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How do you keep meetings short? | waxman: Have standing meetings. It makes everyone pick up the pace, and it's almost impossible to doze off or doodle, and yet if you need to write something down you still can |
How do you keep meetings short? | slantyyz: If it's not a meeting you called, your options are a little more limited, but if it's one of your meetings, here are some tips:1 - Have a set time limit, don't be afraid to even carry an egg timer2 - Set an agenda, and make sure everyone has it in advance. Agenda is vague, but I'm talking about a list of items (somewhat specific talking points) for which each item can have a realistic time limit3 - Carry a big stick. This is your meeting, don't be afraid to swing your stick, even if your superiors are in the meeting. This is where most meetings fail, because the organizer is too scared to take control.4 - "Take this offline" is a powerful weapon as well. Once you even remotely sense that a tangential/offtopic discussion is coming up, tell the participants to take it offline, note it for follow up for yourself so that you can ensure a proper resolution.5 - Think about using a meeting cost timer. Yes, this is gutsy, but if people see a dollar amount (just use a blended hourly rate x the number of people in the meeting) tallying up on a screen somewhere, they start to respect the cost of the meeting and can be motivated to NOT bore people with low priority discussion. |
Best incorporation type for a consulting company? | byoung2: If you are never going to take outside investment, an LLC would be simpler to set up and maintain. You would have a separate legal entity, limited personal liability for the members, and pass-through taxation. With an S or C corp, there are annual reporting requirements, and you need to elect a board and hold annual meetings. |
Review my startup - Snapza.com | makeee: Clickable link: http://snapza.com?invite=6142 |
Review my startup - Snapza.com | wesley: So, what differentiates this (at this point in time) from dailybooth? (Apart from having fewer features) |
What's a PC (for Linux) laptop that doesn't suck right now? | sigil: Try a used T40, T41 or T42 -- maybe a bit on the bulky side for you, but they have really solid hardware support under Linux / BSD (eg suspend resume usually works with no fiddling, wireless works, etc). These were the last decent models in the original IBM Thinkpad line. For some reason the T43, the final T-series model which predates Lenovo, is much flakier than its predecessors. |
How should I get started with Scala? | DanielStraight: For what's it's worth, I've never made it more than 20% of the way through a Scala tutorial before it broke down on account of incompatibility. Eventually, I gave up. I would definitely take the warnings about broken tutorials to heart. |
How should I get started with Scala? | plinkplonk: In practice, it is very hard, if not impossible, to make any sustained progress in Scala (and Clojure) with zero background in Java. Both are "power tools" for people comfortable with the Java ecosystem. Both change fast neither is in a state where you can have zero knowledge of java(and the associated bits of the java ecosystem like classloaders, classpaths and so on) and still program anything except toy examples comfortably.If you don't have a (minimal) java background you should probably acquire that first (unless you have a buddy/mentor who can ease you over any java/jvm roadbumps as they appear). |
Is Facebook Graph API ready for production use? | eugenejen: Currently Facebook broke all APIs, either Graph API, Old RESTful APIs and FQL.I don't know the frontend part. My company uses Facebook's javascript library and we are switching to the new Javascript SDK.One of the big bugs in Facebook backend is here http://bugs.developers.facebook.com/show_bug.cgi?id=9758 |
Will this site make $500 per month? | inerte: You're far from your stated goals but I like what you have there. You need more templates tough.And explicitly say somewhere how do I order custom designs. If I didn't like the 8 or so that you have there what options do I have?Otherwise what you have there is an e-commerce site sellings a few pre-defined image sets. It's like you said the minimum viable product, which is cool.And yes, you can make more than US$ 500 per month, if you execute properly :) |
Will Greece go bankrupt? | d2viant: If you have a great idea and think you can build a business around it, do it. Don't let macroeconomic issues that are out of your control influence your decision to go for it. |
Will this site make $500 per month? | Slumberthud: I would use something like this, but, as inerte says, you need a heck of a lot more selection. Maybe you could team up with designers and resell their work, giving them a cut? |
Will this site make $500 per month? | _pius: Very smart, nice idea. |
What merchant account and payment processor do you recommend? | ramit: I got my own merchant account because I needed to do some more sophisticated monetization work than Clickbank, Paypal, or Amazon allowed.Now I use Authorize.net + Powerpay.biz + 1shoppingcart. Works pretty well together. |
