once a year.I need to redesign my commercial sites, but I'm not sure what the goals of the redesign would be. Seems like if you have something that works (like Drudge) what's the point in redesigning? I guess having new goals -- changing market demographic, desire to keep it fresh, im... |
How often should you redesign your site? | unalone: I think that every time you have an idea for a redesign that's comprehensively better than your old layout, you should take it. Don't redesign for the heck of it. Wait until you've got a good idea. |
How often should you redesign your site? | kirubakaran: "One year" is a long time in internet years. Users won't notice the difference between yearly redesigns and bi-yearly redesigns. Good idea might be to change little at a time, all the time, with some A/B testing thrown in. |
How often should you redesign your site? | patio11: Test constantly. Button placement, calls to action, colors of buttons, etc -- 5% increases to conversion compounded 20 times means big bucks.As for total throw-it-out-and-start-over redesigns: I'd say "seldomly". I did one once, because I had the golden opportunity for it -- both a major tech change that was... |
How often should you redesign your site? | mpotter: Only redesign when you have a measurable goal or set of goals in mind. It helps if they're quantifiable, but they don't necessarily have to be.There are many dangers in redesigning prior to establishing a goal (particularly with commercial sites) -- principal of which is never knowing when and if you've succee... |
How often should you redesign your site? | jwilliams: Depends - is the site mainly content or functional/transactional?If it's mostly content then I'd say constant small revisions with the occasional overhaul. Tweak to whatever delivers the content best.It's different for a functional site. Even if a tweak is an usability improvement, existing users will go "eh... |
what's the web app for entrepreneurs which compares products from the competition? | mtw: found it, it's http://www.competitious.com |
Review My WebApp | acro: Maybe you could write a short description of the app to encourage people to comment? |
Review My WebApp | Adrenalist: This is a really interesting/fascinating webapp. A few suggestions.
1. Improve the design / User Interface. It's a bit clunky and diminishes the experience.
2. Make the search field auto-complete. Use jQuery and you could have it done in a few minutes. I am not a chemist, so I don't know the exact spellin... |
Review My WebApp | mdolon: I'm not sure if other tools like this exist but man I could've used something like this back in my Organic Chem classes. I like it, I tried to search for a few things and was able to find most of it (couldn't find nitroglycerin). Best of luck! |
Review My WebApp | sspencer: I really like the idea of being able to search for a molecule just by drawing it! It's a fantastic and intuitive idea, if it works...Which it doesn't, at least for me. When I click the draw link, all I see is an empty white popup box with Preview and Submit buttons that I can't interact with.Here's my setup... |
Gift ideas for hacker types? | yan: Books? My gf usually picks something from my Amazon wishlist when she has no other ideas.. |
How often should you redesign your site? | mikeryan: I'd say 5-7 years would be time to start looking at an entire overhaul.Here's the thing. Your site should be in constant state of flux with new features added and subtracted, moved etc. After a while you'll just end up with a bit of code "crud". Its almost worth it just to do a site wide front end rewrite on... |
Review My WebApp | okeumeni: I have to admit, as a hardcore hacker I'm clueless here. I wanted to type "water", "beer" then out of frustration I end up typing "wtf" lol.Seriously you should find away to attract the attention of regular guys like me, the potential here is to make sense of chemistry to people by being a bit more talkative... |
Shall we hasten the demise of IE6 by charging more? | silentbicycle: Just a suggestion: Consider instead framing it as giving a discount to people who use a newer web browser, since "they didn't require the extra work supporting older, buggy web browsers does" (or similar phrasing). It makes the same point, but may be less likely to make potential customers resentful.Eit... |
Shall we hasten the demise of IE6 by charging more? | stuartcw: Make sure one of the ads is for Firefox... :-) |
Shall we hasten the demise of IE6 by charging more? | geuis: I wonder if IE6 users are more prone to click on ads anyway. Overall, this is an interesting idea. If you implement it, follow up in a couple months with what the effects are. My company has thousands of pageviews a day, with about 25% being IE6. I would love to push this idea internally because A) it makes the ... |
Gift ideas for hacker types? | hs: "How to get rich" from Felix Dennisone of his article is in the ycombinator library (good sign as hacker types like this book)http://ycombinator.com/lib.html -> If You Want to be Rich, First Stop Being So Frightened.
