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So I've finished College. Now what? | biohacker42: Both graduate school and a startup are good ideas.This being the worst economy since 1930, graduate school may be the way to go.You can also do both at same time. |
How do you cope with incompetent team members? | pg: Measurement often helps people to focus. |
how would you protect a URL redirection service from spam? | vikram: I'd let the spam come in the first instance and not publish the link, based on rules, or algorithms once you have more data. Later on you can block certain ip addresses. Also try creating a blacklist to get you started. |
how would you protect a URL redirection service from spam? | evgen: If you don't take a peek at the content on the other side of the URL then your options are somewhat limited. If I were faced with this problem I would probably start by doing broad "spam site" classification based on the domain name (which would probably eventually involve things like doing DNS/whois lookups an... |
Where to get icons for virtual gifts? | pg: I wouldn't be surprised if it was worth paying a designer to make them. They're supposed to seem valuable. |
Where to get icons for virtual gifts? | ucdaz: I've used these design contests from the following forums.
You'll be surprised of their quality.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=94
http://www.webmaster-talk.com/graphic-design-contests/ |
How do you cope with incompetent team members? | Tichy: Let him create CSS stylesheets for grid layouts without tables. |
Funding for a teen startup | thepanister: Apply for funding from ycombinator:
http://ycombinator.com/s2009.htmlAnd you will know. |
Funding for a teen startup | pg: It's not a great territory for startups, because the buying decisions are made by such bureaucratic organizations. There's no group of clever, poor early adopters for a startup to start with. |
Where to get icons for virtual gifts? | thorax: You guys look into someone like Viximo instead of inventing your own system from the ground up? |
What podcasts do you listen to? | mikeyur: Gdgt Weekly and TWiT for 'Tech' as well as NLO (http://nobodylikesonions.com) and Stop Podcasting Yourself for comedy/entertainment.Although none of these will help you learn anything they're really good at keeping you occupied/entertained. |
What podcasts do you listen to? | drjrock: RadioLab (http://radiolab.org) is simply the best podcast ever created ever. Other than that, I listen to This American Life (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/) for serious stuff and You Look Nice Today (http://youlooknicetoday.com/) for comedy. And for a little shameless self promotion, check out the Rails E... |
how would you protect a URL redirection service from spam? | duskwuff: Add a captcha, if you aren't using one already.Rate-limit link creation based on the user's IP.Check submitted links against a URIBL. Prevent users from adding links which are on the blacklist, and remove links which appear on the blacklist.Reject links to newly registered domains outright. |
How do you cope with incompetent team members? | blasdel: There's a way you can address him directly without causing drama: defend him! "Hey Bob, I'm worried that the boss will think you're wasting time bogged down in stuff he thinks are unimportant, and that your priority tasks get done by other people. I don't want you to get in trouble, we should figure out a way ... |
What podcasts do you listen to? | yan: radiolab is awesome (radiolab.org)I like 'the brain science podcast,' and it's pretty much all I listen to on long drives: http://www.brainsciencepodcast.com/Ginger Campbell, the author of the brain science podcast also publishes "Books and Ideas" podcast which is enjoyable: http://booksandideas.com/edit: Not exac... |
How do you cope with incompetent team members? | 10ren: > loses himself in unimportant stuff,If you mean he is perfecting an aspect of the code that isn't important, that is a notorious engineer/Asperger's problem, which is a great strength when properly directed.It's hard for me to believe that a software developer would have no empathy for this character flaw, so m... |
What podcasts do you listen to? | kylec: The only ones I listen to with any regularity are Stack Overflow, Wait! Wait! Don't tell me! (http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=518...) and This American Life (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Podcast.aspx).I was listening to Planet Money (http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail... |
Best practices for rapidly changing database schema? | lrajlich: I've heard of a number of ways of solving this. I don't like json in blobs since you can't query or index the blob data effectively.I propose the attribute table pattern, which I've used to decent amount of success. It's not as sexy as ff's, but it is simple, easily cached, and queried. Here's an example sche... |
Funding for a teen startup | kobs: Quizlet (http://quizlet.com/about/) seems to be successful and is run by a teen. I'm not sure if they've taken funding though. |
Funding for a teen startup | minalecs: build it yourself. If you believe in the idea that much, take the time to learn how to do it. |
