jkeisling/hacker-news-corpus-2007-2022 huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Ctrl/Shift with same hand or opposite?
I have been contemplating the techniques in efficient typing. In particular, whether it is more efficient to press a Ctrl or Shift key with the same hand that you press a number or letter, or with the opposite one.

Have you any thoughts on this?
Ask HN: Is MVP overly pessimistic?
The idea of MVP seems very in vogue right now, which I think is appropriate in the context of lean times and lean startups.

However, it's occurred to me that MVP may be overly pessimistic because it ignores potential network effects.

For example, a signup flow that ends in a "not available now/just kidding" kind of screen is NOT going to a result in a potential new user tweeting to their followers about your service. It will probably end in a modest amount of frustration. In light of this, perhaps MVP cannot be applied at overly broad levels - would it represent too much of an underestimate?

Maybe the real question is -- can you MVP your entire business? Or only features, after you've launched?
Show HN: Flowful – Ambient music generators for focus and concentration
https://www.flowful.app
Hey everyone,

Flowful is a collection of ambient music generators designed to fade into the background while you work.

I made Flowful out of frustration with ambient music playlists on streaming platforms either skewing my recommendations, or launching me into something very distracting once the playlist is finished.

The music is procedurally generated real time in your browser using Javascript by piecing together a bunch of custom-recorded samples.

Its free to try without an account, and the premium tracks rotate to become free on a weekly basis, meaning if you wait long enough, all the tracks would have had their turn on the free week.

There are currently around 20 tracks (not including the combinations) and I plan on adding one or two new tracks each week (or whenever inspiration strikes).

Most of the track art is made by DALL-E 2.

Any and all feedback is very appreciated! :)
Shopify Dashing extension dashing-contrib
https://github.com/QubitProducts/dashing-contrib
This project is an extension to Shopify's Dashing. Including this rubygem you will be able to:

- Use all the built-in widgets
- Extend built-in module to define, test jobs
- Built-in jobs are only a couple of lines implementation, no repetitive copy and paste
- Existing secret parameters is automatically loaded from .env file
- Rest API to get overall state summary
- Rest API to trigger save history
Debian To Switch To Systemd Or Upstart
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTQ5NzQ
SystemD is best ever.
Ask HN: Who would recommend coding on a bean bag?
Who spends chunks of their day coding on a beanbag instead of a standing desk? Would you recommend it? Pros? Cons?
Top Tech Investors in 2013 Midas List
http://www.vccafe.com/2013/08/05/forbes-reveals-the-2013-venture-capital-midas-list/
The top VC funds and top partners in terms of returns and what are the firms that brought the most liquidity to tech investors.

Who would you add to this list?
Show HN:Limit CPU, IO, Network in Java
https://github.com/haosdent/jcgroup
jcgroup is a cgroup wrapper on JVM. You could use this library to limit the CPU shares, Disk I/O speed, Network bandwidth and etc of a thread.
From Gen X to Microserfs to JPod
http://www.cbc.ca/wordsatlarge/blog/2008/01/from_gen_x_to_jpod.html
JPod is novel set in Vancouver, BC about employees at Electronic Arts. There is a new series based on the novel airing on the CBC.

This interview touches on life in the Google generation.
Macs in the age of advanced persistent threats
https://www.isecpartners.com/storage/docs/presentations/iSEC_BH2011_Mac_APT.pdf 
This presentation from Black Hat compares Window7 against OSX and reveals where Macs are more vulnerable than Windows7 PCs. The good news is that Lion has addressed some of the problems. The authors encourage Apple to add additional measures. Consider the exposure to network exploits discussed here, especially those resulting from leaving certain service configuration set to their defaults.
Blackrock (and others) Paid Analysts for Insider Information
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/business/in-surveys-hedge-funds-see-early-views-of-stock-analysts.html?pagewanted=all
Couple key quotes:

"As one of the largest payers of trading commissions to Wall Street, BlackRock is a client that brokerage firms want to please to keep those commissions flowing. For a period during 2008 and 2009, the firms participating in an expanded survey received cash based on their results.

