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remail brings speedy full text search & entire offline mailbox to the iphone
| thanks for posting this!the title sounds like we're doing full-text search.but we also do something far more valuabel: we download all your email to your iphone for offline access. for the first time ever, you can have all your emails in your pocket.and they take up less space than you’d think: 100k emails need about 500mb on your phone. (=6% of a 8 gb iphone, the smallest you can buy) | just bought it and synced up to a google apps hosted imap account with about 3500 emails. it is extremely fast, though in my case, unfortunately very buggy. it crashes when there are no search results, returns emails with the incorrect senders attached to the body and sometimes clicking a search result goes to the wrong email. |
remail brings speedy full text search & entire offline mailbox to the iphone
| just bought it and synced up to a google apps hosted imap account with about 3500 emails. it is extremely fast, though in my case, unfortunately very buggy. it crashes when there are no search results, returns emails with the incorrect senders attached to the body and sometimes clicking a search result goes to the wrong email. | i bought remail 1 and just bought 2? this was not a free upgrade? either way worth it. downloading everything is very cool.also is it possible to have multiple accounts in the app? my gmail and imap? or 2 gmails - regular and corp. |
remail brings speedy full text search & entire offline mailbox to the iphone
| i bought remail 1 and just bought 2? this was not a free upgrade? either way worth it. downloading everything is very cool.also is it possible to have multiple accounts in the app? my gmail and imap? or 2 gmails - regular and corp. | this is cool. but i really want to use the mac mail client with your database. i assume i have to use your mail client too? |
remail brings speedy full text search & entire offline mailbox to the iphone
| this is cool. but i really want to use the mac mail client with your database. i assume i have to use your mail client too? | i thought the iphone supported server imap searches since 3.0? |
how to get into the hottest restaurants in town
| thanks for posting this, i found it really interesting.as a 20-something geek i was surprised to read how virtually every place accepted the bribe in one way or another. it really contradicts my low confidence + true/false mentality.his attitude appears to have been the magic for making those deals... had he been holding the money timidly he implies they certainly would have turned him away. i will take away from the article the reminder that more self confidence (to a point) reaps benefits in ways i wouldn't always expect. | wow, i'm jealous. i think the real question is how you can get a job writing about your experience bribing maître d's and eating free meals at some of the best restaurants in new york. |
how to get into the hottest restaurants in town
| wow, i'm jealous. i think the real question is how you can get a job writing about your experience bribing maître d's and eating free meals at some of the best restaurants in new york. | i've always done the whole "if you could squeeze me in, i'd be very grateful" bit, followed by a tip later. the meaning is implied so clearly that it might as well have been stated explicitly, plus the host doesn't risk losing his job. works like a charm. |
how to get into the hottest restaurants in town
| i've always done the whole "if you could squeeze me in, i'd be very grateful" bit, followed by a tip later. the meaning is implied so clearly that it might as well have been stated explicitly, plus the host doesn't risk losing his job. works like a charm. | i'm still stuck on the get hot girl to accompany me step. i hear that's where the expense lies. |
how to get into the hottest restaurants in town
| i'm still stuck on the get hot girl to accompany me step. i hear that's where the expense lies. | i'd rather get into the best restaurants. |
starbucks: stay as long as you want
| very smart of starbucks.i feel that some independent coffee shops are being a little short-sighted. while i tend to favor giving my business to independent shops, one of the local ones here in sf has recently cut their free wifi to 60 mins and blocked all power outlets. i don't really know what that's meant to accomplish, other than making me go elsewhere. | i don't go to starbucks because of their wi-fi. most places i can just walk in and start using it, but with starbucks i need to maintain a cash card and register it online, then after that it has a time limit. it sounds simple to do, but it's yet another card i need to carry around with me everywhere for no good reason. |
starbucks: stay as long as you want
| i don't go to starbucks because of their wi-fi. most places i can just walk in and start using it, but with starbucks i need to maintain a cash card and register it online, then after that it has a time limit. it sounds simple to do, but it's yet another card i need to carry around with me everywhere for no good reason. | qustion for hackers: do you actually get any code written at starbucks? i've always found it too distracting and usually only go there to read... |
starbucks: stay as long as you want
| qustion for hackers: do you actually get any code written at starbucks? i've always found it too distracting and usually only go there to read... | here in chile you can stay as long as you want and there are no time restrictions on the free wifi. almost every other day i spend a few hours working at a starbucks.recently a colombian competition, juan valdes, opened a few shops here, but they restrict the free wifi use to 60 mins. you don't see a lot of people working there. |
starbucks: stay as long as you want
| here in chile you can stay as long as you want and there are no time restrictions on the free wifi. almost every other day i spend a few hours working at a starbucks.recently a colombian competition, juan valdes, opened a few shops here, but they restrict the free wifi use to 60 mins. you don't see a lot of people working there. | they might say that. but for whatever reason i'd feel a lot less comfortable staying in the nearest starbucks for a long time (say, a few hours) than in any of the independent coffee places in my neighborhood. this might just be me, though. |
ask hn: do you like reading about startups more than doing one?
i struggled with posting this question. not so much the question as to whether or not have something here in the text box.<p>on one side, the question begs to be asked. on the other, i'm thinking it must have been asked in the past. and for maximum effect, it would do best without any commentary.<p>so what to do?<p>have you started your startup, or are you waiting? will you ever start it?<p>it begs to be asked.<p>(interestingly, these came up in the cursory google search.
<link> <link> | reading -2 starting -2 writingreading about startups was very important when i was in the learning mode. then once i started, i stopped reading. now that i have sold my business, i started writing, hoping that someone else would be reading.<link> | i am in the middle of a pretty product intensive startup right now, and i truly miss the glory days in college where i'd dream with my friends about all the great ideas that we could do.reading about startups brings back a lot of those feelings.so to answer your question. i have started my startup, but i still like reading about startups, sometimes more-so than actually doing my own. |
ask hn: do you like reading about startups more than doing one?
i struggled with posting this question. not so much the question as to whether or not have something here in the text box.<p>on one side, the question begs to be asked. on the other, i'm thinking it must have been asked in the past. and for maximum effect, it would do best without any commentary.<p>so what to do?<p>have you started your startup, or are you waiting? will you ever start it?<p>it begs to be asked.<p>(interestingly, these came up in the cursory google search.
<link> <link> | i am in the middle of a pretty product intensive startup right now, and i truly miss the glory days in college where i'd dream with my friends about all the great ideas that we could do.reading about startups brings back a lot of those feelings.so to answer your question. i have started my startup, but i still like reading about startups, sometimes more-so than actually doing my own. | it's saturday morning here in the uk. i can barely see because my eyes are suffering the ill effects of a hard day of coding on my start-up yesterday. i should be in bed. or i should be outside enjoying the sun. or giving my wife some attention. instead, i am damaging my eyes even more, by being here. yes, i do love reading about startups. more than doing one? nah. that's a bit like loving women but not doing one... |
ask hn: do you like reading about startups more than doing one?
i struggled with posting this question. not so much the question as to whether or not have something here in the text box.<p>on one side, the question begs to be asked. on the other, i'm thinking it must have been asked in the past. and for maximum effect, it would do best without any commentary.<p>so what to do?<p>have you started your startup, or are you waiting? will you ever start it?<p>it begs to be asked.<p>(interestingly, these came up in the cursory google search.
<link> <link> | it's saturday morning here in the uk. i can barely see because my eyes are suffering the ill effects of a hard day of coding on my start-up yesterday. i should be in bed. or i should be outside enjoying the sun. or giving my wife some attention. instead, i am damaging my eyes even more, by being here. yes, i do love reading about startups. more than doing one? nah. that's a bit like loving women but not doing one... | i actually started first and then began to read, kind of counter intuitive but it wasnt on purpose.reason is in my circle of friends when i was at uni we didnt talk much of startups. actually it was unheard of, stable job was the way to go. i had ideas back then but never implemented them cause it was all about the big income in a big company.if i knew of this world of startups and this whole startup scene i would have probably started about 2 years out of uni cause its dam more exciting and fun plus the payoff for hard/smart work is actually there. i guess everyones path is different and things happen for a reason, main thing is im here now so its all good.now its been 5 years out of uni and im almost done with my first startup. its been about a year in the making. designing, planning, coding and then reading as i went along. we are about 2 months away (doing final testing) and quite excited and scared at the same time.if all goes well the i will do more reading (cause i'll need to know alot more) and myself and the team wont be looking back ... full steam ahead. |
ask hn: do you like reading about startups more than doing one?
i struggled with posting this question. not so much the question as to whether or not have something here in the text box.<p>on one side, the question begs to be asked. on the other, i'm thinking it must have been asked in the past. and for maximum effect, it would do best without any commentary.<p>so what to do?<p>have you started your startup, or are you waiting? will you ever start it?<p>it begs to be asked.<p>(interestingly, these came up in the cursory google search.
<link> <link> | i actually started first and then began to read, kind of counter intuitive but it wasnt on purpose.reason is in my circle of friends when i was at uni we didnt talk much of startups. actually it was unheard of, stable job was the way to go. i had ideas back then but never implemented them cause it was all about the big income in a big company.if i knew of this world of startups and this whole startup scene i would have probably started about 2 years out of uni cause its dam more exciting and fun plus the payoff for hard/smart work is actually there. i guess everyones path is different and things happen for a reason, main thing is im here now so its all good.now its been 5 years out of uni and im almost done with my first startup. its been about a year in the making. designing, planning, coding and then reading as i went along. we are about 2 months away (doing final testing) and quite excited and scared at the same time.if all goes well the i will do more reading (cause i'll need to know alot more) and myself and the team wont be looking back ... full steam ahead. | i started my startup. it's more fun than reading about them, although reading about them is fun too. |
ask hn: founders: interested in earning extra cash?
hey hners. need some feedback: how many founders / cofounders could use, or could have used, extra income while starting up your company? the typical job/gig search thing just doesn't seem efficient or practical for entrepreneurs. i'm thinking about starting a service that helps founders get recruited for extra remote work ---- and get paid very well for it.<p>i'm thinking something along the lines of a marketplace exclusively for entrepreneurs, where you'd create say offers or packages which employers can purchase, and on our end we'd go out and ultimately serve as your recruiter and find you work that fits in your schedule.<p>the issue is that founders don't have time to look for work and browse job descriptions, or interview --- so we'd need to make it clear that you have x amount of availability, you're being hired remotely, and at a rate you specify.<p>for employers, entrepreneurs typically have highly desirable skill sets --- even with limited availability and performing remote work.<p>is this of interest? thoughts? | i'd be super interested in this. been working on a startup full-time but might have to look for contract work soon. i think the value add of something like this is having you curate the job listings for entrepreneurs and you being able to convince companies the value of our unique skill set. might be best done manually at first but i'd pay for a service like that. | what i really want is an agent. i'd be willing to give up a small percentage if my hourly every month to an agent who brought me contracts i was really, really interested in. i've thought many times about how to pull this off, and i just don't know if the dynamic is right in the industry. |
ask hn: founders: interested in earning extra cash?
hey hners. need some feedback: how many founders / cofounders could use, or could have used, extra income while starting up your company? the typical job/gig search thing just doesn't seem efficient or practical for entrepreneurs. i'm thinking about starting a service that helps founders get recruited for extra remote work ---- and get paid very well for it.<p>i'm thinking something along the lines of a marketplace exclusively for entrepreneurs, where you'd create say offers or packages which employers can purchase, and on our end we'd go out and ultimately serve as your recruiter and find you work that fits in your schedule.<p>the issue is that founders don't have time to look for work and browse job descriptions, or interview --- so we'd need to make it clear that you have x amount of availability, you're being hired remotely, and at a rate you specify.<p>for employers, entrepreneurs typically have highly desirable skill sets --- even with limited availability and performing remote work.<p>is this of interest? thoughts? | what i really want is an agent. i'd be willing to give up a small percentage if my hourly every month to an agent who brought me contracts i was really, really interested in. i've thought many times about how to pull this off, and i just don't know if the dynamic is right in the industry. | fwiw, i know of at least one member of the billion-plus exit club who was a core founder & did sidework during the early days.... |
ask hn: founders: interested in earning extra cash?
