skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Review my webapp (again)- Visitrs socialized bookmarking
Hi,

I've asked your opinions/reviews on Visitrs (http://www.visitrs.com) before: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=957163 and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=736929

Since then i've made some changes to make it more a website based social application than a simple chat system. It is more like a socialized delicious, and an interactive stumbleupon. Yet it's being developed in the background, but i guess it's time get to get some insightful views, if you don't mind :)

Features being developed are browser extensions, follow/ignore mechanism, external authentication such as twitter&fb, and some more fixes, additions.

If anyone wonders about the software stuff: Visitrs runs on Django and mongodb interfaced with mongokit, uses xapian for indexing, ejabberd + strophe.js for chat system, memcached, and finally mootools.

Thanks
Guess what most developers do?

Let's admit it, most devs don't test. There. I said it. Most devs just want to write more features, more new code, more design patterns, more cool algorithm.

Dev 1: "Testing? Testing is not my job. Go ask the QA to do it".

Dev 2: "Yeah... we're just not born to do testing, it's just not how our brain is wired".

Dev 3: ... more excuses why dev shouldn't test ...

I get it that devs aren't good at usability testing. But the majority devs I met don't even want to test their own code. Some don't want to write unit-test, some don't even want to test the functionality of the code they just wrote.

sigh
Yeah, those buttons are irritating, I will get rid of them and use something else.
"Analysis Paralysis" often has a root cause: incompetence.

A pal of mine was a consultant for a logistics company serving a large country that's north of the U.S. This company was developing a package tracking system in Java, back around 2000 or so, when "Java" was often a synonym for "Project Failure."

Now, when the whole thing started, I told him that I could knock off a prototype in a week in PHP. Nope, these guys decided to spend five months developing a framework for their application, and then they were going to spend the next month developing the actual app.

Well, six months later, I hear that the predictable outcome had happened: management was shocked to discover that the application took 30 seconds to serve up a page view.

My pal sent me a copy of the app and it was an absolute rat's nest: the kind of project where you use 1500 lines of code to say what you could say in 15. The sheer bulk of the code made it difficult to maintain: and it had poor performance written into it's DNA. The real problem was that this wan an IBM shop that was developing its first webapp, developing its first Java app and... nobody knew what they were doing.

-----

Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with front-loading your design and analysis work... IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING! In the hands of people who have a holistic view of the application and toolset it's based on, front-loading is a beautiful tool that can make implementation and testing a breeze.

However, because it delays feedback, prolonged analysis doesn't (necessarily) test the ideas behind a design. Bad ideas can get in, and stay in -- nothing challenges the arrogance of the uninformed.

If, on the other hand, you are humble, and "know what you don't know", a rapid prototype can be a powerful way to get some experience, test your ideas, and, who knows, maybe even ship something.
test account credentials: test@standupbuddy.com / test123

During my daily standups I often can't remember everything I'd worked on the previous day, and sometimes I forget to ask questions that need asking. I made this tool to keep track of what I do as I do it and write down any questions I have.

Any feedback would be helpful.
Thanks for the demote, but I wasn't bashing the article on grounds of its age. If you had actually bothered to read the rest of my comment it would have become obvious that I was referring to the fact that people dig old stuff up and present it as news when the discussion itself has already moved on towards more insightful conclusions a few months ago.
I've yet to see someone say they aren't within their right. I think the complaint is in the lack of upfront warning, and the track record of seizing non-sex related domains (Answer.ly).
Great interface. Please add anchor titles to primary navigation buttons so I can figure out what they do by hovering before I click on them.
In Udo's defense, this article did cause a stir. That does make it seem like "ancient" history...

Peter Seibel tried to "unpack some of the context," it's probably a good place to start for anyone who's interested:

http://gigamonkeys.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/a-tale-of-two-re...
I agree with you about getter/setter and trivial code. But sometime when you're a VP of Engineering and you knew that most of your developers will slack off eventually and start not writing unit-test guess what you'll do?

You set the code coverage bar high enough.

While I disagree with the said VP or Lead or Senior people, but sometime we have to admit that not many developers in our industry care about quality and have the attitude of test is important.

