skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Tell HN: LessonLearned #1 - Customer Discovery - Even Before I start my startup
So I have been pondering with an idea of late which does not seem to leave my mind and to see whether it had any viability I decided to follow up on it as a side project. This started a month back and the idea is still strong.

After some thinking I decided to start on a customer discovery exercise to identify if there is anyone else apart from me who is facing a similar problem. Due to the nature of the idea it is important to have people living in close proximity of each other there by I decided to seek people in the condo building I live who would be willing to work with me and help me with feedback/suggestions.

Day 1
1. I created a posting to be put on the notice board and left it with the concierge.
2. The building management responded that the notice is too big for them to put on the board and that I should shorten it.

Day 2
1. I submit a revised copy and called them from my office in the afternoon to inquire about the posting
2. A Mr X picked up the phone and I asked him if it has been posted and these are some of the things he said
- "Your posting smells of commerical activity"
- "Why don't you come clear on your game buddy"
- "Why don't you come and meet me so that I know what this is all about"
3. I got angry and decided to go home early and sort this out. Walked upto Mr X's room and fireworks blew.
4. He accused me of having an ulterior motives and I accused him of being disrespectful. I was not willing to give up w/o a fight.
5. While all this is happening Mr X slipped this "When I read this I felt that this is a network marketing thing and hence I cannot pass it"
6. Just when he said this I realized that having Mr X is actually a boon for me as he was reviewing my post before everyone sees it.
7. I immediately mellowed down and Mr X spoke about the reasons why he felt that and what I could have written to make it more encouraging after all I was looking for volunteers.
8. To cut it short - Mr X and I are now friends.

Day 3
1. I submit another revised copy to Mr X and he says that he wants me to get approval from the board of directors of the building.
2. In addition to this Mr X suggested me what to write and what not to write in the mail to the directors.

Lessons Learned
1. Never give up w/o a fight
2. While fighting always pay attention to what's being said - sometimes things being said are very informative.
I got a sore right wrist during a Diablo 2 weekend, and it persisted for about 4 years.

In the end I had to get a chair of the right height, a desk of the right height and a wrist rest.

Take it seriously, the most important thing is an ergonomic work setup and some breaks.
"So if you actually read their profile and send intelligent messages selectively, you'll get responses."

In a dream world. I've done that on OKC and have gotten zero responses.
That chart needs to be distributed way more widely.

Spoiler alert: the difference between what Republicans and Democrats think the median wealth should be is less than a quarter of the difference between the lower of those numbers and what it actually is.

We're arguing over a fiction.
Agree with a better comparison being XUI, but adding "jQuery" to the description gets more attention.

I have to say though John that your view of what makes a great app framework doesn't necessarily matter to everyone. I think your philosophy is executed quite well in jQuery Mobile, but that doesn't make your approach the best one for all cases.

Your choice to go for broad support actually weakens the showing of jQuery Mobile on more shiny devices compared to products which have them in mind to begin with. Does that make jQuery Mobile then inferior? Hell no! It's great, does what you set out to do, and does it well.

Thomas' pretty obvious use of the jQuery name to get some attention aside, there's nothing wrong with zepto's philosophy. It differs from yours, but it will undoubtedly have an appeal to some people or for certain projects, just probably not the same projects where someone would find jQuery Mobile appealing.
Incidentally, I think that if many government functions were privatized you would be paying a (much) higher rate than you are now since you've already shown the willingness to pay the current rate.

If you don't pay your taxes, you'll get put in a cage or shot. That's not a "willing" payment.
What are the questions to ask when hiring a long term project engineer
I was told I would be better off to hire a committed site engineer to build my site. The reasons for this is that it not an easy site to build and it is the business.It will forever be changing , adapting, and growing as our audience needs dictate and opportunities develop.So my question is what is the criteria I should use in bringing someone on board and who has the flexibility and foresight to adapt the site to changes in technology and customer needs.This person should have a vested interest in the site too. Live or die.Thanks
If you agree with John Carmack (at least somewhat), then you should read "For a new liberty" by Murray Rothbard: http://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp

Where he explains how society can live without taxes extracted by the threat of force.
Conversely, the top 74 earners in 2009 made as much as the bottom 19 million.

Updating to include citation: http://www.tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/UBEN-8AGMUZ?...
Got 50+ emails by now. Will reply to all but it is already 12:30 am here :) Will try to reply as many I can do today, rest tomorrow.

The biggest learning from looking at HNers' sites has been this: they are text-heavy without any clear call-to-actions and usually lack a concise, descriptive headline.
I can't enlighten, but one of the first questions in my mind was, "Ok, it can run LINPACK, but can they program it?"
Agreed, Python hits a sweet spot, largely because GvR managed to maintain a strong anti-not-invent-here culture in the community.