hey hners. need some feedback: how many founders / cofounders could use, or could have used, extra income while starting up your company? the typical job/gig search thing just doesn't seem efficient or practical for entrepreneurs. i'm thinking about starting a service that helps founders get recruited for extra remote work ---- and get paid very well for it.<p>i'm thinking something along the lines of a marketplace exclusively for entrepreneurs, where you'd create say offers or packages which employers can purchase, and on our end we'd go out and ultimately serve as your recruiter and find you work that fits in your schedule.<p>the issue is that founders don't have time to look for work and browse job descriptions, or interview --- so we'd need to make it clear that you have x amount of availability, you're being hired remotely, and at a rate you specify.<p>for employers, entrepreneurs typically have highly desirable skill sets --- even with limited availability and performing remote work.<p>is this of interest? thoughts? | fwiw, i know of at least one member of the billion-plus exit club who was a core founder & did sidework during the early days.... | you have my attention. now, what's the pitch? |
ask hn: founders: interested in earning extra cash?
hey hners. need some feedback: how many founders / cofounders could use, or could have used, extra income while starting up your company? the typical job/gig search thing just doesn't seem efficient or practical for entrepreneurs. i'm thinking about starting a service that helps founders get recruited for extra remote work ---- and get paid very well for it.<p>i'm thinking something along the lines of a marketplace exclusively for entrepreneurs, where you'd create say offers or packages which employers can purchase, and on our end we'd go out and ultimately serve as your recruiter and find you work that fits in your schedule.<p>the issue is that founders don't have time to look for work and browse job descriptions, or interview --- so we'd need to make it clear that you have x amount of availability, you're being hired remotely, and at a rate you specify.<p>for employers, entrepreneurs typically have highly desirable skill sets --- even with limited availability and performing remote work.<p>is this of interest? thoughts? | you have my attention. now, what's the pitch? | is this of interest?oh yeah, definitely.thoughts?want. now.seriously, i could see this being really useful if it works. i'd be very interested in giving it a try. |
microsoft code digger
| a similar tool exists for java, although it doesn't rely on symbolic execution (but iirc it is able to use it for integer constraints) but evolutionary test data generation [1]. there's a plugin for eclipse too.[1] : <link> | anyone know something similar for c/c++ or python ? |
microsoft code digger
| anyone know something similar for c/c++ or python ? | i tried it. doesn't usually work all that well though, and basically only works on built in .net types. if you pass in your own object containing only .net types, it's not smart enough to fill those in with potential test data. interesting idea, but i found it completely worthless |
microsoft code digger
| i tried it. doesn't usually work all that well though, and basically only works on built in .net types. if you pass in your own object containing only .net types, it's not smart enough to fill those in with potential test data. interesting idea, but i found it completely worthless | i'll prefix my question by saying i'm unfamiliar with qc beyond knowing of its existence and roughly what it does in terms of generating test values:am i misunderstanding, or is this akin to quickcheck for c#? |
microsoft code digger
| i'll prefix my question by saying i'm unfamiliar with qc beyond knowing of its existence and roughly what it does in terms of generating test values:am i misunderstanding, or is this akin to quickcheck for c#? | anything similar for javascript? |
gopro ipo on loyal3
| it's always seemed strange to me that ipos are not open to the public in the us. is it some kind of great depression legacy?here in finland ipos have been open since at least the '80s, or maybe always... in the original dot-com hype days of 1999, there would be long queues in front of banks as the "joe publics" wanted to put their money into it stocks that were mostly crap isps or web design consultancies. all those stocks crashed hard a year later, of course. (but then again, you wouldn't have been much better off investing in the "big and established winners" like nokia, which peaked at around 90€ and later traded at below 2€ in the darkest post-symbian days.) | interesting. from the loyal3 landing page: <link>;i love the amazon brand and service, and now i can invest in this brand whenever i have a spare $20 or $50." -jacob ortizand then on their "about us"we offer a technology platform where people can buy stock in their favorite brands in 3 easy steps, invest as little as $10 and pay no fees, really.by using ownership to bring brands together with the people who love them, the loyal3 platform deepens brand engagement and creates more valuable and loyal stakeholders.then the letter from the ceo: <link> what i read from this is that people can, for as little as $10, own a piece of any company, especially ones that "they love", and not-legally-speaking have to do zero financial diligence. i'm all for innovation, but that's scary. |
gopro ipo on loyal3
| interesting. from the loyal3 landing page: <link>;i love the amazon brand and service, and now i can invest in this brand whenever i have a spare $20 or $50." -jacob ortizand then on their "about us"we offer a technology platform where people can buy stock in their favorite brands in 3 easy steps, invest as little as $10 and pay no fees, really.by using ownership to bring brands together with the people who love them, the loyal3 platform deepens brand engagement and creates more valuable and loyal stakeholders.then the letter from the ceo: <link> what i read from this is that people can, for as little as $10, own a piece of any company, especially ones that "they love", and not-legally-speaking have to do zero financial diligence. i'm all for innovation, but that's scary. | this loyal3 looks interesting because of the ipos, credit card purchasing, and the no fees option.however i am wondering what happens if the company (loyal3) folds since it allows fractional shares? closest reference i found was this,"loyal3 securities, inc., as a broker-dealer, has to comply with certain regulations regarding the requirement to have adequate net capital and asset protection. loyal3 segregates your securities holdings and cash in your account, meaning it keeps your assets separate from the firm’s own assets. in addition, loyal3 securities, inc., is a member of sipc, which protects securities of the customers of its members up to $500,000 (including $250,000 for claims for cash). an explanatory brochure is available at www.sipc.org." |
gopro ipo on loyal3
| this loyal3 looks interesting because of the ipos, credit card purchasing, and the no fees option.however i am wondering what happens if the company (loyal3) folds since it allows fractional shares? closest reference i found was this,"loyal3 securities, inc., as a broker-dealer, has to comply with certain regulations regarding the requirement to have adequate net capital and asset protection. loyal3 segregates your securities holdings and cash in your account, meaning it keeps your assets separate from the firm’s own assets. in addition, loyal3 securities, inc., is a member of sipc, which protects securities of the customers of its members up to $500,000 (including $250,000 for claims for cash). an explanatory brochure is available at www.sipc.org." | knowing nothing at all about investing, this looks pretty awesome. i wish they could provide a global service, being outside of the us.what are the limitations of using a platform like this to buy shares and what would the limitations be on their side to be us only? |
gopro ipo on loyal3
| knowing nothing at all about investing, this looks pretty awesome. i wish they could provide a global service, being outside of the us.what are the limitations of using a platform like this to buy shares and what would the limitations be on their side to be us only? | this concept and platform seem like a great thing, but gopro's $3b valuation may be aggressive. |
attention, startups: move to new england. your gay employees will thank you.
| i think there ought to be a clear separation made between religious/cultural marriage (marriage1) and state-recognised unions (marriage2).then:the catholic church can allow itself only to marry1 heterosexual, undivorced1(and maybe 2 too?) couples.some weird cult (so long as no laws are broken) can marry1 several people together into one union.gay couples can marry2 regardless of what any religion or cultural group thinks, and can also marry1 in a liberal church, if they so wish.etc. etc.and the state can allow any two consenting (unmarried2) adults to marry2. and this doesn't mean much more than that they become each others' next-of-kin, they automatically inherit upon the death of the other, have certain housing / visiting in hospital rights etc.. so even, e.g. two pensioner friends with no family could marry2 for companionship and security (even if they are e.g. both female and heterosexual). | wouldn't it be better, long term, to stay in california and work towards changing cultural values so that gay marriage is no longer a controversial issue?i'm from massachusetts. i'm exceptionally proud that my state was the first to legalize gay marriage. but i'm worried that it'll just make us into an enclave while the rest of the country says, "oh, those crazy new englanders, it's just gays and hippie liberals up there. don't bother listening to a word they say."prop 8 failed by 5% of the electorate. if you could convince 5% of california voters that the sky does not fall when gay people get married, you could win rights for all 36 million of california's citizens. that's 6 times bigger than massachusetts, and close to 3 times bigger than the total population of new england. and it'd provide an example that's impossible to marginalize for the rest of the nation. |
attention, startups: move to new england. your gay employees will thank you.
| wouldn't it be better, long term, to stay in california and work towards changing cultural values so that gay marriage is no longer a controversial issue?i'm from massachusetts. i'm exceptionally proud that my state was the first to legalize gay marriage. but i'm worried that it'll just make us into an enclave while the rest of the country says, "oh, those crazy new englanders, it's just gays and hippie liberals up there. don't bother listening to a word they say."prop 8 failed by 5% of the electorate. if you could convince 5% of california voters that the sky does not fall when gay people get married, you could win rights for all 36 million of california's citizens. that's 6 times bigger than massachusetts, and close to 3 times bigger than the total population of new england. and it'd provide an example that's impossible to marginalize for the rest of the nation. | on a side note - prop 8 raises a very interesting constitutional question for california. the first initiative to ban gay marriage passed by a wide margin, then was struck down by the courts. the next initiative was framed as a constitutional amendment, and passed narrowly.if the initiative process can be used trivially in a "%50 + 1" way to deny civil rights to a minority group, then does california have a meaningful constitution? if an initiative appears to violate the constitution, and it's fairly trivial to get it on the ballot as an amendment to the constitution, then the notion that an initiative could be unconstitutional becomes meaningless, right?so i actually do hope that the courts strike this one down. partly because i'm opposed to prop 8, of course, but also because i don't want a state constitution that can be changed in such a meaningful way by a "fifty plus one" majority. |
attention, startups: move to new england. your gay employees will thank you.
| on a side note - prop 8 raises a very interesting constitutional question for california. the first initiative to ban gay marriage passed by a wide margin, then was struck down by the courts. the next initiative was framed as a constitutional amendment, and passed narrowly.if the initiative process can be used trivially in a "%50 + 1" way to deny civil rights to a minority group, then does california have a meaningful constitution? if an initiative appears to violate the constitution, and it's fairly trivial to get it on the ballot as an amendment to the constitution, then the notion that an initiative could be unconstitutional becomes meaningless, right?so i actually do hope that the courts strike this one down. partly because i'm opposed to prop 8, of course, but also because i don't want a state constitution that can be changed in such a meaningful way by a "fifty plus one" majority. | oh come on.i'm all for gay rights, but this article's premise is completely ridiculous. |
attention, startups: move to new england. your gay employees will thank you.
