skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Part A - I always make few screens in Photoshop before coding. These screens include form, items listing and generic text page. These are not complete and finished designs, they just help me to visualize stuff upfront, and to design some common elements (buttons, form controls etc). After that I customize every screen based on content it displays.

Part B - There are many sites that write about UI and UX, they should be googleable :)

Part C - I'm doing both development and design of our apps. I think that designers that don't code can't really design good app because you must have all of the interactions under control, and for that you must understand how things work both on server side and client side. I don't think they should know how to setup server and deploy app, but there must be some understanding of how things work.

Part D - When I started working as a developer, I worked in web studio that also did great design. But they also gave me the ability to try and design stuff along them. They taught me about typography, layouts etc. I even did some print stuff because I wanted to learn it. Little by little pieces started to fall in place. I'm far from great designer, but I can design things that are nice and usable. The biggest problem is that I really like boxes. When I'm designing stuff I'm automatically placing things so they can be easily sliced. But I'm working on it.

My advice is to just start working on some designs, and to find some friendly designer that will help you with constructive criticism.
Good question, I'll address it in the article. No institution will let you get away with that, but if the seller is financing it then maybe. You can, though, put down as little as 3.5% today.
Yes, stop consume wastes.
Any experience with lighty?
I sent you an email about http://contexium.com. We can use your feedback on customer acquisition. Thank you, Il.
whoops, emailed andrew to fix!
formula is a death machine.
http://www.breastfeeding.com/reading_room/what_should_know_f...
"A good college application (like a good movie according to Siskel) has 2-3 good qualities and no bad ones."

Can you please share the qualities you look for, as well as what kind of red flags you would spot?
I guess what goes around comes around #. As, now, I am the one who needs help.

I have a really messed up college app and I need a lot of guidance in it. Sure, I can nail the writing and communication, but I don't exactly have a bright past and I don't know what to do with it. Is disclosure appropriate? Or is buttoning up about it the best way forward? I want to be honest, but I really don't know what's it like at ground zero. So, my app has been languishing in edit hell for a while now. What's worse is that I really don't have any clue whom to turn to.

Do you mind if I start a conversation with you?

*# http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1826828

P.S. - I am willing to say it again and again this community really is awesome.
I did simulated admissions decisions for a couple hours as part of an education class. The admissions officer who came in worked for Cornell engineering so I have some insight into that process. Basically the highlights were:

* Each application has to be read and judged in 3 to 4 minutes. That includes the full transcript, SAT scores, all the essays, the letters of recommendations, etc. The goal was to finish 3 applications every 10 minutes.

* The admissions department gets a printout twice a day with the predicted stats of the new class, as well as the predicted U.S. News & World Report ranking. How hard your application gets graded largely depends on what the report in the last three hours said, and standards can vary wildly from day to day.

* If we came across someone who seemed like a total douchebag but who had great grades and other things the college was looking for, we were told to just let them in and never think about it again.
problems I see with what you've said:

>>I've been in the "build->launch->move to next project" loop for some time.

From my experience making a few apps, launching is just the first step, not the last. People will care about products you care about. If you're just building stuff to throw out onto the internetz and hope a few randos latch on... well, that's exactly what you'll get. If you want dedicated users who keep coming back, you'll have to steadily improve your projects, and nurture them into full-fledged awesome products. There are no shortcuts, what you put in is what you get out (usually).

Also, the original idea is almost never perfect. Products evolve over time, flickr didn't start as a photo site. Listen to you customers, but not too much, find the problems that REALLY need solving. Like Henry Ford said, "if I listened to the customers, I would have made a faster horse." What he really means that the customers wanted faster transportation, not necessarily a horse. You need that insight to see what the core problems are, and solve them in novel ways.

>>I lack visual design skills, but yet trying to do my best to provide a usable UI for the products. One of my motives in building a product against my lack of visual skills is knowing that "they started as crap too".

That is not good enough. Knowing you suck at UX is a good start. But justifying it by calling out reddit, twitter, and stumbleupon? That's just naive. You want to know what made them succeed? THEY GOT BETTER. They didn't sit on their ass saying "well, those other guys suck, so I can too." No, they were the ones saying "I'll endlessly strive to make my product better every single day."

Software adopts the personality of the developer(s). Users can tell when the developer actually loves and cares about something enough to follow through with good support and updates. Similarly, users want software that gets to the core of their problems, not just shallow complaints, which brings me to my next point:

>>My projects are mostly based on features that are missing or misimplemented in the existing products.