how would you protect a URL redirection service from spam? | thorax: For ri.ms and tinyarro.ws, we've actually seen significant reduction in spam just by banning abusive IP addresses. So far, that has had the biggest bang for the buck in terms of dropping spam considerably.In other words, we periodically do human review and obvious spammers are IP banned. It's a neverending prob... |
How do you cope with incompetent team members? | minalecs: what do you do if this is your superior ? |
Funding for a teen startup | albertsun: What funding do you really need? Living with your parents takes care of all your biggest expenses. All you have to do is write code. And you have plenty of time to learn how to write code if you don't know how to. |
So I've finished College. Now what? | paraschopra: In Biotech or Bioinfo industry, real work is done only by PhD or Masters. So, if you want to enter the industry, go to graduate school.I am not sure how easy would it be to start a biotech startup at your stage because biotech startups require a lot of funding to get started. However, you can always start ... |
Who is going to the O'Reilly E-Tech Conference? | code_devil: Never knew about this, looks good but expensive. I hope they have Video Sessions online. |
How do you cope with incompetent team members? | herdrick: Anything you can do to improve the productivity of one of the best people will overwhelm by an order of magnitude even the most heroic improvement of the doofus. If you are in charge and are allowed to make such decisions, axe him. Getting another crack at finding a top performer is your best bet. |
What podcasts do you listen to? | bemmu: Agreed that Radio Lab and Stack Overflow are the best ones, but I would add Venture Voice to that list too. Google Developer Podcast is occasionally interesting. Hanselminutes may have a few good episodes, but is usually too Microsofty. There are also some nice language podcasts out there, at least Learn Thai Po... |
What podcasts do you listen to? | bemmu: I propose a Hacker News podcast, which would consist of progress updates and lessons learned from start-ups. The host could call each participating start-up every once in a while and then assemble these clips to a show. I won't take on the task of recording it, but would be an avid listener. |
What podcasts do you listen to? | rodrigo: Dan Carlin's Hardcore History , The History of Rome, Econ Talk, and TED talks. As I have a very long conmute im always on the looking. |
How to get better at selling? | JeremyChase: I won't recommend any books, but I do recommend talking to your potential clients. Ask them to buy your product, and when they say no ask them "Why not?". Then figure out what you need to do to change that no into a maybe, or a yes.Don't change everything you are doing to accommodate one customer, but the ... |
How to get better at selling? | terpua: Read "Four Steps to the Epiphany" |
project suggestions for newbie python hacker | adnam: You could write an app that takes a keyword, looks for recent posts on twitter tagged with that keyword, and returns a list of the other tags that were used for the same posts - a sort of 'what's related' search for twitter tags.Anyone else have any ideas? I encouraged donderwolkje to post here on HN. |
How would you price an iPhone app? | ram1024: how much work went into developing it?
is it a radically innovative and useful application?
is it fun? will it spread socially? what kind of marketing will need to be done to get it sold?there's a billion questions that must be answered that would affect such a decision. without any of that information, even ... |
How to get better at selling? | Tangurena: There are a couple of issues here.1) to get better at selling, one of the first things to do is more practice [1] at selling.2) there are some skills to learn, and these skills are "soft" ones - which typically receive disdain in techie culture [2].Last year, I ran for public office. I discovered to my surpr... |
Looking for NYC-based technical co-founder for green meta-retail site | smoody: HNers,I have personally known the founder of the above startup for a decade and can vouch for her abilities as both a serial entrepreneur and as a genuinely good person. This isn't her first time doing this, so she has a track record. And, although the funding climate is a bit bumpy these days, there are some u... |
Gui Design WebApp that makes all widgets look hand-drawn | dawie: After reading your description, this came to mind. http://www.balsamiq.com/Their blog posts are on HN quite often. |
How would you price an iPhone app? | hotshothenry: If it's really useful I'd say no less then 3.99 and no more then 5.99, so I'm thinking 4.99 |
Gui Design WebApp that makes all widgets look hand-drawn | saurabh: That would be Balasmiq
http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups |
How to get better at selling? | quellhorst: The best book for me was "The Sales Bible" |
How to get better at selling? | iamelgringo: One of the best business classes that I ever took was from a retired VP of sales for a Fortune 500 insurance company. He highly recommended the Carnegie Sales courses: http://www.dalecarnegie.com/I plan to take that class this next year. |
How would you price an iPhone app? | tstegart: Well, between $.99 and $9.99 is a good starting point, because thats where almost all iPhone apps are priced. Then, you can look at your competitors, and find their range of pricing. I'd be priced comparably, if you offer similar features. I'd also opine that its much easier to raise your prices than it is to... |