...One of the company’s survey questions, titled “earnings surprise direction,” asks analysts whether a company’s coming profits “are more likely to surprise on the upside or downside.” Another asks: “Do you think the current consensus earnings forecast” for a specified period “will likely move upwards or downwards?”

A more recent question involves takeovers: “How likely is it that the company will be taken over in the next 6 months?”

... A 2009 document on the firm’s analyst surveys is even more explicit. “We are trying to front-run recs,” it said, referring to trading ahead of analysts’ recommendations."
Show HN: Imagor v1 – fast image processing server in Go and libvips
https://github.com/cshum/imagor/releases/tag/v1.0.0
Imagor is a fast, Docker-ready image processing server written in Go, with libvips. The v1 milestone has got more advancements to its internals.

At the moment, all existing popular Go + libvips image applications (imgproxy, imaginary, bimg etc.) bridge libvips through buffer. While these are all good with normal web images, the latency and memory overhead can be noticeable when working through large, raw images, as they are all loading the whole image buffer in memory, sequentially.

Imagor v1 now bridges libvips through streams (i.e. Go io.Reader/Seeker/Closer). This greatly increases network throughput especially with network sources like HTTPs, S3, GCS, by giving the ability to overlap processing pipelines.

With streaming in place, same goes for image Exif metadata. Imagor can try to retrieve data just enough to extract the header, without reading and processing the whole image in memory.

Though of course cgo + stream means a lot of moving parts that can go wrong. Imagor has increased test coverages since then. It has been running in production for months, serving over a million of images everyday. Feel free to create a pull request or report an issue if you found bugs, suggestions or enhancements.
Programatically responding to your B'day wishes on Facebook
http://pradeepnayak.in/technology/2012/08/13/programatically-responding-to-your-bday-wishes-on-facebook/
A simple python script to thank all your friends on Facebook who have wished on your birthday
What are your thoughts on having many webapps each responsible for one task?
During the recent years (5 or so) we have seen the rise of many relatively small and simple applications each of which is responsible for either one or a few tasks. One of the most notable examples are the applications by 37signals: each of their apps takes care of just one aspect of the business and does it well.

What I am concerned about is the fact that small businesses (the target market of 37signals and other such companies) must subscribe to at least 3 or 4 different apps (perhaps from different vendors) to meet their otherwise uncomplicated requirements.

This may amount to a quite high monthly fee if all subscriptions are added together. Sure, the makers of such applications don't really see this ($20 a month per client is not much) but for the small business is a small fortune when added up (~$150). Despite this, it seems to me that this way of doing business (sell many different apps to the same company) is working well.

My guess at the moment is that it depends on the application and whether the target business can afford to not use it.
Ask HN: Anyone else having problems with Google Talk/GMail?
For the last week or so I've been getting a lot of problems with Google Talk on all my devices. Every so often, people appear to not be able to send messages to me, and I cannot message them in turn. The error I get is along the lines of "NAME did not receive your chat."

This is happening fairly intermitantly and is sometimes solved by a refresh (although sometimes not).

Interestingly, I've also noticed Chrome/IE complain that "your connection to mail.google.com is encrypted with 128-bit encryption. However, this page includes other resources which are not secure. These resources can be viewed by others while in transit, and can be modified by an attack to change the behavior of the page."

(this is the experience on both my mac and windows machines).

I've disabled practically all the "google labs" plugins I have, but it doesn't seem to have helped.