Also agreed, I'm quite binary, if not caricatural, in my characterization. But it gets the point across, and I trust readers to put grains of salt wherever appropriate.

This being said, if like most projects, yours is more about reusing existing stuff than about writing software components that have never been released by anyone else before, and better-fitting components exist in PHP than in Python, You'll be better off writing ugly and not-fun PHP code. Some people can swallow this, others can't; the latters are probably better off not going the startup way.
Yeah, I didn't catch that earlier:

IMO, TDD shines when:

You're doing completely data oriented tests

You're doing things that have to work under changing (non-GUI) conditions without crashing

You're using embedded/system level controllers which need to be functioning under all inputs.

You have a moderately data intensive app and a moderately complex GUI action required to put in edge cases.

You have a automation framework at your disposal to push buttons and capture window contents.

You can structure your project into backend library/front end GUI using library.

TDD lacks luster when:

You have lots of GUIs and no automation framework

You have poor definition of system behavior (proofs of concept based apps sometimes have this)

You have an embedded target with limited debugger support

You have physical switches in your application

You have apps with lots of heterogeneously structured mutli-threading (the more conditionally compiled/run code, the worse the heisenbugs get), especially with a strong GUI component.
Two lines of code (and Slackware Linux) and I saved 'The Firm' around $250k (NZD)

Was an old Dental system written using a flavour of Unix that I've forgotten now. The system ran over X.25, but we were moving to TCP/IP. In the end I built up a bunch of slackware boxes that redirected tty1a to a telnet session and back again. Worked a treat. And the bonus was - we were then able to remote administer the original system (which wasn't possible before).

But while it was only two lines of code, it did take me a couple of months to figure out a solution. I had to learn a lot to get to that point - but it gave me a great appreciation for Linux.
Complications in A/B testing - Experiences at KISSinsights
> "Due to Armadillo Aerospace, in the last decade I have observed and interacted with a lot of different agencies, civil servants, and congressmen, and I have collected enough data points to form some opinions."

I think this is very important part of his argument. A person who has just graduated from high school has very little first hand knowledge about how things work and can only parrot stuff learned mostly from media sometimes from books. You can dismiss Carmack's arguments only if you think that Carmack:

a) has a political agenda and is lying about his experience with government

b) has a low IQ and is incapable of seeing how things "really work"

c) has significantly less experience than you and your experience with government has been very much different.

If you just graduated high school a year ago and everything you needed to know about politics you learned from the Daily Show, at least give Carmack the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he's on to something.
I tried it, and it generally just depressed me that all my compatible matches were over 100 miles away. Guess I should get out of South Dakota if I ever want this service to do any good for me. It would probably be good for my sanity and career if I did.
In my case, their landing page was more than enough.

I was searching for exactly this service for my social network startup. Found Embedly, navigated to api docs, went live in just an hour or two. Great service, I almost forgot it's there until seeing this thread.
Government would be far more efficient if you had a choice about whether you participated in its schemes.

Mutual self-defense is the purpose of government and is very cheap compared to the total cost of the US government. I doubt anyone would opt out of that arrangement, especially if they then had to pay an additional tax whenever they wish to trade with the US.

And all of the rest, the insurance schemes, forced charity, regulation can surely been done and are done better by voluntary arrangement. Even local government would be better if you could leave any municipality that failed to deliver.

So the problem is lack of choice, lack of competition. In other words, they can compel you, so they don't have to pay attention to all of the concerns that entities always must pay attention to when you have a choice.

If state and city governments knew that territory and the taxes it pays could "walk away", they would be much more responsive. Or they would start shrinking, as people left for better arrangements.

In more primitive tribal arrangements, that's exactly what people did when someone became a tyrant. We have lost that and we need to get it back.
On systems of government like the US republic or the various democracies around the European continent, there is an absolute concept of a citizen's contribution to the infrastructure that the state..

It's called taxation.

And it is not the only one. Citizens have various duties in every state; they don't have to be enumerated.

For people that make their fortunes by not paying their taxes, lying to the government, etc. your argument might have some value. For people that are working in the public sector exclusively, your argument might have some value. For an absolutist government, your argument would make a lot of sense.

But not for the rest.

(edited: my grammar sucks. i should get some sleep :/)
Well, protip for MistyKaye is to email. I could see how it might put you off, but if you introduce yourself with a bit of fun, don't come off as a weirdo, it can work.

By and large, for me this generated much more reliable results than the email method. As good as 1 in 3, versus 1 in 12 for emails.