Have you ever paid for a "Pay as You Wish" album? If so how much? | Dobbs: I payed 13 dollars for a copy of Girl Talk Animal Party. I will admit the reason I payed $13 was because he requested $10 if you were going to download the flaks. At that point he stated he would mail me a copy of the cd in addition if I payed $3 for shipping and handling. |
Do users know what they want & how do you test? | mcav: Users express what they want, sure. But it's up to the developer to gather users' wants and analyze them to search for the reasoning behind the wants.That's the closest I've been able to come to learning what users want -- they often can't articulate it well enough.Conversations go like this: Them: "I want featu... |
Do users know what they want & how do you test? | sam_in_nyc: One thing that's permanently changed the way I answer the question "what do people want" is this video, about how one man discovered that people are segmented, and they won't tell you what they want:http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spagh...What you should end up taking away from it is ... |
Do users know what they want & how do you test? | eries: The fact that customers don't know what they want is only an obstacle if our goal is to find out what they think they want. Luckily, our goal is usually to find out what they actually want, which requires some combination of listening, experimenting, and learning.http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/search/... |
What makes a good programmer? | user: Having a life outside programming :) |
What makes a good programmer? | brianto2010: http://paulgraham.com/head.html> "A good programmer working intensively on his own code can hold it in his mind the way a mathematician holds a problem he's working on."http://paulgraham.com/pypar.html> "I'll call the Python paradox: if a company chooses to write its software in a comparatively esoteric la... |
Hacking in a SHTF world | Tichy: I know how you feel, but maybe it is premature to worry about such things. Most of the skills you mention might be relatively easy to learn should they become really important. At least chopping should be easy? Cooking definitely is. Shooting I don't know, but perhaps it is overrated?In any case, it is hard to l... |
Gui Design WebApp that makes all widgets look hand-drawn | csbartus: Pencil http://www.evolus.vn/Pencil/Home.html is free and built on Firefox/Gecko |
Hacking in a SHTF world | tjic: > During Depression 1.0 everyone seemed so nice.Read about the Bonus Army
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_armyThere are a thousand other reasons that the Depression was not, remotely, "nice".> Does anyone have some MacGyver preparation tipsI personally think that we're in for a decade-long "L-shaped" / "Japan... |
What makes a good programmer? | Tangurena: This is a philosophical question in the ballpark of "what is good?" So I'll turn it around and ask "what do you mean by good programmer?" Someone who meets deadlines? Someone who gets the job done? Someone who doesn't upset the boss?I think the following video will explain why there can never be a single ans... |
Hosted Subversion? | nostrademons: SourceForge? Google Code?Or do you mean something that keeps the source code private? I never really understood the point of private source code hosting; if it's on another company's servers, it's not really private anymore, and I'm sufficiently paranoid to distrust it. |
What makes a good programmer? | makecheck: Someone for whom programming is a passion, and not just income. Someone considerate enough to help the next programmer who will look at the code.This type of person then naturally picks up good practices with experience. For example: using multiple languages (and not being afraid to use the one best suited... |
Define Genius | jws: From the wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iq, the "positive correlations" section you can expect IQ to be useful predicting the following:• SAT score.• Job performance of a new hire when the new hire does not have existing experience.• Income, but being at the extreme high end doesn't help much more... |
Hosted Subversion? | rcoder: I work on the Project Kenai (http://kenai.com/) team at Sun, and we provide hosted source code repositories, ticketing, wikis, and a variety of other tools for project management.We're still in beta, so you'll need an invite in order to actually create a project. Hit me up via email (my HN username at gmail.com... |
How do you go about asking someone for ownership of their domain? | brk: From looking at the current site, it seems "the organization" is one guy who never got any further than spending a saturday afternoon editing some html in notepad.I would argue that most "absolutely amazing ideas" can exist on any domain, so there is no "the domain" in this case. There IS a domain currently regis... |
Hosted Subversion? | lhorie: If you mean for private repos, unfuddle.com offers both. |
How do you go about asking someone for ownership of their domain? | alecst: I work with a non-profit organization called Kate's Club (www.katesclub.org). Until recently, however, www.katesclub.com was owned by a guy who was using it for erotic images, and we received more than a few complaints about this. A friend of mine emailed the site owner and said he'd like to purchase the domain... |