So... Anyone else experiencing any of this?
The future of web browsing?
http://labs.thesedays.com/2010/04/23/concept-blogpost-future-browsing/
Concept blog post about how browsing could be more user-friendly in the future.
Try our latest updated online Remote Desktop Screen sharing software.
http://www.livelook.com
Its a free one click private and secure screen sharing software with NO learning. A free download is available at Livelook.com
Build your own Homopolar motor
http://dangerouslyfun.com/homopolar-motor
A very fun and simple motor that uses the earth´s magnetic field to works.
How does NDR Spam work?
http://protogenist.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/how-does-ndr-spam-work/
The SMTP protocol does not support authentication of the sender address. As a result, email
messages can claim to be coming from any valid email address. Spammers have long known
about this and tend to make use of fake addresses when sending their bulk mail. Since
successful spam relies on targeting the largest number of clients possible, spammers tend
to have large lists of email addresses.
Aussie banks expose credit card details
http://www.zdnet.com.au/aussie-banks-expose-credit-card-details-339309128.htm
Australia's biggest banks are posting credit card numbers in clear view on mailed customer statements in a direct violation of credit card security regulations.
Extract Images from Presentation & Create PDF File from These Images
http://saaspose.com/blog/saaspose-slides/archive/2012/11/07/save-slides-as-images-and-generate-pdf-files-from-images-using-saaspose-rest-apis.html
Saaspose APIs offer various types of features to add kinds of common tasks to your web app such as text and image extraction, file conversion, barcode generation and recognition etc. Image extraction is an important aspect in processing the documents in cloud. Using Saaspose.Slides REST API, you can extract images from the presentations by saving the slide as an image and use this image to generate a PDF file by using Saaspose.Pdf. Saaspose.Slides allows you to save slide as an image. You can also save a slide as an image with specified size and use it accordingly in your applications. This REST API allows to extract the images from the slides and you can use these images in several ways as per your requirements. You can achieve the desired results in your applications by using a combination of features supported by Saaspose file format APIs.
Test App Engine Datastore
http://www.dev-articles.com/article/Test-App-Engine-Datastore-433002
How to easily test crud operation against google app engine datastore using low level api
Cloud Computing Comparison Engine
http://www.cloudorado.com/
Find the best cloud hosting provider for your needs within seconds. No search, no calculator, no effort.
How To Sell Even The Smallest Online Businesses
http://mixergy.com/how-to-sell-even-the-smallest-online-businesses/
Great tips on prepping for a sale (no matter your business' size) and getting buyers interested in your company.
ITunes 11 cover color scheme detection in HTML 5
http://github.com/Dannvix/ColorTunes
mimics iTunes 11... detects then album cover color scheme using HTML 5 and CoffeeScript
Review my startup: Speechable.com
http://speechable.com
Speechable™ is a free photo service that lets you easily upload and add speech bubbles to your photos and share them with friends via email or on Facebook®, MySpace®, Orkut, blogs, and message boards.
Ask HN: What value does a business guy bring to a startup in the early stages?
As a technical co-founder will be building the actual product, what should a business co-founder be doing in the mean time?
Github added a "Star" option to projects (in addition to "Watch")
http://github.com
Might be A/B tested and gradually rolled, didn't see anything on the blog / FAQ or online... so I guess it's silent at first to see acceptance...

Nice feature in any case...
The Unreasonable Effectivness of Data (Peter Norvig)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vR8Vddf7-s
A recent (and highly interesting) talk given by Peter Novig, Director of Research at Google.
Chasing the Dragon
http://blog.snagsta.com/2008/07/11/chasing-the-dragon/
post about Mike Butcher's inaugural TechCrunch Pitch and a few tips on helping startups pitch their ideas to investors.
The future of Malaysia and world
http://futuremalaysia.wordpress.com/
This blog will discuss about future of Malaysia and world.
Computing Needs Time
http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2009/EECS-2009-30.html
"This paper considers the orchestration of computing with physical processes. It argues that to realize its full potential, the core abstractions of computing need to be rethought to incorporate essential properties of the physical systems, most particularly the passage of time. It makes a case that the solution cannot be simply overlaid on existing abstractions, and outlines a number of promising approaches being pursued. The emphasis needs to be on repeatable behavior rather than on performance optimization."
Imaginary Color
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_color
To determine whether Sharp's new four-primary-color HDTVs would matter, I spent the evening researching light perception and color theory. If you haven't seen the commercials, they're adding a yellow element to each pixel in order to better-reproduce yellows and golds.