Will Greece go bankrupt? | hga: "If something can't go on forever, it won't" (some famous economist I'm too lazy to look up).Of course that says nothing about the timing....The fiscal policies of Greece are unsustainable. Ditto for some of the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain). A bailout without an austerity program will only delay the end ... that the latter looks somewhere between unsustainable to a non-starter.A bailout would be very bad for the Eurozone, since it will increase the moral hazard for the rest of the PIIGS (well, maybe not Ireland). A failure to bailout Greece (now or later) will likely put the rest of the PIIGS in dire straits as their sovereign debt is put into question.Greece can't make its creditors take an implicit haircut by devaluation as long as it uses the Euro. In the long run it's hard to see it both keep the Euro and not give the creditors an explicit haircut, i.e. they won't get all their money back ... which will make the continued borrowing they need harder to impossible.I don't see any prospect for a soft landing.However as d2viant implies, there's a good change that any of the above problems can be managed. The world is a rather open place ... things you have to worry about more than an inflation (which will only happen, at least any time soon, if Greece goes of the Euro, and then only for Greece) are problems like currency export controls.E.g. if you're in Greece, you might find it impossible to pay e.g. Amazon for AWS services, they might impose controls on your ability to remove money from the country. On the other hand, if you keep enough of a presence outside of Greece including payments going into your company and then out to AWS you might be able to pull it off.It's all very iffy, we just don't know how the various governments in question will handle these problems. Be flexible, try to keep reserves for problem, avoid single points of failure WRT to individual countries. Also don't obsess on inflation, there's enough deleveraging going on or the potential of that continued deflation is very possible. |
How do you keep meetings short? | reduxredacted: It's a tricky problem as a participant and it depends on the individual who's dragging the topic on.I find this problem to be more the fault of the facilitator than the participant. There's always an opportunity to say "I understand your concerns, lets take this offline so we can continue with our discussion."As a participant, depending on who is hosting, you may step all over sensitive toes if you try to correct the individual in question.When I host I have a few rules. I always start on time and avoid repeating myself for people who arrive late. I define the purpose of the meeting up-front. I never schedule more than 30 minutes. I stop people who bloviate or go off topic by suggesting a possible follow-up (often unnecessary).And the most useful opening line is "Though I booked 30 minutes, I want to value everyone's time, so I think we can [insert purpose for meeting here] and have plenty of time to spare." Any variation of that seems to get people to pay attention and contribute because there's an expectation that we'll get somewhere, and be done quickly.As a participant: If I know the meeting organizer well enough, it's a conference call and the organizer is not sharing their desktop, a simple IM to them host saying "Land the plane." or "Find a way to shut him/her down.", perhaps with more carefully chosen words depending my relationship with the meeting host helps.If you feel comfortable enough with the host, content and meeting arrangement you may find that you take over for the host as a participant. Be careful, though, some peoples' egos bruise easily. |
Will this site make $500 per month? | vijayr: clickable
http://33banners.com |
Would you take a job that might suck over an already bad one ? | dnsworks: All jobs will suck. The key is to find a way to be happy that doesn't involve basing the entirety of your personal identity on your day job. Or just take lots of drugs. |
Will this site make $500 per month? | augustflanagan: > 1) As already stated, increasing your range to appeal to a broad cross-section of customers and repeat customers. 2) A good marketing strategy. At this stage I'd say (1) should be your focus but you might want to start thinking about (2) quite soon.Any one have any good suggestions on number (2)??? I have a few basic ideas, but haven't hit upon anything solid yet. |
Would you take a job that might suck over an already bad one ? | Tichy: What don't you like about the people at the new job? Maybe they are not as bad as you think? |
Mongodb vs Redis for Django? | knuckle_cake: While I don't have enough Django experience to give suggestions on that front, you can use BigTable if you want to move to Google App Engine, though the drawbacks may outweigh the benefits when dealing with an established app.That said, I did recently make this choice for a Ruby/Sinatra app I'm working on, and ended up going with MongoDB due to conveniences like MongoMapper more than anything else (I wanted to enforce a partial schema without having to resort to silliness like customField1, customField2, etc.) I'm pleased with this choice so far, though plan to look at Redis again in the future when I need something lighter in weight for storage. |
Will this site make $500 per month? | newobj: So, have you sold any yet? |
How should I get started with Scala? | rit: Actually, my coworkers who are Java programmers complained of the opposite - they felt the Scala books didn't link in Java enough and assumed experience in things like Ruby and the like.I found Venkat's book to be a good solid, terse start which gives you the bulk of what you need to start poking around.After that, the O'Reilly book is solid for really building meat. It's also available for free online if you want to really look at how usable it is for you:http://programming-scala.labs.oreilly.com/ |
what tools do you use to find available/cheap domains? | sidmitra: http://domai.nrhttp://www.bustaname.com/http://www.nxdom.com/ |
Mongodb vs Redis for Django? | mark_l_watson: From a Ruby perspective, but this may still be useful: Redis is very nice for data that fits in memory (disk persistence is for recovery, not for realtime access) and support for counters, sets, etc. is cool.That said, I really like MongoDB for many reasons: interactive shell, great Ruby support (and Scala and Clojure, etc.), very easy to set up and use, and some replication support (not as good as Cassandra, but I will never need that kind of scalability).I think that the Python support for MongoDB is very good. |
