skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask YC: I think i have some great ideas for websites, but I don't code. What to do?
I can't code to save my life, but I know a fair amount about graphics and usability. I'm pretty tech'd up on the web-social scene too.
I don't know any coders who'd work on ideas (all too busy on careers)
Is it worth going the rentacoder route? Will it bite me in the ass if takes off?<p>I have my ideas on paper, with specifications, screen designs etc etc. How can I create these into websites?
There still were some dropping out every year after that, but the number was significantly smaller after each step.
I understood what you meant. My response was less coherent than I would have liked. Let me try again.

I don't think undergraduate deferments count, because most students would graduate before the draft ended. They would not escape the decision to illegally dodge the draft or go to war.
This is my first post, i registered to ask this. Hope that's ok. Fwiw I've been reading here for a long time ...
I use it on my desktop, but I've decided not to upgrade from Firefox 2 on my lappy until 3 stabilizes some. It crashes about every 20-45 minutes of usage, which is deeply irritating. I'll probably revert to Firefox 2 on my desktop, as well. I like the new stuff in Firebug, but it's not worth the instability.

I'm running the latest Opera on my XO, and find it much improved over older versions--screen real estate is finally being respected in Opera (it used to be really cramped, but has gotten more minimal). Speed is good, stability is good, and memory usage is good. If I can get the hang of the JavaScript debugger in Opera, I might even switch on my laptop and desktop. I never thought I'd consider Opera a better browser than Firefox...but with the poor stability and bloat of FF3, I'm finding myself not really loving Firefox, anymore. Hopefully, it'll get better with the next release.
Go Home, Bill
Surely all they need to protect themselves is publish a paper outlining the method into the public domain?
Distributed Software Development Explained
http://searchyc.com/non-technical+founder

http://searchyc.com/%2522idea+guy%2522

http://searchyc.com/non-coding+founder

http://searchyc.com/outsourcing
Yeah, it most definitely is pointless. But it was fun for a few days, and was an interesting experiment.

The point of the comment in reply to yours was that not everything NEEDS to be useful. Somethings are just FUN.
Click on 'Register a .ME Domain' and choose a registrar. Then go to their site and purchase a domain the normal way. You are not guaranteed to get it. Beware though, some registrars may not refund you the money but instead allow you to use it to buy other domains through them. So I revoke my earlier idea to try and register the same names through multiple registrars.
Frankly, your English is imperfect. But, you communicate well enough to get your point across. So, I estimate you are more effective than most non-native English speakers.

In any event, I'll offer you three hints that may help you reach fluency. First, you are less likely to make errors and more likely to be understood if you use simple sentience structures. Second, never use the word such. Third, always capitalize American.
Yahoo got the tools to index Flash files as well, they just haven't implemented them yet. Getting there first doesn't make Google evil, but painting Google as an evil monopoly might get your blog some easy traffic.

Earlier story:

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/adobe-flash-google-yahoo-...
From the Most Popular Websites in Paper to the Simple Foundations of Modular Innovation
I watched the E3 preview of Half Life 2 again and again and again. So probably Half Life 2.
Not for portability. Do most Windows users have PS viewers installed?
>So you think that was hard?

Not particularly, no. All I had to do was keep my wits and wait for the economy to turn around. These days, I can laugh off the entire experience and sum it up in a message board post.

As you say, in the end you'll be OK if you keep your head and plan for better times. Just remember that, no matter how bleak the environment might become, things will improve.
I don't think it'll work. Why would I care what some girl did on Saturday, out of the other 18,000 people on my campus? It's cool to do that for say silicon valley because people actually know who you're talking about, but on a college campus it's a different story.

That and finding reporters to hire would be hard, and you can't realistically charge by each 1,000 pageviews. You're only going to get so much traffic from a site aimed at one college. And 2 posts per weekday? I don't think there is that much interesting stuff happening at Georgia Tech to write about. You'll end up having kids posting about the waterballoon slingshot they made at their dorm and used to hit kids walking to the campus bus.. but that's still "meh" in my book.
I've never liked that the product description comes before the pain statement. If the product description makes the pain statement obvious then it isn't needed at all, but if not then it seems like the problem with the status quo should come first to put the product into context.
..and for those who don't make the cut?

