skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: searching for mobile wireless POS printer
Dear HN-crowd,

I am in need for 'mobile wireless printing devices' that can be programmed to be integrated into our wireless hotspot network.

Please let me explain, how I would like to use it. Then I will explain some technical needs.

Goal: Salesmen, using the mobile device to sell access credentials. Those salesmen have to be accountable.

The ideal solution would have only 3 buttons. '+' and '-' to select an service id from a list of predefined services.
'Enter' to confirm a service and print out a receipt including access credentials for our hotspot system.

On a more technical level, I would like to store some key-value pairs on the device to identify the salesman and available services.

When the 'Enter' button gets pushed, I would like the device to send out a (ssl encrypted) web request to our billing system. Depending on the
answer (error+message/success+password), the device should print the receipt.

I hope my explanation makes sense and is somehow understandable.

I would be very happy if you could direct me to a vendor that could help me on this issue.

In case it helps: we are in need of several hundred devices.

Thank you for your time.

(you will find my email address in my profile)

btw: IPhone + printer + duct tape is not really an option. But I am open for other creative approaches. :)
Surprise to me: reCAPTCHA is still a labs product?
Condolences to Remy Sharp and his family.

With respect though I read from a quick search that just less than 1000 babies die each day just from poverty (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_human_babies_die_everyday). If that is really the most depressing tweet marc' has seen then he's probably quite lucky. How about this http://twitter.com/Disease_Infect/statuses/22701037933 for depressing?

Sorry, but OT:flagged.
You don't have to be logged in - just give them a long-term cookie when they show up on your site and it still works.
And if you aren't voting anything down, you wouldn't be the kind of person who would need such a website in the first place.
Yes, but that is still 4 characters = lots of strokes. Also, not everything can be reliably shortened this way. You can't get the kind of shortening you can with things like "TNT", "DNA". And what about when there are no two character words to be shortenened? Like WTF.
Ask HN:How do you cope with frustrations in single person startups.
While starting up I'm sure all of us have times when we are frustrated or dejected. With n-person startups you usually have someone to listen to/help you. What do you do when you are a single person startup and specially when you are not very comfortable with people around you ?
You might be excited to hear about this new platform from a small computer company called Apple. They have now released a mobile phone, and let you write applications for it without carrier approval.

What is more, they only take 30% of the purchase price (unlike the carrier fee of 70%), and the approval process - while slower and more annoying than many would like - doesn't require you to setup meetings with carriers business development group.

There is also a web based platform called Facebook where you can deploy apps. The approval process for that is usually so straight forward that a guy did a blog post when he had to rely on personal connections in order to get his application enabled!

;)
Boxee, Rdio, Roku Respond to Apple TV and Ping
I totally agree.

Although, the idea also holds its own. It's one of those "wish i'd thought of" ideas that's refreshingly simple.
A couple options. Take a break. Go to the gym. Talk to friends or professional peers about it. Vent on the Internet. Get out your shoebox of postcards sent from third graders and reread some. Go do something which brings you joy. etc, etc.
Is Amazon Making a Loss on Its 99-Cent Downloads to Counteract Apple's Rentals?
You can do it even better in S60 (!!!) Seriously!

http://research.nokia.com/research/projects/mobile-web-serve...

It's very cool - they even have a proxy setup to give you a fixed URL for your mobile site. Chews though your batteries, though.
You may need to convince your significant other for that though.
Dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1400882
We Are Family Review, Kajol, Kareena Kapoor’s movie rating
**New Lipfeed.com Api Reference
New Lipfeed.com Api Reference
If the whole form were horizontal, I'd see how that makes sense.

But the entire form is vertical.

With labels on the left, your eye has to scan down the form to the next field, over to the label, then back to the field. With labels above, it just has to scan straight down the form.
I find it interesting that he compares the value of phone apps to the value of the mobile web. There are thousands more apps than the user can process, and the majority of apps that the user downloads will be abandoned/forgotten within a few hours/days.

It sounds a lot like the internet in general, to the extent that App stores could be considered a transient analogue to a gated internet. Thousands of apps/sites all struggling to attract the attention of users.
And if you aren't voting anything down, you wouldn't be the kind of person who would need such a website in the first place.

You lost me there. You're talking about this on a site that doesn't even allow its users to downvote stories. And you're talking to a power user of that site, who just told you he doesn't ever downvote things. HN is a culture of voting up things that are good, and, rarely, downvoting things that are distracting from the conversation. That's one of the reasons it's so good.

As to cookies for non-logged in users, they don't really help anything. Sure, you could consider every clickthru as a 'vote' for personalization purposes, but it would likely just fill a user's feed with poorly titled things and clickbait. Probably more than half the articles I click through on get closed immediately without reading. I wouldn't want to optimize my view to include more of that.
As others have said, AWStats is ok.