Will this site make $500 per month? | apsurd: I'm curious if you did any google search term research? How many people are searching for things like "ad banner templates" etc. Once you find those you can more directly provide a solution for what people want.For example if there are lot of "ad banner builder" , "free banner themes", "how to run ads" etc, it more directly hints at what your customers needs are.You could also try throwing a couple of your templates on http://graphicriver.net and see if anyone is interested.My main advice is to figure out what type of people want your service. On one hand it seems like you are targeting people that don't know or don't want to deal with banner ads but they feel like they should. I think thats problematic because the people that are prepared to get started with a banner ad campaign arguably know the basics of photoshop. Or if they don't they are going to need something a little more robust than what you currently offer. Then there's the case where a person is 100% happy with a basic banner theme, I'd argue such a person would also need a little more help in actually gaining a return on his campaign. In other words the people interested in an easy, simple, quick and dirty banner design, are not necessarily going to be the people thinking scientifically enough to gain any long term benefits from banner advertising.This is all just theory though. Hope this helps. |
Mongodb vs Redis for Django? | hcm: I'd say it really depends on what you're storing and how you're using it.Redis is great for situations where you need a very large volume of reads and writes, and have a fairly simple data model. See http://simonwillison.net/static/2010/redis-tutorial/ for more information and some use cases.MongoDB allows for data to be structured and queried in more complex ways, and touts itself as more of an alternative to an RDBMS than Redis does. If you're looking to use it with Django, check out MongoEngine at http://github.com/hmarr/mongoengine |
Will Greece go bankrupt? | ozres1: Greece will only be bankrupt if they don't get bailed out again either by the EU, the IMF or both.The measures demanded by the IMF & EU (which is necessary for political will & arguably 'right') will cause the economy of Greece to contract.There has been much squabbling within the EU about how to structure a loan and the whole thing has been a mess given differences within the EU.The stability of the Euro is certainly much on the minds of the Germans given their experiences with the mark and the loan can be challenged in the German supreme court if it undermines the Euro.I frankly wouldn't worry about which way the Euro will go. Especially when compared to the problems other wealthy nations will face. |
cheap way to control voltage wirelessly | mbenjaminsmith: Not the cheapest but probably the simplest way would be to use an inexpensive router. The dd-wrt capable variety give you linux and a serial port for under 100$. There are tons of ways you could glue a potentiometer to a serial port. |
cheap way to control voltage wirelessly | CyberFonic: Easy, get a PIC, Atmel, Aduino, etc microcontroller. Interface it to a WiFi USB key and write a bit of code. A lazy weekend's work for a Real Hacker. |
Design patterns resources for functional languages? (inc JavaScript) | twilightsentry: You might want to look at Garnet and Amulet, which used a number of neat techniques with prototype-style objects to build user interfaces. There's a good summary of their work at: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~amulet/papers/amuletappframe.pdf
On the FP side of things, I'd _very_ highly recommend "The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs," by Abelson and Sussman. |
Added value gateways for s3-like cloud storage providers? | eliot_sykes: Clickable link
http://www.smestorage.com/ |
How to stop a hacker from deleting your off-site backups? | wwortiz: Maybe look here: http://www.tarsnap.com/security.html it looks like you can create keys to only write and maybe keep decrypting keys offsite for just this situation. |
How to stop a hacker from deleting your off-site backups? | eru: Perhaps you can go from a push-system to a pull-system for the backups? |
cheap way to control voltage wirelessly | pcarmichael: It might help to be more specific - what kind of voltage are you looking to control? AC, DC, or both? High voltages or low voltages? High current or low current? Is the load reactive or resistive? |
How did Academia.edu get their .edu domain? | vash3g: Domain record activated: 10-May-1999from: http://whois.domaintools.com/academia.edu |
How did Academia.edu get their .edu domain? | npk: They answered this question many years ago.http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23938 |
Do you patent your software projects? | georgecmu: What class, what school, which country?Generally, it's very rare for a 'program' to be patented. What usually gets patented is algorithms and frameworks. |
Do you patent your software projects? | ilkhd2: And many, many coders are so averse to this idea, so they do not do this obnoxious stuff. |
Frameworks for real-time collaboration in a web application? | ssriram: I used APE and a heavily modified tiddlywiki to put together BlipWiki at http://www.baggr.com and used the python/javascript diff-match-patch libraries from http://code.google.com/p/google-diff-match-patch/ to keep the data in sync |