| oh come on.i'm all for gay rights, but this article's premise is completely ridiculous. | i was talking to my wife this morning about this discussion, and the notion that having one of each sex as parents being important. she's got (among other degrees and years of relevant experience) a masters in this from harvard.it turns out that the literature about child development finds that much more important than "one of each" parent is having multiple available adult figures around that a kid feels comfortable talking to.this is for at least three reasons:1. the kid can get multiple viewpoints.2. the kid, during adolescence goes through the process of distancing themselves from their parents and during that time needs other sources of adult guidance.3. the kid can compartmentalize what they talk to different adults about (one about sex, one about drugs, hopefully me about rock and roll.)lacking that, a kid will get information from other kids. that's a dangerous road. |
google chrome more popular than safari
| i've been a mactard for years and a big fan of safari, but chrome has become my default browser on my mac.chrome became the default on my pc at work as soon as i could get it installed a year ago.the beauty of chrome is its speed and elegance. omnibox for searches, the behaviour of tabs (remembering which tab spawned the subsequent one), and the ability to use icons only for the bookmarks bar are three things that safari doesn't do.the addition of extensions for the pc have cemented its position there, and when those services are added to the mac version life gets better.firefox does most of this, of course, but it looks and feels bloated and old on both platforms.i will forever love firefox for freeing us from microsoft's ie tyranny, but chrome is truly firing on all 8 cylinders these days, pun intended. | market share doesn't matter. what matters is person-hours of internet usage. chrome users are on the internet for hours every day. it's part of their job. ie users are on the computer maybe once a day at the end of the day to check their hotmail accounts. since i'm online much more, i'm worth much more to google, because as i search in the address bar i come across many google ads from my google search results. some of which i click on. |
google chrome more popular than safari
| market share doesn't matter. what matters is person-hours of internet usage. chrome users are on the internet for hours every day. it's part of their job. ie users are on the computer maybe once a day at the end of the day to check their hotmail accounts. since i'm online much more, i'm worth much more to google, because as i search in the address bar i come across many google ads from my google search results. some of which i click on. | chrome is the new firefox--the quickly moving upstart. a great thing as firefox is quickly losing its shine. |
google chrome more popular than safari
| chrome is the new firefox--the quickly moving upstart. a great thing as firefox is quickly losing its shine. | i can't see why anyone would stick with safari giving that chrome runs the same rendering engine, a faster js engine and extensions. |
google chrome more popular than safari
| i can't see why anyone would stick with safari giving that chrome runs the same rendering engine, a faster js engine and extensions. | it doesn't hurt that google has been pushing chrome via ads like crack. |
18 of the top 25 facebook games lost significant monthly active users
| excuse me while i weep for spammy games that litter my feed with massive amounts of pointless trivia, and pester me at every corner to invite my friends.if your traffic drops because an avenue of spam has been closed, perhaps you need to take a good long look in the mirror.which isn't to say that third party notifications weren't useful for legitimate purposes - they wouldn't have even existed otherwise - but it was a massively abused system and i'm glad the hole's been closed. | i only ever know about the first time one of my friends joins one. after that all is silence as i hide the spambots. |
18 of the top 25 facebook games lost significant monthly active users
| i only ever know about the first time one of my friends joins one. after that all is silence as i hide the spambots. | tangential: i wonder how well a game like nethack would work as a facebook game. the game could facebook broadcast if a player ascends, dies after passing a certain (hard to reach) milestone, gets a high score or achieves an account-first...i guess it probably would only appeal to whatever few people are into social media and are willing to play ascii games. but it would be nice to see a real game--not to mention an important, venerable one--show up in my newsfeed all the time, instead of farmville, mafia wars, that chef game with those obnoxious over-cute chibis... (yeah, i know you can block them, i'm just lazy...) |
18 of the top 25 facebook games lost significant monthly active users
| tangential: i wonder how well a game like nethack would work as a facebook game. the game could facebook broadcast if a player ascends, dies after passing a certain (hard to reach) milestone, gets a high score or achieves an account-first...i guess it probably would only appeal to whatever few people are into social media and are willing to play ascii games. but it would be nice to see a real game--not to mention an important, venerable one--show up in my newsfeed all the time, instead of farmville, mafia wars, that chef game with those obnoxious over-cute chibis... (yeah, i know you can block them, i'm just lazy...) | most sites lose traffic in summer. |
18 of the top 25 facebook games lost significant monthly active users
| most sites lose traffic in summer. | this is why you shouldn't base your business model on another companies platform. should they make a design change (or even decide to clone your functionality), your business could be significantly impacted.i'm sure facebook also sees the millions in revenue that 3rd party games are making on their site and are probably developing a soon to be released "facebook games"...it's business. |
webhost "peachy dandy" disappears... with my sites
peachy dandy [peachydandy.com], the web hosting service for two of my domains, ceased to be sometime on sunday 2011-02-13. nameserver domains unregistered, control panels inaccessible. no warnings, no email notifications, no refunds of prepaid [quarterly/annual] account balances. sales and support contacts unresponsive. owner refuses to acknowledge that he was ever affiliated with the company.<p>note that they appeared perfectly legitimate: reselling on behalf of a reputable firm [hawk host], offering a normal range of hosting plans from a few dollars a month to $80 or so. they had hosted these two domains for 18 months without any significant downtime, and had responded quickly to my (few) support tickets over that time period.<p>neither domain hosted mission-critical services, just a company blog and web-facing marketing material. the mx records pointed to another mailserver provider. therefore i had no automated monitoring pointed at either domain, and did not immediately realize that the servers had gone down. (my focus was elsewhere; i first found out when i casually attempted to login to wordpress later in the week.) as a consequence, i lost these web presences for days, and undoubtedly lost company email [as senders could not retrieve the mx records from the nonexistent nameservers].<p>tl;dr moral: monitor everything. what happens if one of your hosting vendors silently evaporates while you're focusing elsewhere? write out the entire chain of dependencies for your email domains, web domains, dns redirects, ip forwarding, etc. do this again every few months. if a host/service <i>really</i> isn't mission-critical and you therefore don't want to pay for third-party monitoring, at least setup cron jobs such that your hosts/domains cross-check each other at regular intervals. remember: your 1337 skill set is <i>useless</i> if you are not aware of priority issues. don't let what should be just an hour or two of email/www downtime balloon into a serious impact on your brand. | i work at hawk host - we restored a lot of the peachy dandy accounts so you might want to submit a ticket to our support department (<link> and we'll see if we can get you your stuff. | for monitoring, pingdom has a basic free account with uptime/response time monitoring and email notifications. if you host your nameservers and email (google apps?) elsewhere, losing a web host isn't quite so bad. i also unfortunately just went through this with my personal vps a few days ago, with hazenet disappearing off the face of the planet. |
webhost "peachy dandy" disappears... with my sites
peachy dandy [peachydandy.com], the web hosting service for two of my domains, ceased to be sometime on sunday 2011-02-13. nameserver domains unregistered, control panels inaccessible. no warnings, no email notifications, no refunds of prepaid [quarterly/annual] account balances. sales and support contacts unresponsive. owner refuses to acknowledge that he was ever affiliated with the company.<p>note that they appeared perfectly legitimate: reselling on behalf of a reputable firm [hawk host], offering a normal range of hosting plans from a few dollars a month to $80 or so. they had hosted these two domains for 18 months without any significant downtime, and had responded quickly to my (few) support tickets over that time period.<p>neither domain hosted mission-critical services, just a company blog and web-facing marketing material. the mx records pointed to another mailserver provider. therefore i had no automated monitoring pointed at either domain, and did not immediately realize that the servers had gone down. (my focus was elsewhere; i first found out when i casually attempted to login to wordpress later in the week.) as a consequence, i lost these web presences for days, and undoubtedly lost company email [as senders could not retrieve the mx records from the nonexistent nameservers].<p>tl;dr moral: monitor everything. what happens if one of your hosting vendors silently evaporates while you're focusing elsewhere? write out the entire chain of dependencies for your email domains, web domains, dns redirects, ip forwarding, etc. do this again every few months. if a host/service <i>really</i> isn't mission-critical and you therefore don't want to pay for third-party monitoring, at least setup cron jobs such that your hosts/domains cross-check each other at regular intervals. remember: your 1337 skill set is <i>useless</i> if you are not aware of priority issues. don't let what should be just an hour or two of email/www downtime balloon into a serious impact on your brand. | for monitoring, pingdom has a basic free account with uptime/response time monitoring and email notifications. if you host your nameservers and email (google apps?) elsewhere, losing a web host isn't quite so bad. i also unfortunately just went through this with my personal vps a few days ago, with hazenet disappearing off the face of the planet. | thank you for sharing - sorry that happened :( |
webhost "peachy dandy" disappears... with my sites
peachy dandy [peachydandy.com], the web hosting service for two of my domains, ceased to be sometime on sunday 2011-02-13. nameserver domains unregistered, control panels inaccessible. no warnings, no email notifications, no refunds of prepaid [quarterly/annual] account balances. sales and support contacts unresponsive. owner refuses to acknowledge that he was ever affiliated with the company.<p>note that they appeared perfectly legitimate: reselling on behalf of a reputable firm [hawk host], offering a normal range of hosting plans from a few dollars a month to $80 or so. they had hosted these two domains for 18 months without any significant downtime, and had responded quickly to my (few) support tickets over that time period.<p>neither domain hosted mission-critical services, just a company blog and web-facing marketing material. the mx records pointed to another mailserver provider. therefore i had no automated monitoring pointed at either domain, and did not immediately realize that the servers had gone down. (my focus was elsewhere; i first found out when i casually attempted to login to wordpress later in the week.) as a consequence, i lost these web presences for days, and undoubtedly lost company email [as senders could not retrieve the mx records from the nonexistent nameservers].<p>tl;dr moral: monitor everything. what happens if one of your hosting vendors silently evaporates while you're focusing elsewhere? write out the entire chain of dependencies for your email domains, web domains, dns redirects, ip forwarding, etc. do this again every few months. if a host/service <i>really</i> isn't mission-critical and you therefore don't want to pay for third-party monitoring, at least setup cron jobs such that your hosts/domains cross-check each other at regular intervals. remember: your 1337 skill set is <i>useless</i> if you are not aware of priority issues. don't let what should be just an hour or two of email/www downtime balloon into a serious impact on your brand. | thank you for sharing - sorry that happened :( | "peachy dandy" who?why not shop for one of the more well known and likely to stay in business web host?and "hawk host" is a reputable firm? who ever heard of them? |
webhost "peachy dandy" disappears... with my sites
peachy dandy [peachydandy.com], the web hosting service for two of my domains, ceased to be sometime on sunday 2011-02-13. nameserver domains unregistered, control panels inaccessible. no warnings, no email notifications, no refunds of prepaid [quarterly/annual] account balances. sales and support contacts unresponsive. owner refuses to acknowledge that he was ever affiliated with the company.<p>note that they appeared perfectly legitimate: reselling on behalf of a reputable firm [hawk host], offering a normal range of hosting plans from a few dollars a month to $80 or so. they had hosted these two domains for 18 months without any significant downtime, and had responded quickly to my (few) support tickets over that time period.<p>neither domain hosted mission-critical services, just a company blog and web-facing marketing material. the mx records pointed to another mailserver provider. therefore i had no automated monitoring pointed at either domain, and did not immediately realize that the servers had gone down. (my focus was elsewhere; i first found out when i casually attempted to login to wordpress later in the week.) as a consequence, i lost these web presences for days, and undoubtedly lost company email [as senders could not retrieve the mx records from the nonexistent nameservers].<p>tl;dr moral: monitor everything. what happens if one of your hosting vendors silently evaporates while you're focusing elsewhere? write out the entire chain of dependencies for your email domains, web domains, dns redirects, ip forwarding, etc. do this again every few months. if a host/service <i>really</i> isn't mission-critical and you therefore don't want to pay for third-party monitoring, at least setup cron jobs such that your hosts/domains cross-check each other at regular intervals. remember: your 1337 skill set is <i>useless</i> if you are not aware of priority issues. don't let what should be just an hour or two of email/www downtime balloon into a serious impact on your brand. | "peachy dandy" who?why not shop for one of the more well known and likely to stay in business web host?and "hawk host" is a reputable firm? who ever heard of them? | who trusts a hosting company called peachydandy.com?? |
david heinemeier hansson says, 'unlearn your mba'