I get that shipping is more important than anything else. But I found people often use that excuse for not writing test. Besides... the definition of "Done" pre-TDD/Agile is "I wrote my code albeit not thoroughly tested, now let me throw this pile of crap over the wall to the QA".

It's just how our industry used to work until recently.
count me in !
Tell that to Comcast.
As a Reddit Mod, this doesn't seem to counter one of the best defences against people spamming their own content: training the spam filter to hate a specific URL.

This system would only seem to work if the URL got through the spam filter, so isn't much use to the kind of voting rings you tend to find already operating on Reddit.

Though it's still a very valuable proof of concept.
I'd love to learn a bit more about git, but this is pretty worthless as just the slides.
I think it helps you focus and work through a business idea in a structured way. Have experienced it that I just fell in love with an idea. It helps you think about it in a more rational way.
If you end up doing the process with this tool or with a sheet of paper doesn't matter. But I like it as it "forces" you to think of it from different angels.
the high number makes people think that it "has to be good;"

I will claim guilty to this. Whenever a thing is esteemed by many, especially people respected, I will always contemplate its worth far longer than if I passed by something unannounced and unawares.

"If an intelligent man delights so in this, why don't I?"

... and the pause is probably enough.
Interview with Craig Silverstein, Google's first employee
A Couple of Things We have Learned on Refunds
Auto Transport Services From Car Auctions
We recently switched from SVN to Git and the transition has been painful - last week there has been at least one issue pr. day that has stopped work and that needed to be addressed. Personally, I have used Git before via github and it has worked well (tho' my usage was mostly doing small updates, no branches, no merges etc.)

My current impression of Git is that it's very powerful, but too low level and not that user friendly. I am currently evaluating Mercurial, since it seems to be easier to use and more user friendly.

Anybody have experiences working with both Git and Mercurial with a team of 5-10 people?
I don't like to think too much while surfing the web, I like to be told what to do. I get to your site and I am not sure why I am there and what I am supposed to do with it. There needs to be some sort of statement 6-10 words so I at least know what you are trying to do.
Actually these days Mexico is a fairly well developed country with decent internet penetration.
Beautiful design! Nice work.
Ask HN: My project IsItRails.com — what should I do?
Started two years ago IsItRails.com is a very small app that is able to identify if a site runs Ruby on Rails or not (at least to some 90%). It's the outcome of a lazy three days hack has an horrible ugly design (I know…) and currently over 4000 known Rails sites.

But it does the job and saves some "curl --head" and "view source" actions for curious persons like myself (when using the bookmarklet).

As not only the design sucks I'm considering a relaunch from scratch but I'm not sure about if and how much time and money (e.g. for design) I should invest et all? Can this be run as "a business"? Is there any commercial potential in this app or its data? I'm not currently sharing the database which might or might not be interesting for hosters/PaaS, add-on/monitoring providers and consultancies?

I'll continue running the service as it currently is, even if there's no revenue possibility… so please be honest in your opinion: What do you think? Thank you.
clickable: http://IsItRails.com/
Neha Sharma Hot Crook Movie Photos, Crook Movie Wallpapers, Pictures, Images
Crook is a new Hindi movie of Bollywood directed by Mohit Suri and Mukesh Bhatt is the producer.. Leading casts of the film are Emraan Hashmi and Neha Sharma.‘Crook- It’s Gook To Be Bad’ is all about the racial attacks made on Indian students in Australia. 'Crook - It’s Gook To Be Bad’ is set to be release on Oct 8th, 2010. Find Latest Neha Sharma Hot Crook Movie Photos, Crook Movie Wallpapers, Pictures, Images.
Can't believe noone said Harvest yet.
You're right. I'm not a native english speaker, that's why writing instructions is the hardest part of my all projects :) Already added it to "features being developed" list.

