skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: WordPress or Drupal?
I have an iPhone app, and now I need a supporting website to go with it. The site should extol the virtues of the product to organic and ad visitors, allow changing the design/copy without programmers help, allow A/B testing of the same, and contain a blog and a user support forum.

So it seems that I need a CMS, and there aren't that many ways to get a CMSs that supports A/B testing. Specifically, it seems that Visual Website Optimizer is it. Hence my choice narrows down to Drupal or WordPress.

Which should I pick? I don't know PHP and I spend most of my time programming Cocoa Touch and .NET/MS-SQL (server side services).

Ideally I would also like to be able to customize the website later, adding things like end-to-end funnel tracking (extending into iTunes, and onto device itself so that I could see who bought the app). So it would be nice if the system allowed for me to ease myself into customizations without spending weeks learning things upfront.
Webtrends Happen Every Two Years
I have learned the most in math classes that did not allow calculators. It is about learning the concept, not learning how to use the tool.
Well that's very misleading, even Wikipedia thinks that : " Google confirmed that the RLZ tracking token [...] [is] not in versions of Chrome downloaded from the Google website directly or in any versions of Chromium."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)#Differen...
A lot of it is noise, absolutely. But while I wrote this as satire, it's based on the experiences I've seen from new developers. If you didn't know any better, it could be easy to think that Rails devs all use Rails 3, are completely swept up in the NoSQL movement, and don't have libraries that will run on Ruby 1.8

Really this article was designed to point out that an overabundance of choice - even though they're great choices - can be harmful to new developers. And people should consider joining things like RailsMentors.org right now. Because more than ever, this is a time where one-on-one mentoring is all but necessary.

As far as greener pastures...I'd hate to see the day when any community measures itself by comparison to other communities, rather than on its own accomplishments.
Regarding Redis-To-Go: what am I missing about their pricing scheme? $110/mo for 500 megs? A 500M Slicehost slice, which (it seems to me) is 2 commands (curl and make) away from being a redis server, is $38/mo. And it can do other things!

(Seriously: what am I missing?)
This isn't a matter of police officers surrendering rights. It's a matter of whether or not they get special rights to privacy. If I can be recorded with video or audio, so can they. If they can have video/audio recordings in their vehicles to record the traffic stop or other encounters, so can I.
Not so. Even manage a couple of 500kcal "starter" days is not too bad.

http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/subsubsection1_3_3_0_3_...

The Hacker's Diet: appropriately named.
Understandable, but the point I was trying to make more than anything was simply that Google "wasn't" actually trying to hate us, not really. The title biasied before I even hopped.
two options:

1. Just ask what you need to do to get a raise. You should expect something about the economy being bad as the answer.

2. Get another offer, Tell your current employer that you are very happy with the current job but, they are not competitive in compensation, and you will be giving you two weeks notice the next Monday. The wait to see if there is a counter offer.
It hasn't stalled, it's just classified.
I don't really understand your phrasing, "auto_hash is an inferior password hash", its a rails plugin that uses SHA2 (256). If you mean "auto_hash" uses an inferior password hash, could somebody please point me to some info on why it shouldn't be a good enough option for almost all websites? I really don't want to go imposing an obscure hashing algorithm on users of the plugin, especially with hashing algorithms that deliberately impose a speed penalty for extra security.

I'm not interesting in changing the world of password hashing with my trivial rails plugin by using anything other than the most secure of the common hashing algorithms, SHA2. I'm also under the impression that SHA2 is now the most widely recommended security hash.
Good feedback! I had the time to add a simple

// PHP code

and

// Fun code

comments at the top of the code examples. Not great but hopefully helpful :) This was meant to be a high-level intro. I'll be diving into explaining the nitty gritty of the language next month.
And she also makes more money when writing about controversy. No one's going to make their page view bonus by saying everything is fine.
How to Setup two Finger Scroll on Ubuntu touch pad
Simple How to article on setting up two finger scroll on your laptop running Ubuntu.

http://mixeduperic.com/linux/ubuntu-1004-how-to-setup-two-finger-scroll-on-laptop-touch-pad.html
The current version of Chrome is 5.0.375.99... Chrome Plus is at 5.0.375.38.

I'd be more worried about the vulnerabilities fixed in Chrome that aren't fixed in Chrome Plus:

http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2010/06/stable-chan...
http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2010/06/stable-chan...
http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2010/05/stable-chan...
http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2010/07/stable-chan...
That's not always true, especially for people working in large agencies where there is actually 1-2 windows per year for raises, I've seen people leave over it. I've seen it done to people being elevated to the Managing Director level, but having to wait x months before compensation kicks in.

