prompt
stringlengths 2
23.7k
| chosen
stringlengths 1
43.3k
| rejected
stringlengths 1
16.4k
|
|---|---|---|
firebase (yc s11) raises $1.1m for real-time app infrastructure
| my initial thoughts were that meteor would be more widely deployed in production than firebase would. but it also seemed like firebase had a more obvious path to profitability than meteor.given the current vc market and the rapidly evolving landscape of (so called) real-time services, i'm surprised they raised such a small sum. i would have thought if you were going to go the vc route, you might as well go all in and raise a massive chunk.with a (somewhat conservative) estimate of $10k a month per engineer and $1.1m to spend, a team of 8 engineers would give you a runway of just under 14 months. i think you would want more runway than that. | i think there's a good lesson for startups building platforms: don't underestimate the importance of hustle.i met james and his team at a hackathon this past march. twilio (the company i work for) was a sponsor, along with firebase and several other api companies. i had never heard of firebase, and i don't think any of the ~100 developers there had either.james and his team (~6 of so colleagues 8 friends) spent that weekend talking to every team there, understanding what they were trying to do and diving into their code. they were everywhere, buying beer, lending a helping hand, you name it.3 months later, they raise a million dollars. not a coincidence. |
firebase (yc s11) raises $1.1m for real-time app infrastructure
| i think there's a good lesson for startups building platforms: don't underestimate the importance of hustle.i met james and his team at a hackathon this past march. twilio (the company i work for) was a sponsor, along with firebase and several other api companies. i had never heard of firebase, and i don't think any of the ~100 developers there had either.james and his team (~6 of so colleagues 8 friends) spent that weekend talking to every team there, understanding what they were trying to do and diving into their code. they were everywhere, buying beer, lending a helping hand, you name it.3 months later, they raise a million dollars. not a coincidence. | we're using this to power roll20[1]. the whole team has been very responsive and supportive of any and all questions. congrats![1] <link> |
firebase (yc s11) raises $1.1m for real-time app infrastructure
| we're using this to power roll20[1]. the whole team has been very responsive and supportive of any and all questions. congrats![1] <link> | congrats to them, they deserve it for a great product.i've ran through the demos and have been waiting my invite to set in for a while now. |
firebase (yc s11) raises $1.1m for real-time app infrastructure
| congrats to them, they deserve it for a great product.i've ran through the demos and have been waiting my invite to set in for a while now. | are you working on a way to develop and delpoy apps on your platform without shipping the entire source code to the app to the browser? i'm guessing there are a lot of people who don't mind their source code being sent to each user, but i think there are many of us who would love to use your platform that would prefer not to do that.congrats on the funding! |
wikipedia adopts mariadb
| official announcement: <link> looks likely to inherit a big slice, possibly even a majority, of mysql's user base over time.it's not just because mariadb is as good as any of the "official" editions of mysql offered by oracle, but because it has only a single code base under a single free license (as opposed to differently licensed "open source" and "enterprise" editions), because it has an active not-for-profit foundation looking out for the project and the community[1], and because many of the original contributors to mysql, including founder monty widenius, are now working full-time on mariadb.[2]say hello to the new mysql -- mariadb -- same as the old mysql!--[1] <link>[2] <link> | ever since oracle has taken hold of mysql (i was at oracle at the time, and saw their goals firsthand), they have been trying to extract as much money as possible from anyone using the database in a commercial way. just the mention of mysql strikes fear in the heart of any executive who has had any interaction with the mob that is the oracle money extraction machine.the sooner we all can move on and keep from using mysql, the better, and good riddance to it and the red horse it unfortunately rides in on. |
wikipedia adopts mariadb
| ever since oracle has taken hold of mysql (i was at oracle at the time, and saw their goals firsthand), they have been trying to extract as much money as possible from anyone using the database in a commercial way. just the mention of mysql strikes fear in the heart of any executive who has had any interaction with the mob that is the oracle money extraction machine.the sooner we all can move on and keep from using mysql, the better, and good riddance to it and the red horse it unfortunately rides in on. | this article has many facts wrong.it seems that mysql development halted entirely at sun.i was concerned about oracle's motives w.r.t mysql but i can say they have come out with major new releases that improve mysql in substantial ways. for instance, they've greatly improved the scalability of innodb on large smp machines.on the other hand, neither sun nor oracle have been really wanting to win with mysql either and i think we could have seen more and different innovation in mysql if it had been in other hands.the wikipedia win is big for mariadb because it's a show of confidence that it works in demanding applications. |
wikipedia adopts mariadb
| this article has many facts wrong.it seems that mysql development halted entirely at sun.i was concerned about oracle's motives w.r.t mysql but i can say they have come out with major new releases that improve mysql in substantial ways. for instance, they've greatly improved the scalability of innodb on large smp machines.on the other hand, neither sun nor oracle have been really wanting to win with mysql either and i think we could have seen more and different innovation in mysql if it had been in other hands.the wikipedia win is big for mariadb because it's a show of confidence that it works in demanding applications. | is there a reason to choose mariadb over percona or vice-versa? they're both drop-in replacements for mysql and both replace innodb with xtradb (which percona makes). |
wikipedia adopts mariadb
| is there a reason to choose mariadb over percona or vice-versa? they're both drop-in replacements for mysql and both replace innodb with xtradb (which percona makes). | is mariadb still substantially slower than mysql?<link> |
techcrunch gets a facelift
| there's almost no emphasis on the navigation and for a site with so many parts this is a negative.on the whole i like the move to the cleaner and simpler layout but it still puzzles me that they almost completely neglect categories or tags. | i think the redesign is absolutely terrible, and i'm not talking about visuals. the emphasis of the ui is on advertising / sponsorships, and not on content; for a content-focused company, this doesn't work. i can't help but think of a tirade that david cross goes on about arrested development where he basically ridicules the network for shortening the length of the show, minutes at a time, in order to increase ad revenue at the expense of the show and its viewers. techcrunch appears to be doing the same thing, albeit in a different medium. |
techcrunch gets a facelift
| i think the redesign is absolutely terrible, and i'm not talking about visuals. the emphasis of the ui is on advertising / sponsorships, and not on content; for a content-focused company, this doesn't work. i can't help but think of a tirade that david cross goes on about arrested development where he basically ridicules the network for shortening the length of the show, minutes at a time, in order to increase ad revenue at the expense of the show and its viewers. techcrunch appears to be doing the same thing, albeit in a different medium. | not nearly as big of a change as the last redesign.the original tc design: <link> |
techcrunch gets a facelift
| not nearly as big of a change as the last redesign.the original tc design: <link> | liked the old ui better :( |
techcrunch gets a facelift
| liked the old ui better :( | gigacrunch? |
the illusion of diversity: visualizing ownership in the soft drink industry
| three firms control 89% of us soft drink sales [1]. this dominance is obscured from us by the appearance of numerous choices on retailer shelves. steve hannaford refers to this as "pseudovariety," or the illusion of diversity, concealing a lack of real choice.if you assume that people have the same values as the author and want to establish their class credentials by buying from a minor player, then it's proper to conclude that the only reason they buy from the big three is that they have no other choice. if you assume that most people follow their friends' tastes, are responsive to advertising, and don't care much about the minor differences in taste between one sugary drink and another of the same kind, then you can restore common sense and say yes, if there's a beverage on a shelf in a store with a price on it, then anyone who walks by it has a real, non-illusory choice between that beverage and another one. they drink coke and dr pepper because their social norms don't oblige them to take a symbolic stand against the financial dominance and boring aesthetics of major corporations. their desires and norms tell them to drink a mainstream, ubiquitous brand. | link to the deep zoom version (opens faster):
<link> |
the illusion of diversity: visualizing ownership in the soft drink industry
| link to the deep zoom version (opens faster):
<link> | funny, the situation is actually better than i imagined. i had always assumed that pepsi and coke owned everything; depending on my mood i would think that one or the other owned dr. pepper, too. |
the illusion of diversity: visualizing ownership in the soft drink industry
| funny, the situation is actually better than i imagined. i had always assumed that pepsi and coke owned everything; depending on my mood i would think that one or the other owned dr. pepper, too. | although this is a lovely visualization, the data seems somewhat limited. it omits common brands i see in every supermarket* (pritty, suitty, doble cola, terma, speed unlimited) even ones that i know belong to coca-cola (inka cola). and i don't see any firms whose names are in other than english or spanish. perhaps "soft drink industry structure" here really means "us soft drink industry structure" or perhaps even "lansing, mi, soft drink industry structure"?such severe limitations in scope should be mentioned up front, not relegated to a "methods" section.(* every supermarket in the rich parts of buenos aires, that is.) |
the illusion of diversity: visualizing ownership in the soft drink industry
| although this is a lovely visualization, the data seems somewhat limited. it omits common brands i see in every supermarket* (pritty, suitty, doble cola, terma, speed unlimited) even ones that i know belong to coca-cola (inka cola). and i don't see any firms whose names are in other than english or spanish. perhaps "soft drink industry structure" here really means "us soft drink industry structure" or perhaps even "lansing, mi, soft drink industry structure"?such severe limitations in scope should be mentioned up front, not relegated to a "methods" section.(* every supermarket in the rich parts of buenos aires, that is.) | okay, i understand how this is a problem with news. i really do.but with soda? isn't the total variety of offerings more important than than variety of companies? |
ask hn: php vs. node.js vs. go for a new startup?
i am coming back to the it industry after about 6 years of being involved in something completely unrelated. my partner and i are starting a startup that’s going to make a online blogging application for a niche market. if we are successful, the application would need to be able to scale to handle a lot of users (100k visitor per day if we are successful, nothing like fb levels or something). because it’s going to be a blogging platform with a business model similar to squarespace.com, the load will be distributed over many different domains, making it easier to scale.<p>both my partner and i have good knowledge of php. however, due to the complexity of the project, we will have to find additional developers anyway. from what i read online node.js and go are the in thing right now, and scale much better than php. my question is, should we stick with the “devil we know,” php, or dive into learning and developing in node.js or go. should we consider another programing language / platform?<p>what are your thoughts. this are honest questions, we are just looking for some feedback. thank you for your help. | unless you know you can't use what you know, stick with what you know. business concerns trump technical concerns for early-stage startups, and the differences between the three are minute as far as business is concerned. however, having to struggle with learning a new stack can impact your business.even if the differences between node.js and go mattered, you won't get anything valuable from asking hn "should i use node.js or go", since the two stacks are broadly in a similar niche and have similarly-sized communities. it'll mostly be fans of one technology bashing the other, as you can already see in this thread. it would be better to focus on specific concerns: do you need support for shared memory on multicore? is the ability to reuse javascript code on the browser and the server a concern? is there a specific library that's essential to your business that's only available on one or the other? these questions would engender a much more interesting discussion. | write it in php to start. if it takes off, hire a bunch of devs and rewrite it in go. i say this as someone who hates php and generally likes go and javascript.the biggest question in your business model is not "how do i scale this?" or even "what technology should i use?", but "will this take off?" if the answer to that is yes, you will have resources to deal with the problems of how to scale it, and you will have more information to answer the question of what technology to use. (in particular, you'll know what your developers want to use; you can give them an ownership stake in the technology decision - which should really be their decision, not yours; you will know exactly what feature set you need to implement and what sort of loads you'll bear; and additional libraries or technologies may have come out in the meantime.)usually the biggest factor in development time is how well you know the technologies you're using, not any intrinsic level of productivity with the tools. different technologies will top out at different levels, and imho go tops out significantly higher than node.js, which tops out significantly higher than php (and at least in the early stages, python tops out higher than go). but if your goal is to found a successful company and you know what idea you want to pursue, you are better off investing the time in proving out your business idea than in learning the perfect new technology. (if you don't have a concrete idea, investing in learning a new technology is a pretty good way to pass the time until you do.) |
ask hn: php vs. node.js vs. go for a new startup?