A recent graduate in recessionary times rarely has the luxury of sitting back and waiting for the next application round. When there's rent to pay, food to buy and an empty bank account facing you, things can be a little rough.
What is Simplicity?
I can code... would you like to give me a brief overview of what your idea is?

Email me @ gmail.com
If you design it so that he can use, but provide short cuts for more advanced users - you can reach quite a lot of people.
In a world where there's no crazy-ass bullshitters who spread their disease shamelessly even if don't have an ounce of legitimacy? Yes.
That's right. And that's why I did not write it as my own opinion. 'Social' reasons make pdf better in this regard.

I still prefer html for reading on-screen, though.
For a moment, I thought "Microsoft Fixes Feature" was an Onion article satarizing Microsoft's habit of rewriting everything with new features and newer defects isntead of making their existing stuff work flawlessly.

As it turns out, I was very unpleasantly surprised by how vulnerable IE ahs been until this recent fix. Ouch!
If you're considering the encryption of passwords and not the hashing and salting of passwords, you're already in some trouble.

You don't want to decrypt passwords.

You want to hash, and compare. And only then with a cryptographically secure hash.

And you also want to consider building in some form of evasion, and quite possibly to introduce a deliberate delay in the password processing; steps to slow the inevitable password attacks.
Botox ride
Most of us have heard of Botox and at least once in our lifetime it would have crossed our minds to use Botox to iron out those wrinkles and the frown lines on our face. Many people visit London Botox clinics to have their wrinkles removed.
MySQL: Recovering Innodb table Corruption
Signs you're a bad programmer, and how to remedy them
It really depends on what your ideas for a website are. If you are thinking along the lines of a brand new web app, you'll certainly need to look for someone or spend some time learning, if it's something simple, you might be able to do most of it on your own.

First thing I would do: Create my own website. It doesn't have to be anything special, just a 5 page html-only site. This will make sure you understand the basics of websites. If you're already comfortable with this you could step it up to setting up a blog with wordpress or another content manager. This will give you a brief introduction to databases.

If you already are at this level, great. If not, it will help you to communicate with whoever you end up working with. It also gives you some idea of what's involved and what is and isn't possible.

When you get down to it, almost anything is possible. It just takes significantly more effort if something is done one way and then a change is attempted.
Sparklines: theory and practice
I don't get it, didn't they open source the player? In which case anyone could write their own indexer.
The software stack was developed long before Android was around. There's a good graphic describing the software here: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Category:Software

I believe the are enabling android to run "beside" their stack.
Lost scenes of "Metropolis" rediscovered
OS X 10.4 is stated as the minimum requirement (but PPC is fine):

http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/system-requirements...
this is probably the largest problem with Lisp adoption

Sometimes it's not clear if that's really the problem, or if it's more the perception (and the fact that the perception gets repeated a lot) that's the problem. Hence my question earlier in the thread.
That's simply not true.

vast majority of companies

Based upon what data?

I've personally conducted over 2,500 interviews and hired many of them. That's what I look for. And no, I'm not in HR or a headhunter.
John Resig had a JS library for making these dynamically using the Canvas element. The project page is: http://ejohn.org/projects/jspark/

It doesn't seem to work in Safari 2 though. Looks fine in FF2.
Why not learn? "I can't code to save my life" -- this doesn't have to be a permanent condition. Unless someone's truly a moron, I don't think there are many people who truly can't code, just like there aren't many people who can't learn to play a musical instrument or to write well or to play chess. Coding is a skill like any other. Since you have an interest in tech, give it a try. There are plenty of people on the Internet who are willing to help you out.
Visualizing a Large Product Backlog With a Treemap
Learn to code -- that's what I did. It doesn't take much to get to the point where you can implement your ideas.