How to stop a hacker from deleting your off-site backups? | oomkiller: Setup pull backups. Rsync.net does this for me. How it works is they ssh into your box using an SSH key and pull down the backups. That way the password is never stored on the box that is being backed up. |
Which is highest up-voted submission on Hacker News? | adelevie: 700+ votes is ridiculous.But compare those 700 votes on a single post to all the votes for posts calling Steve Jobs a crazy loon for the iPhone SDK TOS fiasco. |
Which is highest up-voted submission on Hacker News? | conanite: Currently, A New Approach To China, 1125 points. See http://top.searchyc.com/submissions_by_points |
Need some tax advice... | brianmckenzie: First of all, fire your CPA. Sounds like that will help you pay off the debt faster. If you can't find a better/cheaper CPA in NYC, Turbotax online has a special version for contractors, which is what I use.Next year, make estimated quarterly payments to the IRS, Just take 30-40% of what you make each quarter and send it to them, their website explains how to do it. Then at the end of the year you will either get a refund, or the amount you owe will be small enough that you can easily pay.EDIT: I use Turbotax online, not Quickbooks online. |
When do you use Chrome's Javascript console? | chintan: I find Firebug generally more useful for JS debugging.Try the Chrome PageSpeed plugin - I like the "sluggishness" chart. Its Very cool! |
Need some tax advice... | starkfist: Just do it the New York way and tell him he's fired.Then again, did you just not pay in and then hire an accountant in hopes of making reality go away? There's not that much an accountant can do if the real problem is you're not paying your bills... |
Maintaining useful business documentation | patio11: At my day job, we put everything permanent in a wiki and everything temporary in Trac (our issue tracking software). It turns out that engineers spent most of their time in trac rather than the Wiki, so that gradually is becoming the authoritative option.For my business, I have three things: I have a succession of paper notebooks for any idea that can get garbage collected in less than a week. This is good for, e.g., A/B tests. (Why am I doing an A/B test with the Dropbox style invites? Flips open notebook to last page. Oh, that's why.)You're going to laugh at me for this, but for long-term, searchable business documentation... I use my blog. What the effity was I thinking when I launched this feature two years ago? Search for my blog post about it. (Issues too minor for the blog have commit notes in subversion.)If I were more worried about exposing my ideas to the world, I'd use an internal wiki-style software instead of the blog.The third thing, which is perhaps less useful as an answer but still true, is that I have very, very good memory for the written word. (This is one reason I write so darn much. Anything I write and almost everything I read, I get to keep.) |
When do you use Chrome's Javascript console? | apsurd: Javascript, like html, is all client side so its easy enough to code in with a simple text editor and refresh. Chrome is now my default browser so I use the js console for all my debugging. I just code changes, hit refresh and watch the console. No errors generally mean the app works as intended. Syntax errors bring up a red x and the line number. The console is also very useful for debugging and verifying asynchronous requests. Logging to the console is also very helpful using console.log();. Lastly the debugger helps you track down 404 requests like old paths to images and does general asset speed optimization.A common example would be attaching handlers to some links via jquery. I usually start with asserting that a jquery click handle is executing. I would console.log('works'); and refresh the page. If nothing logs, then I look if any errors were reporting, has the jquery file loaded (the console tells you all this).Second thing I use a lot if ajax so I have to know if I'm getting a response back, and what the response is. A lot of times the response can cause a 500 error and you won't see any updates from the browser side. Using the console you can see whether or not the request was made, check headers, and response output. An error response is conveniently reported with bold red dot to indicate a problem. |
Please stress-test the arc server for my latest prototype | waleedka: I like the simple UI. Here are a few ideas that came to mind while trying it:- Ask me to choose a few categories before I start so you can do better news targeting and get me more engaged right from the beginning.- Going through stories need to be faster. Either pre-load the next few stories or show me a list of headlines on the side so I can skim through and click the ones that catch my attention.- I need a back button. A tiny link would suffice as I won't be using it often, but when I need it it's very useful. |
Please stress-test the arc server for my latest prototype | akkartik: I'm trying to build an online reader that:a) Lets you read interesting content from all your usual sites in a single place.b) Is accessible to Normals without needing to grok rss, feedreaders or subscribing.c) Scales up to large number of sites even for power google-reader users without seeming like a chore. (I was subscribed to 1000 sites on google reader when I moved them to readwarp)d) Smartly prioritizes the sites I care most about.e) Doesn't allow individual sites to swamp my reading just by pushing out a firehose of articles. (http://akkartik.name/blog/2009-05-19-21-30-46-soc)f) Intelligently unsubscribes me from feeds I no longer care about.g) Isn't completely swamped by the (ipad) popular story du jour. |
Please stress-test the arc server for my latest prototype | iamcalledrob: One big UI thing.The opposite of a thumbs down is a thumbs up.