(Yeah, I kept rough stats. I was an SEM nerd in those days, shudder, and looked at it like a campaign to be optimized.)
Paul Allen honored for contributions to neuroscience
First they tell you it can't be done, then they laugh at you, then it is a nice little hobby project, then you might be able to go full-time but so what you couldn't pay rent in San Francisco, then $100k isn't really that much anyway, then you're the exception that proves the rule.
Bundle Of SMS Sending in iphone4 Using Best Cydia Apps | InfoMov.Com
I'm sorry, but $150 for three computers isn't exactly draconian.

What the article doesn't say is that the 2008 license may have allowed 6 installs, but you could only use 3 at the same time on the same LAN.

And if you already a valid product key, who waits 15 days to activate it anyway? This is a lot of fuss about nothing.
True Frenemies: Facebook Works Both Against And With Bit.ly
We use PHP. I'm hoping to rebuild the backend in Clojure, which I am just learning. I wish we had built the whole site using Clojure, for the reasons Paul Graham mentions when he wrote Blub programmers. But I did not know Clojure when we started.
Make $2.00 today.
Offer HN: 3 Free Questions on PickFu.com
Hey fellow HNers,

I enjoy the many hours I spend on HN everyday so I want to give back to the community too. Since PickFu has been pretty helpful to other entrepreneurs, I'm giving out beta accounts to the first 20 that email.

To make the processes faster, login using RPX then email info [at] pickfu.com with the email address you're registered under.

A beta account gives you 3 free 50 response questions.
I would suggest limiting the number of users and calling it beta. That way you can be in close contact with these users and actually pull out their feedback. I would release a simple MVP--one that is useful to you. Not much more. Beware that users make great editors but poor creators.

Get to charging quickly. Once you charge $1, you will treat the project as a commercial endeavor--it will fight for your attention over other work and it is incredibly rewarding.
I know many folks saw this and the Adobe Edge tools as something Adobe would be creating in the future but it is really nice to see them in action already and I can't wait to get my hands on the first release build to take a look at just what they are kicking out code wise.
Does the logic for these text-processing tasks change a lot and that's why you need a higher level language for them?
You can look up the Star Trek reference, but in an interviewing context, it refers to an question that is essentially impossible to answer and/or basically never occurs in real life and yet is somehow meant to judge a candidate's ability to "think outside the box" or under extreme pressure.

As well as, of course, to showcase the interviewer's vast wealth of experience and keen insight into the human condition that enables him/her to assess as much in 5 minutes from candidate's response to a completely contrived question.
Adding GPUs seems a no-brainer in retrospect. Have top500 institutions outside China been trying this approach?

Except one thing. Until recently GPUs have only done single-precision calculations. Double precisions has been added with the latest architectures but double is, I believe, still very slow. So this means that single precision results are sufficient for the top500 tests as well as the particular applications (in the Tianhe’s case: weather and oil exploration)?
Generally found that most Caucasian dating sites work if you are Caucasian (or want to date Caucasian people), which in hindsight seems obvious really.

The "popular" ethnic sites (e.g. shaadi.com) are geared more towards "marriage" than "dating", but surprisingly most ethnic people on them want to "get to know you first" for a long time (in most Indo society this is usually done in a family context i.e. with others around, and for a relatively short period of time before a marriage decision is made, the short time frame being there to protect the individuals i.e. modesty of girls, and prevent "undesirable" behaviour, all this being counter balanced by the families getting involved to ensure matches are good and process does not take excessively long), which is basically "dating" by another name (but seems more socially/culturally acceptable, especially in Indo cultures, due to the "marriage" pretext/context).

Perhaps many people are on them as there is no major ethnic alternative, hence I think an ethnic OKCupid (or clone) would do well. I may even try to build (an albeit rubbish) one for Show HN November, lol.

Of course this is a single view garnered through anecdotal evidence, observation of many others (over the years), lots of general discussion on the topic with people from all walks of life, and based on a small sample size, so totally unscientific, but yet remarkably true.
There's another one here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1844338
One of the lead programmers of JAWS is Glen Gordon. He is blind is one of the smartest programmers I have known.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAWS_%28screen_reader%29

http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw070204
It used to be that guy's pen.
No problem. Thanks for expanding.

I didn't mean to imply that changing the match type will magically increase quality score. To me breaking them out as exact matches is about making the targeting better, both for the text ad and the landing page, which sets you up for a better quality score.
I met my wife on OkCupid. We weren't a highly-rated match (70-something percent, IIRC), and I was a bit outside the geographic area she was looking in. But we got to talking on the site, based in part on shared musical interests, and here we are.