i am coming back to the it industry after about 6 years of being involved in something completely unrelated. my partner and i are starting a startup that’s going to make a online blogging application for a niche market. if we are successful, the application would need to be able to scale to handle a lot of users (100k visitor per day if we are successful, nothing like fb levels or something). because it’s going to be a blogging platform with a business model similar to squarespace.com, the load will be distributed over many different domains, making it easier to scale.<p>both my partner and i have good knowledge of php. however, due to the complexity of the project, we will have to find additional developers anyway. from what i read online node.js and go are the in thing right now, and scale much better than php. my question is, should we stick with the “devil we know,” php, or dive into learning and developing in node.js or go. should we consider another programing language / platform?<p>what are your thoughts. this are honest questions, we are just looking for some feedback. thank you for your help. | write it in php to start. if it takes off, hire a bunch of devs and rewrite it in go. i say this as someone who hates php and generally likes go and javascript.the biggest question in your business model is not "how do i scale this?" or even "what technology should i use?", but "will this take off?" if the answer to that is yes, you will have resources to deal with the problems of how to scale it, and you will have more information to answer the question of what technology to use. (in particular, you'll know what your developers want to use; you can give them an ownership stake in the technology decision - which should really be their decision, not yours; you will know exactly what feature set you need to implement and what sort of loads you'll bear; and additional libraries or technologies may have come out in the meantime.)usually the biggest factor in development time is how well you know the technologies you're using, not any intrinsic level of productivity with the tools. different technologies will top out at different levels, and imho go tops out significantly higher than node.js, which tops out significantly higher than php (and at least in the early stages, python tops out higher than go). but if your goal is to found a successful company and you know what idea you want to pursue, you are better off investing the time in proving out your business idea than in learning the perfect new technology. (if you don't have a concrete idea, investing in learning a new technology is a pretty good way to pass the time until you do.) | if i was starting from scratch today i'd use go. go makes writing fast, scalable and reliable servers as easy as it is possible to make it. at least that is my experience.i started out writing cgis and servers in c many years ago and have experimented with perl, python, php, ruby, nodejs and go since then.go has a syntax that is instantly familiar and simple to master.
go's concurrency paradigms are simple to understand and easy to use.
go's compiler is fast and clear.
if a go program compiles it nearly always runs.
go's built-in library has most things you need to write http-based servers.if you use go naively you will almost certainly be using go correctly: your server will be fast and efficient. this is not the case with nodejs. writing fast, efficient nodejs code is hard. maintaining fast, efficient nodejs code is even harder.on the down side - while go don't suffer from 'callback hell' but it does have a tendency towards 'cast soup' - this makes working with json a little trickier than it should.aside from the main programming language i would also look at:* json api-first driven development* redis* nodejs's plethora of web-centric code management tools & compilers: scss, requirejs, grunt etc* single-page javascript app technology: ember, angular etc* docker.io* svg* camlistorethese (with go) are the main technologies i'd use to build a large web infrastructure. |
ask hn: php vs. node.js vs. go for a new startup?
i am coming back to the it industry after about 6 years of being involved in something completely unrelated. my partner and i are starting a startup that’s going to make a online blogging application for a niche market. if we are successful, the application would need to be able to scale to handle a lot of users (100k visitor per day if we are successful, nothing like fb levels or something). because it’s going to be a blogging platform with a business model similar to squarespace.com, the load will be distributed over many different domains, making it easier to scale.<p>both my partner and i have good knowledge of php. however, due to the complexity of the project, we will have to find additional developers anyway. from what i read online node.js and go are the in thing right now, and scale much better than php. my question is, should we stick with the “devil we know,” php, or dive into learning and developing in node.js or go. should we consider another programing language / platform?<p>what are your thoughts. this are honest questions, we are just looking for some feedback. thank you for your help. | if i was starting from scratch today i'd use go. go makes writing fast, scalable and reliable servers as easy as it is possible to make it. at least that is my experience.i started out writing cgis and servers in c many years ago and have experimented with perl, python, php, ruby, nodejs and go since then.go has a syntax that is instantly familiar and simple to master.
go's concurrency paradigms are simple to understand and easy to use.
go's compiler is fast and clear.
if a go program compiles it nearly always runs.
go's built-in library has most things you need to write http-based servers.if you use go naively you will almost certainly be using go correctly: your server will be fast and efficient. this is not the case with nodejs. writing fast, efficient nodejs code is hard. maintaining fast, efficient nodejs code is even harder.on the down side - while go don't suffer from 'callback hell' but it does have a tendency towards 'cast soup' - this makes working with json a little trickier than it should.aside from the main programming language i would also look at:* json api-first driven development* redis* nodejs's plethora of web-centric code management tools & compilers: scss, requirejs, grunt etc* single-page javascript app technology: ember, angular etc* docker.io* svg* camlistorethese (with go) are the main technologies i'd use to build a large web infrastructure. | stick with what you know so you can get your start-up off the ground quickly and cheap. once you hit phps limits, you can still gradually migrate over to $whatever_language_is_hipster_language. regarding node.js and go explicitly, i'd give those two at least one year of "maturing time" until you use it for mission-critical stuff. |
ask hn: php vs. node.js vs. go for a new startup?
i am coming back to the it industry after about 6 years of being involved in something completely unrelated. my partner and i are starting a startup that’s going to make a online blogging application for a niche market. if we are successful, the application would need to be able to scale to handle a lot of users (100k visitor per day if we are successful, nothing like fb levels or something). because it’s going to be a blogging platform with a business model similar to squarespace.com, the load will be distributed over many different domains, making it easier to scale.<p>both my partner and i have good knowledge of php. however, due to the complexity of the project, we will have to find additional developers anyway. from what i read online node.js and go are the in thing right now, and scale much better than php. my question is, should we stick with the “devil we know,” php, or dive into learning and developing in node.js or go. should we consider another programing language / platform?<p>what are your thoughts. this are honest questions, we are just looking for some feedback. thank you for your help. | stick with what you know so you can get your start-up off the ground quickly and cheap. once you hit phps limits, you can still gradually migrate over to $whatever_language_is_hipster_language. regarding node.js and go explicitly, i'd give those two at least one year of "maturing time" until you use it for mission-critical stuff. | pick what you know the best. you will waste time in learning something new instead of working on your product.when time comes, you can always optimize it(writing performance critical parts in c), or pay guys who are better than you to "translate" your app to another language.god knows i'm not following this advice, but please do not fall into a "premature optimization" trap. |
debugging – section 5.10 of programming pearls
| the stories in the post all have repeatable bug conditions. if you read bugs submitted for something like chrome or firefox (or any big complex program) you see a lot of trying to figure out what state triggers a bug. there's a lot of, "i can't repeat it. works fine for me." it's almost impossible to deduce what causes a bug because so many possible states can exists at any given moment.the way a lot of bugs are eventually solved is not by asking what caused them, but when they started. it's often the regression testers who find the source. you keep going back through the nightly releases until you find one that doesn't exhibit the bug. at that point you go to the commit logs and there is your problem. | i was debugging some code i had written once. it was leaking 1m of memory per call (c/c++). stepping through the code revealed nothing. leak detectors told me that everything was fine. in desperation, i changed a function name to "potato." the leak stopped. i nearly fell out of my chair. it turned out that i was using exactly the same method signature as a function in a library i was linking against. this was over ten years ago so i do not remember the details, but i will never forget the potato function. |
debugging – section 5.10 of programming pearls
| i was debugging some code i had written once. it was leaking 1m of memory per call (c/c++). stepping through the code revealed nothing. leak detectors told me that everything was fine. in desperation, i changed a function name to "potato." the leak stopped. i nearly fell out of my chair. it turned out that i was using exactly the same method signature as a function in a library i was linking against. this was over ten years ago so i do not remember the details, but i will never forget the potato function. | one day i found i couldn't log in typing one-handed, holding the keyboard in the other. i finally realised that my password of some years wasn't what i thought it was, i just typed it consistently incorrectly when touch-typing. quite a secure password when even i didn't know what it was. :-) |
debugging – section 5.10 of programming pearls
| one day i found i couldn't log in typing one-handed, holding the keyboard in the other. i finally realised that my password of some years wasn't what i thought it was, i just typed it consistently incorrectly when touch-typing. quite a secure password when even i didn't know what it was. :-) | reminded me of my favorite bug:<link> |
debugging – section 5.10 of programming pearls
| reminded me of my favorite bug:<link> | i have the book mentioned at the end, _the medical detectives_, by berton rouechè, and it is full of fascinating stories - highly recommended. |
commit to keep coding – github + beeminder
| i'm the bee in beeminder. i think that beeminding your github account is going to be amazing for hackers/founders -- a way to force yourself to always be making forward momentum. we've been tracking how much code we write for over a year now -- though in a bit more structured way. we track user visible improvements (it has to be something worthy of tweeting @beemuvi for the hardcore fans of beeminder). we've been doing one-per-day for 733 days now and if we ever fall behind we pay a user $1000. it's been invaluable in keeping us going! | summary for those not familiar with the craziness that is beeminder: it's a combination of quantified-self tool and a commitment device app (like stickk and gympact and aherk) where you put up money, to be paid if you don't do what you said you were going to do. in this case you're pledging to push commits or close issues a certain number of times per week.the money aspect sounds super perverse, but we think of it as paying a fee for a service (the graphs, reminders, etc) that happens to be waived if you never need beeminder's kick in the pants. |
commit to keep coding – github + beeminder
| summary for those not familiar with the craziness that is beeminder: it's a combination of quantified-self tool and a commitment device app (like stickk and gympact and aherk) where you put up money, to be paid if you don't do what you said you were going to do. in this case you're pledging to push commits or close issues a certain number of times per week.the money aspect sounds super perverse, but we think of it as paying a fee for a service (the graphs, reminders, etc) that happens to be waived if you never need beeminder's kick in the pants. | i don't think counting commits is a good metric, because i know if it were me, i would start splitting my commits up into trivial changes in order to meet the count ("added comment", "added line break", etc).it supports going by issues, which is better, but how about counting additions/deletions? |
commit to keep coding – github + beeminder
| i don't think counting commits is a good metric, because i know if it were me, i would start splitting my commits up into trivial changes in order to meet the count ("added comment", "added line break", etc).it supports going by issues, which is better, but how about counting additions/deletions? | very cool - anyone who's following pg's advice to "stay alive" would be well advised to git committing :) |
commit to keep coding – github + beeminder
| very cool - anyone who's following pg's advice to "stay alive" would be well advised to git committing :) | can we get details about the way this is implemented?i assume you poll github on some timescale? i noticed that beeminder took around 24h to see my commits. |
microsoft secretly installs firefox extension through windows update
| you can get outraged that updates do not list every package affected, or you can have your software used by people who think both internet explorer and firefox are actually called "the google", but you cannot have both. i think ms is making the right call here: assume that a user who has expressed desire for a toolbar, via installing it and requesting an update, wants it in all browsers.the four people in the world who use both ie and firefox and wanted the bar in ie but not in firefox are capable of tweaking that setting themselves. | i can't figure out which bothers me more: microsoft being so underhanded with these updates to software it doesn't produce or that they allow pretty much any company to install an add-on within firefox without user consent. this has happened once before with microsoft and it's even happened with skype, a company founded by modern, savvy entrepreneurs. why won't firefox add a feature to disable an installed add-ons until flagged as wanted by the user? |
microsoft secretly installs firefox extension through windows update
| i can't figure out which bothers me more: microsoft being so underhanded with these updates to software it doesn't produce or that they allow pretty much any company to install an add-on within firefox without user consent. this has happened once before with microsoft and it's even happened with skype, a company founded by modern, savvy entrepreneurs. why won't firefox add a feature to disable an installed add-ons until flagged as wanted by the user? | if only we could sneak in google chrome frame into ie this way... |
microsoft secretly installs firefox extension through windows update
| if only we could sneak in google chrome frame into ie this way... | firefox central can "recall" and block any rogue extension.they did it last year when microsoft tried this, they should do it for this one too asap.i purposely do not run as the default firefox profile, so i don't think microsoft got me this time... |
microsoft secretly installs firefox extension through windows update
| firefox central can "recall" and block any rogue extension.they did it last year when microsoft tried this, they should do it for this one too asap.i purposely do not run as the default firefox profile, so i don't think microsoft got me this time... | this happened last year too:
<link> |
announcing the windows 8 editions
| i love that apple doesn't make me choose between editions. i paid $30 and i got the new os. did i get the upgrade edition? what features did i pay for?no idea. i got it all, for $30.i didn't even want to read the whole table for all the features of windows 8. i just want windows 8. | windows 8: normal person editionwindows 8: i work in a big company editionwindows 8: at least i get office for free editionalso what's with this: all editions of windows 8 offer a no-compromise experience.