I was confused by the star. Is that a "favourite" button? |
Bug: Number of comments doesn't show on all stories? | wglb: I saw this perhaps a month ago and emailed PG. His response was that if the comments are not in the cache (as they will be after a restart) then it doesn't show the number and always says "comments". |
What do you think of this project? | corruption: Where did 101 come from? |
What do you think of this project? | Ascendancy: Seems like a really nice system, actually. The idea has room for growth and could turn into something really neat |
Please stress-test the arc server for my latest prototype | Osmose: A lot of the articles I got looked odd and messed up because of the content being chopped into your site. Webcomics especially suffered (Hark a Vagrant didn't even display until I opened it in a new window).Perhaps an iframe or something similar so we can see the site itself, with your site becoming a top or sidebar? |
Please stress-test the arc server for my latest prototype | tokenadult: You are asking for user comments, I take it, so my comment will be about a first impression from visiting your site. You are gathering information about user preferences, but I didn't see a convenient link to your site's privacy policy. While I can certainly trust anyone who posts on HN not to do anything nefarious with my personal information (can't I?), it is industry-standard practice for consumer-facing websites that gather personal information of any kind to have a posted privacy policy. That may or may not have any legal effect, but it can have a user-reassurance effect that will encourage more people to use your site, if that is what you desire. |
Please stress-test the arc server for my latest prototype | joeycfan: Not a bad idea, posting here.Next time just go to Reddit and post'Free jailbait porn, click here' |
What do you think of this project? | minouye: Great design and a cool idea, but I really think that 101 things is way too many. I had the patience to put in about 5. I doubt that very many people will be able to think up 101 things--of course maybe I just have fewer goals in life than the average person :-) |
What do you think of this project? | apsurd: I think this is pretty good. You should focus on simplicity. I'm thinking about signing up (haven't yet). It's a nice reminder and a cute way to motivate oneself.An API is vital imo. This whole concept rests on simplicity and friendly motivators. I'd want a nice widget display or a json output of my list so I can add it to a blog or wherever I'd like to promote/remind myself of my goals. This of course is a huge marketing benefit for you as well.Hope this helps. |
Please stress-test the arc server for my latest prototype | jgg: How will this be different from StumbleUpon? |
Review My Startup Site - Not So Beautiful People (nsbp.me) | minalecs: funny.. but i don't think much of a differentiator from other dating sites... i mean what dating site is there where everyone is beautiful :) |
Pls review my product: Rapid Social Response | jayliew: <oops> I posted this Ask HN wrong - this body of text is supposed to be up there, but I don't want to delete and repost this because I'll lose the comments here.