| while i don't disagree with what he's saying, there is a nuance that isn't coming across that is pretty important:it's not just about entrepreneurship - every real business is steeped in stuff that just can't (or shouldn't be) taught in school. business school theory is meant to be general, and sometimes painfully high-level in its focus.but! that doesn't make the knowledge and experience of business school worthless or something that has to be "unlearned". a broad knowledge of business practice and theory is not a substitute for practical domain experience and knowledge. it is a great compliment, however.it seems trendy to dismiss mba's (the degrees, not the people) as worthless, or even worse, apologize for having one. the truth is far less sensational: it's a degree - nothing more, nothing less. as long as you keep an open mind, all knowledge is good. | dhh makes a few mistakes in his reasoning here. i have an mba and work for a successful yc startup. here are the flaws with his argument:1. mediocre business schools aren't worthwhile. and although school rankings are only an approximate quality measure, any school that isn't in the top 30 in the world or top 10 in the us is probably mediocre. he is basing his analysis on his experience at the university of copenhagen, which doesn't make most global rankings (<link>, <link>, <link>, doesn't crack the top 30 in europe (<link>, and doesn't actually offer an mba (<link> in addition, the 3 year program the dhh refers to is actually an undergraduate program (the mba is a graduate degree).2. internet businesses operate at large scale (if they are successful), and understanding large scale businesses operations requires quantitative analysis. working for a yc startup myself, i can attest that what i learned in business school is incredibly useful. my school (wharton), focused on quantitative analysis, and i came out of it with a set of tools that i use everyday. these include statistical analysis, quantitative model building, quant marketing tools, and financial analysis. of course you can learn these tools on your own, but you risk not knowing what tools are available to address the problems you face.3. in addition to tools, a good mba program will teach a general problem solving technique to systematically break down, analyze, and solve business problems. and it will teach you to effectively communicate your solutions to others (you boss, a client, a vc, whoever). some people are naturally good at this and don't need an mba to do it. but many need to be taught how to think in this manner.4. as another commenter pointed out, a lot of value from getting an mba comes from networking. however if you get an mba in one country (denmark) and then move to another continent, that network will be less useful.5. many of dhh's lessons about building a successful startup - including charging for your product, picking a competitor, and rejecting conventional thinking about starting a tech company - are exactly the type of things you learn while getting an mba. in fact, rather than learn specific lessons like these, you learn a framework for evaluating your business and market, and formulating the right way to structure your company.dhh does make a few good points, both explicit and implied:1. strategy frameworks like the porter's 5 forces (he incorrectly describes it as a management theory) aren't particularly useful for starting companies. although these frameworks can help to gut check if a startup is entering a good or bad market, they won't be at all useful in the day-to-day running of a company.2. based on my small sample set (of 1 school), i don't think business school is useful for learning how to build a product or be entrepreneurial. granted, some schools specialize in this and mine did not, so other schools may be useful in this regard (stanford gsb is known for entrepreneurship). |
david heinemeier hansson says, 'unlearn your mba'
| dhh makes a few mistakes in his reasoning here. i have an mba and work for a successful yc startup. here are the flaws with his argument:1. mediocre business schools aren't worthwhile. and although school rankings are only an approximate quality measure, any school that isn't in the top 30 in the world or top 10 in the us is probably mediocre. he is basing his analysis on his experience at the university of copenhagen, which doesn't make most global rankings (<link>, <link>, <link>, doesn't crack the top 30 in europe (<link>, and doesn't actually offer an mba (<link> in addition, the 3 year program the dhh refers to is actually an undergraduate program (the mba is a graduate degree).2. internet businesses operate at large scale (if they are successful), and understanding large scale businesses operations requires quantitative analysis. working for a yc startup myself, i can attest that what i learned in business school is incredibly useful. my school (wharton), focused on quantitative analysis, and i came out of it with a set of tools that i use everyday. these include statistical analysis, quantitative model building, quant marketing tools, and financial analysis. of course you can learn these tools on your own, but you risk not knowing what tools are available to address the problems you face.3. in addition to tools, a good mba program will teach a general problem solving technique to systematically break down, analyze, and solve business problems. and it will teach you to effectively communicate your solutions to others (you boss, a client, a vc, whoever). some people are naturally good at this and don't need an mba to do it. but many need to be taught how to think in this manner.4. as another commenter pointed out, a lot of value from getting an mba comes from networking. however if you get an mba in one country (denmark) and then move to another continent, that network will be less useful.5. many of dhh's lessons about building a successful startup - including charging for your product, picking a competitor, and rejecting conventional thinking about starting a tech company - are exactly the type of things you learn while getting an mba. in fact, rather than learn specific lessons like these, you learn a framework for evaluating your business and market, and formulating the right way to structure your company.dhh does make a few good points, both explicit and implied:1. strategy frameworks like the porter's 5 forces (he incorrectly describes it as a management theory) aren't particularly useful for starting companies. although these frameworks can help to gut check if a startup is entering a good or bad market, they won't be at all useful in the day-to-day running of a company.2. based on my small sample set (of 1 school), i don't think business school is useful for learning how to build a product or be entrepreneurial. granted, some schools specialize in this and mine did not, so other schools may be useful in this regard (stanford gsb is known for entrepreneurship). | while i have a lot of criticisms of the mba program i was in, i was lucky to get a few important lessons that i think are useful:1 - from my small business professor: don't think about it, just do it. if you overanalyze your idea, you'll never start your business.2 - guest speaker in advertising: the customer always gets what they deserve.3 - economics professor: most of the experts out there just read a couple more articles more than the next guy.4 - same economics professor: if you want to be rich, sail and ski. you'll make your best connections. (i don't do either, but i don't disagree with his assessment)5 - strategy classes: focus on what you're good at6 - final strategy study: learning how to work with people you want to fire but can'tof course, everyone gets different stuff out of their program - it seemed like everyone in my cohort wanted to be a product manager at proctor and gamble, but that's another story. |
david heinemeier hansson says, 'unlearn your mba'
| while i have a lot of criticisms of the mba program i was in, i was lucky to get a few important lessons that i think are useful:1 - from my small business professor: don't think about it, just do it. if you overanalyze your idea, you'll never start your business.2 - guest speaker in advertising: the customer always gets what they deserve.3 - economics professor: most of the experts out there just read a couple more articles more than the next guy.4 - same economics professor: if you want to be rich, sail and ski. you'll make your best connections. (i don't do either, but i don't disagree with his assessment)5 - strategy classes: focus on what you're good at6 - final strategy study: learning how to work with people you want to fire but can'tof course, everyone gets different stuff out of their program - it seemed like everyone in my cohort wanted to be a product manager at proctor and gamble, but that's another story. | i think a lot of the problem comes down to mba students who have zero critical thinking or problem solving ability. i see it all the time in my program - students take everything they learn verbatim and act like it is gospel. in reality, they should always be questioning what they are learning, thinking about how it might apply in the real world, and what the benefits/consequences are. for example, my entrepreneurship class is making us write a business plan with the sole intention of gaining funding. that's nice - but at the same time i'm using it as an exercise to also see what the plan would look like as a lifestyle or small (37signals-ish) business.secondly, mba programs are just now beginning to (somewhat) teach that pure profit maximization is not the only goal of a business. it will take a while for this to catch on, and not all mba students are going to adopt this way of thinking, but there are some of us out there who do. this is happening with both social ventures and sustainability-focused businesses. |
david heinemeier hansson says, 'unlearn your mba'
| i think a lot of the problem comes down to mba students who have zero critical thinking or problem solving ability. i see it all the time in my program - students take everything they learn verbatim and act like it is gospel. in reality, they should always be questioning what they are learning, thinking about how it might apply in the real world, and what the benefits/consequences are. for example, my entrepreneurship class is making us write a business plan with the sole intention of gaining funding. that's nice - but at the same time i'm using it as an exercise to also see what the plan would look like as a lifestyle or small (37signals-ish) business.secondly, mba programs are just now beginning to (somewhat) teach that pure profit maximization is not the only goal of a business. it will take a while for this to catch on, and not all mba students are going to adopt this way of thinking, but there are some of us out there who do. this is happening with both social ventures and sustainability-focused businesses. | most schools do a terrible job at teaching entrepreneurs and future small business owners. mba programs are meant to prepare students for mid-level positions in big companies that already have a set plan.if you want to run a startup, you definitely need to unlearn your mba. |
speed dating for hackers
| i thought this was actually going to be, you know, speed dating for hackers. | this is nice, but their whole "darwinian evolution" concept is flawed. evolution works by finding the most stable configuration relative to environmental constraints. the constraints they are imposing here are fake.in other words, they need to put "the market" into their iterative cycle. |
speed dating for hackers
| this is nice, but their whole "darwinian evolution" concept is flawed. evolution works by finding the most stable configuration relative to environmental constraints. the constraints they are imposing here are fake.in other words, they need to put "the market" into their iterative cycle. | this seriously could not have come at a better time. i'm in la and just started getting into the community. there are some hack labs around the city as well, but nothing specifically like this that i'm aware of. massive props to steveeq1 for the link. |
speed dating for hackers
| this seriously could not have come at a better time. i'm in la and just started getting into the community. there are some hack labs around the city as well, but nothing specifically like this that i'm aware of. massive props to steveeq1 for the link. | perhaps we can consolidate this discussion with the earlier one:
<link> |
speed dating for hackers
| perhaps we can consolidate this discussion with the earlier one:
<link> | sounds identical to startupweekend |
what’s really so bad about bubble sort?
| since this is the third recent item on hn featuring the impact of branch prediction on code performance, let's make sure we keep our heads on straight: a good algorithm will outperform a bad algorithm that's tuned for branch prediction.quicksort infamously abuses branch prediction, yet is still the standard against which all other sorting algorithms are compared. some work is being done to improve quicksort's branch prediction performance [1], but that's mostly focusing on choosing better pivots.a perfect sorting algorithm, something like a very large sorting network, will necessarily make any processor's branch predictor give up and go home -- and that'll still be faster to execute than a naive algorithm tuned for branch prediction.[1]: <link> | honestly, bubble sort isn't that bad.couple years ago i had a fairly simple program which collected some data into a linked list and displayed it at the end. it took about 2 seconds to load and process the data from disk. i realized it might be neat to optionally sort the output. since i didn't feel like doing serious work, i just added a bubble sort to my linked list which took a comparison function and then bubble-sorted by pointer swapping.guess what time it added? less than a 10th of a second. completely negligible. it saved me a few hours (as writing bubble sort for a linked list takes maybe 5 minutes and has no chance of complicated bugs) and i doubt anyone will ever notice any slowdown.so what's the lesson? little performance tweaks hardly matter in the average program nowadays because everything's disk or network bound (io bound). for the average program it's not worth writing more complex code that will be quicker (once you fix the hard-to-see bugs) until you actually know the slowness is an issue. |
what’s really so bad about bubble sort?
| honestly, bubble sort isn't that bad.couple years ago i had a fairly simple program which collected some data into a linked list and displayed it at the end. it took about 2 seconds to load and process the data from disk. i realized it might be neat to optionally sort the output. since i didn't feel like doing serious work, i just added a bubble sort to my linked list which took a comparison function and then bubble-sorted by pointer swapping.guess what time it added? less than a 10th of a second. completely negligible. it saved me a few hours (as writing bubble sort for a linked list takes maybe 5 minutes and has no chance of complicated bugs) and i doubt anyone will ever notice any slowdown.so what's the lesson? little performance tweaks hardly matter in the average program nowadays because everything's disk or network bound (io bound). for the average program it's not worth writing more complex code that will be quicker (once you fix the hard-to-see bugs) until you actually know the slowness is an issue. | excellent post complimenting:<link> has been posted many times before - however, applying it to bubble sort, which we all know well, is really interesting.thanks for sharing! |
what’s really so bad about bubble sort?
| excellent post complimenting:<link> has been posted many times before - however, applying it to bubble sort, which we all know well, is really interesting.thanks for sharing! | my theory about bubble sort is that a lot of people remembers it just because the name is so damn cute. you can't say bubble without smiling. so i say that we should rename quick sort to something a bit nicer, something first year comp sci students can remember instead of bubble sort. and, for good measure, bubble sort should be "terrible sort" or something like that. |
what’s really so bad about bubble sort?
