skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
http://www.getaquirk.com/ Ties your social network accounts (FB, Twitter, 4SQ) to a QR code. Scan to connect.

Main focus is on getting users past the home page to sign up for the service. What's there still doesn't do a good enough job convincing the users why they should sign up.

The next problem is getting users to actually connect through the service. Channeling users to download a scanner app and download their QR code is probably the next major step.
http://mugasha.com We make it really easy to listen to long DJ sets. Best place for listening to electronic dance music.
I bought a couple from http://cheapssls.com (no affiliation). There they are under $10.
http://peerlove.com - web based employee recognition
City of the Future Tessellation Demo
Building Personal Experiences Online Through Content
[Looking for feedback] Crossbrowsertesting.com adds mobile platform for testing
I'm using f.lux right now. I'm pretty sure I first heard of it on HN, not sure why the URL hasn't been posted before though.
تحميل فيلم The Social Network مترجم 2010
If I were Rose, I think I'd have been bored with digg even before the v4 fiasco. The site might have been bringing in good money but it was still a den of tedium.
We just added mobile browser testing this weekend. We wanted to let people know and get some feedback. Main site is: http://crossbrowsertesting.com

Thanks!
The Conj (Notes, thoughts and links on Clojure-Conj)
This is predicated, of course, on investors taking a long term view. I think it's been shown that we don't tend to do that.
it appears they dont have anything on me (no cookie/javascript blocking, just vanilla chrome) and I do browse extensively. Anyone know why this might be happening?
> it becomes more and more sensible to think about Ubuntu as a separate operating system, built on top of technologies like Linux, Debian or GNOME

It's as if other distros can't use whatever technology Canonical develops (or, more like it, integrates into its own stack), as long as it's free.
Why are these tutorial framework specific? Just set up your nginx/lighttpd/apache to server traffic over HTTPS and set up redirects from http://example.com to https://example.com.
> find hosted VPN services

So have you solved your problems if you use third party VPN to do the encryption between you and the third party and the mentioned third party also conveniently has your whole data stream unencrypted, no matter from where you connect?
Just because some people refer to themselves as 'rock stars' doesn't mean that they -are-. 'Rock star' isn't defined like that, and so the whole argument falls flat. And if those people start calling themselves 'rock solid', this argument still falls flat.
What did he put on Mars?
It isn't hard to find good software engineers. It's hard to find good software engineers that will take the pitiful wages being offered.

Raise your rates and you'll find them.
Apparently you can book tickets, check email and do all sorts of stuff online without knowing that each website has a distinct address called a URL.

Yes. The days of DNS as a mainstream human interface are numbered.
Request a free "Starved for Attention" Action Kit. Fight World Hunger Locally
Interesting, but not difficult. I approve highly of the idea, though; perhaps something with XSS next time?
After I initially overreacted about it's simplicity, I saw the point more clearly. In fact, the more I think about it the more I loved it. (from your business's standpoint)

Whenever I've been apart of interviewing candidates, ≈70% of the time was wasted on applicants who fluffed their resumé, got an interview, and were obviously not what they claimed to be. This would probably significantly reduce that overhead and at the same time attract people who enjoy coding vs. do it just to pay the bills.
What are you doing at work that you don't want people looking over your shoulder? Serious question by the way - it always comes up in work environments that some people are pretty against the lack of privacy that comes along with these types of set ups, but really if you are at work there shouldn't be too much (if anything) on your screen which is private.

I'm a big fan of bull pen type environments, where it's wide open spaces and everyone is together with no walls between.

If you have that, and also offer a few "quiet rooms" where you can go if things are loud or you need to check your personal email, I don't see what the problem is.
Not as badly as billing.microsoft.com
A lot of people find MongoDB is faster for queries because they avoid a lot of joins.
Flash getting native Direct3D & OpenGL GPU Hardware-accelerated 3D support
http://ihackernews.com - HackerNews for iPhone/Android/Mobile phones.
No spoilers! :o)
I'm just learning Rails now, and while I still prefer Python over Ruby, Rails is more fun and I'm feeling I'm getting more done with less effort.

On the other hand I think Django is simpler to understand in-depth, with Rails I feel like a lot of it is magic and it'll take a lot more work to understand how it works (but it isn't stopping me being productive with it).
Oh, people can break computers alright. Give them a picture of small kittens or of porn and, believe me, they'll find a way.
Alright, so, I fully understand the scalability reasons for using MongoDB, but I need someone to clearly explain to me when NoSQL would be a better solution than SQL from a development standpoint. Because like someone pointed out, Postgres without fsync can be just as fast.