if they're no compromise, why do i have to choose between them? |
announcing the windows 8 editions
| windows 8: normal person editionwindows 8: i work in a big company editionwindows 8: at least i get office for free editionalso what's with this: all editions of windows 8 offer a no-compromise experience.
if they're no compromise, why do i have to choose between them? | awesome! they listened to feedback and killed off the mess of skus. now only if they'd allow disk encryption (bitlocker) in the basic sku, so non-pro users can use the os instead of having to install truecrypt. |
announcing the windows 8 editions
| awesome! they listened to feedback and killed off the mess of skus. now only if they'd allow disk encryption (bitlocker) in the basic sku, so non-pro users can use the os instead of having to install truecrypt. | as a long time linux user and recent osx laptop user, i hadn't used windows with any regularity since 2001. recently i bought a copy of windows 7 to run some niche software that lacks wine support and is cumbersome to run in a vm.my first impression was that windows 7 was great, it appeared to have removed many of the rough edges from xp and vista.soon enough though i began to run into issues relating to legacy programs' security needs. turns out, the only option i had was to run the programs as administrator, since the crippled version of windows 7 i bought has the ntfs permissions essentially disabled.why of all things would the secure filesystem be one of the disabled features on the consumer focused os version?this realization was a bit jarring, b/c i felt that the "tax" to use the os properly in this case was fairly high. i can see charging more money for actual features, but ntfs permissions are clearly used behind the scenes in the home version, so it feels more like using crippleware than opting out of advanced capabilities.so i hope that windows 8 uses a more reasonable way to determine what is a basic and what is a pro feature. |
announcing the windows 8 editions
| as a long time linux user and recent osx laptop user, i hadn't used windows with any regularity since 2001. recently i bought a copy of windows 7 to run some niche software that lacks wine support and is cumbersome to run in a vm.my first impression was that windows 7 was great, it appeared to have removed many of the rough edges from xp and vista.soon enough though i began to run into issues relating to legacy programs' security needs. turns out, the only option i had was to run the programs as administrator, since the crippled version of windows 7 i bought has the ntfs permissions essentially disabled.why of all things would the secure filesystem be one of the disabled features on the consumer focused os version?this realization was a bit jarring, b/c i felt that the "tax" to use the os properly in this case was fairly high. i can see charging more money for actual features, but ntfs permissions are clearly used behind the scenes in the home version, so it feels more like using crippleware than opting out of advanced capabilities.so i hope that windows 8 uses a more reasonable way to determine what is a basic and what is a pro feature. | 'window steam blog' |
ask hn: what's the best first business book for a programmer?
i'm a programmer and i don't know much about business but i'd like to start my own venture. what are some good resources (books, websites, etc.) for learning the basics of business? | great question.firstly, the more i've gotten involved in business over the years, the more i've come to realise that for any kind of sale requiring human contact, personal relationships are absolutely paramount.this is fairly straightforward, but it bears repeating. people will buy from people who they like. in a situation where a customer can choose between vendor a and vendor b who have similar products and prices, they will choose the likable vendor a who is friendly and who they enjoy getting a call from. this is 100 times more powerful than vendor b who has 3 additional features that are really great, but who has made no attempt to establish any kind of relationship with the customer.as such, the first book i would recommend would be the classic "how to win friends and influence people" by dale carnegie.once you've got a handle on that, "ready, fire, aim" by michael masterson talks about the value of moving quickly, selling quickly, and figuring out the finer details as you're moving along. this was invaluable for me, since i used to want to have everything pretty much perfect before moving. this was negative because it took a long time to get anything to market, and also because theory rarely survives direct contact with reality - the adjustment period in the first stage of operations is critical to the overall success of the project. this book also has plenty of enjoyable personal stories and business anecdotes that make it very readable.i second "made to stick" as a great study on what makes things popular, and how they become popular.it's really hard to narrow down more book recommendations actually - i've read hundreds of books over the years on a variety of topics. what i found i needed to do, was continuously seek out good books and learn about topics as they arose.generally when it comes to book learning and business, i would recommend this : figure out your basic plan, and get started.once you encounter your first problem, seek help (ideally from both a mentor and some books).for instance, you've built a product, now you want to sell it. you hop on google ads and put down $400. you've got a solid click through rate, and 2 weeks later, zero sales.time to learn about marketing. seek out some good marketing books (your marketing sucks is very good), buy them, read them, and ask your mentor about them.now you're making some sales, and a sales guy approaches you. he bought your product, and he likes it. he's interested to become your salesperson. next you need to find some good books on negotiation (getting to yes). of course, you're also going to need to get some advice from a lawyer or a mentor to ensure that the deal you do is fair and economically sustainable.different books will provide all sorts of different benefits and insights depending on the stage of your business and your level of experience. book selection should be a continual process.hope this is helpful and best of luck. please feel free to contact me if you need anything else. | "founders at work" by jessica livingston[1] <link>
[2] <link> |
ask hn: what's the best first business book for a programmer?
i'm a programmer and i don't know much about business but i'd like to start my own venture. what are some good resources (books, websites, etc.) for learning the basics of business? | "founders at work" by jessica livingston[1] <link>
[2] <link> | the e-myth (the e stands for entrepreneur): <link> sivers has a good collection of his notes (and many other biz-centric books) here: <link> opening line nails it: "everything needs to be a system. think of your business as a franchise prototype. you should be able to hand the "how-to" manual to just anyone, to do it as good as you." |
ask hn: what's the best first business book for a programmer?
i'm a programmer and i don't know much about business but i'd like to start my own venture. what are some good resources (books, websites, etc.) for learning the basics of business? | the e-myth (the e stands for entrepreneur): <link> sivers has a good collection of his notes (and many other biz-centric books) here: <link> opening line nails it: "everything needs to be a system. think of your business as a franchise prototype. you should be able to hand the "how-to" manual to just anyone, to do it as good as you." | i really think you might be best to start off with something like 'small business kit for dummies' - not because i think you're a dummy, but because you say you don't know much about business. instead of books about motivation, leadership, negotiation and so on, you probably need something more down to earth - what your legal options and obligations are, basic accounting and economics, contracts and ownership of intellectual property, and so forth.not to say the other things aren't valuable or important, but it's often the seemingly obvious stuff that can end up causing you expensive headaches. the small business administration (www.sba.gov) is not that focused towards startups (because on a national scale, a 'small business' is anything with 0 500 employees) but they do have all sorts of handy information on their website, and it's all free. |
ask hn: what's the best first business book for a programmer?