</oops>This is just an MVP; the back end does not scale well (this is so not intended for outside of just our small HN community here). I'm actually embarrassed to post this here, but if you're not embarrassed, you've waited too long to launch, right? So here's my first pitch for HN-peer-review.Q: In a nutshell, what is it?A: Auto-response, for Twitter. (Twitter for now, possibly Facebook later)Q: Why the name?A: It's from Altimeter's Jeremiah Owyang's 18 Use Cases of Social CRM report, I thought this app would help in the use case(s) he listed: http://bit.ly/csoAJCQ: I don't want to even visit the site, just 'show me' the value prop.A: Ok, tweet "@jaysern hi !!!"Q: Anything else in it just for HN readers?A: Aside from the use cases I listed on the site, here's one I did not list: I also pull tweets from public_timeline, so if you try match on hot trending word, your twitter account will tweet out to strangers ;) Here's my user page: http://www.rapidsocialresponse.com/user/jaysern/ (If none of this makes sense, don't worry - just ignore)I was delaying posting this on HN because I wanted to make sure I got the Mixpanel analytics working right (since learning and getting feedback early is point!) Thanks much YC alumni & Mixpanel's cofounder @trefn for helping me with the tech support! |
Review My Startup Site - Not So Beautiful People (nsbp.me) | koanarc: Clever idea, though I'd recommend allowing multiple choice searches, and perhaps including in this post a zip code known to have existing users, just for example purposes -- if we can't get any results for given search criteria, the effort to review is a little much to keep interest. How many users do you have so far?Also, the "procreative/festive/hedging their bets" field is completely obscure. What the hell does that even mean?edit: also also, I'd hire a professional copy editor. What you've got has a lot of character, but a bit longwinded -- simple sells. If you're shooting for the stars it could use some cleanup by somebody completely grammar-anal/with an English degree. |
Pls review my product: Rapid Social Response | patio11: 1) Web design is a lot like pants. Sure, it is annoying and you already have the important bits covered, but please put it on before going out of the door. It takes a few minutes to use a free HTML/CSS template: if you like the Web 2.0 aesthetic, styleshout.com has what you need.2) Curiosity: Is the backend a person who is going to be composing tweets for me?3) My worry, which this web site has to sell me on and that it is not doing currently: Is this going to spam my followers or make me look like an idiot to them? (Eliza answers my query: "What resemblance do you see?") |
Pls review my product: Rapid Social Response | sh1mmer: I really like this, it seems like a good way to help with some of the "customer service" type of stuff I get at work on Twitter.I'd be interested in seeing if you could answer non-directed messages against a search stream instead of a friends stream. |
What do you think of this project? | qeorge: Nice idea, and I like the design. Looks like you've got people using it.I was a bit confused as to where to begin though. Am I to create my own list of 101 things, or are there some suggested lists I can start with?Also: try preloading the images in your stylesheets (or using sprites). There's a noticeable flash when I hover over the sign-up button as signuphover.png is loaded for the first time. I'm fond of this jQuery plugin, which makes this painless:http://www.filamentgroup.com/lab/update_automatically_preloa... |
Pls review my product: Rapid Social Response | qeorge: I like the idea. I know this is an MVP, so please take my comments with a grain of salt:1) I'm not sure I trust your system yet. Can I preview what it might have said to my followers (or strangers!) before activating a filter?2) Does it respond to strangers or not? Here[1] you say it does, here[2] you say it doesn't.[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1306887
[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13069913) Can the public see my response page? (/user/qeorge). I'd rather they couldn't, but I would definitely like to keep track of the messages I've sent.4) Bit.ly analytics integration would be awesome, so I can see what messages are working. Maybe even stop using a response if no one is clicking its link?Still not sure I would use this, because I don't do enough tweeting to automate it, and it still feels spammy. |
Need some tax advice... | qeorge: It sounds like you're making a pretty decent amount of money if you owe $27k. Have you double-checked those numbers? Do they add up using back of the envelope math? Is that all income tax, or did you forget to pay your SS/medicare/unemployment insurance as well?Either way, fire your accountant. If you're making < $100k/yr, I would probably go without and learn to file them yourself.Also, the most surprising thing I've found: the IRS is really nice and helpful. They have an 800 number, and although the wait is long, they will spend as much time with you as you need. Everyone wins when your business succeeds, and so they are there to help. |
What do you think of this project? | rick_2047: I just love the design simple and accessible. I am giving you the facebook authorization because I just loved the way your design handles the things. Way to go bro |
Domain Registrar? | dave1619: I'm using godaddy but want to switch. Too cluttered and borders shady. |
Domain Registrar? | iamdave: NearlyFreeSpeech.netI recommend them for hosting and domain registration. Everything about them is easy, and suits both competent and novice webmasters.Plus you get an SSH account at no extra charge. |