Also, are such systems limited, compared to Javascript or PHP based tracking?

Yes. Javascript enabled tracking gives you a lot of additional information. For example: screen resolution, plugins, which link was clicked on a page to get to another page (not referer - the actual link).

It's also possible to track a user's mouse movements on a page (which can give you heatmaps of usage on a page)

Cookie based tracking can show if a user has visited the site previously, and track particular users throughout the site, perhaps over multiple visits.
I applaud you for taking it so well! Most people given advice like that tend to argue why they should do it their way, even though all evidence points to the contrary. Even if you decide to not keep going on this blog, you'll remember that you need to apply the consistency thing to yourself for everything you do from now on :)

Good luck!

(And, if it makes you feel better, I recently had the same epiphany about my own writing projects. I figured it out by assessing what the blogs I love did, and realizing I did almost none of those things.)
> If Ping tells you that all your friends are buying and listening to the new Ceelo single, you might be more likely to snap it up yourself.

Or rather, I'd be more likely to ask them for a copy and buy nothing / something else.
Perhaps I'm just weird, but the main feeling I have for people who achieve 'success' at a very early age is sadness. What sort of life are they going to have... The sort enjoyed by child actors? :/

(I'm not talking about anyone in particular, just in generalities).
I know the ancestors of Chinese characters were pictures but not the current characters (with a few unconvincing exceptions). Most of the characters now are "phono-semantic compounds".

Not to be offensive or anything but those "oh they picked that cause it looks like this" stories are bullshit. In my opinion at least. Take the example you chose 啼. That also means "wild animal cry". How does that help the picture theory? And even if this one story happens to be true, how does that explain all the other thousands of characters?

I understand that you're trying to apologize for the Chinese writing system. But there is no need. It just sucks. Horrible, hard-to-use designs are cobbled together all the time, the Chinese character system is just a particularly prominent example.

Now for a quote from David Moser's Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard speaking about learning a French word.

And voila! I've learned a new word, quickly and painlessly, all because the sound I construct when reading the word is the same as the sound in my head from the radio this morning -- one reinforces the other. Throughout the next week I see the word again several times, and each time I can reconstruct the sound by simply reading the word >phonetically -- "a-mor-tis-seur"
Engagement Rings
We have a dazzling variety of engagement rings. Our offers of diamond engagement rings and gemstone rings are within budgetary requirements of the couples. They can pick up the rings in their choices of settings. Our quick services enable the couples in having access to the suitable rings, delivered to them on time.
Teen Problem Crash Course No. One Video Games | Gameolosophy
HTC HD Mini Specifications Cum Review | Latest Cool Tricks Tips Window
I've put up a GH repository of mongrel2 with its dependencies included. Compiling and installing should be as simple as typing:

make all install PREFIX=$HOME/opt/mongrel2

http://github.com/bnoordhuis/mongrel2
Why not just link to the gist itself?
http://gist.github.com/562017
Broadly-implemented standards are like paved roads. They help the industry move forward together. But before you can pave a road, someone needs to blaze a trail.
The article is probably in an academic journal and the author doesn't have rights to decide what to do with it.

(Scribd may be evil, but academic publishing is like a coven of necromancers)
There is one app which is worth of hundred euros to me: a local public transportation app (ReittiGPS in Finland). 3 euros for an app which I use almost daily and which has saved me hours is pretty low.

On other hand I have dozens of little apps which I use very seldomly. But I guess I will be wasting money for those apps, since one or two of them has been pretty useful to me (and games of course).

And I still use much more money for beer than apps :)
InterAcademy Council Rebukes IPCC: Pachauri To Resign?
Surely "I don't take you for granted" is a more important message to your other half than what someone else might think.

When I first started out in business I always noticed how guys at the office would be sorting out doing something for Valentines and then the day after would be complaining how expensive everything was.

I have never done anything for Valentines in the 7 years I've been with my better half. Every day I appreciate her being there and make sure she knows it. If I felt the need to make an effort once a year, surely instead of feeling good about it I should be feeling guilty about clearly not having done enough for the rest of the year...
My wife is very understanding, so we talk a lot. In fact, I talk about just about every medium-sized (and larger) decision with her.

When we were first married, it took her a while to get that when I started talking about a new project or idea (and this was before I could even program), that it didn't mean that I was actually going to do it ... they were more mental exercises. But once she figured out how I think, she's rolled with it. She challenges my ideas, forcing me to refine them, and making me develop better narratives for them. Occasionally, there'll be some project I think is a good idea that she doesn't share my enthusiasm about. Curiously, those are usually my weakest ones.