Thanks
These ones are advanced tips. I'll send you more beginner resources later on.
Day Planning for Small Teams
Link to HN in RSS feed?
I use Google Reader to keep an eye on a lot of stuff, including HN, via the
http://news.ycombinator.com/rss feed. It's a pain to find on HN the same posts I see there to give an upvote when one is deserved (and to check the comments). Any chance of injecting the HN link in the feed (when the post title is linked to a non-HN place) ?
I don't get it. Is it a joke, a parody, or something real? Does it even matter?
I'm familiar with this data. I'm not sure a downward drift is an accurate way to state it -- some said it became too predictable. All they did was simply change the line for what is considered "proficient". The actual test scores from year to year didn't really change though.

Here's a nice graphic from the NYTimes:
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/08/01/education/01sch...

The real problem is that we have an artificial line for proficiency. If you look at the graphics you can see that they can move that line once again, and again largely affect minority schools downward, even if they make substantial gains over the next few years.

It would be far better to have each school release mean/median/stdev or deciles of their scores. This will really give you a much better idea of the improvement in a school.

But anyways, back to HCZ. They've still shown great improvement, even if proficiency has taken a step back from 100% in some cases due to a change in the proficiency line.
For someone looking only at the tips, this is sadly very unfriendly. Basically, you need to click or press more than 300 times on your keyboard to go through. This cannot be used as a reference even so some stuff were interesting (I gave up at slide 84). I welcome a reformatting as a cheat sheet by a courageous reader :)
extsrc.js - make all your [script]s 'async' (works with document.write too)
Three Things You Can Count on: Death, Taxes, Spotify’s Arrogance
These slides are worthless without the talk. Instead go download his excellent book (or buy it) from http://progit.org
Advanced tips is what I was looking for. I can see it being some standalone material, perhaps I shouldn't just be browsing over it.
Yesterday I wrote a topic "Your social widgets are losing you visitors right now".
Today I present you solution to very old problem of scripts delaying page loads: just change src="" to extsrc="" and use 'extsrc.js':

<script extsrc="..."></script>

Now all of your scripts are loading AFTER the page renders. It works even if scripts use document.write

I've tested with Chrome/Ubuntu and Firefox/Ubuntu - works like it should.

ALPHA! Test it and let me know if your browser matches the reference rendering. If it doesn't - maybe we can do some fallback.

Quite a few bugs fixed by now. Please test it and leave bug reports.
Thanks for the link, but this confirms my initial suspicions.

Japan's GDP is about 1/3 of the US, yet according to your link there was only $0.2 Billion of venture investment, as compared to $17.7 B in the U.S. That's roughly 1% of US venture Financing and wildly disproportionate!

There seems to be something holding back entrepreneurship, and I don't think its for lack of smart people.
Hey New MySpace Logo, New Gap Logo Has Some Words For You
Онлайн магазин за PC, PS3, XBOX 360, PS2, PSP, Wii и NDS игри и аксесоари.
> "But when you’re looking at, ‘We’ve got to go from zero to done in six weeks,’ well, I can’t do that unless I cut something out. And what I’m going to cut out is the stuff that’s not absolutely critical." [...]

> Remember, before you freak out, that Zawinski was at Netscape when they were changing the world. They thought that they only had a few months before someone else came along and ate their lunch. A lot of important code is like that.

It makes sense that, under these circumstances, their #1 priority was to ship, to bring a product to market before others did. Even if the first version sucked, it would still be better than no product.

Unfortunately this is exactly the kind of situation that gave us IE, and we still have to deal with the after-effects today. I wonder if this would count as an argument against the often-touted claim that "competition makes products better". It sure didn't cause browsers to be better in the late 90s. In fact, we didn't start to see decent browsers until after the browser wars, after IE's dominance had been established.
This is a follow up post on my previous article, which can be found here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1730236

Max
I'm not surprised in the least. Bayer has a huge cropscience division, and bees are integral to them selling crops and seed.

Seems more like an oversight than "nefarious pan-government cum dystopian corporate plot".
Also, sometimes you submit an interesting story and it gets immediately downvoted to 0 points, removing it from the subreddit homepage. If you can solve this, a good story has more chances of being picked.
The people who do things like this, those who do any social media operations (SMO), are smart enough to use it to promote 'acceptable' content that won't be flagged as spam.