Do NOT base your software on a feature. Features are shallow, like breast implants. Build VISION and PERSONALITY into your software, and people will love you even if you're flat-chested. Again, this goes back to UX/UI and taking care of your product and helping it evolve a personality AFTER launch.
Proprietary gstreamer glue code for Android
keep in mind that everyone's advice is generally predicated on only their own experience, and may or may not apply to your baby
I wouldn't be surprised if they tried using condoms, too. Non-lubricated, of course, but maybe ribbed for the robot's pleasure?
In is well
absolutely. A personal message will carry so much more weight. I get tons of advertising requests and they barely get read because I can tell they are boilerplate.
Curating HN content regarding parenting would be a worthwhile effort because of posts like this. I've been pleasantly surprised with HN's willingness to share thoughts on the subject.
Here is a good start: http://www.google.com/search?q=parenting%20site:news.ycombin...
It seems very unlikely that they will be able to depend upon Windows and Office as their primary revenue stream for very much longer, so their survival depends upon being able to go into new territory. They've done this to some extent with games, but have been struggling to compete with mobile.
The PlayStation Phone is still real
> If I believed that I would be wasting my time with YC.

Not at all. YC gives you incredible leverage to diversify your portfolio, making it that much more likely that you would have a piece of the next Google.

> obviously the sentence about Google, as phrased, is a joke

It's clearly hyperbole, but there's a difference between hyperbole and a joke. You've said many times you believe the outcome of early stage investing is bimodal. In your Startup School talk you even made a point of saying you "did the math" that led you to this conclusion. You said you didn't even start to question this conclusion until you started writing the talk for the last startup school. And this seems to be as close as you get to retreating from that conclusion:

"So I think at least some super-angels are looking for companies that will get bought. That's the only rational explanation for focusing on getting the right valuations, instead of the right companies. And if so they'll be different to deal with than VCs. They'll be tougher on valuations, but more accomodating if you want to sell early."

This is the passage I referred to as "grudging acknowledgement." A non-grudging acknowledgement would have gone something like this: "Because angels do not operate under the same constraints that VC's do, it opens the door to exit strategies that VC's are not able to undertake because of the constraints they operate under. This has the potential to change everything, including the current bi-modal distribution of outcomes, which is caused at least in part by the fact that VC's have to hew to a schedule and can't reinvest proceeds from early exits. So you as founders might be able to provide very nice ROI's for your investors without really dramatic wins, as long as you can add value quickly and reliably." Or something like that.

> Whether programs process strings and whether they're visible in your source code are separate questions.

Of course surface syntax and internal representations are separate issues. I challenge the claim that "it's lame to clutter up the semantics of the language with hacks to make programs run faster." The semantics of the language determine, for example, whether strings are mutable, whether it's possible to take the CDR of a string, whether taking the Nth element of a string is an O(1) operation or an O(n) operation. "Cluttering up the semantics with hacks to make program run faster" could save you a lot of money, and is therefore not "lame." The chances that it will save you a lot of money is proportional to how successful you are.

> There is definitely a subset of opportunistic investors whose motives and character deserve to be impugned.

OK, but maybe you should draw the distinction a little more specifically, particularly when your audience is a bunch of aspiring first-time founders. It is very easy to interpret what you said as, "Anyone who gives you this line is [very likely to be? almost certain to be?] a jerk."
Solving Real-World Selenium Issues
Foodfolio - social recipe box startup raises funds on Kickstarter
FTC Ends Inquiry Into Google for Data Collection
Not stealing your thunder, but with few free hours at my disposal, I could lend a hand to someone aswell.

I could take some designs, and implement corresponding HTML/CSS/JS for them. glad to help! my email is in the profile.
Create a knowledge base out of your work email easily
Our tool http://grexit.com lets Google Apps users create a knowledge base out of their day-to-day email communication.

Why GrexIt?

You have lots of email discussions at your workplace. A good number of those might be of a lot of relevance to people who were not a part of the email discussion. Some quick examples:

- You posted a question to a few of your colleagues. You got some responses, and after a few emails on the thread, you got your answer. This answer might be of relevance to many other people at your workplace who might have the same question that you had.

- You are working on a project and using email heavily to discuss key matters on the project. A new member joins the team, and needs to have access to all these email threads.

- You found a link on the internet that you think your colleagues can use. You forward this to your immediate peers over email, but do not want to send it to everyone as they might not need it immediately, and might consider the email to be spam.

All this is useful knowledge hidden in your inbox, which can not be useful to others, and might probably die in your inbox. GrexIt solves this problem by letting you add content from your inbox to an online shared repository, which anyone from your workplace in need of information can access. You can do this using our very intuitive and easy to use browser plugin. Effectively, GrexIt is a very simple tool to let out knowledge that might be trapped inside your email inbox, and open it up to a wider audience which might need it.