When you're part of a larger whole that controls the HR scale, showing you can work within that isn't always bad.
The story behind the 2010 startup success: Siri
The article is meant to be taken as satire, but do consider that if you're a new developer and you go a'Googling, you're going to encounter JRuby, and Rubinius, and Macruby.

It would be silly to throw all of these items at a new developer, and no teacher in their right mind would ever do that.

But if you're trying to pick up the language on your own...that's what you'll see.
I actually kind of agree. Rails Auth isn't a hard problem. As long as you're not rolling your own password hash and you're not rolling your own session store, I'm comfortable saying "authentication code in Rails is just glue; do the simplest thing that can work".

Now, authorization is a radically different story; unfortunately, though, there's no good Rails solution for getting "off-the-shelf" access control and permissioning, so you may be kind of stuck anyways.

(Pet peeve of mine? Mixing up authorization and authentication.)
Why is there no love for the (appropriately named), Hacker's Diet? Incredible results here.

http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/hackdiet.html
Personally I think Rundgren is an acquired taste, like Zappa. But give it a shot. He's also produced some amazing albums for other groups (XTC's Skylarking being my favorite).
Oh, well I will continue using hackerne.ws in my browser but refrain from propagating the URLs. Cheers.
Ask HN: Logistics of Hiring for a Startup
What tips/suggestions would you offer when it comes to the logistics of hiring for a startup? Do you offer a salary or hire on a contract basis initially? What about equity - how much, how to calculate? Health plans? Benefits? What about setting up payroll? HR?

Basically, all the articles on hiring I've come across so far have talked about things to look for in a potential hire, but I'm looking for info on the overall logistics that go into bringing a new person on board. So all you experienced startup founders, please list your tips here:
Or debt-fueled spending has been adding to GDP between 1998 and 2008. Did we by any chance have a massive debt fueled speculative bubble from 1998 to 2007?

(If you borrow $10 and spend it, GDP has increased by $10. If you spend it on something other than services, income won't go up commensurately.)
Wasn't saying SCII was innnovative in specificity, merely that games that allow sandbox innovation would be more likely to face intense scrutiny as to what they release as any sort of content from any user or otherwise.
I guess the question is - does the customer know they don't exist yet but you have every intention of delivering?
For every person who chooses to dive into computing and biotech, that's one more person who cannot work on energy, propulsion and aviation. I know I for one would probably do one of those if I wasn't in computing.
Title should be "Founders shouldn't read business books unless the books are highly likely to contain actionable insights regarding their business"

That's not very catchy, but very true.
Isn't that true for all sales/marketing techniques? If it is, should you not use them? Of course not.

It's a moving target, but if you don't keep taking shots at it, you better have a product that is HEAD AND SHOULDERS above your competition on some other level.
No, because SEO can create rankable pages for terms that previously had no useful results. Also, SEO tends to subsidize the creation of entertaining content (see, e.g., the Huffpo or Business Insider).
I think "Couch Potato" covers it.

If you ask me, I think it's a much further-reaching pejorative.
I guess for now:

- a way to directly upload a video from a file select field (http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/2.0/developers_guide_pro...)

- a unique identifier for the video I can then store in my database with other metadata (which user uploaded it, when, etc). If you want to expose other metadata on the video like compressed size, number of views, etc that'd be great but not yet necessary

- a standardized way to embed the videos based on the unique id (above)
It doesn't sit well with me that this discussion is seemingly being led by corporate, rather than public, interests. I would like to see Julius Genachoski reign the debate in and push a policy through.

It also should be pointed out that Google's proposal is a _proposal_ and not yet written policy.
Buffy & Angel
The saga of Git: Lightning does strike twice
New Online Gradebook Launch Signals New Education Technology Paradigm
Something like ~60% of searches are unique. So there's plenty of content opportunities out there. But definitely there seems to be a "winner and loser", although it is incredibly hard to define.

The high volume, monetizable keywords are more easily defined, and within that sector, the game may be more "zero-sum". Outside in this vague "new search" sector, any person who throws thousands of content pages and gets links will be able to drive a decent amount of traffic. How much, though, is up for debate.
Game Boy tool for sound
Does Google Plan to Fly UAV Spies in the Skies?
You're saying that we should ignore his political affiliations and focus on the numbers he presented.

I'm saying the numbers he presented don't add up to the point he was making unless you add them up totally wrong -- and the point he's making is manifestly political and has nothing to do with anyone's business reality.
what do the :> and :< operators mean in this context, I though they were used for indicating sub/super types?
Can't make it; have fun!
Ask HN: What would you charge for a PHP A/B testing license?
I have released a PHP-based A/B testing app called phpA/B that's free for personal use, but I'd like to do a paid commercial license.