What is the advantage of giving up the ability to use SQL and the associated relational algebra that has long been established in that query language? I'm not asking to start a flame war, I'm sincerely interested. Can someone give me a use case for when NoSQL would have a clear advantage over SQL?
Just announced and demoed at this morning's Adobe Max 2010 keynote by CTO Kevin Lynch. Another big demo for Flash gaming/gamedev is native support for gamepads/joystick controllers.

http://max.adobe.com/online/monday/
I was under the impression that Ubuntu Netbook Remix only supports Atom. It's the only processor listed in the UNR System Requirements:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequire...
7 Reasons Why Web Apps Fail (2006)
What is the cost of storage, again?
Yup. As you gain more experienced with computers, you understand what will and what won't break a computer. The same thing goes for an OS.

I bet there are a number of Windows users that never update, in fear that it will break something. (To be fair, it might, but usually it's unlikely).
My grandma declared a few years ago that she would have nothing to do with computers, as she did not want to get sick from those widely rampent computer viruses!

The lesson? ???
The blue is really strong, but other than that, I think it looks fine.
Hey we're doing some really similar stuff at Quizlet.com (small startup but over 1 million registered users), let me know if you want to chat.

http://quizlet.com/
Quick thing to fix:

When the page loads in my browser (1366x768 resolution), it automatically scrolls me down the page a bit, enough so that I cannot see the EasyCal logo without scrolling back up.

This is because of the auto-focus on the email address text field under "Interested in using Easy Cal?". Maybe remove that and only apply it when "I want to try it!" is clicked?
During Adobe Max, Apple Declares More War on Flash
Would be funny if somebody went overboard and actually rooted the box, deleted the other entries and changed the site so the problem couldn't be solved (or closed the competition).

Then I guess you'd have to give him the job by default :-)
a) Google's CEO is a bit of a douche. We already knew that.

b) How is taking a picture from a public road even a privacy issue that people care about?
As said in the post, when people call themselves rock stars there are problems.
However, new hire orientations now provide this card along
with a full handbook of other more specific rules and legal
regulations, as the way Nordstrom operates has changed.

Too good to be true in the modern day perhaps. Seems like they broke their own Rule #1
Kareem,
I may not be the intended audience for your webapp but I couldn't figure out what the term 'booking' calendar meant.
May be you could put up a few situations when someone would use your app to help understand your app better.
Though, as tptacek pointed out a while back, there can be more comfort with well defined boundaries: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1640765

Personally, I love the idea but, with disappointment, I can't pragmatically recommend it for all but the most minor of situations.

There are so many workplace rules and laws that violate common sense that you have to adhere to (e.g. many "harassment" laws) that spelling them out is almost the only way to avoid frequent problems (e.g. My wife was formally reprimanded for not inviting certain colleagues to an after work - and not work related - function. This is called "bullying" nowadays and we spent months dealing with the disciplinary case/suspension/etc. They now have a policy where you have to officially disclose who you are friends with or not and why. My wife no longer works.)

Update: I read too quickly. It seems they've realized the above and are distributing a book of policies too. A shame.
This could be a way forward for an open Swing toolkit on Mac:

http://lists.apple.com/archives/java-dev/2010/Oct/msg00493.h...
However, new hire orientations now provide this card along with a full handbook of other more specific rules and legal regulations, as the way Nordstrom operates has changed.

Hopefully the 75-word card still sets the tone, and the full handbook is just to satisfy the bureaucrats.
Jeez.. so philosophical.

People say (description)(profession) to quickly describe what they do to other people. They pick the best description.

Long haul truck driver doesn't mean incapable of driving short distances, it means that most days she gets up, gets into a truck and drives a long way. If you're some place that makes outsiders cringe you might get all philosophical about whether the "long haul" or the "truck driver" part of your job description is the heart of the matter, but... no one wants to listen to that:

Internet marketers go on about whether internet or marketing are really the heart of what they do. So do leggo artists.
Typically I've found that the best employees don't need "managing" in the classic sense, they need facilitation and protecting from the usual distractions.
Hello Sahil,

Excellent offer, I hope you have fun creating and blogging about the process.

I would like to suggest creating a logo for the Gramps project [1] (a Genealogy Program) which I just found a few days ago and in a reply to me one the developers mentioned that they have "No real official logo."[2] and from the looks of the project they could use a new wiki template[3].

Please consider upvoting to help improve the project.

[1] - http://gramps-project.org/
[2] - http://goo.gl/JDN1
[3] - http://www.gramps-project.org/wiki
Ubercab, Now Just Uber, Shares Cease And Desist Orders
While I don't support a blanket statements along the line of "every app should be using MongoDB," it is equally invalid to say that "anything that deals with money" has no use for MongoDB. If you look at http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Production+Deployments you will see a few financial and ecommerce sites. I can tell you that there are even more financial firms not on that list in various stages of production. Even if your entire app can't be written using MongoDB, it is still worth investigating if the time savings of using it for a portion outweigh the costs of using an additional data store. But that is more of a business question than a technical one.
Hi Michael,

from a development standpoint only, I like the fact that I don't have to write database migrations (as defined in Rails). It means I can iterate more quickly during the development.