If there's one thing I believe in, it's not waiting for other people to help you or cut you a break -- just learn what you need to learn to make it happen.
It has begun. iPhone 3G line starts in NYC a week early
The article covers "enterprise" scenarios with a convoluted writing style ("award-winning tools such as Perforce" means it has to be good). They think distributed means two sites. See http://i.cmpnet.com/ddj/images/article/2008/0807/080703santo... for the world they live in. We even get a new acronym: Distributed Software Development (DSD).

No mention of mercurial, git, darcs, or monotone to be found.

ddj: for when you need your content smashed into 1/4th of your window with small graphics and you miss being advertised to by random underlined words ("developer" obviously means "I want to buy a $5M sun server").
I had watched V.S. Ramachandran's talk about the Brain on TED as was fascinated and I recently read Dawkins The God Delusion and find it to be very interesting and easy to read.

If the books suggested by you and authored by those two are easy to grasp as their talk/other book, I would definitely buy them.
Lip Care
Lips are always considered to be one of the most sensuous parts of the human body and the one with perfect lips can seduce anyone they want. Many Hollywood actresses including Marilyn Monroe and Angelina Jolie were known for their sexy lips; their lips add extra glamour to their personality. Many of us do not take good care of our lips, we tend to ignore and walk around with dry and blistered lips. Little do we know that by giving little extra attention to our lips we can become that popular person at our college or at our work places.
OpenMoko (OpenSource Cell Phone) On sale, 900Mhz Model already sold out
What a gyp! This page doesn't tell me any ways to kill my users.
Excessive sweating
You don’t have to be in hot weather to sweat right? Normally things that make people sweat are hot weather, workouts, emotional triggers such as anger or fear and pungent food. But unfortunately there are some of us who walk around like mobile coolants with perpetual sweating. We don’t need any of the causes to sweat; if we have to use Rene Descartes formula of existence, in our case it would be, “I sweat, therefore I am”!!!
It is also true historically that people who innovate often are forced to close their code, which otherwise they'd quite possibly be happy to open. It's more often companies that put restrictions rather than engineers themselves.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply YC is the solution for everyone. I just wanted to point out that we're still funding, regardless of the economic weather. (The average startup takes longer to succeed than economic cycles ordinarily last, so we ignore them.)
Turn-by-turn navigation software is going to go away very soon anyway. ATT keeps trying to sell it to me, but I already have Google Maps, which is free. Sure, it doesn't talk... but it does show me where I am on a map and it tells me how to get where I'm going. (OK, actually I don't have a car... but I've tried it while riding in one and it works fine.)

Anyway, one update to Google Maps, and the entire business evaporates. That's what I'd worry about, not iTunes.
This may be a bit contrary to public opinion here, but realistically, depending on the difficulty of implementing your idea ... learning to code might not be good enough. It'd be a good idea to do anyways, but might not be your answer.

University/Work/Church/Geographical Region -- look extensively into your current network of friends, family, colleagues, etc.

Or find someone here.
I don't think you understand arguments. When you are arguing for a cause, taking a "reasonable" middle ground doesn't get you anything. You have to argue for the extreme, so that the other side agrees to meet you half way. Then you get what you really want. (If they met you half way to your half way, then you'd not be satisfied.)

RMS needs to say "all non-Free software should go away" so that some of it will.
Está chegando a hora Rails Summit Brazil 2008
I agree. Its not hard to get into web programming. Use a framework (CakePHP, Ruby on Rails, etc.) and learn the associated language as you go a long.

I do have a programming history, but I learnt the basics of ruby and rails in a weekend! ;)
The Awesome bar is actually pretty good but it takes some getting used to. The bookmarks menu is weird and just plain stupid. And frankly, it crashes more often than any piece of software I've owned in the last 5 years. I'm almost willing to bet Win98 was more stable.

Still, I'm sticking with it in the hope that Mozilla will push out a patched/stable version soon
It's not a question of ethics. It's capitalism. It's not like buying the software hurts anybody, you're just spending money. You could make the same arguments about a lot of things, including the US auto industry, Nintendo, and Hollywood.