What do you think would be appropriate pricing/licensing options?

See the app at http://phpabtest.com
I likely jumped to those conclusions long, long ago.

However, I do like OKC in that they take tons of data and make actual conclusions about it. Regardless of whether or not it's eventually proven wrong, or (as stated above) there are some obvious discrepancies not taken into consideration, it's still cool to see overall trends in human psychology based on something so simple as how a photograph was taken.
Updates to Contacts and a (slightly) new look for Gmail
There's no such thing as a "security hash". You mean to say "secure hash function". The term "security" refers to the integrity of the hash itself; SHA256 is "secure" against attempts to cause collisions (and several other attacks).

None of that has anything to do with the security that SHA256 provides to your application. SHA256 knows how to take care of itself. It doesn't know a damn thing about passwords. SHA256 isn't a secure password hash.

You already know that, because you're not just using SHA256; you're also adding a random salt to it. That's because if you didn't do that, attackers could just aim a precomputed dictionary at your database rows and smite it. So your hash isn't SHA256; it's a construction called "salted SHA256" (or "SHA256 with a nonce").

Nonced SHA256 still sucks, though, because SHA256 is lightning fast. Attackers can't throw precomputed dictionaries at your password hash, because you randomized them. But they can take each hash in turn and run a large dictionary against each hash. This is a brute force attack, but it's not a brute force against the 256 bits of the hash; it's an attack against the (low) entropy of the passwords themselves.

This is how all password cracking got done in the '90s, which was a bit of a golden age for password cracking. It's how John the Ripper (the most famous password cracker) works. John the Ripper is extraordinarily fast against Unix password hashes, which are slower (by a lot) than SHA256. Incremental crackers tear through naked SHA256 hashes like a knife through butter.

That you don't know any of this --- and I say this respectfully --- tells me that maybe you should be using someone else's password hashing library instead of reinventing your own. But you're welcome anyways for the quick and dirty lesson in password hashing.
As you can see, the general pattern is that more complex cameras take better pictures.

Argh, no! That is correlation. More complex cameras are probably used by more experienced photographers. I would bet a high percentage of those are made by professionals.
I totally agree. But take two programmers. 1 is good and has been there for 5 years. The other is GREAT and has been there for 6 months (and is 20 years old w/out a college degree). The second programmer gets a fat raise, placing him above the first in terms of pay. The first doesn't necessarily agre that the younger fella is clearly better: "Yeah, he cranks out code and he kisses the right asses. But a lot of it needs to be rewritten and he gets 'creative' with the spec," or somesuch. "Performance" is subjective. In the above scenario, you might have 5 disgruntled good programmers when you give you young star a fat raise.

I'm all for a meritocracy, but it's tricky with anything that's hard to measure (exception: sales).
I'd pay exorbitant hidden fees to see the results of Mr. Hill's efforts.
Wikileaks war data visualizations
Just worth highlighting this (as a lot of discussion seems to be on the bullets and contradictions):

Rules of the game

The aim of the game is to get across the intellectual battleground unscathed. There are two types of injury you can suffer.

A direct hit occurs when you answer in a way which implies a logical contradiction. We have been very careful to make sure that only strict contradictions result in a direct hit. However, we do make two caveats.

First, because you only have choices between pre-selected and carefully worded statements, you might find that you have taken a direct hit because the statement closest to your own conviction leads into a contradiction. However, had you phrased the statement yourself, you may have been able to avoid the contradiction while expressing a very similar belief.

Such possibilities are unavoidable given the constraints on the game. We merely ask that you do not take it personally if you suffer a direct hit and don't get too frustrated if the choices we offer you sometimes seem to force you into a choice you'd rather not make.

You have to bite a bullet if your choices have an implication that most would find strange, incredible or unpalatable. There is more room for disagreement here, since what strikes many people as extraordinary or bizarre can strike others as normal. So, again, please do not get too upset if we judge you have bitten a bullet. Maybe it is our world-view which is warped!
I use this keyboard: http://goldtouch.com/p-64-goldtouch-adjustable-keyboard-blac... (it's completely split, but the two halves are firmly connected).

The #1 reason is that it has a minimal laptop style single column of keys to the left of BS \ ENTER etc., my biggest problem is moving my right arm from the keyboard to the mouse (all mouse alternatives I've tried are worse than a plain optical mouse).