Anyway, I stumbled across this article on imaginary color. Check out this gem:

At Walt Disney World, Kodak engineered Epcot's pavement to be a certain hue of pink so that the grass would look greener through the reverse of this effect.
Presentation from Scala Enthusiasts talk on foursquare's use of scala and lift
http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=0ATHAG0M-0vxXZGNicHozY2tfMjVjemNuczJjMg&hl=en
Interestingly he strongly recommends postgreSql over Mysql when using lift
MySQL vs. MongoDB: The Complete Edition
http://java.dzone.com/articles/mysql-vs-mongodb-complete
MySQL vs. MongoDB: The showdown. One of our MVBs is on a quest to make this test work in his favor! He's documenting his every step through a series of articles and you can find them all here!
Wearable pillow for desktop power naps
http://www.studio-kg.com/ostrich/
Would you like to get your head in this? I am sure your boss will love it too!
Billionaire M&A Deal-maker Training
http://smartstartup.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/08/billionaire-cou.html
Learn how to become a billionaire through M&A.
Ask HN: Avoidance of Java - problem or pattern?
When looking new open source projects, and I see Java is in the mix, the project immediately loses some of its potential attraction.

In my case this comes from a few factors:

1) Past experiences with projects that went overly "Enterprise" with layers of abstraction that eventually turn the project into quicksand - once you enter you get sucked in never to escape.

2) Code that is excessively verbose, due in part to the nature of the language. It was once said that concise languages ruin your taste for others [1]. When you just want to get stuff done, patience for boilerplate wanes fast.

3) The JVM while an engineering marvel (to some), can be difficult to keep memory consumption in check, and emits some of the most unpleasant exception information I have seen (1000 line stack traces from a single JDBC fault). I have come to prefer an interpreter or a compiler, but not something in between.

The question comes from a regular experience of seeing interesting F/OSS projects get announced, followed my an immediate lack of interest once the terms "Java" or "JVM" are mentioned. This symptom carries into JVM based languages.

Am I being completely unreasonable, or is this a common malady?

[1] http://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/why-learning-haskell-python-makes-you-a-worse-programmer/
HTML 5 graphics editor and browser released
http://figurepool.com
Figurepool is a ready-to-use intuitive diagramming tool with which you can create any kind of graphics online. With Figurepool you can create workflow charts, user interface mock-ups, software architecture sketches and all other kinds of diagrams.

You can keep you graphics private or share them with others in the figure-pool, via social media, or include them in your blogposts - if your figures update, your blogs update too. When making your figures public you will see how other users rank your graphics. You can clone public figures of others and adapt them as you like.
How to Choose a Meaningful Name for Your Startup
http://www.zeusriver.com/blog/2011/10/how-to-choose-a-meaningful-name-for-your-startup/
I originally posted this at a different link that I took down and re-edited. Hope it is helpful to someone.
IT's Star Turn
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jul2007/id20070718_340679.htm
To thrive in the 21st century service economy, startups and old-line companies alike must shift their IT geeks to the front lines of innovation.
Lenovo Denies Me Windows 7 SP1 Unless I Pay $170
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb2_o0omeXk
So, I tried to install Windows 7 SP1 on my Lenovo G560, but the update says I need to update my Graphics Driver. Tried to do that, but Intel's update says I need to go through the vendor. When I went to Lenovo's support site, it didn't have the latest driver, so I called Lenovo. They said they I had to pay $120-$179 to get the update (!) even though there is an update for the driver from Intel and it's Lenovo's fault I cannot upgrade. My conversation is in this video (if I sound angry, it's because I am). Anyone know if there is anything else I can do? Is this standard practice? Am I overreacting?
Show HN: I made a tool that speeds up TCP/IP by eliminating packet loss
https://www.netpump.com/netpump-data/
I have been chipping away at the problem of packet loss during TCP/IP data transfer for the last 19 years. I am new to HN – Greetings

I created this tool (Netpump Data) to optimise the size of packet segments and use nonlinear data transfer to reduce the risk of access congestion, enable accelerated delivery, and access the latent capacity of available bandwidth.

By “nonlinear data transfer”, I mean that files are segmented and transmitted through different ports (or sockets), as opposed to TCP/IP, which is a linear transfer through a single port.

I’ve found that I can get speeds usually around 2x to 5x faster than TCP/IP (but up to around 15x).