But even with her support and counsel, I definitely wish I had a cofounder or two I could work alongside every day.
> Back before I even knew that facebook had guidelines I had a facebook app disabled (and associated facebook account). It was not spamming or anything, just inviting people in strongly worded language to download the app.

The exact same thing happened to me in Jun '06 when facebook platform launched. The application was /ireadit I used to respond to each and every post on our wall, sometimes a long message encouraging users to invite other book readers, few emails to moderators of book clubs. Most of these messages were ofcourse similar. I had sent anywhere up to 20 such emails and my account got blocked day 3. The application was registered through my account (then only the owner can add other developers), it was growing at exponential rate, and we were so scared the app would stop working.

They unblocked the account in next one day. I guess that was only because our founder knew someone higher up in facebook.
Android was also a Labs project it seems. Perhaps Labs is a method for Google to assimilate its purchases?
Roger Ebert: No Longer an Eater, Still a Cook
You probably can add it. I know people removed the default lock screen from Sense via package and file removals. Incidentally, the Sense lock screen was one of the reasons I wanted to get away from it, the down-up motion kept unlocking my phone in its sleeve (not an issue with left-right on the default). The ability to silence the phone from the lock screen is another feature I like about the default lock.
It's hard to clean off the oil from your fingers.
Pick any of his arguments and you can flatten it in seconds.

I've seen the nonsense 'avg cost to develop app' metric before, put it in context, there are a huge number of apps that use the same code with different data.

Also claiming that apple doesn't value the actual apps is ludicrous given their app specific advertising campaigns of 'There's an app for that'.
You don't answer your phone if you're in bed?
>kids prefer junk food to vegetables because it tastes better

I'm reminded of the studies in which people perceive that wine poured from an expensive bottle tastes better than wine poured from a cheap bottle - even though they're the same wine. Tasters actually processed the two wines in different parts of their brains.
Came here to say just that.
Maybe not the regular iPhone apps, but there are many opportunities for apps like alternate streaming services or games (apple can release a wii remote like device) or facetime enabled video conferencing etc.
IBM X-Force backs-off Google as major patch offender
Effectiveness of statins is called into question
I have read many blog posts from Zed and seen some talks about using statistics evidence (R project) to measure performance (http://zedshaw.com/essays/programmer_stats.html). If he says they are negligible he probably measured them, and they probably are.
Last time, when pg was speaking about the trend of efficient markets, I was wondering how incredibly the tech startup funding is NOT an efficient market.
We are in the internet age. Anybody can start a startup from anywhere in the world. Despite this, you have to travel to Silicon Valley to be considered to be funded in the first place. Most people cannot even have an American visa I guess.
Imagine a world, where you could just login to a site, and start there a startup by a mouse click, like a project in sourceforge. Imagine a self-serve system, like Adwords: anyone could invest any amount into any startup, even $1. It would be so much more efficient. The competition would be so much bigger. And Sillicon Valley and being a U.S citizien would be so less important anymore.
About Those 99-Cent TV Episodes Being Sold On Amazon ...
I keep getting downvoted. I'm not sure why. My guess is that criticizing criticism of an article that a bunch of people find sketchy has made me a target for their low opinion of the article or site itself. This seems especially likely given that the only response to my original comment, which has been increasingly upvoted while mine have been downvoted, chooses to see the lack of top-aligned labels for the comments form as likely evidence that the article was authored for base motivations, or that the author doesn't really believe his own advice. This despite the fact that I offered several very plausible reasons why it would not count as such evidence. Here's another one, just for the hell of it: laziness.

I have no idea if the site is as sketchy as people claim, because I've never even heard of it before. But even if it is, I still wouldn't think the comment form comes anywhere close to giving unambiguous information about the author's motives. There are so many highly plausible reasons for this that you'd have to be thoroughly unreasonable to assume that it's strong evidence for any particular reason.
Samsung's first tablet computer
Samsung has become the latest challenger to into the tablet computer battle, unveiling its Galaxy Tab at the IFA conference in Berlin.
Is this available in all countries?
20+ Conceptual Black & White Photography | Bloggs74
See also the linked iPad comparison http://www.androidcentral.com/samsung-galaxy-tab-vs-apple-ip...
8 Biggest Time Wasters for Developers
> Assuming that every minute of your life you are earning money, I guess :-)

Then you are most likely not in debt in the first place!

But yes, 'time is money' and all that, but when you have more time than money that changes the value of time.
Twitter to log every click on every link in every tweet
I must say that I strongly disagree with you. There should be enough local VCs where are rich people having too much money or having problem how to get best result from them. E.g. they are not satisfied with what they get from bank.