| my theory about bubble sort is that a lot of people remembers it just because the name is so damn cute. you can't say bubble without smiling. so i say that we should rename quick sort to something a bit nicer, something first year comp sci students can remember instead of bubble sort. and, for good measure, bubble sort should be "terrible sort" or something like that. | who actually uses bubble sort except as a class assignment? the whole advantage to the algorithm is it's easy to understand and implement. you learn that one first and then you move on to more practical stuff.in commercial programming it's pretty rare to run across a situation where writing your own sorting routine makes sense. |
mruby – ruby in your browser
| since this project depends on webruby and webruby uses emscripten, it could get close to 2x native performance in browser(only firefox nightly) because of the awesome asm.js support.i am a big supporter of asm.js after reading john resig's post on it(<link> | nice to see! some things are working very well: 22 class fixnum; def even?; self%2==0; end; end;
22 (1..100).to_a.select{|i| i.even? }
but some basic things are broken: 22 n = 5
=2 5
22 n
=2 runtimeerror: arena overflow error |
mruby – ruby in your browser
| nice to see! some things are working very well: 22 class fixnum; def even?; self%2==0; end; end;
22 (1..100).to_a.select{|i| i.even? }
but some basic things are broken: 22 n = 5
=2 5
22 n
=2 runtimeerror: arena overflow error | very cool. we wrote a post about different techniques to getting ruby in the browser on our blog: <link> (mruby.js) was one of the options we considered but ultimately didn't use. |
mruby – ruby in your browser
| very cool. we wrote a post about different techniques to getting ruby in the browser on our blog: <link> (mruby.js) was one of the options we considered but ultimately didn't use. | i was at a talk on mruby at a recent conference. it's some interesting stuff: the program size footprint is only something like 40k , and memory usage is around the same when running. it was initially meant for embedded systems, but seeing it here is also an interesting use case. |
mruby – ruby in your browser
| i was at a talk on mruby at a recent conference. it's some interesting stuff: the program size footprint is only something like 40k , and memory usage is around the same when running. it was initially meant for embedded systems, but seeing it here is also an interesting use case. | cool! when i read the title i immediately thought - it must be done via emscripten, and it turned out that i was right :) |
what do blind people actually see?
| as someone who has been blind since birth this is accurate. i know that people who go blind later in life continue to dream in color since they have the memory of color to reference while i do not. i wonder if someone who goes blind later in life experiences things differently, possibly by automatically filling in what they assume they would see based on what they know of there surroundings from there other sences. | first of all, be aware that the group that's actually totally blind is relatively small. most people who are legally blind have some form of light perception, or can see something. i've been totally blind since birth.blind people can have a good or bad sense of direction, just like their sighted peers. i think the device described in the article might be more useful on short distances and less relevant for knowing where your home is while you're far away from it. this because blind people don't have the visual queues to determine if they're walking in a straight line for example. getting immediate feedback could help with such skills and learn them how to verify the signals from the device with other senses.sensory substitution, aka how to replace input from one sense with input from another is a quite interesting topic. |
what do blind people actually see?
| first of all, be aware that the group that's actually totally blind is relatively small. most people who are legally blind have some form of light perception, or can see something. i've been totally blind since birth.blind people can have a good or bad sense of direction, just like their sighted peers. i think the device described in the article might be more useful on short distances and less relevant for knowing where your home is while you're far away from it. this because blind people don't have the visual queues to determine if they're walking in a straight line for example. getting immediate feedback could help with such skills and learn them how to verify the signals from the device with other senses.sensory substitution, aka how to replace input from one sense with input from another is a quite interesting topic. | a great article. i recently visited the "blind exhibition" in warsaw. they show you some items that blind and visually impaired people use on a daily basis and then you have to guess what they are for. i'd never contemplated how blind people know when a coffee cup is full, or pair their socks.they then take you into a series of rooms (bathroom, the street, art gallery, kitchen etc.) which are completely black. not a shred of light. you are blind. i can't describe how it felt other than terrifying. i didn't know if my eyes were open or not. it wasn't the black that i saw when closing my eyes, or am sleeping in a dark room. it was this empty hollow of nothingness.as someone who has always wondered what it's like to be blind then closed my eyes for a few minutes and stumbled around my home - it's nothing like that at all. i left having found a new sense of understanding for the struggles that blind and visually impaired people go through on a daily basis.an interesting but harrowing statistic they mentioned at the end of our trip was that the majority of people go blind, instead of are born blind. and the main cause is diabetes. it's not uncommon that those with diabetes lose their sight and then their sense of touch. imagine not being able to feel your way around after going blind.i highly recommend the exhibition if you're ever in warsaw, and i think they have it in a couple of other cities:
<link> |
what do blind people actually see?
| a great article. i recently visited the "blind exhibition" in warsaw. they show you some items that blind and visually impaired people use on a daily basis and then you have to guess what they are for. i'd never contemplated how blind people know when a coffee cup is full, or pair their socks.they then take you into a series of rooms (bathroom, the street, art gallery, kitchen etc.) which are completely black. not a shred of light. you are blind. i can't describe how it felt other than terrifying. i didn't know if my eyes were open or not. it wasn't the black that i saw when closing my eyes, or am sleeping in a dark room. it was this empty hollow of nothingness.as someone who has always wondered what it's like to be blind then closed my eyes for a few minutes and stumbled around my home - it's nothing like that at all. i left having found a new sense of understanding for the struggles that blind and visually impaired people go through on a daily basis.an interesting but harrowing statistic they mentioned at the end of our trip was that the majority of people go blind, instead of are born blind. and the main cause is diabetes. it's not uncommon that those with diabetes lose their sight and then their sense of touch. imagine not being able to feel your way around after going blind.i highly recommend the exhibition if you're ever in warsaw, and i think they have it in a couple of other cities:
<link> | a very interesting take on the perceptions of blind people. i don't think i am acquainted with anyone who has been entirely blind from birth (which is a rare condition of life). i know a professor of psychology (who indeed does much of his research on human visual perception)[1] who has very limited vision, and thus is "legally blind." he began life, i think, with a bit more vision than he has now, but has long been visually disabled. in a personal conversation, he related that his originally intended research field was astrophysics, which of course can be studied by analyzing instrument readings from radio telescopes and other devices that don't necessarily have visual outputs. my wife is his piano teacher, and she has had to adapt her teaching to her first student who cannot read a printed musical score.a much younger person i know who has very limited vision (and the prospect of declining vision as she grows up) attends summer mathematics programs with children running around playing soccer and frisbee and seems to handle that with aplomb. to not even be able to recognize shapes or moving human beings, something that the blind people i know best are still able to do, would be especially challenging.aside: have you all noticed that people who have acquired profound deafness that begins in adulthood have much less understandable speech than people with normal hearing? apparently we all rely on feedback from our own senses to keep our speech behavior within the phonologically normal range of whatever language we speak as a native language, and habit alone can't maintain the fine tolerances necessary for readily understandable speech.after edit: of course anyone can experience total lack of sight simply by going into a totally unlighted place. the human eye doesn't emit vision rays, after all (even though the ancient greeks seemed to think otherwise), so if you are where there is no light, you see nothing with your eyes.[2] studies on the human diurnal behavior cycle are sometimes done in deep caves with no source of artificial light.[1] <link>[2] <link> |
what do blind people actually see?
| a very interesting take on the perceptions of blind people. i don't think i am acquainted with anyone who has been entirely blind from birth (which is a rare condition of life). i know a professor of psychology (who indeed does much of his research on human visual perception)[1] who has very limited vision, and thus is "legally blind." he began life, i think, with a bit more vision than he has now, but has long been visually disabled. in a personal conversation, he related that his originally intended research field was astrophysics, which of course can be studied by analyzing instrument readings from radio telescopes and other devices that don't necessarily have visual outputs. my wife is his piano teacher, and she has had to adapt her teaching to her first student who cannot read a printed musical score.a much younger person i know who has very limited vision (and the prospect of declining vision as she grows up) attends summer mathematics programs with children running around playing soccer and frisbee and seems to handle that with aplomb. to not even be able to recognize shapes or moving human beings, something that the blind people i know best are still able to do, would be especially challenging.aside: have you all noticed that people who have acquired profound deafness that begins in adulthood have much less understandable speech than people with normal hearing? apparently we all rely on feedback from our own senses to keep our speech behavior within the phonologically normal range of whatever language we speak as a native language, and habit alone can't maintain the fine tolerances necessary for readily understandable speech.after edit: of course anyone can experience total lack of sight simply by going into a totally unlighted place. the human eye doesn't emit vision rays, after all (even though the ancient greeks seemed to think otherwise), so if you are where there is no light, you see nothing with your eyes.[2] studies on the human diurnal behavior cycle are sometimes done in deep caves with no source of artificial light.[1] <link>[2] <link> | i still want that vibrating compass belt. |
apple must publish notice samsung didn’t copy ipad in u.k.
| this is not a disjunctive syllogism.if apple could not prove that samsung copied them, it does not follow that samsung didn't copy them, just as if california couldn't prove that oj did it, it doesn't follow that he didn't do it.this ruling, that apple has to affirm something equally unproven, is bizarre. | wasn't the original ruling basically saying, "it's not a copy of the ipad because it's not as cool"? you know if apple really does have to put this notice on their website, they'll probably find a way to work that into the announcement. |
apple must publish notice samsung didn’t copy ipad in u.k.
| wasn't the original ruling basically saying, "it's not a copy of the ipad because it's not as cool"? you know if apple really does have to put this notice on their website, they'll probably find a way to work that into the announcement. | sounds fair, considering.apple's suit damaged samsung, so this seems to me like fair payback. |
apple must publish notice samsung didn’t copy ipad in u.k.
| sounds fair, considering.apple's suit damaged samsung, so this seems to me like fair payback. | this is very good because it will make companies think twice before going to court. |
apple must publish notice samsung didn’t copy ipad in u.k.
| this is very good because it will make companies think twice before going to court. | this reminds of a kid who got totally destroyed in a fight: both eyes are swollen and black, his nose is broken and bleeding, he can barely talk through his swollen lip, and he has a chipped tooth. then the teacher tells the other guy to apologize and shake your hand. you walk away thinking, "i showed him ..." |
general purpose programming languages' speed of light
| this "magellanic view" of programming language exploration doesn't seem quite right. programming language design is mostly not about finding virgin territory by inventing brand new ideas (which was admittedly easier in the era when high-level languages were brand new – i.e. in the 1950s). rather, it's mostly about finding unexplored folds hidden nearby in the vast, combinatorial manifold of ways to combine existing ideas in a single, coherent language. in my experience, people who have spent a lot of time designing languages are the most sympathetic to people trying new permutations – precisely because they are so painfully aware of all the awful compromises they were forced to make in their own designs and their understanding that much better ways of combining those features might be so tantalizingly close.scala is a great example: the innovation of the language is not so much in new language features, but rather in its ingenious combination of so many powerful features into a single, coherent system. of course, some may argue that scala has too many features (i'm a bit terrified of it), but it's indisputable that putting all those pieces together in a way that works is tour de force of language design. | am i the only one who sees no clothes on this article?i mean, it seems that the person who wrote it spends a lot of time thinking about programming and much less time programming; that's where he ends up with meta-ideas that are interesting but also mostly wrong.languages are substantially different. you don't (and can't) understand every concept under the hood to drive the thing. you can't add and substract features, they're interdependent. |
general purpose programming languages' speed of light
| am i the only one who sees no clothes on this article?i mean, it seems that the person who wrote it spends a lot of time thinking about programming and much less time programming; that's where he ends up with meta-ideas that are interesting but also mostly wrong.languages are substantially different. you don't (and can't) understand every concept under the hood to drive the thing. you can't add and substract features, they're interdependent. | a bit off topic, but i've been learning about languages like ml and scala, and what does everybody have against static typing?
i feel like if we used type systems better, we'd have a lot fewer problems. you can prove that your programs have no bugs! that's much stronger than unit testing.when thinking 'static types', does everybody just think c/c++/java?