Pls review my product: Rapid Social Response | zemaj: I signed in expecting a demo. It looks like it activates the service straight away when using the sign in button. I couldn't see any information or way to deactivate it, so I revoked the oAuth access from twitter. |
Pls review my product: Rapid Social Response | petercooper: Twitter power user here and.. I signed up. Nice and simple. I didn't set up any responses but if it works as described, excellent. Nothing confused me, even though it lacks the "gloss" of a finished product.All that out of the way though, I didn't set up any responses because I can't figure out any use for it. I looked through my recent @replies and there's no pattern to any of it. I just couldn't figure out any interesting way to use this (beyond mere testing).. sorry :-) |
Please stress-test the arc server for my latest prototype | kylec: Um, I think I DOSed you. Sorry. I ran ab to stress-test your server, and I guess it didn't handle it all that well. I wonder how HN handles excessive traffic? |
What do you think of this project? | iamgabeaudick: Maybe decrease the number of goals. 101 is a lot - both to accomplish and even just to think about and write down. |
Please stress-test the arc server for my latest prototype | asimjalis: Looks like it's down. |
Hacker news source code? | JacobAldridge: http://github.com/nex3/arc/blob/master/news.arcI'm not sure if this is the latest version, but should point you in the right direction. My understanding is that pg keeps some aspects (eg, the hellbanning protocols) out of this code to prevent the system being hacked and overrun by spammers.There are also other sites running versions (Markenomics.com comes to mind; News Mogul is no longer with us). Not sure how many of those have published their changes to source code. |
Domain Registrar? | nreece: NameCheap.com is the best I've used. |
Domain Registrar? | pedalpete: i've used enom signed up via google apps a few times.One time google apps tried to make me sign up for the domain via godaddy, but I didn't complete the transaction because of godaddy.The UI for using enom is pretty good, you get google apps in one simple sign-up, i'd recommend it. |
Domain Registrar? | mattyb: Gandi.net is French, but they're awesome. Free SSL cert too. |
Is Ad-hijacking or Ad-injecting legal? Or just frowned upon? | patio11: You're almost certain to fall under a broadly written computer crime statute if the D.A. has a mind to charge you.For example, in my home state of Illinois:A person commits the offense of computer tampering when he knowingly and without the authorization of a computer's owner, as defined in Section 15‑2 of this Code, or in excess of the authority granted to him: ... alters ... data;The ellipses are fair -- it really is that broad. Bonus points: it is insta-federal because of the effect on interstate commerce, again if someone has a mind to make an example of you. |
Hacker news source code? | rick_2047: Instructions on setting up the news site.http://github.com/nex3/arc/blob/master/how-to-run-newsQuestion: What kind of server does one need to setup arc on it? Do you need like a total control (as in virtual/dedicated servers)? |
Pls review my product: Rapid Social Response | keshet: My $0.02
<disclaimer>
I don't use twitter (I have an account, but never tweet, almost never look at the people who I am following) - so maybe I am too old school to have anything interesting to say.
</disclaimer>This strikes me as severely reducing the S/N of the social networking space - if this gets popular, which I assume is your goal, then a large percentage of tweets will be generated automatically. Now permutate this machine-generated "social" information with all the tools springing up to analyze tweets and derive all kinds of useful crowd-sourced insights. It all becomes that much more diluted with less and less information actually created by a live, thinking human being. This might be the start of a trend - tools which tweet automatically based on incoming tweets, creating that feared endless loop which you cannot detect because you only control one participant. Oops, some kids are out trampling on my lawn, gotta go. |
Pls review my product: Rapid Social Response | dchs: Perhaps FAQbot might be a better name as it might help people grok it faster? It would also give people a hint about what content to populate it with.Also, could you scan Twitter for the questions most frequently asked of a given account? |
Are there any solid stats on Flash crashing Safari? | ZeroGravitas: Quote from Mozilla's blog of Metrics on work to correct Firefox crashes:"For example, with a significant percentage of crashes in Flash, a lot of work around stability improvement for Firefox users is currently going into Flash Player 10.1."http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/2010/04/08/dramatic-stabilit...It's also worth noting the comment that explains another large percentage of their crashes came from misbehaving extensions when they rejigged the internal code between 3 and 3.5. Since Safari doesn't have that issue that would increase the Flash crash rate as a percentage of the total for them.You can also look at Firefox's crash stats and dig through the various bits of data in various ways. Most of it is incomprehensible to me, but if you sort crashes by site then Flash based sites seem to come top.http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/topcrasher/bydomain/Firefox/3...Obviously these sites are partly there because they are popular (take that Steve Jobs!), but it still seems over-represented by Flash to my eye. |
Review my side project - UniversityReport | ig1: Clickable: http://www.universityreport.co.uk |