BTW I think http://www.kickstarter.com/ is what you described.
Here's a very interesting article from CX Partners (http://www.cxpartners.co.uk/cxinsights/web_forms_design_guid...) which analyses different form layouts, labels placement etc. on few popular websites (Google, Yahoo, etc.) in which they used eye-tracking to find the flaws in the forms design and to identify common usage patterns which users follow.
Reminds me of the time I phoned my wife about something unimportant and she'd forgotten to put her phone on silent.

She was in court, taking evidence from a witness. The judge didn't take it too badly - but it was quite embarrassing for her!

Of course people value their partners - but always taking a call no matter what. That sounds plain silly (and possibly rather rude) to me.
Relatedly, Scheme in 15 minutes.

http://blog.jcoglan.com/2009/05/19/talk-writing-a-language-i...

http://vimeo.com/4339116
Having the labels above the input field can make localization easier since it allows the label text to grow or shrink without affecting layout.
As a Confluence user I have to second that.

For a small team Confluence is an even more "no-brainer" than MediaWiki, etc...
I think it's fairly condescending to bother noting that she is female and make out it's somehow a big deal.

Reminds me of Alan Partridge (Comedy show)... "A female drummer! Interesting. Close your eyes, could have been a man."
It seems too small to me. Even being very negative about Apple, once I played with an iPad I was quite hooked. It is of perfect size for reading, browsing and what interests me most, social gathering around it, be it gaming or reading with 2-3 people.

Pretty much the only reason I would imagine myself getting a tablet, would be for "enhanced boardgames" and then the size must be as big as possible.
If you have wealthy enough parents you might suggest that you consolidate your debt with them, that at least gets you off the hook for the interest. That's the killer longer term anyway. I think that's not an unreasonable request between family members. I've done it for my mom at times and she has done it for me as well before then. Looking out for each other is better than to have everybody save and borrow from the bank, and a lot cheaper too. Assuming everybody is honorable and you keep a paper record of what gets borrowed and what's been returned to avoid confusion.
7 Examples of Mac OS X Apps with the Best User Interfaces
Apple has always been known and loved for creating hardware and software that is easy to use, intuitive and reliable, and it’s Mac OS X desktop operating system continues the tradition like no other software product does
Thomas Edison's plot to hijack the movie industry
Flagged for the above reason. Come on, people. Don't be intentionally annoying. (I also flag posts that link to a tweet linking to some other page)
Vanilla, official Android please - this is what's important to me. I don't want to worry about my hardware vendor deciding that they don't want to update the OS any more, and I don't want to worry about using an unofficial unaudited built of Android.

Does anyone know if this device can run vanilla android?
After fixing that, I ran into an even more surprising error which someone had already reported - turns out a simple JavaScript closure chokes it:

(function() {})();

http://code.google.com/p/closure-linter/issues/detail?id=3
There is no local VC for example in Eastern Europe at all. There are no people understanding technology AND having money. Really almost zero. Lots and lots of talent is wasted. This is not an efficient market at all. Anyone can read all the startup advice on the internet from anywhere in the world. But at most part of the world, the only option is bootstrapping. And I think it is not an efficient market even in the Sillicon Valley. You are funded with a lot of money or no money at all even there. If individuals could fund you with any small amount (like on the stock exchange) it would be an efficient market like the stock exchange, which is incredibly efficient. (I am in an Eastern Europian country, and I can buy stocks of a big American company for $10 if I want anytime 24/7. This is efficient market I must say.)
Windows Phone 7 RTM
I'm the opposite, not sad but happy. People that achieve success at an early age, assuming they're not doing it to satisfy the pressure from some parent or family member but simply because of their own desire to achieve something and / or change the world are absolutely great.

All that PG and company can do for people like this is open the doors for them and give them some monopoly money, they have to do all the legwork and make it happen.

I wouldn't compare this with 'child actors' or 'virtuoso musicians' at the ripe old age of 5, hardly any of them chose for that. But someone that's 20, that's a different story. They presumably do this because they want to.

Just give them all the tools they need and get out of their way.

And to call this a 'success' already is a bit early I think, there is a misconception that when you have received an investment that you already have a success. That remains to be seen, but there is a substantial chance of success and there is a person that wants to achieve that success.

Time will tell if it works out.
I don't think we'll see the iPad or iPhone simply mirroring the TV, but being used as dedicated input devices in their own right. I imagine that most AppleTV apps will come with a matching iPhone or iPad app for input. For example the iPhone can display buttons and icons which you use to control the app on the TV or use the tilt sensor like some sort of Wii like motion control.

I don't think making AppleTV owners also own an iPhone or iPad to get the full potential from the device is anything Apple would consider a negative.