Define Genius | ErrantX: I have a very high IQ and wouldnt consider myself a genius!Genius, IMO is about seeing things differently and sheer devotion to a cause. Einstein and Darwin would be examples of that. IQ tests do check for that (well not the devotion, but the thinking outside the box) but I dont think they represent it well. |
Hacking in a SHTF world | patrocles: Hard Times by Studs Terkel.While it covers a lot of ground, it does cover what worked and what didn't during the Great Depression. |
Review my First Open Source Project - CommentWidget | andrewljohnson: I also wrote a short blog about the project at: http://www.trailbehind.com/user/andrewljohnson/blog/I'm very curious to hear criticism of the code, so let me know if you spot bugs or bad style. |
Review my First Open Source Project - CommentWidget | sketerpot: It would be a lot cooler if you added default CSS styling that made the comments look aesthetically pleasing. And documented the API for changing it.Right now it looks like the basic functionality is there, but it would catch on a lot easier if it looked unobtrusively snazzy. |
Review my First Open Source Project - CommentWidget | lacker: It's funny how many of the comments on your site are people trying to break your security with <script> tags and the like. Good work so far in resisting them ;-) |
Review my First Open Source Project - CommentWidget | rokhayakebe: Maybe let users login using their Facebook ID. Integrate with Gravatar. Really nice job. |
Why don't you ban the dead link forever? | alecst: I would imagine that the data on the page could change, and therefore it would be irresponsible to assume that the link once bad is always bad. |
Server Anti Virus | thepanister: kaspersky. |
webtools for new website design/flow | poppysan: try pencil -its a firefox plugin.http://www.evolus.vn/Pencil/ |
An inexpensive, reliable DNS solutions? | oldgregg: Avoid DNS if at all possible.I've used these guys for years, simple and really reliable:
http://www.dnsmadeeasy.com/s0306/price/dns.htmlMore recently, Godaddy (and I'm sure other registrars?) includes DNS hosting for free-- It's a crappy interface, but simple and gets the job done. |
Server Anti Virus | martey: Is installing anti-virus standard practice on Windows servers? I always assumed that they (unlike consumer versions of Windows) were locked down enough that, just like with Linux servers, as long as you enabled a firewall and kept up with updates, you would be okay. |
Review my First Open Source Project - CommentWidget | thepanister: You may consider using clickpass for logins, if you will require login.
http://www.clickpass.com/ |
Why don't you ban the dead link forever? | thepanister: I really wish that pg checks this entry out, because I am tired of the spam on this website - although it's relatively low.check this out!
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=506273I feel that there is no spam protection here! |
Review my First Open Source Project - CommentWidget | Raphael: Don't let someone post the default text, "Your comment goes here." |
I want to learn iPhone development, where to start? | cubicle67: Best resources - the sample apps on Apple's iPhone Dev site (you need to be registered (free))There's wide selection. Find one that you like, and play with it. Change things, add things. Turn it into something else.Worked for me. YMMV |
I want to learn iPhone development, where to start? | amichail: http://www.apress.com/book/view/9781430216261 |
how do you split up an iphone app between 3 people? | ram1024: decide what needs to be done, delegate the tasks that people clearly have a talent or knack for. spread the remaining tasks around to those capable of doing them.same as any project of course |
I want to learn iPhone development, where to start? | stuntgoat: O'reilly Safari Library costs money but you get unlimited access to many current programming books to read online. There are several books available on iPhone development and Objective C programming. It helped me immensely when learning Javascript. Also, you can often search for functions and text within the... |
how do you split up an iphone app between 3 people? | ScottWhigham: I think that some kind of source code management (SCM) tool is the first step. Subversion, Git, whatever - pick something and go with it. After that, a project mgmt tracking tool of some kind. You can start small (text files) in the beginning and grow into bigger tools that feature bug tracking, feature r... |
webtools for new website design/flow | ScottWhigham: Is Balsamiq too low-end? http://www.balsamiq.com/ |
Should I use Amazon S3? | aditya: S3 is probably your best bet, especially if you're building for scale. |
Should I use Amazon S3? | ropiku: Using Amazon S3 you have the advantage of using a tested and scalable system, easy to implement and use and it's not expensive. |
Should I use Amazon S3? | thepanister: Use s3 but be careful, as someone might abuse your bills! |
Should I use Amazon S3? | vaksel: What is the actual site doing? Is it just a file sharing site where you have a 150mb limit, meaning the average size will be a few megs...or is this something special where people upload some special 150mb files? |
I want to learn iPhone development, where to start? | bouncingsoul: Here's what I've found:– Learn Objective-C: http://cocoadevcentral.com/d/learn_objectivec/– iPhone Dev Central Tutorials: http://www.iphonedevcentral.org/viewtutorials.php?page=Tutor...– iPhone Application Programming Guide (login required): https://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/iPh... |