Hollywood films were imposed upon European countries after WW2 as a way to spread American ideas and culture, and it's partially because of that that Hollywood has been able to get so big. So now is it unethical that people 'have' to spend money on big blockbusters because they don't live in a big enough market to make indie films worth showing?

Or similarly, would you say the US car business is unethical because it was involved in strategically eliminating trains in various parts of the country so more people would drive cars?

(Look the Nintendo one up if you're confused, it's from the NES/SNES days.)

If this was about food and we were all being forced to buy McDonalds because McDonalds forced everyone else out of business, then I'd agree that we should be up in arms. But this is software. Or rather, it's JUST software. Computers would cost a lot of money with or without Windows.
Ok let's do one thing. No more post about the topics below for about one month:

- "motivational" post, (you may ask if you need it, but unless someone asks please do not freely give any for 1 month)

- "Twitter related" post (let's let this guys Be )

- "I quit..." (Good, here is a candy and now please go work on your Google meets Twitter killer app)

* and finally Ask "Do I really find this interesting?" before hitting Submit ( I will do this one more often myself)
Depends who your audience is. If you're trying to convince smart people, arguing for extremes will make them think you're a fool.

And incidentally, if you find yourself trying to convince audiences of stupid people, you may want to stop and ask yourself whether you want to be spending your life that way.
Ever hear of a phrase cost of opportunity?(Unless you are unemployed, chances are its a better financial decision to work and pay someone 20K to code a product, than spending that time learning and coding it yourself) + chances are the quality of code, a complete amateur creates will not be optimal.(full of bugs, not secure, with a very crappy design etc)
I suspect the biggest problem with Lisp adoption may just be that people find s-expressions terrifyingly incomprehensible. Though there's always some reason the median programmer doesn't want to use Lisp, the reason changes. In the 1980s people said Lisp was too slow. Now it's libraries. This kind of variety is the signature of reasons people offer when they're avoiding something out of fear or laziness.
Sorry, I started to write a more details explanation of my position last night but was interrupted and closed the browser.

Stallman is suggesting that software should be free because people shouldn't have to pay for it, and so that anyone can modify it.

In theory that sounds great, but the truth is that capitalism has driven most of the software that actually enhances the lives of the majority of people who have computers. Look at the differences between Gimp and Photoshop (or even Paint Shop Pro), or between Impulse Tracker and Logic Pro. (IT wasn't free, actually, but it was really cheap!) Software that people pay for is usually better, and far more useful.

I tried using Gimp at my company for a while to save us money, and I was practically pulling my hair out after ten minutes. It sucks. It really, really sucks. It does a lot of cool things, but it's buggy and it's difficult to use.

If Adobe wasn't rich because they sell their software, their software wouldn't be nearly as good. Same with most other software companies.

Now if it wasn't proprietary, most of the advantages of being able to sell it would go out the window. If everyone had the source code to Photoshop, Photoshop would be nearly worthless. And then everyone would go off and add features when they could, and each feature would only be usable to the person who wrote it. There's no reason to make it usable if you're writing it for yourself.

And that's how Photoshop could become Gimp.
I think its more about building a patent arsenal so that when other large software companies think about enforcing a patent against Google they will get scared off due to the risk of a counter action.
Photoshop is worth it if your business depends on it. Gimp wastes your time. It takes a few weeks to work off the price of Photoshop vs the time you'd lose trying to get Gimp to work properly.
http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ojbyrne