is it upfront costs? my first ml program, i took half an hour to write a function that output all the words in a trie. it gets easier, and more interesting afterward, but i might have given up had it not been for a class.
are static types too rigid for prototyping? scala, haskell and ocaml have repls.some of the "experimental features of static type systems" like dependent types are really powerful; you can make some strong proofs about the logic of your program. i'd be willing to give up (or at least try going without) duck typing for that. |
general purpose programming languages' speed of light
| a bit off topic, but i've been learning about languages like ml and scala, and what does everybody have against static typing?
i feel like if we used type systems better, we'd have a lot fewer problems. you can prove that your programs have no bugs! that's much stronger than unit testing.when thinking 'static types', does everybody just think c/c++/java?
is it upfront costs? my first ml program, i took half an hour to write a function that output all the words in a trie. it gets easier, and more interesting afterward, but i might have given up had it not been for a class.
are static types too rigid for prototyping? scala, haskell and ocaml have repls.some of the "experimental features of static type systems" like dependent types are really powerful; you can make some strong proofs about the logic of your program. i'd be willing to give up (or at least try going without) duck typing for that. | interesting concept, but the flaw at the heart is the presupposition that lack of progress right now means we are at the ultimate limit of what can be accomplished. imagine if cavemen learning to paint on walls said, well we haven't improved in a few millennia, so this is probably the most complex thing that can be represented by drawings. or what about math stopping with euclid? it was thousands of years later that progress happened.technology comes in fits and starts. a lot of new things happened in the 50s and 60s, we are still trying to figure out ways to use and apply them. just because someone thought about and prototyped something then doesn't mean it's not new when that feature goes mainstream (e.g. garbage collection in java, channels for concurrency in go, etc).for a long time we couldn't break the sound barrier, which is a limit, but not the speed of light limit. because progress is stalled now doesn't mean there will never be progress in the future. |
general purpose programming languages' speed of light
| interesting concept, but the flaw at the heart is the presupposition that lack of progress right now means we are at the ultimate limit of what can be accomplished. imagine if cavemen learning to paint on walls said, well we haven't improved in a few millennia, so this is probably the most complex thing that can be represented by drawings. or what about math stopping with euclid? it was thousands of years later that progress happened.technology comes in fits and starts. a lot of new things happened in the 50s and 60s, we are still trying to figure out ways to use and apply them. just because someone thought about and prototyped something then doesn't mean it's not new when that feature goes mainstream (e.g. garbage collection in java, channels for concurrency in go, etc).for a long time we couldn't break the sound barrier, which is a limit, but not the speed of light limit. because progress is stalled now doesn't mean there will never be progress in the future. | but when our hypothetical blub programmer looks in the other direction, up the power continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up. what he sees are merely weird languages. he probably considers them about equivalent in power to blub, but with all this other hairy stuff thrown in as well. blub is good enough for him, because he thinks in blub.<link> |
tell hn: namecheap stores unecrypted passwords + let's sales staff see them
saw this on another forum, so i though you guys might want the heads up. | looks like a namecheap representative previously addressed this rumor:-------------------hello all,rest assured, passwords are encrypted. we do have one-way password hashes for certain combination to make it possible for cs to validate the authenticity of the customer. the support representative is not shown the full password.to make it even more secure, we too have plans to implement an option to specify a 'support security code' that can be provided for communication with cs instead.thanks,
mohannamecheap.com<link>8pos... | do you have any proof of this other than seeing it on a forum?it is like i heard from a friend who knows someone who's father works there kind of thing without evidence. |
tell hn: namecheap stores unecrypted passwords + let's sales staff see them
saw this on another forum, so i though you guys might want the heads up. | do you have any proof of this other than seeing it on a forum?it is like i heard from a friend who knows someone who's father works there kind of thing without evidence. | that is annoying, and is a bad security practice, but not the end of the world as a customer. it's actually slightly less horrifying at namecheap, because as your registrar you should be using crazy good passwords anyways, which means they're never re-used.three recommendations:* head /dev/random | md5 # very annoying to type, though* ruby -e 'puts rand(100128).to_s(32)' # less annoying to type* keychain access password helper at "memorable, 31 long"note that fedex has the same bad behavior.the real risk here is to namecheap, who is utterly exposed in the event of a database leak. if they're keeping online plaintext passwords, they'll have nothing to say to mitigate the catastrophic damage of giving up many of their customer's most sensitive credentials. |
tell hn: namecheap stores unecrypted passwords + let's sales staff see them
saw this on another forum, so i though you guys might want the heads up. | that is annoying, and is a bad security practice, but not the end of the world as a customer. it's actually slightly less horrifying at namecheap, because as your registrar you should be using crazy good passwords anyways, which means they're never re-used.three recommendations:* head /dev/random | md5 # very annoying to type, though* ruby -e 'puts rand(100128).to_s(32)' # less annoying to type* keychain access password helper at "memorable, 31 long"note that fedex has the same bad behavior.the real risk here is to namecheap, who is utterly exposed in the event of a database leak. if they're keeping online plaintext passwords, they'll have nothing to say to mitigate the catastrophic damage of giving up many of their customer's most sensitive credentials. | while we're on the subject: what domain registrar would you recommend instead of namecheap? |
tell hn: namecheap stores unecrypted passwords + let's sales staff see them
saw this on another forum, so i though you guys might want the heads up. | while we're on the subject: what domain registrar would you recommend instead of namecheap? | you cannot say for certain that they don't encrypt passwords. they could use a 2-way hash. |
improve developer habits by showing time cost of db queries
| love things like this.here's a screenshot expanded version of our staff bar on github.com:<link> of those numbers are clickable. the graphs button on the left links to a flame graph (<link> ruby calls of the page. the microscope button is a sorted listing of cpu time and idle time by file that went into the page's render. the template number links to a timing breakdown of all the partials that went into the view. the sql timing links to a breakdown of mysql queries for that page, calling out n+1 queries, slow queries, or otherwise horrible database decisions. depending on the page, we'll also have numbers for duration and queries spent in redis, elasticsearch, and gitrpc.our main github.com stuff is pretty tied into our stack, but one of our employees, garrett bjerkhoel, extracted a lot of this into peek, a very similar implementation of what we have on github. we use peek in a ton of our smaller apps around the company. here's the org: <link> | i recently developed a profiler for my company's web application. it uses dynamic introspection to profile (nearly) all function calls on the server side. it automatically picks up any sql queries and profiles them as well. it's all packaged up in a web interface which can be invoked on any page on the site. you can see the exact queries, sort functions by time or number of calls, etc. it also shows a full reconstruction of the call tree, with individual branches expandable and collapsible.it was a lot of fun to write and has been just as fun to use. we've found a number of simple changes that led to big performance gains on some of the pages. |
improve developer habits by showing time cost of db queries
| i recently developed a profiler for my company's web application. it uses dynamic introspection to profile (nearly) all function calls on the server side. it automatically picks up any sql queries and profiles them as well. it's all packaged up in a web interface which can be invoked on any page on the site. you can see the exact queries, sort functions by time or number of calls, etc. it also shows a full reconstruction of the call tree, with individual branches expandable and collapsible.it was a lot of fun to write and has been just as fun to use. we've found a number of simple changes that led to big performance gains on some of the pages. | as much as people like to make fun of php, symfony2 has the best development toolbar i've ever seen, with the previous winner from symfony1. |
improve developer habits by showing time cost of db queries
| as much as people like to make fun of php, symfony2 has the best development toolbar i've ever seen, with the previous winner from symfony1. | sometimes what bothers me is i sometimes have no idea if a query is slow or not. this holds more true since i've been developing on rails with postgres. with mysql it seems the bottleneck queries seem a lot more exponentially progressively degrading in correlation to the amount of records in a set.
with postgres this seems to be a lot more linear.i have just made some crafty work in rails to make use of hstore datatypes in rails. it stores an array of hashes, which i have not found a way to index the keys of yet.is this slow or fast for example?
i'm doing a full-text search over all unnested (hstore) array values over a given column in a table wih 35k records. development=# select "leads".* from "leads" where ( exists ( select * from (select svals(unnest("address"))) x(item) where x.item like '%mst%') );
time: 57.257 msi'm used to mysql, and this kind of query over unindexed records seems fast, but it also seems this might be slow for postgres standards ?:/
bear in mind.. no indices. |
improve developer habits by showing time cost of db queries
| sometimes what bothers me is i sometimes have no idea if a query is slow or not. this holds more true since i've been developing on rails with postgres. with mysql it seems the bottleneck queries seem a lot more exponentially progressively degrading in correlation to the amount of records in a set.
with postgres this seems to be a lot more linear.i have just made some crafty work in rails to make use of hstore datatypes in rails. it stores an array of hashes, which i have not found a way to index the keys of yet.is this slow or fast for example?
i'm doing a full-text search over all unnested (hstore) array values over a given column in a table wih 35k records. development=# select "leads".* from "leads" where ( exists ( select * from (select svals(unnest("address"))) x(item) where x.item like '%mst%') );
time: 57.257 msi'm used to mysql, and this kind of query over unindexed records seems fast, but it also seems this might be slow for postgres standards ?:/
bear in mind.. no indices. | great tip! for rails devs, i strongly recommend rack-mini-profiler [0]. it gives you an in-browser view of rendering time (which you can expand to break out by partial) with query time listed for each query. each query also includes a stacktrace to make it easy to fix offensive queries. great for identifying n+1 query bugs as well. there's a railscast for it, too [1].[0] <link>[1] <link> |
ask hn: building an app to make real-world conversations searchable. want it?
we’re working on retrospect (<link>, an app that sits in the background and intelligently records location and audio from your day-to-day interaction with the world. it lets you access your real-world conversations just like you might search your email. look for things like “conversations with sarah at starbucks” or “baseball games i’ve gone to with my dad”, then play back the recorded moment.<p>we’re launching sign-ups for our free beta starting today if you’d like to try it out.<p>what do you think? would you use something like this? | it sounds like you are using speech-to-text and nlp algorithms to make audio recordings keyword searchable.frankly, the consumer use cases for this are creepy. if this were a thing, and my friend or family member were recording all our conversations, i would ask them to turn it off or leave.but i think you should market this to law enforcement, law firms, and possibly business executives. it would be very useful in these spaces to have searchable audio transcripts of court hearings, testimonies, depositions, interrogations, confessions, as well as board meetings, keynote presentations, etc. maybe also useful for journalists and academic researchers who do a lot of recorded interviews.if your speech-to-text performance is really good, it could also replace stenography in closed-captioning. (yeah that's still how closed captioning works for live tv--someone listens and pecks away at a stenotype.)basically, sell it any place where a stenographer is currently employed, or where people currently use audio recorders. don't try to get people to record audio of their entire lives for sentimental value, though, that isn't a realistic use case. most people's lives are mundane and we know it. we don't need a searchable, chronological index of every time we curse or fart. | want it? with extreme emphasis: oh hell no!i'm so annoyed by this project. imagine the kind of chilling effect this would have on daily interactions if you knew everything you said was being recorded. it has a chilling effect even if it's you that's recording your own interactions! if i found out someone was surreptitiously recording my casual conversations i'd just never talk to them again, except to chew them out for doing such a shitty thing. also, if someone asked me whether it's ok to hit record in a social setting, i'd look at them sideways and not only decline, but would instantly stop trusting them and cut them out of my life as a consequence.i rarely want people to fail, but i really, really want this privacy-busting, surveillance project to fail miserably. we're surveilled enough as it is without intelligent people contributing to these garbage projects.ted, will, and george: work on something that benefits humanity rather than chills the frankness of interpersonal interactions. the potential consequences of this project are awful. |
ask hn: building an app to make real-world conversations searchable. want it?