Would love it if you could try GrexIt out and let me know what you think about the tool.
Is this question still visible on HN? I cannot see it without going through the list of my own submissions.
Egads, you're kidding me. If you are applying to the Ivies and are not black, your competition had a violin in her hands at the age of 6 months, has played in Carnegie Hall, was the valedictorian of her high school class and had test scores in the 99th percentile, and will still be rejected with the words "Another smart Asian girl... meh."
Fastest Viable Product: Investing in Speed at a Startup
As pointed out the Zune lives on but I think it'd be difficult to argue it really made a substantive splash in the market despite arguably being a superior device as well as having the (imho) very strong Zune Pass subscription service. We're four years in and I can count on one hand how many people I've known that owned a Zune. There are parallels with WP7 launch but the stakes are much higher this time around because the relevance of the desktop is waning for general consumer use and Microsoft needs something to replace it. WP7 is an inflection point, if it fails I think you'll see Microsoft go roughly down the same path IBM has as far as consumer relevance (unless perhaps they turn Xbox Live into a OnLive-esque games as service thing, which they are in a better position than Sony or Nintendo to do).
Jason, thanks for articulating "show progress." That is really profound and applies in many areas of life. I've seen a lot of posts about "iterate" and such, but none of that directly attacked the old advertising slogan "you never get a second chance to make a first impression," until you did.
I'm only really rejecting a few of his rejection attempts. Overall it's a cool idea, calling strangers and attempting to share food are where it went over board.
Simulations of Elections with Various Methods of Voting.
Lessons from Rypple and Facebook, Part 1
I have no current need for this, but as a techie this would probably be the most useful of the recent offers if I had my own website. I have no idea how this stuff works, it always seems like black magic.
Offer HN: Free AppSumo.com Bundle
Hey Guys

I heart HN and have met / learned a lot from being on here. First 10 emails get todays (http://appsumo.com) designer bundle.

Email in profile.
That's disingenuous.

Two years is enough time to become second best at anything. First best usually has talent, who also tries just as hard as you.
Hi, thanks for the offer.

A general question: I do some Google PPC, LinkedIn PPC and Facebook PPC. I point those ads to specific landing pages relevant to the ads and keywords on my site.

I also track everything with Analytics (i check visitors, referrals, time on page, page views, keywords, countries).

I have a very small number of conversions (contact email sent via form). But I guess it's a numbers (%) game: I have a small amount of visitors.

The thing is: I check almost every day my stats on Analytics, but after my routine check of the stats i mentioned earlier, i really don't know what else to do/check/verify and what sort of "next action" I have to do with all the data I gather.

I guess, my question is: what's next?
Well income tax wise you'd have to pay taxes on the income regardless of where it's coming from. If there is a country that is under embargo (which I don't know haha) then you're keeping all of the income. Thus, you would have to pay tax on the full amount because you never remitted the portion of the sale that was supposed to be your cost.

If you pay it out later on, then you could take a deduction for it later. This is a common issue that people deal with. It's essentially cost of goods sold. It'll become part of your COGS once you pay it.
I really don't think I've ever seen a company that doesn't give a shit about its public reputation as much as Oracle. Maybe Blackwater.

"We don't have to care, we're the database vendor."
Security alert: New Trojan Horse apps said to attack the Mac
What marketing tools/methods do you use for your startup?
Hey guys! My partner and I are just about done with our prototype. I've been reading, talking to various friends and mentors, and reaching out.

What marketing methods do you use for your projects? What has worked well? What hasn't worked so well?

As a freelance SEO trying to break free from "the ties that bind", my focus is marketing. Now I'm trying to bring marketing into the discussions on this site.
Rolling over your child is a myth. Only happens if you're drugged or wasted.
This is tangentially related, but what should a new college grad expect to make his first year out?
Harvard used to get a lot of flack for legacy preferences. A writer named Dan Golden documented some of the "Z-List" rule-bending in his 2006 book, 'The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges -- and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates'. Here's what the Boston Globe reviewer (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2006/09/04/...) had to say about the book when it came out:

Golden's book is a well-reported critique of what amounts to affirmative action for rich people, who enjoy a panoply of preferences in the college admission process that outsiders could never dream of. The best-known examples are ``legacy" admissions for alumni children; scholarships reserved for upper-class sports, such as rowing; and the ultimate preference: dough. When you read how Harvard treats the children of its fat - cat Committee on University Resources -- who enjoy such perks as sit-downs with the director of admissions, personal campus tours, and access to the coveted ``Z-list" of deferred applicants -- suddenly real affirmative action for people who need it doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

The most egregious example of pay-for-Crimson - play is that of Jared Kushner , now the youthful owner of The New York Observer. While Jared was applying to colleges, his dad, New Jersey billionaire developer Charles Kushner , pledged $2.5 million to Harvard, to be paid in installments. (Kushner pere pleaded guilty to tax evasion and other counts in 2004 and recently completed a prison sentence.) An official at Kushner's high school told Golden: ``There was no way anybody in . . . the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard. His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought, for sure, there was no way this was going to happen." Kushner graduated from Harvard in 2003.