i'm a programmer and i don't know much about business but i'd like to start my own venture. what are some good resources (books, websites, etc.) for learning the basics of business? | i really think you might be best to start off with something like 'small business kit for dummies' - not because i think you're a dummy, but because you say you don't know much about business. instead of books about motivation, leadership, negotiation and so on, you probably need something more down to earth - what your legal options and obligations are, basic accounting and economics, contracts and ownership of intellectual property, and so forth.not to say the other things aren't valuable or important, but it's often the seemingly obvious stuff that can end up causing you expensive headaches. the small business administration (www.sba.gov) is not that focused towards startups (because on a national scale, a 'small business' is anything with 0 500 employees) but they do have all sorts of handy information on their website, and it's all free. | i would go for 4 steps to the epiphany, it gives you practical steps to follow to avoid that process of sitting down as a programmer and deciding magically what everyone wants. (then being dissapointed when you spend x time coding it and finding out they dont) |
show hn: smart bookmarks extension
| would be nice to add a full-offline option.don't take it wrong, but i'm getting wary of services offering to store my data online for free, especially when i don't know how / if it intend to make money.looks good though, i might give it a try even with that issue. | would be nice to know what it actually does before installing it. |
show hn: smart bookmarks extension
| would be nice to know what it actually does before installing it. | so that makes what 4 or 5 new bookmarks extensions for chrome in the last two weeks?they all suffer from the exact same problem: online and not nearly as fast as the current default option in chrome. don't get me wrong, i hate the default bookmarks manger in chrome and wish that after 6 years they'd update it already (or at least ad api's that allow someone else to) but all the latest get same basic things wrong while not being very different form one another.edit: i guess i should clarify, i don't mean that online is bad, i used xmarks for a long time, i just don't like online only because it affects retrieval and search rates. there's just no way to beat the speed of a local directory.[i've installed dewey, dragdis, and fetching.io. fetching is really more of a history extension than a bookmarking one but the idea behind it is the same. after about two weeks i stopped using dragdis because the ui makes looking for things impossible and dewey i installed but never enabled because it was just too much of a hassle] |
show hn: smart bookmarks extension
| so that makes what 4 or 5 new bookmarks extensions for chrome in the last two weeks?they all suffer from the exact same problem: online and not nearly as fast as the current default option in chrome. don't get me wrong, i hate the default bookmarks manger in chrome and wish that after 6 years they'd update it already (or at least ad api's that allow someone else to) but all the latest get same basic things wrong while not being very different form one another.edit: i guess i should clarify, i don't mean that online is bad, i used xmarks for a long time, i just don't like online only because it affects retrieval and search rates. there's just no way to beat the speed of a local directory.[i've installed dewey, dragdis, and fetching.io. fetching is really more of a history extension than a bookmarking one but the idea behind it is the same. after about two weeks i stopped using dragdis because the ui makes looking for things impossible and dewey i installed but never enabled because it was just too much of a hassle] | interesting, and very slick and pretty, but doesn't solve my too-many-tabs problem anywhere near as well as tabs outliner: <link> |
show hn: smart bookmarks extension
| interesting, and very slick and pretty, but doesn't solve my too-many-tabs problem anywhere near as well as tabs outliner: <link> | this seems to be the exact same as this chrome extension: <link>
i might be wrong, but there don't seem to be any real differences or improvements compared to dragdis. |
valve finds value in open-source drivers
| 2 valve has granted these intel linux developers complete access to the game's source-code, including the source engine. this has allowed intel's linux developers to better investigate possible optimizations and tweaks to their driver in order to enhance source-powered games. valve has even given them commit access to push back changes to the game company.that sure is something ea and ubisoft wouldn't do in a million years. | 2 valve makes games people actually want to run, rather than most of the games we work with now...burn!and i know i've said this before, but there are open-source drivers for the other vendors' cards as well...and i think they'd benefit tremendously from some valve love. |
valve finds value in open-source drivers
| 2 valve makes games people actually want to run, rather than most of the games we work with now...burn!and i know i've said this before, but there are open-source drivers for the other vendors' cards as well...and i think they'd benefit tremendously from some valve love. | i'm guessing valve's foray into linux is more or less a hedge against microsoft. if windows 8 is a massive flop, the next best option is mac or straight linux. if windows 8 is a success, well, i suppose it is business as usual albeit with some extra pressure from the windows app store. |
valve finds value in open-source drivers
| i'm guessing valve's foray into linux is more or less a hedge against microsoft. if windows 8 is a massive flop, the next best option is mac or straight linux. if windows 8 is a success, well, i suppose it is business as usual albeit with some extra pressure from the windows app store. | i think an interesting takeaway from this article even for those who are not really interested in gaming on linux is that the benefits of open source development can be seen even when source isn't made available to the world, but just within or between organizations.that is probably something most hners know or suspect already, but this seems like a particularly clean proof of that concept. |
valve finds value in open-source drivers
| i think an interesting takeaway from this article even for those who are not really interested in gaming on linux is that the benefits of open source development can be seen even when source isn't made available to the world, but just within or between organizations.that is probably something most hners know or suspect already, but this seems like a particularly clean proof of that concept. | playing cs:go on fedora 17 with the latest nvidia drivers is an absolute nightmare. however, the framerate and audio lag are doing wonders for building my patience. |
mozilla to certificate authorities: no subordinate cas for traffic interception
| this is being read as good news, as mozilla sticking up for its own users by enforcing a new control on its cas. but what it actually reads like to me is a surrender. for once, i'll line up with the howl- at- the- moon crowd and say that, excepting the fact that mozilla might have been boxed into a corner here, this is a bit of a travesty.what you're not getting in this story is the following set of facts:* a mozilla-approved ca appears to have sold one of its customers a ca=yes cert --- in other words, they sold one of their customers the ability to be a ca.* the customer wanted the cert to implement a "data loss protection" system. these are systems that either sit on the network or on everyone's machine and scan traffic to make sure people aren't exfiltrating company secrets. dlp systems want to see inside of ssl/tls traffic.* you don't need a ca cert to look inside the ssl/tls traffic of your users. what you're meant to do is, create your own self-signed ca root certificate and install it yourself in all your users' browsers. yes, this is painful.* so instead of incurring that pain, this particular company got a ca to, in effect, install that certificate in the browser of every computer on the internet. that they didn't intend to mitm the traffic of every one of those computers is beside the point.* instead of the exact audit and certification process used by mozilla to add new cas, this chained sub-ca was audited by the ca itself. but: before you say, "well at a minimum you'd hope the ca audited them!", you should know: the primary business of this particular ca is auditing.* the ca didn't appear to have told anyone this for a long time (i want to be careful to point out that i don't know exactly what the timelines are here; from the crls, it doesn't look great).* something happened that caused the ca to announce that they had issued the cert.* a long discussion happened on mozilla bugzilla, under a critical security blocker bug that more or less requested that the ca be removed from firefox.* publicly, the policy response from mozilla was, "they came forward, and removing their cert from the roots is an extreme punishment". i think behind the scenes, getting rid of this ca was problematic for other (valid) reasons.* so instead, stern letter to all the cas. yay! the internet is safe again.i don't know how much more cut-and-dry an abuse of the ca system you can get than selling your ca status to random unnameable companies so that they can implement mitm systems.but more than that: it is simply batshit crazy that cas are allowed to sell ca=yes certs at all. i don't get it. maybe someone working at a browser vendor can reply to this comment and explain to us why any one company is trusted to make a decision like that for the entire internet?i am a vocal and public fan of ssl/tls, and i've even on occasion stuck up for x.509 (horrid as this certificate format is). but this stuff here is the part of the ssl/tls system that the privacy zealots are right about. i'm hopeful that we'll see adoption of a system like moxie marlinspike proposed with "convergence", where instead of blindly accepting mozilla's policy decisions (and updating our policies once- in- a- blue- moon), we'll have end-user-selectable trust roots and thus an incentive for someone (maybe the eff) to do a good job running such a root. i'm also hopeful that at some point we'll manage to figure out a ux for website trust that is better than what we came up with in 1997. | i think ca's are problematic nevertheless because they involve a third party i never invited. i would much prefer to have a ssh style public key fingerprint that you must verify and accept for one site, and know that once i've decided to trust them, nothing can come between me and them unlike with ssl certification chain. i would prefer to receive my bank's public key on paper when signing up for online banking and verify that it equals what i see when i first connect to their servers.this reduces the mitm to the initial handshake. this could be worked out to a degree with some p2p scheme or a set of dhts for popularity count. fingerprints would be submitted to a public service that accumulates submissions from different users, identified by the same public key used to sign the submissions. trustworthiness would be weighted based on the history and age of the users' submissions: someone who has used the same public key and submitted fingerprints for five years is likely to be a real user that you can trust instead of a bot that generates new identities in order to submit false fingerprints to launch a mitm. there are numerous ways to implement this.one positive thing would be to bring the same attention to trustworthiness to people's minds that they must employ in "real" life as well, i.e. offline. a website that's never fraudulent or genuine (unless you got it in writing) but shades of trust more reflects the interactions we encounter in real life (can i trust this guy because my friend said he's ok?). |
mozilla to certificate authorities: no subordinate cas for traffic interception
| i think ca's are problematic nevertheless because they involve a third party i never invited. i would much prefer to have a ssh style public key fingerprint that you must verify and accept for one site, and know that once i've decided to trust them, nothing can come between me and them unlike with ssl certification chain. i would prefer to receive my bank's public key on paper when signing up for online banking and verify that it equals what i see when i first connect to their servers.this reduces the mitm to the initial handshake. this could be worked out to a degree with some p2p scheme or a set of dhts for popularity count. fingerprints would be submitted to a public service that accumulates submissions from different users, identified by the same public key used to sign the submissions. trustworthiness would be weighted based on the history and age of the users' submissions: someone who has used the same public key and submitted fingerprints for five years is likely to be a real user that you can trust instead of a bot that generates new identities in order to submit false fingerprints to launch a mitm. there are numerous ways to implement this.one positive thing would be to bring the same attention to trustworthiness to people's minds that they must employ in "real" life as well, i.e. offline. a website that's never fraudulent or genuine (unless you got it in writing) but shades of trust more reflects the interactions we encounter in real life (can i trust this guy because my friend said he's ok?). | suppose you visit <link> from inside a corporate network.assuming ideal scenarios no one can snoop on your traffic between you and google because of ssl.if a company wants to monitor you they have lots of options. one option is to try and record all traffic between you and gmail. however if the try to do that your web browser will pop up a warning saying mail.google.com is pretending to be someone else.to get around this a company can create fake certificates that are trusted by your browser. then they need to intercept the traffic and basically pretend they are gmail all the way recording you.ignoring the fact that companies already have a lot of rights to snoop on whatever you do this is just bad precedent. |
mozilla to certificate authorities: no subordinate cas for traffic interception
| suppose you visit <link> from inside a corporate network.assuming ideal scenarios no one can snoop on your traffic between you and google because of ssl.if a company wants to monitor you they have lots of options. one option is to try and record all traffic between you and gmail. however if the try to do that your web browser will pop up a warning saying mail.google.com is pretending to be someone else.to get around this a company can create fake certificates that are trusted by your browser. then they need to intercept the traffic and basically pretend they are gmail all the way recording you.ignoring the fact that companies already have a lot of rights to snoop on whatever you do this is just bad precedent. | awesome news, finally someone stands up to the blatant misuse of trust. i work in such a company where ssl mitm is a part of day-to-day development. it is disgusting that the security of ssl is broken for the sake of corporate control over its workers. |
mozilla to certificate authorities: no subordinate cas for traffic interception
| awesome news, finally someone stands up to the blatant misuse of trust. i work in such a company where ssl mitm is a part of day-to-day development. it is disgusting that the security of ssl is broken for the sake of corporate control over its workers. | for the uninformed, what does this mean? (btw, i did read the post; i just didn't understand it.) |
show hn: papa parse 3