we’re working on retrospect (<link>, an app that sits in the background and intelligently records location and audio from your day-to-day interaction with the world. it lets you access your real-world conversations just like you might search your email. look for things like “conversations with sarah at starbucks” or “baseball games i’ve gone to with my dad”, then play back the recorded moment.<p>we’re launching sign-ups for our free beta starting today if you’d like to try it out.<p>what do you think? would you use something like this? | want it? with extreme emphasis: oh hell no!i'm so annoyed by this project. imagine the kind of chilling effect this would have on daily interactions if you knew everything you said was being recorded. it has a chilling effect even if it's you that's recording your own interactions! if i found out someone was surreptitiously recording my casual conversations i'd just never talk to them again, except to chew them out for doing such a shitty thing. also, if someone asked me whether it's ok to hit record in a social setting, i'd look at them sideways and not only decline, but would instantly stop trusting them and cut them out of my life as a consequence.i rarely want people to fail, but i really, really want this privacy-busting, surveillance project to fail miserably. we're surveilled enough as it is without intelligent people contributing to these garbage projects.ted, will, and george: work on something that benefits humanity rather than chills the frankness of interpersonal interactions. the potential consequences of this project are awful. | i'd use it.
if it weren't hosted.
and if it was open source.
otherwise, i just can't bring myself to trust it.the concept is a goldmine. you need to convince potential users of its security an privacy protection, should there be any. if there isn't any, your product is a ticking time bomb. |
ask hn: building an app to make real-world conversations searchable. want it?
we’re working on retrospect (<link>, an app that sits in the background and intelligently records location and audio from your day-to-day interaction with the world. it lets you access your real-world conversations just like you might search your email. look for things like “conversations with sarah at starbucks” or “baseball games i’ve gone to with my dad”, then play back the recorded moment.<p>we’re launching sign-ups for our free beta starting today if you’d like to try it out.<p>what do you think? would you use something like this? | i'd use it.
if it weren't hosted.
and if it was open source.
otherwise, i just can't bring myself to trust it.the concept is a goldmine. you need to convince potential users of its security an privacy protection, should there be any. if there isn't any, your product is a ticking time bomb. | amazing idea, now imagine this with google glass. it would be just like in the third episode of black mirror. |
ask hn: building an app to make real-world conversations searchable. want it?
we’re working on retrospect (<link>, an app that sits in the background and intelligently records location and audio from your day-to-day interaction with the world. it lets you access your real-world conversations just like you might search your email. look for things like “conversations with sarah at starbucks” or “baseball games i’ve gone to with my dad”, then play back the recorded moment.<p>we’re launching sign-ups for our free beta starting today if you’d like to try it out.<p>what do you think? would you use something like this? | amazing idea, now imagine this with google glass. it would be just like in the third episode of black mirror. | i was thinking about this a few years back, when i was working on firmware for pre-smart-phones. probably something to do with getting old and forgetful :)the trouble with audio - as everyone has pointed out - is the privacy and storage issues. what i would be interested in is some way of producing a condensed "markup" of your day, easily searchable using a voice assistant. it would record the basic facts but not the verbatim conversations.when i first thought of this in any depth it was still unfeasible, but now i think much of it is already there. still, a big project. maybe smaller, niche versions for particular tasks would have to come first? |
my year as an amateur android game developer
| i have every wish for success of this and every other business, but in the spirit of helping other impressionable developers, making a business is hard enough without making video games.how do i love games and hate games businesses, let me count the ways. user expectations are pegged by aaa games, whose budgets you cannot possibly match. those aaa products set a price point at $dirt_cheap. (angry birds costs what?) your core users are thieves. when you fail at marketing on day one, which you will because everyone does, in any normal business you get progressively better but in games the obsessive fetishization of the new means your game is virtually sunk. it is virtually impossible to iterate based on user feedback because your users are a) transients and b) not wonderful people to deal with. gamers are virtually immune to ads, don't search for anything gaming-related, don't pay prices sufficient to justify cpc spends, and if by some miracle they hear sbout you via word of mouth they will search for you on piratebay/etc first and google second. meanwhile, in addition to megacorps staffed by people who have been doing this professionally for years, you are also competing with a virtually inexhaustible supply of hobbyists, because perhaps 3 out of every 4 cs majors got into computers to make video games and the fourth one is lying.does any of this get better for mobile devs? no, it gets worse, unless you're picked by the platform's kingmakers. | temporarily de-anonymizing myself because my android experience is apparently not typical. my main paid app (<link> is getting around 25 purchases per day, with no marketing effort whatsoever. it was featured in a few blogs and podcasts, but they came to me. it's had over 10k downloads in a year, and my original goal was 1000. reasons i think it's done better than average:- it's not a game. as patio11 notes the competition in that area is incredibly intense. in the last few days i've picked up angry birds rio for free, galcon for $1, and airattack for $3. if you aren't an experienced game developer, you're not likely to produce something at that level.- but it is fun. it has unlimited "replay value" and lets users be creative and show off what their phone can do.- the free version converts really well, paid downloads are around 20% of free downloads. it does everything the full version does except for saving pictures and videos. there are no ads, other than a market link to the full version.- i don't have to spend any time or money on custom artwork. even the buttons in the latest version i took from the camera app in aosp.so maybe i'm just lucky, but creating a quality app in a non-saturated field has been enough to produce a decent side income, without having to deal with business or marketing at all. |
my year as an amateur android game developer
| temporarily de-anonymizing myself because my android experience is apparently not typical. my main paid app (<link> is getting around 25 purchases per day, with no marketing effort whatsoever. it was featured in a few blogs and podcasts, but they came to me. it's had over 10k downloads in a year, and my original goal was 1000. reasons i think it's done better than average:- it's not a game. as patio11 notes the competition in that area is incredibly intense. in the last few days i've picked up angry birds rio for free, galcon for $1, and airattack for $3. if you aren't an experienced game developer, you're not likely to produce something at that level.- but it is fun. it has unlimited "replay value" and lets users be creative and show off what their phone can do.- the free version converts really well, paid downloads are around 20% of free downloads. it does everything the full version does except for saving pictures and videos. there are no ads, other than a market link to the full version.- i don't have to spend any time or money on custom artwork. even the buttons in the latest version i took from the camera app in aosp.so maybe i'm just lucky, but creating a quality app in a non-saturated field has been enough to produce a decent side income, without having to deal with business or marketing at all. | don't foret that angry birds was rovio's 40th game. stickability counts.i think to succeed though you need to put out more than 1 per year. i also think there is likely to be a network effect, if someone likes one of your games they may try the rest... this is the equivalent of the mcdonalds "you want fries with that?" - that is they know they only get a certain number of people through their door, so they need to extract as much value from each customer as possible.you will only get so many eyeballs, so if you have more than one game you may get people who try one also trying the other - free marketing. :d |
my year as an amateur android game developer
| don't foret that angry birds was rovio's 40th game. stickability counts.i think to succeed though you need to put out more than 1 per year. i also think there is likely to be a network effect, if someone likes one of your games they may try the rest... this is the equivalent of the mcdonalds "you want fries with that?" - that is they know they only get a certain number of people through their door, so they need to extract as much value from each customer as possible.you will only get so many eyeballs, so if you have more than one game you may get people who try one also trying the other - free marketing. :d | pretty sure a lot of developers would have got similar stories. it's just the wild wild west and they couldn't find gold. in the meanwhile, whoever is selling the pic axes, the app stores, are making money.it's all a fad. create value or sell pic axes. |
my year as an amateur android game developer
| pretty sure a lot of developers would have got similar stories. it's just the wild wild west and they couldn't find gold. in the meanwhile, whoever is selling the pic axes, the app stores, are making money.it's all a fad. create value or sell pic axes. | gaming is a cruel mistress for developers. it's so hit-driven that it can be hard to really predict what will do well and what won't. something that is a smashing success on one platform might just be completely overlooked on another. |
ask hn: do you encrypt your laptop's hard disk?
i have a lot of personal and company information on 2 of my laptops (windows 7 and a macbook). this includes bank account information, private keys, passwords and proprietary source code. i'm always paranoid about my laptops being physically stolen while i'm traveling or if my office is robbed. to help put my mind at ease (somewhat), i've been looking into whole-drive encryption. incase my laptop does get stolen, i can be sure the thief does not get my data.<p>it looks like there are 2 solutions out there for windows - truecrypt and microsoft's bitlocker. i can't use bitlocker because my laptop doesn't have a tpm chip, which i'm told is required to encrypt the boot volume. truecrypt looks like the only option available right now for windows.<p>also, it looks os x does not have built-in whole-drive encryption like window's bitlocker. luckily truecrypt also has support for os x.<p>what do you use to protect your data? are there any pitfalls that i need to be aware of (besides loosing your password)? | as a semi-professional nude photographer i have encrypted every hard disk i own, including my laptop's. it's part of my promise to the customers to keep their photos really safe. i am using ubuntu and luks on all my machines because i find it very convenient to have a superb encryption mechanism built in.as a side note, i do all my picture editing in gimp. while this is not commom among professional photographers, it contributes in some ways to my landmark style. | first off, i'd like to throw bitlocker back in the ring and tell you that boot volume encryption is relatively unimportant for the threat model you propose, specifically untargeted data at rest.boot volume encryption/verification is designed to protect you against attackers who would replace your boot image with a one that contains a rootkit or keylogger. this threat model requires serious forethought and planning on the part of the attacker. he is likely targeting you or your company and he wants to do it steathily. under this kind of threat, you really need the entire company to adopt an extremely high level of operational security. (remember your security is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain.) usually, this kind of paranoia is reserved for three letter agencies.i should mention that truecrypt doesn't protect against this threat either. at some point, there needs to be an unencrypted bootloader, which can be attacked. hardware boot volume verification would verify that the bootloader has not been modified, which is what tpm tries to do.unless the encryption is implemented poorly (which in truecrypt and bitlocker is not) an attacker with access to your boot partition cannot attack your data partition without additional information (like your password).on os x, i've heard good things about pgp whole disk encryption. i don't know if truecrypt can handle boot camp (pgp wde can), if you care about that at all. on linux, i use dm-crypt + luks |
ask hn: do you encrypt your laptop's hard disk?
i have a lot of personal and company information on 2 of my laptops (windows 7 and a macbook). this includes bank account information, private keys, passwords and proprietary source code. i'm always paranoid about my laptops being physically stolen while i'm traveling or if my office is robbed. to help put my mind at ease (somewhat), i've been looking into whole-drive encryption. incase my laptop does get stolen, i can be sure the thief does not get my data.<p>it looks like there are 2 solutions out there for windows - truecrypt and microsoft's bitlocker. i can't use bitlocker because my laptop doesn't have a tpm chip, which i'm told is required to encrypt the boot volume. truecrypt looks like the only option available right now for windows.<p>also, it looks os x does not have built-in whole-drive encryption like window's bitlocker. luckily truecrypt also has support for os x.<p>what do you use to protect your data? are there any pitfalls that i need to be aware of (besides loosing your password)? | first off, i'd like to throw bitlocker back in the ring and tell you that boot volume encryption is relatively unimportant for the threat model you propose, specifically untargeted data at rest.boot volume encryption/verification is designed to protect you against attackers who would replace your boot image with a one that contains a rootkit or keylogger. this threat model requires serious forethought and planning on the part of the attacker. he is likely targeting you or your company and he wants to do it steathily. under this kind of threat, you really need the entire company to adopt an extremely high level of operational security. (remember your security is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain.) usually, this kind of paranoia is reserved for three letter agencies.i should mention that truecrypt doesn't protect against this threat either. at some point, there needs to be an unencrypted bootloader, which can be attacked. hardware boot volume verification would verify that the bootloader has not been modified, which is what tpm tries to do.unless the encryption is implemented poorly (which in truecrypt and bitlocker is not) an attacker with access to your boot partition cannot attack your data partition without additional information (like your password).on os x, i've heard good things about pgp whole disk encryption. i don't know if truecrypt can handle boot camp (pgp wde can), if you care about that at all. on linux, i use dm-crypt + luks | before you dive too far into full-disk encryption, you might want to contemplate the consequences of this research:<link> paper referenced is available at:<link> that paper, the most salient sentence for this discussion is:"on all of our sample drams, the decay rates were low
enough that an attacker who cut power for 60 seconds
would recover 99.9% of bits correctly."the long and short is that your password has to be in ram at some point in order to be matched against what is typed in. ram decays slowly after a machine has been switched off. as the research shows, one can use a widely-available can of air to make that decay happen even slower. in the process, one can pull the value out of ram.note that this is a hardware problem that no software on the market has been able to address. to do so, you would have to be able to validate x against y without having the value of y ever enter ram.consequently, a reasonably good tech thief can read the password out of ram. for the not-so-good tech thief, using passwords and social engineering tricks like being nice to someone and then asking them to watch your stuff for a moment will probably do the trick. i tend to see the various implementations of full-disk encryption as more for peace of mind and mitigation of liability than real security. |
ask hn: do you encrypt your laptop's hard disk?