I'd be curious to know if this is still an issue at Harvard, or any of the other Ivy League schools. Maybe the OP can talk about what happened/didn't happen at Princeton?
"Rule #8: Never keep no weight on you"

That doesn't mean don't get to close too your product. Biggie is saying you should not take large personal risks on behalf of your business.
Ask HN: Does Git replace standard development/staging/production web dev setup?
Typically, web development shops use a development server, staging server and live production server. Does Git replace the need for a staging server?

Most of out website are small and we would like to replace the staging server if possible. What are your experiences with Git?
That's a nice offer, and I don't want to alienate you at all, but is this really a necessary topic for the Hacker News frontpage? Wouldn't this kind of Q&A be better-suited to email, Stack Overflow, IRC, or the Google Group?
I am a rails dev with experience using facebook integration. I have only used facebook connect up to this point, but am going to move towards the new graph api soon, which is much much easier to use. You can send me an email, cullen@ridewithgps.com and ask any questions, and I can hopefully give you some tips in the right direction.

I am looking at exploring mini_fb in the next few days (http://github.com/appoxy/mini_fb) for my new project, and for replacing facebooker/facebook connect in my ongoing startup (http://ridewithgps.com) towards.
For academic graduate studies, work experience rarely helps, since PhD programs are intended for professorships. One key exception is when the professor/PI in whose lab you are most interested in has hopped in and out of the industry, admissions into that lab often place a positive value on related work experience.

One key assumption underlying my answer is that labs and individual professors have more sway on graduate admissions than the centralized admissions office compared to undergrad admissions.

EE and CS often have significant overlap at many schools, like Stanford. At more theoretical schools, like Caltech, Math and CS have more overlap. Just justify your graduate study with respect to your undergrad work in your statement of purpose essay.
Once you select the white one and a plan, it says out-of-stock on the right hand side. And it has never been in stock.
Considering that 37signals products are web-based, they also work natively on a pretty large percentage of available hardware and software platforms (at least the ones you're likely to be using).
> Features are shallow, like breast implants. Build VISION and PERSONALITY into your software, and people will love you even if you're flat-chested.

Just wanted to make sure no one glossed over that gem. Great quote.
Generally, because startups are positive-sum, and your customers and competitors are not out to kill you (and in fact, in a lot of cases, other firms in the same field, even if they compete, will cooperate on standards, support each other incidentally by growing the market, and can coexist nicely). As well, while the government sometimes gets in the way of startups, and some things like IP law can be roadblocks, startups aren't generally doing something explicitly illegal, and your risk of being shot by the feds on a daily basis is a lot lower.
I'm in, attending and presenting.
Thanks so much! Sent an email!
It's very good, and there are excellent developers around. Check out http://www.palermovalley.com/
MS has some of the best engineering team in the world.

But MS does not have leadership with courage. That is the problem.
They mean porn apps. You can get all the porn you want. The browser is wide open.
I like the idea of contextium, when does the service open to users?
Clickable: http://grexit.com
Whats your immediate benefit, as a Twitter client dev, to register for bitly and get an API key rather than just posting to isshort.com/api.php?

You're confused about who I consider my user. My target audience is a developer, not an end user. The web page is only there as a demo; the product is the API.
Rise And Shine: Solar Power Gets Bigger In The U.S.
Hi il, I remember you as one of VWO's earliest beta users. Now VWO has matured and we have good traffic on the site. But we haven't done any paid marketing. So, if you've got some time, would love to chat with you on if there is an opportunity to be tapped here.

Sending you an email too!
Likewise, ZFS on FreeBSD is production ready.

I'm so grateful to the FreeBSD team for rescuing ZFS from the ahem complexities wrt OpenSolaris caused by the Oracle takeover.

Some related interesting news is that ZFS is coming to the Linux kernel (not zfs-fuse) in December, courtesy of these guys: http://zfs.kqinfotech.com/

We'll be following that up with a Linux port of our web cluster, which is pretty cool as it will allow our stuff to run on EC2 and all the other Xen cloud infrastructures.

In the meantime FreeBSD remains our primary platform, and I can heartily recommend CloudSigma for FreeBSD in the cloud. They've been good to us.

And if anyone knows where Kip Macy is lurking let him know we want FreeBSD on EC2 please!
I will try and setup a place online to post it. Basically it just renames files in a folder or directory. by default, it starts the first one with 0000.txt then 0001.txt. I would like to make it ASK for a prefix THEN add the numeric sequence.

I will get it online and update you all.