I am looking for some people to test my observations / assumptions, provide feedback and explore use-cases with me.

Netpump Data must be installed on both ends of the transfer, so it is most appropriate for enterprise networks. Theoretically, it could become a consumer product, but this has not yet been built.

I have a Demo User Guide [1] which provides instructions on how to use Netpump Data in a test environment I’ve set up across 5 servers on the Azure Cloud. There is also an Admin Guide [2] which goes into further detail concerning implementing Netpump Data in other TCP/IP environments.

To give you dedicated time on our test environment to demo the software, if you’re interested, please get started using this Typeform [3] and I will provide you a unique User ID and password to gain access to our Azure servers.

My website, contact information and FAQs are at: https://www.netpump.com/

If you’d like to know how I made this, have any feedback, or discuss how it might be used, I’ll be around to respond to any queries and comments.

[1] https://www.pacbyte.com/user_guides/Netpump%20Data%20Azure%2...

[2] https://www.pacbyte.com/user_guides/Netpump%20Data%20-%20Adm...

[3] https://7zwtzlao1bg.typeform.com/to/YNhhLKgI
Show HN: PostOffer.io – Startup job offer visualization
http://www.postoffer.io
Had enough friends asking me about ways to value their startup offers that I created this site. It uses the binomial options pricing model to calculate the value of stock options to give you the fair market value of your offer.

Tell me if its useful or missing anything, any feedback is welcomed!
Show HN: Time to give crowdshipping a go?
http://signup.tinycarrier.com
TinyCarrier is a web service that connects travelers and people who have a need to send or receive things. It could be personal stuff like books and clothing, a product that you have someone buy for you because it is not available in your country. Transporting items for other people is not a new concept, we just make it safe, social and global.

This is not a package/parcel service. Carries will be packing the items themselves in their own luggage. Carrier and requester are responsible for reporting goods in customs. The service will support this with communicate managed information about each location and the service will we ranking and testimonial based similar to AirBnB and Couchsurfing.

We will eventually be providing an API to allow for blogs, apps and curator services to make use of it as well.

For people thinking: commercialisation of drug mules, silk road, etc. In stead of thinking that everyone are criminals, try think that they are not (because their aren't) and think about the benefits.
Minecraft: The Story of Mojang (2013)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySRgVo1X_18
I love Notch's management style: 'We have to decide what the full version of the game is. That's kindda the first step. The next step is to do that.'
Ask HN: An idea for a web develoment collective
The economy seems to be picking up. I am getting hit left and right with offers to do web development, whether they're from people who just want to hire me on an hourly basis, people who want to retain me for X number of hours a month, or people who are looking for a technical co-founder.

I also have a few of my own ideas I'd like to develop ( but not a lot of money to pay for the things I lack, i.e. good domain names, graphic designers, iphone developers. )

On top of this, I have a decent client base already and am steadily pulling in about 100k a year.

How many other developers are in the same situation? What would be a good model for partnering up with other freelance developers in similar situations?

My thinking is if we combine income, combine clients, and combine man power, we can work a lot more efficiently, and with more security and stability. Having partners with redundant skill sets would also free each other up to go on extended vacations comfortably.

Also we could set aside a few hours a day to work on projects which we own, and which over time turn into a portfolio of money making assets.

Are there any existing collectives like this? Any good models to base this type of organization off of? I'm thinking if successful, we'd want to hire additional people but not necessarily make them equal partners off the bat.
VMware Updates Its Free Offering
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2215586,00.asp
VMware Updates Its Free Offering to offer new support for more operating systems, including Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and Ubuntu 7.10.
Yet Another Text Editor Survey
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1gsLiI9KHk2PnCzHN1u31q9QNkUDVUaG4q9-qOeiZrLI/viewform
In the light of reading the Vim feature voting post, I wanted to get a survey of the most used Text Editors. I take these results and use them in a Scripting presentation. Please take and pass on.
U.S. Federal Court: $675,000 Fine to Grad Student Pirate's 30 Songs is "Fair"
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=25513
U.S. Federal Court: $675,000 Fine to Grad Student Pirate's 30 Songs is "Fair".