I think the lesson is: OkCupid is great, but don't assume that their system is going to do all the work for you. Most of the people I was better matched with, according to the site, weren't in the least bit interesting to me.
I should correct myself: I'm not a big fan of the long terms of software patents. Judging from my particular situation as an inventor, I'd say I appreciate the protection. But I think it should expire in about a year or two, not 17 years.
Untrue, the concept of money was developed long before government. Hammurabi's code only formalized a number of systems that were already in place. It took government to make money unsound.
Getting external feedback is not the same thing as having a co-founder. I would hope that any solo founder is still talking with people about his or her project.
Perhaps they would be charged with disturbing the peace or disorderly conduct. Most localities have catch-all ordinances that police can use in these situations.
However, making 50 sites that make 500 a day is a lot easier than making one site that makes 25000 a day. A lot easier.
Dup: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1803493
I know this isn't a totally original idea (as he mentions in the blog entry) but there seem to be a lot of folks newer to the filed on HN, like me, and I thought this was helpful and interesting.
I don't think Zepto is trying to positioning itself _against_ jQuery. I think it's merely using the jQuery chaining API because it considers it an elegant design (that's actually a compliment) and to give developers something of a migration path in case their application outgrows Zepto.
No numbers yet, but we're very happy with the response we've gotten to date.
Anybody can go out and buy 10,000 CPUs/GPUS and put them in a box - the interconnects are the clever part.
Thanks! This is awesome. I'm sure i can twist drupal + ubercart's arm to make the image preview thing happen. I do get a free SSL banner from Authorize.net so I should definitely sort that out. I've gotten so many good actionable ideas. Thanks a gain and have a great day!
> The bank is also necessary for me to get paid, and so is the electric company and the telephone company and the nice lady down in HR, but it's still my money. I don't mind paying for the services they provide either, but I'll still complain if they take more than they're entitled to.

When everyone gets to decide how much they want to pay for private goods, ceteris paribus we get better, cheaper private goods. When everyone gets to decide how much they want to pay for public goods, ceteris paribus we get worse and fewer public goods.
I read this article a while ago, and I had a reaction that I think has gelled a little more since then. I think I take issue with the notion that elite = ivy league (or similar institutions). It's true that ivies dominate the top spots of the us news and world report undergraduate college rankings (where no public university cracks the top 20) and tend to do well on rankings of top professional school programs (especially mba and law), but interestingly, they don't dominate the list of top graduate schools to the same extent (where public universities do quite well), and they show up even less often on rankings of top engineering schools.

In short, I think it's time we redefined what an elite college really is. The question the writer poses is a very interesting one: are students at elite colleges out of touch with the rest of society? But I'd like to see the same question asked about the graduates of UC Berkeley, UCLA, Texas, Michigan, Illinois, CMU, MIT, Stanford, Caltech, and other universities with top engineering schools.

It's an open question, I'll admit. There probably is a reasonable case to be made that the large public research institutions that have such excellent engineering programs just aren't elite by the standards of the US (this isn't China or France, after all). And I suppose you could also say that graduates of these schools are every bit as out of touch (and as snobby as the author implies) as grads of the top ivies...
You probably don't want to do this, since there is (anecdotally at least) a correlation between ad clicks and less sophisticated visitors. It may be a pain, but there's a good chance that IE users will be where you make the most money.
That's just it, though: why advocate an anti-inefficient-government position? Who, precisely, advocates a pro-inefficient-government position? Right, nobody. So, instead of advocating anti-inefficient-government, it makes a lot more sense to advocate specific measures that will improve efficiency. That might be cutting programs, but advocate cutting of specific programs, because of that program's inefficiency. Give a concrete reason for it, such as number of dollars spent by the average taxpayer, or an alternative use for that money. Pick a specific measure, not something general like "social security" or "TARP".

I sympathize with many libertarian goals, but this generic "anti-inefficient-government" rhetoric doesn't help any of them. Rhetoric is a luxury of mainstream parties. Ross Perot got a significant portion of the votes in many states by hammering on a single issue: the budget deficit. After that, the Clinton administration mysteriously decided that shrinking the deficit was a priority. Which of course didn't exactly last long, but imagine if someone continued to hammer on that with the same fervor throughout Bush's presidency, and into the current administration?
You only need to be clever to program the libraries to use the massively parralel GPUs.

Then any moronic theoretical physicists/geophysicist/industrial chemist can just use MPI, LINPACK,Nag to do useful work on it
Oh what a poor state the world would be in if everyone believed that. :)

Side note: I have no problem with the OP's website.
There's a flawed assumption in your statement that Canadians aren't denied access to coverage due to government bean counters.

I have a relative who is an Oncology nurse in a major US city. She sees a lot of patients from Canada who come to her hospital because they can't get the treatments they need in Canada. Of course, it's only the wealthy ones, because they're the only ones who can afford it.

Similar problems exist with the US government healthcare (through the VA). My father was denied a lifesaving transplant because he didn't meet the government board's criteria for a transplant. Mayo Clinic came through with the transplant and saved his life.
I agree. 2 months is a vacation. I've been solo for 27 months (i do have a team though).

My confession? Get a great co-founder/partner, and do more hard time.