If it comes down to a war with the operators of the site, you will lose. If it gets personal, they'll burn you.

Successful SMO promotes content which, plausibly, you'd imagine succeeded organically. Sometimes the content is excellent and sometimes it's a little substandard, but it doesn't stick out as spam. It decorates itself in a pretty cloak to look legitimate.

Unethical tactics in SMO are like steroid use in sports: Steroid users aren't lazy people taking a shortcut, they're people who train hard, can play a good game honestly, but are looking for an edge that will keep them in the market.

It's a tough business because social traffic isn't good traffic for people who play the numbers game. You've got to relentlessly produce fresh content and relentlessly promote it. If you stop, you could be left with little permanent traffic. You'll get hooked on social traffic, however, by the ego rush you get the first time you get a burst of it and it crashes your server.
Netflix’s Reed Hastings on the New War for the Digital Livingroom
Great interview. My key takes:
- Netflix cannibalizing itself by shifting from DVD to streaming. Great approach by Reed which all big corp CEO's should take
- Netflix going global with streaming. Great vision - will be exciting to see his fight with the right owners for all the different licenses
- Vision for the web TV experience - watch the last minutes of the video. Great vision for what interfaces could look like in 10 years.
But how do we get there? What will be the intermediate steps in the next 1-5 years?
This is just disgusting, absolutely disgusting. I supported T-Mobile because they were the first to come out with an Android phone, and the first to offer lower, non-contract pricing (even though it was painful 2-hr struggle over the phone to get it).

What is it about carriers that they are so desperate to not allow users to use their hardware? Why do they care so much that they're willing to completely destroy their reputation to keep users from doing what they want?

On the plus side, I guess now I can switch to another carrier without a broken contract fee...
Read up about the British Empire and its history (it really is no secret).

Examples include favouring certain classes in Sri Lanka (creating strife that lasted to this day in Sri Lanka and Malaysia). Overseeing immense famine (while British landowners exported food) in India and Ireland. Putting (and killing) people in concentration camps (e.g. South Africa and Kenia). Letting certain businessmen (e.g. Cecil John Rhodes) basically own countries (with all the abuse and rape that this entails).

Did you learn in history books that the British Empire was a divine and enlightened entity that existed for the benefit of mankind?

(Because it basically enslaved 400 million people for the benefit of an Island of less than 40 million).
He only found the big one. That was the one they wanted him to find.
Let us never forget that the project XP originated with, Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System, never actually shipped.
Metaprogramming is Your Friend
At a recent family gathering, my father's generation (boomers) joked about how the social debt was my problem.
My problem is a hundred and ten trillion dollars of social debt, or three hundred fifty thousand per person(http://www.usdebtclock.org/)..write your officials, ask why this nation isn't researching nanotech.
http://www.nanotech-now.com/columns/?article=424
I don't know how long the extraction process will take per person, but the experience of being the last one out would be unimaginable.
Watch the last couple of minutes of the video.
Great vision for the web TV interface in 10 years.
But how do we get there? What are the intermediate steps for the next 1-5 years?
Contaminated Labs
You can find some of the tips here:
http://mislav.uniqpath.com/2010/07/git-tips
Another Ron Jeffries special. Him and Uncle Bob, do the opposite of what they say and you'll do fine.
Yeah I was about to say, Mexico is not 3rd world by any metric.
Joel seems to talk a lot of sense but this is tempered for me by two things. 1) no-one I know uses any of his products and 2) I have a hard time believing he really is able to attract the top talent to work on a project management tool written in VB.
I have a customer who swears that whenever I tell him I've run into a difficult problem, by the third time I've explained it to him, I've solved it.

I'll tell him he's my rubber duck.
I've had similar experiences. Git has great potential, but the tools seem very immature, and basic things I took for granted with Subversion are huge pita's with Git. And it seems like all that needs to happen is a really solid toolkit to simplify those tasks.
interesting. i'd love to hear more about this.
It's rather ironic too, as jgc has a background in anti-spam. That's not to say his content is spam; but it is usually merely good.
Which issues did you have exactly?
I'm asking because my team members want to switch to Git after having to suffer through my praising git for long enough and I'd like to know which traps to avoid.