Should I use Amazon S3? | suhail: Wait till you even have high enough loads to warrant S3 to offload those HTTP requests, in the mean time use nginx to serve your static content. |
What's with all the trivial link spam? | pg: I've been wondering too. My current theory is that it's spammers testing whether submission is unmoderated. |
What's with all the trivial link spam? | thepanister: I have already talked about this problem, but nobody really cares!Even I provided a significant solution to solve the problem:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=506028Guess what? I got down-voted on my comment!EDIT: If pg has no time for it, then why does not he allow us to code a solution, and he can re... |
What's with all the trivial link spam? | SwellJoe: My theory would be that it is a new spam bot, being tested out by its creator. Just a theory, of course. It could also be a user with a bone to pick with HN; their blog posts consistently got deaded by moderators, perhaps, and now they're angrily trying to prove something. Maybe they're doing it with a spa... |
Should I use Amazon S3? | ShabbyDoo: I presume this file doesn't change very often and doesn't require any security in front of it? To be cheap, you could sign up for a few crappy (like GoDaddy) hosting accounts with absurdly high bandwidth limits. Then, provide users with links to them sorta like mirrors. It's not the greatest user experienc... |
Should I use Amazon S3? | babo: Using Amazon services your initial cost is low and it's easy and fast to set it up. Using wisely AWS is a great service, especially bootstrapping a new service.There are use cases where AWS is not recommended, having too many machines up and running 24x7 or transferring huge amount of data out of the cloud. For a... |
What's with all the trivial link spam? | DanielBMarkham: On my blog I'm getting comment spam without any links as well. The usual stuff like "Great work! Plan to come back often!" but there's no link to Joe's Sex Shop or anything -- just a bogus email address and fake name.I used to think it was just poor comments, but it only happens on certain pages, which ... |
What's with all the trivial link spam? | russell: How about banning links in comments until a small karma level, say 10, or a few days registration? Another possibility might be deletion privileges for questionable comments for hackers above a certain karma or registration time. By questionable, I mean comments of a certain form from new users, rather than... |
What's with all the trivial link spam? | mixmax: The answer might be quite boring.When a new user comes to this site he will try out the functionality, click around and see how things work. One of the things that he will probably want to know is how to submit an article. So he goes ahead and tries it, using whatever link he has handy.I know this because I did... |
Should I use Amazon S3? | jrockway: S3 does look pretty expensive for this case. In general, I think S3 is best for storing files that aren't retrieved often. For hosting a download, there are better options.I have an BingoDisk account that supposedly provides unlimited transfer. If you are just uploading and downloading stuff, it sounds lik... |
What's with all the trivial link spam? | joe_the_user: Perhaps the spammers are testing to see if the spam "sticks". The sites where the spams stays will be revisited. Perhaps that spammers think that an account that posts links that don't come up on a black list will considered "safer" later when they can then spam seriously. |
how do you split up an iphone app between 3 people? | ibsulon: There are many possible answers depending on the type of application. How difficult is the view? That can be one person, or a very small piece depending. In some types of games, AI can be enough for one person. Business logic or the model, depending on the application, can be two thirds of the work. Further, p... |
Should I use Amazon S3? | TomOfTTB: How many users would you have?Because I'm tempted to say you should just try one of these cheapie web hosts and see if that fits your needs. For example, and I have no affiliation with this company other than using them a few times, webhost4life has an account with unlimited* bandwidth and unlimited* storage... |
Should I use Amazon S3? | charlesju: Anime distribution? haha |
Should I use Amazon S3? | yesimahuman: Ah yes, a 150MB file site. Whenever I need to get my 150MB files, I'll go to your site!In seriousness, I don't know what the price for amazon ec2 works out to be. However, during the development phase, it is too expensive. I believe it will cost you $72 to run an instance for a month, base price. I wou... |
What's with all the trivial link spam? | eli: It's not just testing the system. At least one popular blog anti-spam system forces comment to moderation only on the first comment from each person. Subsequent ones go right through.I was seeing spam like this over a year ago across a network of sites all with the same set of messages (e.g. "Good site! Thanks!") |
Is there code-block-enabled chat out there for programming teams? | nixme: I've used EtherPad (http://etherpad.com/) successfully for collaborating on code. The only thing missing is syntax highlighting for languages other than Javascript. |
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