| this looks great, particularly the way the website breaks down the main functionality with plain explanations and code samples. i know that there's a bit of a bugbear with some people when it comes to reimplementing csv parsing but having it in-browser could be very handy. | the explanation of features is one of the best i've seen on the landing page. i didn't even have to hit the documentation to fully understand usage under a variety of conditions/circumstances. |
show hn: papa parse 3
| the explanation of features is one of the best i've seen on the landing page. i didn't even have to hit the documentation to fully understand usage under a variety of conditions/circumstances. | do you guys think it would be too cheesy/unoriginal to "steal" this q&a format for other products? i have a free software library to publish pretty soon, and i absolutely love your way of explaining how it all works in a cool, conversational style. |
show hn: papa parse 3
| do you guys think it would be too cheesy/unoriginal to "steal" this q&a format for other products? i have a free software library to publish pretty soon, and i absolutely love your way of explaining how it all works in a cool, conversational style. | that's the coolest, most informative, clear and concise faq i've seen! great job devs. you are cool! :) |
show hn: papa parse 3
| that's the coolest, most informative, clear and concise faq i've seen! great job devs. you are cool! :) | for what would otherwise be considered a mundane task, this page is absolutely epic. nice work! |
i switched back to php after 2 years on rails (2007)
| this is an old story. he eventually switched back to rails [1] : my former company (cd baby) was one of the first to loudly switch to ruby on rails, and then even more loudly switch back to php… this book by michael hartl came so highly recommended that i had to try it, and the ruby on rails tutorial is what i used to switch back to rails again… though i’ve worked my way through many rails books, this is the one that finally made me “get” it.understanding a framework is a long and sometimes tough process. that's the only lesson to be learned.[1] <link> | can we change the headline to mention that this article was written in 2007? i'm quite sure both php and ror have come a long way in a little over five years. |
i switched back to php after 2 years on rails (2007)
| can we change the headline to mention that this article was written in 2007? i'm quite sure both php and ror have come a long way in a little over five years. | please note that this article was written in 2007. |
i switched back to php after 2 years on rails (2007)
| please note that this article was written in 2007. | he is comapring apples to oranges here.the language php to the _framework_ rails.he didn't find the language (ruby) unsuitable, but rather the framework (rails) too heavy. this might of been exactly the same if he tried php with zend/symphony/etc.his bottom line should of been: "sometimes its better to work without a framework". |
i switched back to php after 2 years on rails (2007)
| he is comapring apples to oranges here.the language php to the _framework_ rails.he didn't find the language (ruby) unsuitable, but rather the framework (rails) too heavy. this might of been exactly the same if he tried php with zend/symphony/etc.his bottom line should of been: "sometimes its better to work without a framework". | if ruby is such an amazing language, why not ditch rails and rewrite it in 2 months with pure ruby ? |
mouthbreathing machiavellis dream of a silicon reich
| phrases in this article that constitute nothing less than absolute blind misses and lapses in journalistic judgment:"welcome to the latest political fashion among the california confederacy: total corporate despotism."well, we're two paragraphs in and you already went from critical analysis to full-blown agenda reporting."some are atheists, while others affect obscure orthodox beliefs, but most are youngish white males embittered by “political correctness.”"we've moved on to sweeping generalizations."as best i can tell, their ideal society best resembles blade runner, but without all those asian people cluttering up the streets. neoreactionaries like to see themselves as the heroes of another sci-fi movie, in fact, sometimes boasting that they have been “redpilled,” like keanu reeves’s character in the matrix—a movie moldbug regards as “genius.”"and now we're in the territory of implied racism, straw-manning and caricature."by so doing, moldbug has been able to an attract an audience that welcomes the usual teeth-gnashing white supremacists who haunt the web while also leaving room for a more socially acceptable assortment of “men’s rights” advocates, gun nuts, transhumanist libertarians, disillusioned occupiers and well-credentialed silicon valley entrepreneurs."by the time we get here the sweeping generalizations have become the entire article and it's no longer about the material in question but an excuse for the author to broadbrush everyone he personally dislikes into a neat little category. seems more like he was using 4chan's /pol/ section than moldbug's blog. please note that i'm not a moldbug fan and i loathe justine tunney, for the record; but this article reeks of other issues and definitely of straw-manning those who critique mainstream journalism:"apart from their reverence for old-timey tyrants, they espouse a belief in “human biodiversity,” which is basically racism in a lab coat. this scientific-sounding euphemism invariably refers to supposed differences in intelligence across races. it is so spurious that the wikipedia article on human biodiversity was deleted because, in the words of one editor, it is “purely an internet theory.” censored once again by the cathedral, alas."the problem here is again, the broadbrush of 'racism' - again, not an hbd believer - but to instantly use that label is bigoted reporting and confirmation bias and shows a lack of journalistic ethics.furthermore, wikipedia draws its primary credibility from mainstream news, which primary draws its stories from small outlets or other large outlets (reuters) and reprints them. essentially; this is a journalist thumbing his nose and saying 'aha, behold, i'm the man, i am sponsored'."“if you ask me to condemn [mass murderer] anders breivik, but adore nelson mandela, perhaps you have a mother you’d like to fuck,” yarvin writes."note that the paraphrase adds "mass murderer" to breivik who killed 77, but not to nelson mandela who killed tens of thousands as part of the mk and their bombing campaigns."yet the conservative press remains generally dismissive." this is an outright lie and fabrication; the conservative publications which reviewed moldbug's work loved it."if the koch brothers have proved anything, it’s that no matter how crazy your ideas are, if you put serious money behind those ideas, you can seize key positions of authority and power and eventually bring large numbers of people around to your way of thinking. moreover, the radicalism may intensify with each generation. yesterday’s republicans and independents are today’s libertarians. today’s libertarians may be tomorrow’s neoreactionaries, whose views flatter the prejudices of the new silicon valley elite."and now we've gone to koch and assumed insanity - this from the supposedly trustworthy folks over at the baffler - nothing less than a farce at this point. for every koch there is a soros. the money pool is bipartisan."the formulation mirrored moldbug’s “cathedral.” srinivasan’s central theme was the notion of “exit”—as in, exit from democratic society, and entry into any number of corporate mini-states whose arrival will leave the world looking like a patchwork map of feudal europe."now everyone is moldbug; straw man complete.this article is a great example of how supposed anti-racism quickly turns into an equally vapid form of bigotry against skeptics and that 'anti-racism' includes, like any collective, some of the most bigoted individuals in the world.please note that the author of all these knee-jerk reactions to supposed 'racism' is a well-dressed middle-upper class male in corey pein. do we really need successful white male journalists to fight racism and hierarchy in print and label everyone who does not as 'moldbug' or a potential member of stormfront?i cannot help but mourn the future of journalism as the liberal outlets take over with massive contributions and yet continually straw man koch industries while they receive billions from soros, bloomberg, et al.why must the supposed opposition be labeled as racist, insane, etc.? why aren't the ideas analyzed in an academic, scientific manner? have we passed the age of rational discussion in favor of writing those who disagree with us off as lunatics, 'sympathizers' and 'oppressors' in the age of the oppression olympics? | of all the years i have been part of the hn community, i think that this is the first time something has hit the front page that truly made me go "wtf am i reading?" |
mouthbreathing machiavellis dream of a silicon reich
| of all the years i have been part of the hn community, i think that this is the first time something has hit the front page that truly made me go "wtf am i reading?" | crummy article, but the real issue is that california is getting increasingly fed up with a huge chunk of the us which is simultaneously a) happy to take california's revenue and b) beat california up about it.if you're going to ask to borrow money from your neighbor, you should at least be polite to him. |
mouthbreathing machiavellis dream of a silicon reich
| crummy article, but the real issue is that california is getting increasingly fed up with a huge chunk of the us which is simultaneously a) happy to take california's revenue and b) beat california up about it.if you're going to ask to borrow money from your neighbor, you should at least be polite to him. | i find it kind of weird to construe justine tunney's opinions as somehow related to ayn rand. i have no idea what she is really supporting, but there is no confusing her with an objectivist. whatever you might think of ayn rand, at least she never invented a phrase like, "tyranny of the individual." |
mouthbreathing machiavellis dream of a silicon reich
| i find it kind of weird to construe justine tunney's opinions as somehow related to ayn rand. i have no idea what she is really supporting, but there is no confusing her with an objectivist. whatever you might think of ayn rand, at least she never invented a phrase like, "tyranny of the individual." | the author takes peter thiel's statements grossly out of context. my own reading of his statements and actions place him much closer to "voluntaryist" than "monarchist".given that, i can't place much stock in the rest of his assertions. |
the 64-core parallella is alive
| they are making a critical mistake here by not letting users pre-order the next batch. it says "sold out" and you can't do anything else. they could make hundreds or thousands of sales over the next day or two due to their free launch publicity, but they're fucking blocking everyone from paying for it.most of the folks like me who would have bought something today while reading about it will just forget about it later. these guys are missing out on a huge opportunity. | if you haven't heard of parallella before (like me) and want to learn more: <link>
ok, here's my quick summary. please correct me if i'm wrong:this looks like a small pcb (raspberrypi-alike) that sits the main attraction: a 16- or 64-core epiphany coprocessor, as well as an arm cpu to run the os. not sure how these relate in performance to other coprocessors (gpus with opencl?). power draw seems low (5w). would love to read more about the architecture, why epiphany processors are special, etc. |
the 64-core parallella is alive
| if you haven't heard of parallella before (like me) and want to learn more: <link>
ok, here's my quick summary. please correct me if i'm wrong:this looks like a small pcb (raspberrypi-alike) that sits the main attraction: a 16- or 64-core epiphany coprocessor, as well as an arm cpu to run the os. not sure how these relate in performance to other coprocessors (gpus with opencl?). power draw seems low (5w). would love to read more about the architecture, why epiphany processors are special, etc. | i was informed a few days ago that my 16 core parallella has shipped; i had hoped, when i ordered, that it would come earlier in the year before exams but the fact that it shipped- several kickstarters which did not deliver have made me wary- has me ecstatic to hold it in my hands.i have a great amount of respect for the parallella team: to be able to kickstart a custom chip, that promises very interesting applications, and deliver it within several months of the estimated delivery date with the setbacks they have had is absolutely astonishing for me. while i can't comment on the quality of the final product yet, i would say that they know how to run an excellent campaign. |
the 64-core parallella is alive
| i was informed a few days ago that my 16 core parallella has shipped; i had hoped, when i ordered, that it would come earlier in the year before exams but the fact that it shipped- several kickstarters which did not deliver have made me wary- has me ecstatic to hold it in my hands.i have a great amount of respect for the parallella team: to be able to kickstart a custom chip, that promises very interesting applications, and deliver it within several months of the estimated delivery date with the setbacks they have had is absolutely astonishing for me. while i can't comment on the quality of the final product yet, i would say that they know how to run an excellent campaign. | > the 64-core parallella is still setting the standard in terms of energy efficiency. in fact, it could be argued that it’s the most efficient computer in the world todayi'd be curious if it beats greenarrays (<link> numbers of picojoules per operation. i wonder if those numbers are published for parallela? |
the 64-core parallella is alive
| > the 64-core parallella is still setting the standard in terms of energy efficiency. in fact, it could be argued that it’s the most efficient computer in the world todayi'd be curious if it beats greenarrays (<link> numbers of picojoules per operation. i wonder if those numbers are published for parallela? | is parallella alive? i put in an order more than 18 months ago and still nothing.related question: is erlang running on parallella yet?i remain very interested - 64 or even 16 cores on a small form factor would be incredible. |
scaling mongodb at mailbox
| >one performance issue that impacted us was mongodb’s database-level write lock.people give mssql shit for having row-level locks (if you don't use their mvcc option), yet how is it that mongo runs with a database-wide option and people don't immediately laugh and walk away? is the hype so powerful that people just shrug about a huge mutex? | i dont understand how mongodb can stay as a shiny tool given its long list of shortcomings. it is so elastic that i think it really has no true form (object cache, mq, relational??, key-value bucket).
lately i haven't read any news about a company migrating to mongo, but rather most were either departing from mongo because of some catastrophic outage or some mission impossible operation to handle the shortcomings, like this one.
in its current state it looks more like a prototyping tool that allows you to delay some tech decisions until your product matures, rather than a production tool. or it is just me that wants at least 5 major versions on his production database. |
scaling mongodb at mailbox
| i dont understand how mongodb can stay as a shiny tool given its long list of shortcomings. it is so elastic that i think it really has no true form (object cache, mq, relational??, key-value bucket).