If you tent it it's rock solid, but I didn't find any advantage to that feature. I do really like the variable splitting ability; I've previously used a solid base keyboard with a fixed split (and some tenting) but being able to adjust all this so it's just right is noticeably better.
90% of this rant could be solved by just using Rails 2.3 until Rails 3 becomes more stable. Why be a guinea pig and waste your time if you don't have to. There is nothing wrong with not operating on the bleeding edge if it decreases your productivity.
"Philip OCarroll wrote:
Jul 23rd 2010 12:21 GMT

I hate bankers - they only cause trouble.

e.g. financial catastrophe, global depression"
>If they own a dSLR, they're more likely to be good at composing photographs.

That's a very valid point, selection bias is the most-missed bias in studies of every stripe. But they're not beginners:

>And we also found similar numbers looking only at people who uploaded all three types of photos.

They didn't show a graph of that data, because this is an article rather than a formal study. Getting similar results in an intersection study is an excellent way to show that selection bias was at least not overwhelming - depending on the sample size, it might not even be significant.

The conclusion they made was pretty well supported, and seems like something you would agree with - the details they give are quick guidelines, but it boils down to "photographic skill matters".
It's true. Every time I read one of these OK Cupid analyses, I hear alarm after alarm in my head about bad statistics analysis. But I always read them anyway, because as long as you step back and think about it carefully, the data really is interesting.

An example of another minor quabble, iPhones are expensive. I would expect that owning one correlates with nicer clothes, makeup, and just more/better status symbols in general. It's no news that money is attractive.
How in the world do companies like that stay in business being so incompetent? At some point, don't a series of epic disasters at least _begin_ to tarnish a reputation?
Happy to bring it up to date and update it regularly if it gets linked on news.yc where people can find it.
One might better say "Death to Cargo Cult Management!" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science) than to "Best Practices".
I can't comment if that is probably is the case or not, because all I have is this post, and it's not cited here.

What I do see is fear mongering built almost exclusively on "what they didn't say," "what ifs," and worst-case conjecture.

And I can appreciate those fears, but I also know they conveniently get more pageviews than addressing QoS, or the reality that traffic prioritzation must happen on some level (by type, not source) to accomodate delivering all these services.

It strikes me that the alternative to two pretty "pro-user" companies proposing a framework to deal with an unresolved set of technical issues is to have less open, less "pro user" companies deal with it with their lobbyists behind closed legislative doors. At least initially, I'll trust the devil I know.
Google: Being Evil, Betrayal of a Motto [Rant Warning]
> (This is more the the more fixed the supply of real estate happens to be.)

Correction: (The more fixed the supply of real estate happens to be, the more pronounced this effect will be.)
I've just been heavily criticized for not knowing that ninja is not a class in WoW. Should I feel chastised for being ignorant? Or blessed that I don't spend that much time playing video games?
The Zero Dollar, 5 Minutes Market Research
Why STM works so well in Haskell - Simon Peyton Jones
I'd like to have some context for what he's saying, what's wrong with that?
1) Work somewhere where they have the resources to pay you more. You ain't gettin a raise if they dont have the money.

2) Justify your raise, this will probably mean talking to the guys in accounting, make up something about helping sales but get the sales numbers and a rough estimate of profit margin. Show your boss the numbers and how you contribute to them, admittedly I got cut off from the official numbers after I almost doubled my salary doing this.

3) Send out resumes. Yes, most employers don't want to hear you're leaving because the pay is crap, others do, you want to work for the latter. If 1 and 2 don't work then usually this one will as business is a bit like dating, it's much easier to get the girl if you already have one. When you have a job and ask for money you will do so with confidence. If you are looking for money then you are looking for money. Focus on the goal you want, be willing to jump ship if the pay isn't there.

4) Be interesting, if you don't have some funny stories, make some up, you want to be affable, when you talk to whoever will give you the raise do not go in talking about your raise immediately, make some small talk about whatever THEY are interested in first. Then move to your pitch.

5) There is a lot more to a job than money, make sure you really want the cash, and not any other kind of perk.

Edit:
I also wanted to say, that asking for a raise is a bit of an art, like interviewing. You want to get good at it so do it frequently. Admittedly, you can't ask for a raise every month or two, I personally never asked more than once a year. So go do lots of interviews.
Thanks for the clarification. Also I just thought it was funny. And yes...my humor is dry. It's my English half.
...and you completely ignore his call to let it go. That wasn't an invitation to rant more, he was telling you it is old, let it go.
An interesting continuation to this idea is the German Freiwirtschaft movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freiwirtschaft). Or see http://www.finanzcrash.com/english/aberrations.html for an introduction.
Perhaps you should A/B test a few different price points.

On a serious note, are you thinking a one-time unlimited use fee or a recurring monthly or yearly rate? Also, I noticed on the "Begin Testing" page that you require Google Analytics for it to work. Have you considered using the Analytics API so the user doesn't have to deal with a separate interface to set it up?
Why HackerNews Users Rock