As well for data aggregation kind of jobs (such as http://www.toutpourmonipad.com/ where I munge different-formatted data streams), it's really convenient to be able to mix datas that are partly equal, partly different, when it's relevant to you.

Edit: forgot to mention that MongoDB comes with a built-in geographical index (MySQL doesn't have it, I'm not sure for PostGres - I believe it's via some extension).

Edit2: forgot to mention I really appreciate the upsert abilities for what I do (http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Updating#Updating-Upsert...)

Edit3: anyone with some curiosity for MongoDB will appreciate this book: http://www.amazon.com/MongoDB-Definitive-Guide-Kristina-Chod... - well-written and concise
You might want to talk to your company attorney about the possibility of the company buying back his shares by executing a note for the balance, rather than all cash. Maybe talk about the possibility of having the note come due upon some particular event, such as replacing the investor with another investor of equal or greater value. If the investor is hesitant to go for that option, you could talk to your attorney about the possibility of having the company make payments towards the note balance on some other future event as laid out on a timetable.

If you look in the Attorney engagement letter it probably has language about their duty is to represent the interests of the company only, and not the founders, shareholders, officers or other individuals or entities associated with the Company.

It seems like he wants to willingly pull out as employee and investor/board member, as long as he gets his investment back. So working out a solution for the payment for the shares (with the help of the company Attorney) might get the ball rolling on a solution for you guys.

Good luck with this.
Is HN only about saying nice things about everything?
My personal problem with HN, is that every time I dare to write a comment that is not positive about something, I get downvoted and in most cases the downvoter doesn't care much about explaining it, even when my comment spawned an interesting discussion.

It's very annoying that 100+ karma users could act as really good trolls, they could just go around and downvote everybody without ever loosing karma, but costing the commenter karma.

Don't get me wrong I really enjoy the HN community, there are a lot of bright people here and very good content and discussions, it's just that the system discourages you to have your own opinion on anything, because if you write something that a 100+ user doesn't like he can simply downvote you irresponsibly.

TL, DR: I don't know maybe it's me, maybe I have too radical opinions on stuff. But overall I feel that the downvoters should loose some karma too, and maybe force the downvoter to write a reason for it, to make sure that they downvote responsibly.

PS: I am not saying neither that I'm always right nor that I never deserved the downvote.
the procedural history of cuban's case is somewhat confusing. there are actually two ongoing suits right now.

one is the insider trading lawsuit. the sec's suit against cuban was dismissed by a district judge in dallas for failure to state a claim (even if all the facts accused were true, they still wouldn't be enough to support a conviction of cuban). however, the court of appeals overturned that on appeal and sent the case back to the district court to keep going on the case. that happened relatively recently. the basic issue is whether cuban agreed to keep confidential the information he received.

not long after the sec sued cuban, cuban sued the sec in district court in washington dc based on the freedom of information act (foia). this is the case being discussed in the article. he wants documents the sec used in its investigation of him and other documents. presumably cuban would get ahold of the relevant documents as part of the discovery process in the first lawsuit, but perhaps cuban sought some pr benefits of looking like he was going on the offensive and perhaps he thought he could learn more about what the sec had on him to prepare for the first litigation. the gist is that the sec acted in bad faith by withholding relevant documents from cuban.

there was some discussion about whether the sec was stalling in the hopes that they'd get an exemption to foia provided by congress, but i believe obama repealed that provision in early october. cuban has been pretty brash this whole time, and as a matter of law, it's clearly not an open and shut case. the bravado i find somewhat embarrassing because it's pure grandstanding -- no court would ever grant his request (although judge walton is known as a bit of a renegade). as a matter of litigation strategy, i don't see much benefit to what cuban is doing here. the sec isn't going to back down and has been quite dogged about pursuing the case against cuban. i don't see any advantage in terms of litigation strategy. seems like pure pr.
Actually, it looks like more of a new platform similar to OpenGL/DirectX than a 3D engine a la Unreal/Source/IdTech which Unity3D is closer to.

It's not a response to Unity3D, it's a feature that all of us Flash devs have been requesting for years as Shockwave/Director had it, and Flash had taken over its space/niche/functionality.

If you noticed, the demo was built with the Alternativa3D Flash 3D engine. You'd still need to combo with Flash 3D engines like Alternativa3D & Papervision3D to make your life bearable when building complex Flash 3D apps/games.