lately i haven't read any news about a company migrating to mongo, but rather most were either departing from mongo because of some catastrophic outage or some mission impossible operation to handle the shortcomings, like this one.
in its current state it looks more like a prototyping tool that allows you to delay some tech decisions until your product matures, rather than a production tool. or it is just me that wants at least 5 major versions on his production database. | you need consistency (distributed mvcc), row-level locking and scale-out architecture. clustrix might be a better fit for the workload. clustrix customer twoo.com has 336 core deployment (168 master, 168 slave, 21 nodes each), they have millions of users and billions of transactions per day. their application still thinks it's talking to a single mysql database and they don't have a dba and they have never thought about shard keys etc. we in the database industry should be solving these problems for you. |
scaling mongodb at mailbox
| you need consistency (distributed mvcc), row-level locking and scale-out architecture. clustrix might be a better fit for the workload. clustrix customer twoo.com has 336 core deployment (168 master, 168 slave, 21 nodes each), they have millions of users and billions of transactions per day. their application still thinks it's talking to a single mysql database and they don't have a dba and they have never thought about shard keys etc. we in the database industry should be solving these problems for you. | nice work -- that's a hard problem. i've felt some of this pain as i helped cloudant customers make hot migrations from mongo to into cloudant. your first two figures make it clear just how challenging hot-replications are (especially master-master), not to mention handling failure scenarios. for all of the great things about mongo, there's something very awesome to be said for couchdb's mvcc replication model. glad to see that you're open sourcing those tools. maybe they could be extended to make a mongodb <==> couchdb replicator. |
scaling mongodb at mailbox
| nice work -- that's a hard problem. i've felt some of this pain as i helped cloudant customers make hot migrations from mongo to into cloudant. your first two figures make it clear just how challenging hot-replications are (especially master-master), not to mention handling failure scenarios. for all of the great things about mongo, there's something very awesome to be said for couchdb's mvcc replication model. glad to see that you're open sourcing those tools. maybe they could be extended to make a mongodb <==> couchdb replicator. | i worked on a project where we used mongo to collect analytics and while it worked, there were always problems. we had a problem with our shard key so one shard received more data which crashed it, overloaded the other two shards and crashed the whole system. a second issue we had was trying to read from mongo while we were storing data which caused a lot of lock contention. the question i have is, knowing what you know now, would you have still gone with mongo? |
css3 image filters with examples
| finally, i can use my favourite ie5 features in google chrome! | thanks for pointing this out. i was about to implement some simple image processing (brightness, contrast, invert, etc) for x-ray images and i think the css image filters will give me everything i need. it's a research website and nearly everyone is using webkit browsers, so no problem there. |
css3 image filters with examples
| thanks for pointing this out. i was about to implement some simple image processing (brightness, contrast, invert, etc) for x-ray images and i think the css image filters will give me everything i need. it's a research website and nearly everyone is using webkit browsers, so no problem there. | made a css-filter playground a while a go: <link> |
css3 image filters with examples
| made a css-filter playground a while a go: <link> | i'm not sure what the point of some of these is. take the sepia one for example: why do we need a filter just for that? what's the use case?interesting to note that the blur one "breaks" out of its box, although not while it's transitioning. |
css3 image filters with examples
| i'm not sure what the point of some of these is. take the sepia one for example: why do we need a filter just for that? what's the use case?interesting to note that the blur one "breaks" out of its box, although not while it's transitioning. | <link> |
5 things that will kill your startup [in 2008]
| re: web 2.0 being out of style, perhaps some of the trendy things like gradients, etc. may have fallen out of fashion, but, imo, simple interfaces will never fall out of fashion.for the last ten years, i've programmed user interfaces for folks with high school educations to run complex chemical plants and refineries, and i've seen that an easy-to-understand interface has at least as much importance as the algorithms that underly the interface. | "but you can learn from the backlash seen from youtube and facebook users who felt cheated when the sites built a loyal userbase, got bought out and suddenly the user experience drops in favour of advertising revenue."i think ads are lame. power users block them with adblock plus, anyway, so if you cater to savvy users you'll get shit clickthrough rates and annoy everyone else.are people making $40-100k a year really too cheap to pay $9/month for something they use everyday?
|
5 things that will kill your startup [in 2008]
| "but you can learn from the backlash seen from youtube and facebook users who felt cheated when the sites built a loyal userbase, got bought out and suddenly the user experience drops in favour of advertising revenue."i think ads are lame. power users block them with adblock plus, anyway, so if you cater to savvy users you'll get shit clickthrough rates and annoy everyone else.are people making $40-100k a year really too cheap to pay $9/month for something they use everyday?
| it seems to me that the 'emerging monopolies' wouldn't kill your startup, but be a good thing, as getting bought seems to be a worthwhile goal.
|
5 things that will kill your startup [in 2008]
| it seems to me that the 'emerging monopolies' wouldn't kill your startup, but be a good thing, as getting bought seems to be a worthwhile goal.
| nice article. found it refreshing and forwarding looking, without trying to be too futuristic. |
5 things that will kill your startup [in 2008]
| nice article. found it refreshing and forwarding looking, without trying to be too futuristic. | don't use the dollar?i'm not sure what he's getting at. use a payment service and quote in whatever currency the use prefers. it's not like you have to do your own currency exchange or anything -- all that stuff can easily be handled.also the "there won't be a web 3.0. web 3.0 is a web 2.0 meme" seems a little flip. the 2.0/3.0/4.0/etc meme is from software versioning, not web 2.0. so i imagine whatever comes along big on the web next people will naturally call web 3.0 -- for the same reason the next big wr will probably be called wwiii. that's just the way numbers work. of course, "web 3.0" may never catch on, but that's a different story. |
show hn: i built a service to find cool people on github
| no way i'm signing in with my twitter account to any of your projects. i'm being cautious because i still remember your blogpost about storing passwords of 3rd party accounts in plain text.relevant: <link> | i think the concept is cool but twitter is probably not the best vehicle of choice for me personally. maybe it'll work well for others. |
show hn: i built a service to find cool people on github
| i think the concept is cool but twitter is probably not the best vehicle of choice for me personally. maybe it'll work well for others. | the "sign in with twitter" button doesn't appear to do anything (safari 5.05 on osx 10.5.8). |
show hn: i built a service to find cool people on github
| the "sign in with twitter" button doesn't appear to do anything (safari 5.05 on osx 10.5.8). | bug: it found some people on github but all link to github.com/${login} |
show hn: i built a service to find cool people on github
| bug: it found some people on github but all link to github.com/${login} | it would be great if you could bulk select those you wanted to follow. |
fitfu (yc w11): stay active anywhere
| right.i really want you to sell me this product because this solves (i think?) a problem i often face. the product page (and the blog) makes a big thing about the social aspect and so on. which is fine; but i still have no idea what exactly it does.it tracks my movement. when? how?what exactly does it do?clearly your are hip and cool, which is great. but i've clicked every link and i am still none the wiser as to the product... sorry.edit: right, i noted the tc link (<link> posted elsewhere. that was much more explanatory, now i understand a lot more. in fact (and, man, i never thought i would say this!) the techcrunch copy is pretty solid explanatory text, you should take careful note of it and consider at least a page that says something similar about what the product is. | "ever get the feeling there's more to life than sitting around: sitting at work, sitting in the car, sitting in front of the tv? do you want to get active but haven't time for the gym?"stop watching so much tv. |
fitfu (yc w11): stay active anywhere
| "ever get the feeling there's more to life than sitting around: sitting at work, sitting in the car, sitting in front of the tv? do you want to get active but haven't time for the gym?"stop watching so much tv. | that mascot is really scary.amazing design, though. really sets you apart from the competition. |
fitfu (yc w11): stay active anywhere
| that mascot is really scary.amazing design, though. really sets you apart from the competition. | the one thing i found missing from the pitch: is it effective? of course that's implied in any marketing, but i thought the specifics were a bit fuzzy; just some vague statements about moving around and tracking using the accelerometer. |
fitfu (yc w11): stay active anywhere
| the one thing i found missing from the pitch: is it effective? of course that's implied in any marketing, but i thought the specifics were a bit fuzzy; just some vague statements about moving around and tracking using the accelerometer. | looks awesome guys, congrats! one small bit of feedback: i had a really, really hard time parsing this sentence:2 activate some you time, fit in some fu timeby the time i got to the comma, my brain was totally halted. |
a first look at dell's 'sputnik' ubuntu linux developer laptop
| "developer profiles"? what does that mean? it will install node 88 jshint 88 vim for me or what?what i want out of a linux ready laptop from dell (or anyone):1. make the hardware and os play nice.
2. nothingi can do the rest just please make the display, media keys, battery, drives, etc. work flawlessly. profiles 8 all that stuff are no selling point at all. | 2 "the sputnik will allow developers to create “microclouds” on their laptops, simulating a proper, at-scale environment, and then deploy that environment seamlessly to the cloud. george explained it would use lxc virtual environments containers for the microclouds. these cloud applications can then be deployed to ubuntu instances running on the amazon, openstack, bare-metal with management as a service (maas), and, eventually, microsoft azure clouds. "jesus. can i just have a laptop, please?i don't think they understand that their target market is going to wipe whatever they put on there and reinstall their own. or at least reconfigure the crap out of it. it's like our house, you can't just dump whatever you like into our environment. |
a first look at dell's 'sputnik' ubuntu linux developer laptop
| 2 "the sputnik will allow developers to create “microclouds” on their laptops, simulating a proper, at-scale environment, and then deploy that environment seamlessly to the cloud. george explained it would use lxc virtual environments containers for the microclouds. these cloud applications can then be deployed to ubuntu instances running on the amazon, openstack, bare-metal with management as a service (maas), and, eventually, microsoft azure clouds. "jesus. can i just have a laptop, please?i don't think they understand that their target market is going to wipe whatever they put on there and reinstall their own. or at least reconfigure the crap out of it. it's like our house, you can't just dump whatever you like into our environment. | just get me a laptop with better battery life and a higher resolution screen. give it a better keyboard (none of that chicklet crap). make it play well with open source drivers. and that's it.i don't want extra software. i don't want profiles. i just want something that works out of the box with any recent linux i throw at it. |
a first look at dell's 'sputnik' ubuntu linux developer laptop
| just get me a laptop with better battery life and a higher resolution screen. give it a better keyboard (none of that chicklet crap). make it play well with open source drivers. and that's it.i don't want extra software. i don't want profiles. i just want something that works out of the box with any recent linux i throw at it. | by "developer" they really mean "newbie to-be developer". otherwise i don't understand what's with all the emphasis on software rather than hardware, as if an experienced developer wouldn't already have a preferred developing enviroment and wouldn't already know how to set it up.and the price tag is outrageous even from the perspective of a to-be developer that values having everything setup before hand. |
a first look at dell's 'sputnik' ubuntu linux developer laptop
| by "developer" they really mean "newbie to-be developer". otherwise i don't understand what's with all the emphasis on software rather than hardware, as if an experienced developer wouldn't already have a preferred developing enviroment and wouldn't already know how to set it up.and the price tag is outrageous even from the perspective of a to-be developer that values having everything setup before hand. | i presume that dell are aiming to make a killing from less-informed buyers such as bosses at small companies (i have no idea how this might work at large companies), and parents for their kids interested in programming. given how many people buy dell, the "developer" tag will carry a lot of weight.i certainly can't see any developer going out of their way to buy this for themselves. my hp probook was cheaper, and came with a whole lot more (including ssd and 1600x900 resolution). the only improvement i'd like is a sturdier body, so will probably go for an elitebook or lenovo thinkpad next time. |
ask hn: coding challenges as part of interviews: yes or no?