worked once...
It runs Linux so you could probably make android work on it.
The one thing I'm a bit weary about is their build environment. Last I checked they use OpenEmbedded, which to put it plainly, blew chunks last I tried to use it. After 48 hours of not sleeping I gave up and switched to OpenWRT's new buildroot-ng which I found significantly easier to use.
I hear you, I spent all WEEK fighting with OpenEmbedded. Painfully, it is better than LTIB. Actually there is a sub-set of OE called Poky that is really solid. OE's problem is that the packages vary in quality - primarily in their ability to compile on multiple platforms - Poky picks the betters ones and has fewer platforms, it works very well.
Google is just using a 0-based array indexing system.
Correct, OpenMoko uses the CacaoVM with GNUClasspath for Java - although it is primarily not a Java device. Android is running the DarvickVM which is not actually Java, and runs a Java syntax on top of it. Though the code is compatible, byte code is not, so binary packages for OpenMoko or Android will not run on each other. Thus the two stacks need to be side by side, or you need to rebuild all the packages from one for the other.
Adobe Education Program Now Allows Commercial Use
Although this is the UK version of the page, the US version of the FAQ for students entirely avoids this question, thus supporting the idea that there has been a change in policy.
And a fourth, during the fourth of july weekend. :)
I think Ardour and Rosegarden would be fairer comparisons with Logic Pro. But your point still stands that it was programs like Logic, Cubase, ProTools, Studio Vision that made the market and between them figured out which features should be available and how they should be presented to the user.
Protective order will keep Viacom out of sensitive YouTube user data
/usr/bin/apropos

GCC is on your Leopard DVD. Just install the developer tools. Maybe apropos was also in there. Dunno.

Personally, I am extremely happy with OS X 10.5 for my Java, C++ and Python development. Everything that I need is there. Great editors, Emacs, IntelliJ IDEA, all the usual open source tools through MacPorts.

Leopard also has some clear advantages over Linux for me, like for example dtrace and it's visual cousin Instruments.app. Dtrace is one of those tools that you will miss sooooo much when you are putting your code in production on Linux. It will probably be the reason for me/us to move to OpenSolaris as a production platform.

My only gripe is that Apple is slow slow slow with Java. I really hope they will let Sun and/or the community do Java 7 for OS X. It seems they abandoned that effort and put everybody on the iPhone or so.
Add me to your messengers and let's discuss them. I'm always interested in new projects.
Yahoo: shrimp20
AIM: evicerator52
MSN: evicerator52@hotmail.com
Email: webmaster-at-michaelwalesREMOVEME.com
Google's process to open sourcing their code
A lot of the time, keeping track of the time I spend on non-billable projects is the only way to keep myself going. But I don't use it as the sole metric for gauging my productivity.
Stop waiting for your big idea, learn to get shit done

That's like telling a farmer, "Stop waiting for your crops to grow; plant some seeds first."

For hackers, DoingStuff = PlantingSeeds.
How long can you not practice medicine before your skills deteriorate and your knowledge become obsolete? Probably just as fast as it happens to programmers.
> Highly doubt I’ll ever do something like this but if I do… Well, you saw it here first.

Um, no sir. http://juicycampus.com/ has been around for awhile, and I'm sure other incarnations of the like existed beforehand. It also doesn't change the fact that it's a pretty terrible idea to begin with. You can read about the problems JuicyCampus has had:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23211511/

http://www.abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=4849927&page=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JuicyCampus

There's also a lot more where that came from if you Google them. Anyways, please think a little harder next time. "People are infatuated with the lives of others (instead of living their own)." Yes! Screw people living their own boring lives! Clearly the golden path to enlightenment involves more stuff like this http://www.webfilehost.com/images/mainstream-media.php. Seriously? This is the "problem" you're trying to solve?
If Google didn't file for it chances are some patent troll would. I agree that patents are evil but sometimes they're necessary for defense (see Barracuda fighting back against Trend Micro)
I'd suggest reading Noah Kagan at okdork.com
At Yahoo, a Threat from Within (cumbersome decision-making)
If you just need to build some special purpose application sure, it's better to hire a specialist to do it for you. But if you're talking about starting a business it pays to either learn how to develop software yourself or get a partner that can do it. Trying to outsource the core of your business is just nuts.

While the initial code you write might not be optimal you'll at least understand the code, have a clue what to do when something goes wrong and be better equipped to hire technical talent when the time comes.