It would be totally awesome if Unity3D would export to Flash 3D/Molehill in the future! :D
http://www.staticbuzz.com/ - Implementation of Q&A site model, done in the Drupal cms. Bonus, if this is picked, I'll make your design into a theme and contribute it back to drupal.org where the ArrayShift install profile is still in need of a good default theme. (*Note: The is site is hardly used, but I've actually used it many times to showcase what Drupal can do)
STL is more or less designed to support custom memory allocation, I would say that half of it's complexity comes from this.
When you google everything, stuff like this: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_yo... happens... (read the comments)
Molehill will run on Direct3D in Windows and OpenGL acceleration for Mac/Linux. After that, it will fallback to software 3D rendering.
'Frame of Reference' is exactly the right concept. This is what allows you to make sense of what you don't understand. Even the smartest people with the wrong frames can come up short when challenged.

Having a frame of reference is a combination of specific knowledge (typically gained through a program of formal study), and experience (typically gained from operating within a frame for some time, and building a private sense of how it works in practice).

The fastest way to infuriate an otherwise smart, capable person is to (a) fail to understand that they simply don't share your frame of reference, then (b) treat them like they're incapable of understanding anything at all while (c) failing to supply the kinds of helpful clues that can get them properly oriented, allowing them to use what they do know to make better sense of what they don't.

Computer people seem especially prone to this.
This is very insightful feedback, thanks!

Do you really think listing what people eat at restaurants/bars/coffees be enough to estimate their calorie intake? This might be my cultural bias talking, but here in Europe it would definitely not be accurate because people eat and drink a lot of "homemade" stuff.

I still consider SoWhat... as a gadget solely created to learn Ruby, but your ideas are intriguing. I'll drop you a line soon (busy schedule this week :) ).
http://www.SpellingThing.com/ - Web based spelling practice app. I'm clearly not a designer and would love some help.
I have used you guys before, pretty good site, well designed. It would be cool to see more social integration with your site. I like hypem.com (for listening to music) because of its integration with for instance, last.fm. Really spurs for discussion and brings me back to the site to listen to music.
Querying before the writes solved a lot of problems. It gets the object in the working RAM set. When doing an update, the database gets LOCKED when the statement hits the server--that means if your document is not in memory, you have to wait while it gets looked up. This was an easy, easy win for us.

Regarding the corruption, I got an "invalido BSON object" or something on repair, which tells me some object was only partially flushed to disk when the DAS went down. The slave actually worked fine for simple lookups by ID, but there was some issue with the index and I was unable to run filters against it. Luckily the huge collections are only accessed via unique identifier, so this wasn't a huge issue.
For hiring, sometimes I just want to see the candidate's github account and tech blog. That will say more than the old school resumes.
Bees More Efficient at Solving TSP than Computers
A few years ago I ran a website for a local community science fair. We'd get about 200 schools participating, and they have to register online before they can send kids projects to the fair.

190 of the 200 go off without a hitch. But I always get five or ten angry emails asking how to register a school, because they see no box to type into. Somehow they can find the "contact" link in tiny print and write out an email with bad spelling and grammar, but the "Click Here to Register" link in 24 point red text is impossible to locate. Also, these people are educating our children.

I learned the hard way why most websites have their signup form right on the front page. Call it A/B testing via angry feedback form.
Quote :

"Unity brings together a powerful set of technologies designed to empower application developers and deliver a unique user experience"

From the above hype I mistakenly assumed Unity was something other than a nice Window Manager. Perhaps I do deserve to be down-voted for not wading thru pages of this tripe to find out what it actually means.

My comments still stand : Even if Unity is a superb WM .. does the Linux desktop really need another?

HTML5 would be a better way to do Linux Desktop UI.
Keep in mind that this is the same guy that responds to NBA fines by donating a matching amount to charity. Also, after getting fined for claiming a referee "wasn't fit to run a Dairy Queen", he worked at a Dairy Queen for a day.
I don't know how much domain expertise you would prefer your engineers to have about SEO, Rand, but have you considered that someone with the fairly rare combination of chops sufficient to build your tools and SEO expertise now has fantastically attractive options? You may be misidentifying the market you need to buy them from, and hence the market clearing price.

The capitalist in me thinks it is virtually axiomatic that if you cannot fill demand at a 25% premium to the market clearing price you are in fact mistaken as to what you believe that price to be.

Incindentally, a client of mine coming from the other side (they practically wrote the book on attracting engineering talent, but internal SEO knowledge is limited) has the same problem finding that combo.
That's one nasty, nasty problem.

But why would iPhoto keep the photos themselves in any other format than the original files and just point to them from the metadata store? The most I would to with the files would be to compress them using some lossless (obviously) algorithm... This way, the worst that could happen would be metadata corruption.
Hey, Thanks! We are working on improving the social component of Mugasha right now. Should be live in the next 2 weeks.
Scalling your Websocket/Comet Real-time application using Redis Pub/Sub
Scalling Websocket/Comet applications are not simple. Why? As with Comet, a websocket connection on server A cannot receives or share events with another websocket connection on server B.