just curious what the group thinks of coding quizzes / challenges that are often part of job interviews for programmers. how predictive are they of a coder's future performance? are they appropriate only for entry level positions (when someone has less industry experience), or are they suitable for any level? are they more likely to pique your interest or to come across as cliche? | my experience:successfully pasing a code challenge is not a good predictor of future success. however, failing to pass a code challenge is a very good predictor of future failure. furthermore, making the test harder does not make it predict future success well.therefore, i belong to the "fizzbuzz" school: make the test ridiculously simple. it should take no more than fifteen minutes to complete. if the person gets it obviously right, throw the result away and move on to more important quetsions. do not try to deduce a lot of malarky about their programming style or ability from an obviously contrived problem.for example, writing:a = 5; b = 10does not mean they don't know ruby well, and writing:a, b = 5, 10does not mean they are a ruby expert. and writing:fsquare = lambda { |x| x * x }does not mean they are a closet bipolar lisp programmer. if the program works, it's a pass, move on. if there is a syntax error or some such, who cares, move on.but if they struggle... you need to investigate the reason for their difficulty with a simple problem. | trick questions, or questions with some kind of gottcha have no place in interviews, however, simple, straightforward programming exercises are essential. i've seen people who claim to have x years of industry experience who can talk a good game, but literally can't write a switch statement without reference to the internet.i also like to ask people to peer review some code with both obvious and more subtle errors in it. that's a pretty important skill to me too. anyway, ask them to code some fairly simple algorithm and then critique their own work. if there are several ways to solve the same problem, some more efficient than others, all the better. |
ask hn: coding challenges as part of interviews: yes or no?
just curious what the group thinks of coding quizzes / challenges that are often part of job interviews for programmers. how predictive are they of a coder's future performance? are they appropriate only for entry level positions (when someone has less industry experience), or are they suitable for any level? are they more likely to pique your interest or to come across as cliche? | trick questions, or questions with some kind of gottcha have no place in interviews, however, simple, straightforward programming exercises are essential. i've seen people who claim to have x years of industry experience who can talk a good game, but literally can't write a switch statement without reference to the internet.i also like to ask people to peer review some code with both obvious and more subtle errors in it. that's a pretty important skill to me too. anyway, ask them to code some fairly simple algorithm and then critique their own work. if there are several ways to solve the same problem, some more efficient than others, all the better. | a trivial coding problem is essential. i've seen people with 10 years of experience in xml#java.netenterprise2012 who don't understand conditionals, loops, or boolean expressions.for phone screens, i find steve yegge's guide a useful starting point: <link>'m not a fan of asking candidates to reverse a string or to implement atoi or a binary search, because those have corner cases which, under interview pressure, might be too much to ask for. i just ask for an implementation of a gcd (greatest common divisor) function, in any language. i always explain the problem in detail. only one guy (a phd in physics) ever gave me euclid's algorithm (section 1.1 in knuth's aocp volume 1), so i don't expect it. i do expect a trivial loop, and most candidates take 15-20 minutes to come up with it, and need lots of hints.as far as i'm concerned, anyone who can't come up with a trivial loop (or recursive or tail recursive function) for something like this shouldn't be programming for a living. maybe "developing enterprise solutions," but never programming. |
ask hn: coding challenges as part of interviews: yes or no?
just curious what the group thinks of coding quizzes / challenges that are often part of job interviews for programmers. how predictive are they of a coder's future performance? are they appropriate only for entry level positions (when someone has less industry experience), or are they suitable for any level? are they more likely to pique your interest or to come across as cliche? | a trivial coding problem is essential. i've seen people with 10 years of experience in xml#java.netenterprise2012 who don't understand conditionals, loops, or boolean expressions.for phone screens, i find steve yegge's guide a useful starting point: <link>'m not a fan of asking candidates to reverse a string or to implement atoi or a binary search, because those have corner cases which, under interview pressure, might be too much to ask for. i just ask for an implementation of a gcd (greatest common divisor) function, in any language. i always explain the problem in detail. only one guy (a phd in physics) ever gave me euclid's algorithm (section 1.1 in knuth's aocp volume 1), so i don't expect it. i do expect a trivial loop, and most candidates take 15-20 minutes to come up with it, and need lots of hints.as far as i'm concerned, anyone who can't come up with a trivial loop (or recursive or tail recursive function) for something like this shouldn't be programming for a living. maybe "developing enterprise solutions," but never programming. | this reminds me of a group of main frame programmers i knew who had been forced to become perl web developers. about a month later they were asked to hire another perl programmer and one of their interview questions was what's the difference between 'chomp' and 'chop' (chomp removes the final character of a string if it's a newline, chop does it regardless).they were shocked that the interviewee didn't know the answer because they considered it basic knowledge, "it's in the first chapter for gosh sake." the first chapter in this case covered differences between perl 4 and perl 5.in perl 5, nobody uses 'chop', they all use 'chomp.' many experienced perl programmers might even have forgotten that 'chop' existed.and that's my major problem with gotcha questions, they tend to be pretty far from measuring if a person can actually write productive code. |
ask hn: coding challenges as part of interviews: yes or no?
just curious what the group thinks of coding quizzes / challenges that are often part of job interviews for programmers. how predictive are they of a coder's future performance? are they appropriate only for entry level positions (when someone has less industry experience), or are they suitable for any level? are they more likely to pique your interest or to come across as cliche? | this reminds me of a group of main frame programmers i knew who had been forced to become perl web developers. about a month later they were asked to hire another perl programmer and one of their interview questions was what's the difference between 'chomp' and 'chop' (chomp removes the final character of a string if it's a newline, chop does it regardless).they were shocked that the interviewee didn't know the answer because they considered it basic knowledge, "it's in the first chapter for gosh sake." the first chapter in this case covered differences between perl 4 and perl 5.in perl 5, nobody uses 'chop', they all use 'chomp.' many experienced perl programmers might even have forgotten that 'chop' existed.and that's my major problem with gotcha questions, they tend to be pretty far from measuring if a person can actually write productive code. | programming challenges sort the wheat from the chaff - in particular those who cannot code at all, but beyond that i've rarely found them predictive of future performance. much more important that you hire a good fit for your company. an unhappy or toxic coder can bring a startup to its knees - hire slow, fire fast and all that. |
ask hn: who is hiring? (december 2013)
please lead with the location of the position and include the keywords intern, remote, or h1b if the corresponding sort of candidate is welcome. feel free to post any job that may interest hn readers from executive assistant to machine learning expert to cto.<p>also see: ask hn: freelancer? seeking freelancer? (december 2013) <link> | spacex - los angeles, ca <link> seek to accelerate the course of human history by developing the technologies necessary for multi-planetary civilization.we build rockets and spacecraft from the ground up, utilizing much of our own electronics, software, vehicle structures, and engine systems. the falcon launch vehicle and dragon spacecraft are among the most ambitious engineering systems in the world. dragon holds the distinction of being the first commercially developed spacecraft to have achieved orbit, rendezvous with the international space station, and a safe return to earth. spacex is advancing the state of the art in a field previously dominated by nation states.our next developments include a heavy lift launch vehicle, human transportation, and a reusable launch system that will drastically reduce the cost of access to space.flight software developer as a software developer on the flight software team, you will be creating software that is used to design, develop, launch and operate spacex flight systems. you will engage with other spacex engineers to discover the needs of the mission and code highly reliable software that turns the mission into a reality. you will be responsible for the complete lifecycle of the software you create, from development to testing to operation during a mission. you will accept a large degree of personal responsibility, work on awesome stuff and every day be completely baffled as to how you ever worked anywhere else.spacex software engineering the flight software team is responsible for the software that runs on-board spacex rockets and spacecraft, but we do more than embedded software engineering: we also do simulations, distributed data management, and analysis tools used in preparation for a launch. our problem domains span embedded, fault tolerant, flight control, web, mobile, cloud, and big data computing. the products that we develop run on low-power space computing platforms, mobile devices, desktop systems, and in data centers.we are an organizationally flat group of a few dozen software engineers. although we work on and support critical systems, you wouldn’t know it from observing our office. when it comes to the code we are unrelentingly meticulous and thorough, but when it comes to people we are big on open communication, flexible hours and a casual work environment.when considering you as a candidate, we won’t be focused on specific experience, skills or keywords. we will be looking for evidence that you’re smart, adaptable and exceptionally productive. you will show us that you’re an accomplished programmer, capable of working in many problem domains, and that you can ship products. you’re the engineer that other engineers can count on—you’re highly technical, you attack every problem with enthusiasm, and you share the team’s passionate dedication to the mission.at spacex, the problem domain is full of exciting challenges, and “launching” the product will be like no other product launch you’ve ever experienced!