i have a lot of personal and company information on 2 of my laptops (windows 7 and a macbook). this includes bank account information, private keys, passwords and proprietary source code. i'm always paranoid about my laptops being physically stolen while i'm traveling or if my office is robbed. to help put my mind at ease (somewhat), i've been looking into whole-drive encryption. incase my laptop does get stolen, i can be sure the thief does not get my data.<p>it looks like there are 2 solutions out there for windows - truecrypt and microsoft's bitlocker. i can't use bitlocker because my laptop doesn't have a tpm chip, which i'm told is required to encrypt the boot volume. truecrypt looks like the only option available right now for windows.<p>also, it looks os x does not have built-in whole-drive encryption like window's bitlocker. luckily truecrypt also has support for os x.<p>what do you use to protect your data? are there any pitfalls that i need to be aware of (besides loosing your password)? | before you dive too far into full-disk encryption, you might want to contemplate the consequences of this research:<link> paper referenced is available at:<link> that paper, the most salient sentence for this discussion is:"on all of our sample drams, the decay rates were low
enough that an attacker who cut power for 60 seconds
would recover 99.9% of bits correctly."the long and short is that your password has to be in ram at some point in order to be matched against what is typed in. ram decays slowly after a machine has been switched off. as the research shows, one can use a widely-available can of air to make that decay happen even slower. in the process, one can pull the value out of ram.note that this is a hardware problem that no software on the market has been able to address. to do so, you would have to be able to validate x against y without having the value of y ever enter ram.consequently, a reasonably good tech thief can read the password out of ram. for the not-so-good tech thief, using passwords and social engineering tricks like being nice to someone and then asking them to watch your stuff for a moment will probably do the trick. i tend to see the various implementations of full-disk encryption as more for peace of mind and mitigation of liability than real security. | a bit off topic, but making it less likely you'll lose your laptop to begin with is important. here are some ideas.most laptop have a special slot that accepts a cable lock. i make use of it whenever i'm in a coffee shop and have to leave the machine for more than a moment. i loop it through bag straps and my jacket too. you want to look hard to deal with.its also a good idea to make sure your laptop requires a password after closing the lid or whatever it is that you do when you walk away from your machine. and say hello to people around you and be helpful. they'll more likely to watch your back.and as always, make sure no one can see what your keying in. to that end, it may help to use characters that are close together.and yes, i know i'm a bit paranoid :-) |
ask hn: do you encrypt your laptop's hard disk?
i have a lot of personal and company information on 2 of my laptops (windows 7 and a macbook). this includes bank account information, private keys, passwords and proprietary source code. i'm always paranoid about my laptops being physically stolen while i'm traveling or if my office is robbed. to help put my mind at ease (somewhat), i've been looking into whole-drive encryption. incase my laptop does get stolen, i can be sure the thief does not get my data.<p>it looks like there are 2 solutions out there for windows - truecrypt and microsoft's bitlocker. i can't use bitlocker because my laptop doesn't have a tpm chip, which i'm told is required to encrypt the boot volume. truecrypt looks like the only option available right now for windows.<p>also, it looks os x does not have built-in whole-drive encryption like window's bitlocker. luckily truecrypt also has support for os x.<p>what do you use to protect your data? are there any pitfalls that i need to be aware of (besides loosing your password)? | a bit off topic, but making it less likely you'll lose your laptop to begin with is important. here are some ideas.most laptop have a special slot that accepts a cable lock. i make use of it whenever i'm in a coffee shop and have to leave the machine for more than a moment. i loop it through bag straps and my jacket too. you want to look hard to deal with.its also a good idea to make sure your laptop requires a password after closing the lid or whatever it is that you do when you walk away from your machine. and say hello to people around you and be helpful. they'll more likely to watch your back.and as always, make sure no one can see what your keying in. to that end, it may help to use characters that are close together.and yes, i know i'm a bit paranoid :-) | i would be much more concerned about laptop being arbitrarily seized at an airport by customs or tsa personnel, or by law enforcement otherwise, than it being stolen per se.e.g.<link> can lose a lot to thieves, but you can lose even more to state thuggery backed by the force of "law." |
y combinator to recruit more black entrepreneurs
| i'm black ,what is this ? affirmative action pt2 ? you dont need to "recruit more black entrepreneurs" , you need to recruit entrepreneurs wether they are black,yellow,brown,man,woman,trans without prejudice,based only on their skills. or if "y combinator to recruit more black entrepreneurs" means they were discriminated against before, we want a few good negros to look good, just like a few women here and there ,and build "girls who code" clubs for pr,so the tech world is not labelled as racist or sexist ?the tech world is racist,and sexist. the vc world is way beyond racist or sexist ,it's a culture of nepotism.you cant change that.it's like electing a black president,you may look good abroad but at home noone is dumb enough to think anything has changed. it's even worse to consider minorities as "people that need help".we dont need help we need equality at first place,there is none. | a couple comments:first, altruism aside, this will likely be a win for ycombinator. there are always opportunities to be had in targeting subgroups which others neglect.and the problem with bias is that much of it is subconscious. unless an organisation makes a conscious effort, it will likely discriminate.this means there's an opportunity for yc to get easier access to the cream of the crop, merely by specifically recruiting. and articles like this are helpful too, as they'll signal to would be black entrepreneurs that they should not shy away from yc.second, this could be very important for future african-american entrepreneurs. reference examples are so, so important. i (white male) did not become a programmer, despite a love for math and computers. i literally didn't have a single programmer in my extended family or circle of close friends. i played around with computers, but i had no idea what a programming language was until age 25.(if this sounds incurious, think about what massive blind spots you yourself had until recently)if yc can fund an african-american entrepreneur who succeeds massively, then this will inspire thousands of others.the same arguments apply to recruiting women, and inspiring women. i applaud this move, and yc's earlier initiative to recruit women. |
y combinator to recruit more black entrepreneurs
| a couple comments:first, altruism aside, this will likely be a win for ycombinator. there are always opportunities to be had in targeting subgroups which others neglect.and the problem with bias is that much of it is subconscious. unless an organisation makes a conscious effort, it will likely discriminate.this means there's an opportunity for yc to get easier access to the cream of the crop, merely by specifically recruiting. and articles like this are helpful too, as they'll signal to would be black entrepreneurs that they should not shy away from yc.second, this could be very important for future african-american entrepreneurs. reference examples are so, so important. i (white male) did not become a programmer, despite a love for math and computers. i literally didn't have a single programmer in my extended family or circle of close friends. i played around with computers, but i had no idea what a programming language was until age 25.(if this sounds incurious, think about what massive blind spots you yourself had until recently)if yc can fund an african-american entrepreneur who succeeds massively, then this will inspire thousands of others.the same arguments apply to recruiting women, and inspiring women. i applaud this move, and yc's earlier initiative to recruit women. | as a young black entrepreneur that has known about yc for years now and have followed them and their large portfolio, i think they are making a smart move toward reaching out to a community where people aren't aware of programs like yc and the opportunities they provide. |
y combinator to recruit more black entrepreneurs
| as a young black entrepreneur that has known about yc for years now and have followed them and their large portfolio, i think they are making a smart move toward reaching out to a community where people aren't aware of programs like yc and the opportunities they provide. | this is awesome. a diversity of people will bring a diversity of ideas. you can find highly intelligent, driven people from all walks of life, it's a shame that there's a process broken in self-selection for software engineering and bay area startups. although it's probably not just diverse self-selection that needs work, i imagine there's probably forms of discrimination and roadblocks that privileged classes of the majority don't even recognize. |
y combinator to recruit more black entrepreneurs
| this is awesome. a diversity of people will bring a diversity of ideas. you can find highly intelligent, driven people from all walks of life, it's a shame that there's a process broken in self-selection for software engineering and bay area startups. although it's probably not just diverse self-selection that needs work, i imagine there's probably forms of discrimination and roadblocks that privileged classes of the majority don't even recognize. | one of the things i love so much about being in the high tech world is its natural tendency for a (more) level playing field.it shouldn't (and often doesn't) matter what you look like, where you came from, or who you are. what really matters is the value produced for others by what you do.this sounds like a great step in promoting that property to those who may not have experienced it before. i have a feeling it may work out real well for lots of people. |
i can’t believe i’m praising tcl
| tcl is a bloody good language+ but seems to have languished in obscurity. i can't count the number of times i've heard people in the python and ruby (and lua and processing, and node.js, for that matter) communities announce some wizzy new thing that tcl had 5 or 10 years earlier. i've never understood why that is. the problem with the computing community in general is that it can't see over its own shoulder. every few years, we reinvent the wheel.+ by this i mean you can get a lot done, in not very much code, and maintain it afterwards, and read and modify other people's code easily. | about tcl and the embedded world, a few years ago i wrote a single-file tcl interpreter that is mostly compatible with current tcl implementations (something is missing like namespaces, something was added like anonymous functions):<link>
(source code is here: <link> maintained by steve bennett, and actively used by some embedded folks. |
i can’t believe i’m praising tcl
| about tcl and the embedded world, a few years ago i wrote a single-file tcl interpreter that is mostly compatible with current tcl implementations (something is missing like namespaces, something was added like anonymous functions):<link>
(source code is here: <link> maintained by steve bennett, and actively used by some embedded folks. | if one looks at the eda industry you will have to appreciate the breadth of applications tcl is used in. usually there is a tcl interpreter with custom commands written in c for optimization.the ease with which one can quickly create interfaces between different tools i think is one of the contributing factors to its success. that and of course, the legacy codebase. |
i can’t believe i’m praising tcl
| if one looks at the eda industry you will have to appreciate the breadth of applications tcl is used in. usually there is a tcl interpreter with custom commands written in c for optimization.the ease with which one can quickly create interfaces between different tools i think is one of the contributing factors to its success. that and of course, the legacy codebase. | you can get lisp to interact more like a console language. write a parser to accept python-ish whitespace syntax (whilst still allowing parens syntax), and transform that s-expressions so you can pass to the interpreterto imply: (define (fn a b)
(list (car a) (car (car b))))
you could type: define: fn a b
list:
car a
car (car b)
as it's a console, in practice you'll mostly be typing commands like this: load x y z
but you have good mechanisms for going deeper. and if you just want to write in s-expressions you still can. |
i can’t believe i’m praising tcl
| you can get lisp to interact more like a console language. write a parser to accept python-ish whitespace syntax (whilst still allowing parens syntax), and transform that s-expressions so you can pass to the interpreterto imply: (define (fn a b)
(list (car a) (car (car b))))
you could type: define: fn a b
list:
car a
car (car b)
as it's a console, in practice you'll mostly be typing commands like this: load x y z
but you have good mechanisms for going deeper. and if you just want to write in s-expressions you still can. | imho, nothing beats tcl/tk when you need to write a small distributable application with a gui. the last ones i wrote were for purging files acording their date and for compiling forms/reports. with freewrap i can build an executable with no effort at all. |