Review my side project - UniversityReport | rossj: It took me longer than it should have to find the course I am interested in within the cloud of courses, maybe there's an easier way of doing this?Another problem is that if I pick a course and then have to pick a University it is going to be a long time before I find one with the UCAS score I want, or a certain drop-out rate so I wonder whether a table based view of the universities (once I've chosen a course) might allow me to sort by the fields I am interested in and then click on the interesting University.Great idea though :) |
Review my side project - UniversityReport | binarymax: I'll be honest I'm not really into the colour scheme (too much grey), and the list of courses is a bit too messy for my taste. On the other hand, the information provided is excellent! |
Which is highest up-voted submission on Hacker News? | rlpb: As HN is (presumably) growing, you'd need to normalise this figure using the number of unique visitors at the time the submission was made or something. |
Web apps source code? | seven: Check out http://sourceforge.net/ |
Is Ad-hijacking or Ad-injecting legal? Or just frowned upon? | pbhjpbhj: In most cases I'd guess that it's unauthorised modification of a copyright work. The presentation of a blog for example is formed by design with the adverts - they constitute a part of the work as a whole, removal of the adverts without license would be copyright infringement as it's formation of a "derivative work".Compare a newsagent (ISP) selling a magazine (website). If the newsagent censors any adverts for a competitor in that magazine by pasting over their own advert before selling it on then they've modified the magazine ; without a license this is copyright infringement. |
Web apps source code? | bgnm2000: or http://www.github.com |
Self improvement programs | waxman: Do something based on science, not on some kooky self-help guru.The scientific literature supports only a few interventions that can measurably improve happiness:- keeping a daily gratitude journal (in which you write down what your thankful for at the end of every day; there's a great iPhone App for this actually)- giving things to others- investing your resources in experiences versus materials (a new gadget eventually loses its shine, but fun experiences, especially with friends, improve happiness over the long-term)- join a group that meets regularly (regardless of what kind of group it is); there's actually really strong evidence that this measurably improves happiness |
Anybody else quitting Facebook over privacy concerns? | kimfuh: It wasn't a privacy concern for me. It was boredom. FB slowly became boring. I joined around the time when the poke was invented and FB was something new. Every time i logged in, i'd find something interesting to do. Doesn't feel like that anymore. It feels stale. There's no app for that. |
Maintaining useful business documentation | imp: When I'm doing work on my own projects, I prefer to work with a sharpie marker and blank paper. It's the easiest way to get my ideas out as quickly as possible. The downside is that it's not digitized or searchable. Usually when I'm done writing and sketching out a lot of ideas, I'll just put those papers into a manila folder with a descriptive label and file it away. I bought a nice filing cabinet and label maker last year when I started doing GTD, so it works pretty well. Every meaningful thought is documented, and it's pretty easy to find it when I need it. |
What code have you read recently? | tamberg: Yaler, a high performance relay server implementing HTTPS with Java non-blocking sockets, hierarchical state machines and design by contract. Written by Marc Frei (Oberon microsystems).http://hg.yaler.org/yaler/src |
Self improvement programs | imp: I would be wary of self improvement programs that charge money. I'm not sure what exactly you've looked into, but there's a lot of information out there for free or cheap.I've spent a decent amount of time reading self-improvement books/blogs, and for me the stuff that made the most impact were things that were tailored to the problems I was having at the time.Here's an overview of what I've read over the years that have helped me to some extent:I Can Do Anything if I Only Knew What it Was: http://www.amazon.com/Could-Anything-Only-Knew-What/dp/04405...Paul Graham's Essays: http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.htmlHow to Win Friends and Influence People: http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/14...Four Hour Work Week: http://www.amazon.com/4-Hour-Workweek-Escape-Live-Anywhere/d...Randy Pausch, Time Management: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0GTD: http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Produc...Steve Pavlina: http://www.stevepavlina.com/7 Habits of Highly Effective People (reading this now): http://www.amazon.com/Habits-Highly-Effective-People/dp/0671...So I would say "it depends" on what you want out of life and where you are now. Self improvement is a life-long task and you will need advice that changes as you progress. |
Any way to invalidate cookies? | pierrefar: In GMail, you can log out other sessions if you're logged in. At the very bottom, it says something like "Last account activity: xx minutes ago ..." followed by a Details link. Click it and you'll see the button to log out everyone else but your session.Otherwise, I don't think so and am watching this thread to learn. |
Any way to invalidate cookies? | pella: change your password ... ( all of them )
And next time use: http://www.truecrypt.org/ |
A good and cheap secure certificate provider? | csbartus: Now I see there are certificates even over $500/year for a single domain ...And I see Dreamhost was offering certificates in the past but now it has canceled ...This business is looking very shady I think for a very good reason I would like to know |