Fear of failing in the eyes of the world is the single biggest impediment.http://www.timesonline.co... |
Gift ideas for hacker types? | sidsavara: I own "How to get rich" from Felix Dennis (suggested by someone else). I was a little disappointed in it.Instead, if you DO want to buy them a book, I recommend Tim Ferris - The Four Hour Work Week or Getting Things Done by David Allen.Both those books are enjoyable for their content and suggestions, and als... |
Gift ideas for hacker types? | IsaacSchlueter: Lots of good stuff here:http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/1AC761X0H14R9?tag=foohack-...:) |
Gift ideas for hacker types? | Shamiq: Can you give us an idea in terms of budget?Though not necessarily targeted at the HN crowd, http://www.uncrate.com has some neat stuff. |
Shall we hasten the demise of IE6 by charging more? | twoism: At my company we haven't found a way to charge more, especially with clients that have internal apps that will only work with IE6. What we have been doing is itemizing any hourly work spent on IE6 optimization (hacks). So, at least for clients with multiple projects in the works, it make them think twice about ... |
Review My WebApp | tel: Hire a designer and a copywriter because the way it is now tells me absolutely nothing. My first impression was that you could purchase these chemicals from the interface.Play up the social aspects of it, too. As of now, I don't see what differentiates your site from PubChem (besides speed).Hooking into a spectros... |
Gift ideas for hacker types? | vaksel: iPhone or some porn |
Shall we hasten the demise of IE6 by charging more? | SwellJoe: I've recently intentionally removed some of the hacks for making IE6 look sane in our apps. PNG transparency is the most obvious...so in IE6, our products have grey boxes around all the images. It still all works--nothing is impossible to do in IE6. It just looks stupid. This, of course, is the easiest th... |
Gift ideas for hacker types? | mdolon: Newzbin subscription (or renewal) |
what's the web app for entrepreneurs which compares products from the competition? | TheBosch: I use the companies profiles on http://www.crunchbase.com and look in the left hand side under competitors. |
Shall we hasten the demise of IE6 by charging more? | lionhearted: This made me smile. I'm sure everyone who has built even a simple page has had the urge to break something after seeing their perfectly designed page in Firefox explode in IE6.That said, you'll want to test on a small segment of your IE6 users before full implementation if possible. IE6 users are actually ... |
Review My WebApp | ashleyw: Try to remove your testing pages/comments:
http://www.chemsink.com/reaction_type/19/Not sure how close you are to having real visitors, but test comments are never welcoming! |
Gift ideas for hacker types? | bsaunder: Sometimes thinkgeek.com has interesting stuff. |
Review My WebApp | quantumhobbit: Very cool idea. I would suggest linking to chemical suppliers. I don't know if Sigma-Aldrich and the like have online stores, but that would be a very easy way to monetize this idea. |
Review My WebApp | rwebb: no clue what it is or what it does |
Do you think primarily in English? | comatose_kid: I think in 6502 op-codes. That's probably why many people think I'm 'emotionally distant'. |
Do you think primarily in English? | breily: I'd noticed this sometimes too, but I think it's something that you can change if you want to. When I was learning german, after a couple years of high school classes I went to a month long full immersion program. When I finished that, I was thinking entirely in german. This stopped over time as I went back to ... |
Do you think primarily in English? | dkokelley: I too think is English. It's the only language I'm fluent in so that much is natural. One interesting thing I've noticed is that when I'm conceptualizing something, I will have an idea in my head, but out of some bizarre habit I will think the words through.My point is that I already know what I'm going to s... |
Do you think primarily in English? | vaksel: Thats not being unilingual, that's just not being fluent. The whole definition of fluent, is that you can speak both languages w/o translating it in your head.As far as the whole needing to describe empathy, thats just a lack of vocabulary...you don't know the word for empathy, so you try to describe it with ot... |
Do you think primarily in English? | kapitti: 010011100110111101110000011001010010110000100000
010010010010000001110100011010000110100101101110
011010110010000001101001011011100010000001100010
0110100101101110011000010111001001111001 |
Do you think primarily in English? | markbao: Born in China, with my native language being Mandarin. Moved to USA at 4 years old. I think in English, though–I rarely use Mandarin day-to-day. |
Do you think primarily in English? | paraschopra: Whenever there is a hard problem, I try to visualize it and form a mental movie out of it. For example, if it is some sort of algorithm or optimization problem, I like to ride through the function/algorithm landscape. Visualization really helps in clearing thought.But in everyday thought process, I do thin... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.