note for new or recent graduates: if you’re a new or recent graduate, show us you have some experience outside of your academic course work. personal projects (web apps, mobile apps, electronics, etc.), or club projects (robotics clubs, programming clubs, etc.) are a strong indicator that you have an appetite to improve yourself as a professional engineer. this will go a long way with your application.you can apply online or e-mail your resume to [email protected]. thanks! | if you could work anywhere, what would you do?- wouldn't you want to work towards genuinely making the world a better place?- wouldn't you want to work in a close-knit team alongside some of the brightest engineers in the industry?- wouldn't you want to work on solving interesting problems that haven't been solved before?---at khan academy, i truly believe that you can find all of those things and more. we're a small, 50-person nonprofit tech startup making a big difference in the world. a few weeks ago, we found this great story through the fascinating blog "humans of new york" – please take a moment to read it:<link> is just one story, but every month we hear about hundreds of lives that we've transformed, and there are thousands more we don't hear about.lots of people know us for sal's videos, but we also have hundreds of videos by other teachers and a huge library of math practice exercises. our 100,000+ practice problems have been done over 1.5 billion times total. that's a huge number.this gives us the ability to study learning in a way that no one has previously been able to do. we've run tests which show that students learn more when they're advanced quicker by a custom machine-learning algorithm [1]. as i write this we're running dozens of a/b tests to learn what we can do to make people learn more, from testing how review scheduling affects accuracy to simply testing different teaching styles.whether you're a machine learning guru or you take pride in perfecting ui details for a dropdown menu [2], we have something for you. you'll be working alongside a small team with the best in the business – though we have "celebrity" devs like jquery creator john resig and google's first employee (and former director of technology) craig silverstein, we have many more you haven't heard of but who are just as awesome.---i'm going to put in a special plug for mobile: around 20% of our traffic comes from phones and tablets but we have only two people (me and one other person) working on our apps right now. our ios app is fairly basic, but it already has a few million downloads. we want to make it awesome. if you're a mobile developer we can build a great team around, please reach out. you can't find this sort of opportunity in very many places.we're hiring engineers (web, mobile, data science), product designers, a community manager, and more. oh, and if you want to have a great summer (or fall or spring) building real features for real users, we're hiring interns too.apply at <link> directly (say you saw us on hn!) or feel free to email me at [email protected] with any questions.[1]: <link>[2]: <link> |
ask hn: who is hiring? (december 2013)
please lead with the location of the position and include the keywords intern, remote, or h1b if the corresponding sort of candidate is welcome. feel free to post any job that may interest hn readers from executive assistant to machine learning expert to cto.<p>also see: ask hn: freelancer? seeking freelancer? (december 2013) <link> | if you could work anywhere, what would you do?- wouldn't you want to work towards genuinely making the world a better place?- wouldn't you want to work in a close-knit team alongside some of the brightest engineers in the industry?- wouldn't you want to work on solving interesting problems that haven't been solved before?---at khan academy, i truly believe that you can find all of those things and more. we're a small, 50-person nonprofit tech startup making a big difference in the world. a few weeks ago, we found this great story through the fascinating blog "humans of new york" – please take a moment to read it:<link> is just one story, but every month we hear about hundreds of lives that we've transformed, and there are thousands more we don't hear about.lots of people know us for sal's videos, but we also have hundreds of videos by other teachers and a huge library of math practice exercises. our 100,000+ practice problems have been done over 1.5 billion times total. that's a huge number.this gives us the ability to study learning in a way that no one has previously been able to do. we've run tests which show that students learn more when they're advanced quicker by a custom machine-learning algorithm [1]. as i write this we're running dozens of a/b tests to learn what we can do to make people learn more, from testing how review scheduling affects accuracy to simply testing different teaching styles.whether you're a machine learning guru or you take pride in perfecting ui details for a dropdown menu [2], we have something for you. you'll be working alongside a small team with the best in the business – though we have "celebrity" devs like jquery creator john resig and google's first employee (and former director of technology) craig silverstein, we have many more you haven't heard of but who are just as awesome.---i'm going to put in a special plug for mobile: around 20% of our traffic comes from phones and tablets but we have only two people (me and one other person) working on our apps right now. our ios app is fairly basic, but it already has a few million downloads. we want to make it awesome. if you're a mobile developer we can build a great team around, please reach out. you can't find this sort of opportunity in very many places.we're hiring engineers (web, mobile, data science), product designers, a community manager, and more. oh, and if you want to have a great summer (or fall or spring) building real features for real users, we're hiring interns too.apply at <link> directly (say you saw us on hn!) or feel free to email me at [email protected] with any questions.[1]: <link>[2]: <link> | buffer (<link> - remote (we're a small distributed team of 16 people (5 engineers) across the us, uk, hong kong, taiwan, sweden and australia)we'd love for you to come join buffer for the fun ride. we have over 1.1 million users and our annual run rate is over $2m. there are some super interesting challenges ahead, as we focus on buffer for business.
we're looking to expand our engineering team with the following open positions. * reliability hacker (devops engineer)
* happiness (support) engineer
* backend hacker
here are some key stats about our technology and scale. - we have over 150k monthly active users.
- 8000+ api clients. most popular: feedly, ifttt, pocket, instapaper
- we release changes several times a day - we have an entirely data-driven process,
with einstein and buffer-metrics, our custom built a/b testing and
metrics tracking framework.
- some of the tech we work with: php, python, mongodb, aws (elastic
beanstalk, elasticache, sqs), backbone.js, grunt.js, android, ios.
- more stats and stack details here:
<link>
we're a small team of driven hackers and happiness heroes (our support people). just like you, we're excited and passionate about engineering challenges and have some interesting architecture and scaling problems we work on.if you're interested in coming on board, you’ll: - work closely with sunil on technical architecture and joel on product.
- ship to thousands of users and iterate quickly
- work with our metrics team to make smart changes
- be friendly and comfortable talking directly to customers on issues and features
- be a happy, positive-minded and kind person who has a great approach in dealing
with others
- be a buffer user
- be anywhere in the world, and if you'd like, you have help and support from us
to move to where you want to be
- have experience working with another startup or building side projects
before (would be awesome, it’s cool if not)
some aspects of buffer culture that makes us a little different: - we are totally transparent. we raised $450k, we currently have over 1.1
million users and generate $195k/mo. ask me anything else!
- within the company, all salaries and equity are open and we have a formula
for the distribution.
- we're all very focused on self improvement
- we have daily standups where we discuss our current improvements. this could
be waking up earlier, starting public speaking, blogging, exercise, learning
a language, etc.
- here's our culture deck: <link>
salary: 88k-110k depending on location (living costs) and experience. (<link> 0.5-1%if this sounds fun, let's chat. send me a note about yourself, why you’re interested in buffer, and any relevant links (github profile, projects and background): <link> email our cto sunil [email protected] |
ask hn: who is hiring? (december 2013)
please lead with the location of the position and include the keywords intern, remote, or h1b if the corresponding sort of candidate is welcome. feel free to post any job that may interest hn readers from executive assistant to machine learning expert to cto.<p>also see: ask hn: freelancer? seeking freelancer? (december 2013) <link> | buffer (<link> - remote (we're a small distributed team of 16 people (5 engineers) across the us, uk, hong kong, taiwan, sweden and australia)we'd love for you to come join buffer for the fun ride. we have over 1.1 million users and our annual run rate is over $2m. there are some super interesting challenges ahead, as we focus on buffer for business.
we're looking to expand our engineering team with the following open positions. * reliability hacker (devops engineer)
* happiness (support) engineer
* backend hacker
here are some key stats about our technology and scale. - we have over 150k monthly active users.
- 8000+ api clients. most popular: feedly, ifttt, pocket, instapaper
- we release changes several times a day - we have an entirely data-driven process,
with einstein and buffer-metrics, our custom built a/b testing and
metrics tracking framework.
- some of the tech we work with: php, python, mongodb, aws (elastic
beanstalk, elasticache, sqs), backbone.js, grunt.js, android, ios.
- more stats and stack details here:
<link>
we're a small team of driven hackers and happiness heroes (our support people). just like you, we're excited and passionate about engineering challenges and have some interesting architecture and scaling problems we work on.if you're interested in coming on board, you’ll: - work closely with sunil on technical architecture and joel on product.
- ship to thousands of users and iterate quickly
- work with our metrics team to make smart changes
- be friendly and comfortable talking directly to customers on issues and features
- be a happy, positive-minded and kind person who has a great approach in dealing
with others
- be a buffer user
- be anywhere in the world, and if you'd like, you have help and support from us
to move to where you want to be
- have experience working with another startup or building side projects
before (would be awesome, it’s cool if not)
some aspects of buffer culture that makes us a little different: - we are totally transparent. we raised $450k, we currently have over 1.1
million users and generate $195k/mo. ask me anything else!
- within the company, all salaries and equity are open and we have a formula
for the distribution.
- we're all very focused on self improvement
- we have daily standups where we discuss our current improvements. this could
be waking up earlier, starting public speaking, blogging, exercise, learning
a language, etc.
- here's our culture deck: <link>
salary: 88k-110k depending on location (living costs) and experience. (<link> 0.5-1%if this sounds fun, let's chat. send me a note about yourself, why you’re interested in buffer, and any relevant links (github profile, projects and background): <link> email our cto sunil [email protected] | weft - <link> - boston ma. intern or remote are both welcome! ===========================
====== what we do =========
===========================
we're waze for cargo. building hardware to put inside of shipping containers so our customers get realtime visibility into their supply chain. we're then taking the info we get from the hardware and figuring out where the bottlenecks in the supply chain are, predicting whether or not a shipment is going to make it to its destination on time, and dynamically rerouting/rescheduling shipments so that we can optimize the system as a whole. really neat stuff. ===========================
===== how we do it ========
===========================
web stack -> clojure (immutant) + hana (really scary database on crack) -- we use middleman + enlive (and a bit of hiccup) for templatingalgorithms -> a dizzying mixture of oldschool and newschool techniques ;-)hardware -> prototyped with arduino, still using atmel uc but no longer arduino-ey. manufacture-ready. in the process of sourcing for large scale manufacturing. have some pilots running. ===========================
====== and the rest =======
===========================
we've got some very interesting partners and customers (ranging from telcos to enterprise software providers to regional and international logistics companies).looking for help at every point in the system (hardware, firmware, frontend, backend, algorithms, mobile, etc).
if this sounds interesting, please shoot me an email at [email protected]! |
ask hn: who is hiring? (december 2013)
please lead with the location of the position and include the keywords intern, remote, or h1b if the corresponding sort of candidate is welcome. feel free to post any job that may interest hn readers from executive assistant to machine learning expert to cto.<p>also see: ask hn: freelancer? seeking freelancer? (december 2013) <link> | weft - <link> - boston ma. intern or remote are both welcome! ===========================
====== what we do =========
===========================
we're waze for cargo. building hardware to put inside of shipping containers so our customers get realtime visibility into their supply chain. we're then taking the info we get from the hardware and figuring out where the bottlenecks in the supply chain are, predicting whether or not a shipment is going to make it to its destination on time, and dynamically rerouting/rescheduling shipments so that we can optimize the system as a whole. really neat stuff. ===========================
===== how we do it ========
===========================
web stack -> clojure (immutant) + hana (really scary database on crack) -- we use middleman + enlive (and a bit of hiccup) for templatingalgorithms -> a dizzying mixture of oldschool and newschool techniques ;-)hardware -> prototyped with arduino, still using atmel uc but no longer arduino-ey. manufacture-ready. in the process of sourcing for large scale manufacturing. have some pilots running. ===========================
====== and the rest =======
===========================
we've got some very interesting partners and customers (ranging from telcos to enterprise software providers to regional and international logistics companies).looking for help at every point in the system (hardware, firmware, frontend, backend, algorithms, mobile, etc).
if this sounds interesting, please shoot me an email at [email protected]! | planetary resources - bellevue, wa - full timeplanetary resources, inc (pri), the asteroid mining company, is seeking a flight software and ground software engineer (a combined role) for the development of innovative spaceflight products and support systems.pri’s vision is to mine near-earth asteroids for raw materials, ranging from water to precious metals through the rapid development of innovative and cost-effective exploration technologies. resource extraction from asteroids will deliver multiple benefits to humanity and grow to be valued at tens of billions of dollars annually. the effort will tap into the high concentration of precious materials found on asteroids and will provide a foundation for further space exploration and a sustainable supply of raw materials to the ever-growing population on earth.as a software engineer, you will be responsible for creating the software products that enable pri to deploy and operate state of the art robotic spacecraft. these software products cover the full spectrum of platforms and applications, from mission critical assembly-level code running on an embedded microprocessor to cloud-based high performance data processing.most work is in c++. experience in any of: c, javascript, python, sql, assembly for x86, arm, or microcontrollers helps.apply online: <link> |