My personal switch from SVN to Git was rather painless but that's probably because I "only" used git-svn and at first used Git pretty much like I used SVN and then step by step explored the possibilities offered by Git like local branches etc. pp.

That's what I'd recommend to anyone making the switch, first try it out with git-svn, don't use every new feature at once.

DVCS is a completely different paradigm, it requires some time to wrap your head around. :)
Could you please elaborate on that?
What basic things did you have problems with?
I believe those cheap SOCKS5 proxies are often actually implemented over bot nets.
I'd add kickstarter too to the first list.
Looks like most of the apps are either OSX desktop app or iPhone/iPad.

There's one Android app and one web-app.

Is there any of you who makes a living in Windows desktop app? just curious.
While your link touches on some of the issues holding it back, the strongest reason seems to be how it threatens the existing chemistry research establishment, who are happy to accept zillions of dollars for "nanotech" research that's ordinary chemistry, all the while bad mouthing the prospects for "real" nanotech (Drexler style): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1729945
Facebook Groups: more control, or hit at Google?
I agree that the examples you give are terrible and inexcusable, however they don't support your assertion that the British Empire was more evil than the Third Reich, given what we know about the sheer scale of systematic extermination during the Holocaust. It just doesn't compare I'm afraid.

Also, the British Empire, whilst causing harm, did bring benefits to some countries (something it would be hard to argue the Third Reich did). For instance:

* Infrastructure improvements (railways, roads, canals, industrialisation)
* Improvements in education
* Parliamentary democracy
* A professional civil service
* Free trade
* Medicine (hospitals, vaccinations)

.. and of course cricket :)
Notable contradiction:

Here’s a problem: Many Americans can’t afford medical care.

Here’s another problem: Many Americans can’t afford a decent education, and many parts of our public school system suck.

Here’s another, even more pressing problem: Many Americans are homeless. Many can’t afford to eat.

...

I would like to propose that technologists apply their ample skill to solving the real problems of humanity, not just the perceived problems of their very privileged social set.

How about we broaden our scope to beyond "Americans," which I believe she actually means "United States Citizens." Don't forget all the other countries and continents doing much worse than we are.
Single-Threading: Back to the Future?
I stopped reading at 'Micro$oft'. I am sorry but that's pretty juvenile.
AnythingButiPad goes on sale. HN Gadget gurus wanted.
Hi,
The goal of AnythingButIpad is to be the best one-stop-shop source for finding and comparing all tablets that are competitors to the iPad. This site has the potential to drive the non-iPad tablet market.
I simply lack the time to develop and market this site seriously. I would really appreciate it if a gadget-crazy blogger bought this instead of someone who just wants to make money. Thats why this post on hackernews.

http://flippa.com/auctions/108999

Please vote this post up.
Cheers.
Just looked this up. You're not kidding when you say 'tolerate the bus ride'....

> The overnight Dream Tokushima bus runs from Tokyo and
> Shinjuku (10 hours, ¥10000 each way).

ref: http://wikitravel.org/en/Tokushima
I uninstalled it myself for the same reasons. It does cause problems some times, but after you've fine tuned it those times become very infrequent. You can even synchronise your settings between Firefox installations now by telling NoScript to store its config in a bookmark.

I reinstalled NoScript a while back. IMO, the problems it prevents outweigh the problems it causes.
numbers ="3,4,9,14,15,19,28,37,47,50,54,56,59,61,70,73,78,81,92,95,97].split()
numbers = [int(i) for i in numbers]

def sum_eq(lst,k):
total = sum(lst)
if total == k or k==0:return 1
elif total < k or len(lst)==1:return 0
else:
n1,nr = lst[0],lst[1:]
return sum_eq(nr,k-n1) + sum_eq(nr,k)

def sum_all_eq(lst):
total = 0
for k in range(1,len(lst)):
total += sum_eq(lst[0:k],lst[k])
return total
Yea, but are those in power still looking for handouts if you want to stay out of trouble?