skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thanks for the feedback!

1. Hmm... I'm not sure of that. That's definitely what users expect of bad whiteboards like MS Paint, the one in Netmeeting, etc. I think most whiteboarding involves drawing block diagrams and such (or maybe that's just the engineer in me talking). Could you share what types of drawings you typically do?

2. This is planned.

3. Well I need to improve my shape recognition algorithm then. One of the key features IMO that makes this more natural to use is that you don't have to keep revisiting the toolbar (you can do a lot by never visiting it). Could you elaborate a bit on what shapes you were trying to draw, and what they ended up into, so I know what to fix in my shape recognition algo?

4. Good idea. I should do that.
Awesome! One more request: let the power users get a little button they can put on their sites (say, right above a rich text area) that, when clicked, brings up an empty border in a javascript pseudo-popup. After creating the drawing, it would automatically be included in the text field (or something to that effect). Sorry if I'm not clear on what I mean...

EDIT: I think Lux explained it a bit better in this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=202849
Could you mention which "junk" models you were using, because my XPS (M1330) has been far from that. I was about to recommend another Dell laptop to a friend.
Really wasn't trying to change anyone's behavior, just asking a question hence the "Ask YC" prefix.
This is cool. I was able to figure it out in about 30 seconds. The text is a bit off... I assumed that there should be a toolbar button. Maybe it would just give you instructions...
You might be surprised. There are multiple 3p apps that can edit and save Visio. The brand value of collaborative online Visio diagrams for businesses might be pretty large.
The Magic Meme Machine: TechMeme, Feed Readers, and Social Discovery
Yeah I'm in two minds about that. The problem arises coz of my "optimization" where I automatically figure out whether you want to:
1. Select: click without dragging.
2. Draw: click while dragging.

All other drawing apps have separate tools in the toolbar for select and draw (and even more for square/circle/text... yeesh). And I want to minimize your visits to the toolbar.

If I made it drag instead of draw in your example, then I'd need a "select" tool again :(.

Or I could choose the middle ground: if an object is already selected (i.e. not just being hovered over), then I do a move instead of a draw. Would this help?
I could give you a million things you could do to really improve the security of your service, but the reality is there are a couple of superficial things you can do right now that will get you over the marketing hump on security:

* Deliver all content over HTTPS.

* Have big long random strings of hex characters in the URLs.
"The text is a bit off... I assumed that there should be a toolbar button. Maybe it would just give you instructions..."

Sorry for being dumb, but I didn't follow. Could you clarify? Thanks a lot!
I like it (though I can't say I have much use for a digital whiteboard). It would be nice if it would automatically resize to your window size, though; the bottom is just under the bottom of my window and scrolling just for that little bit that isn't really necessary is annoying. Perhaps this could include a button to extend the space if necessary (perhaps only inside the box, too, rather than extending the whole page).
RIAA Drops Allofmp3 Lawsuit; Pretends Mp3Sparks Doesn't Exist
Thanks! That's an interesting feature, hadn't thought of that. At first thought, I actually don't think it'd be technically too difficult either, just need to make a clean API.
Indeed, that would fix it for me very cleanly for me, at least.
Actually, I hope HTML5 dies. It's horrible. Innovating by writing standards documents is going to get us nowhere. (Some things look great in standards documents, but don't work in real life. That's why people still use tables for layout.)

All we can hope for is that the people with new ideas keep them open source. Then we can standardize after we see what works and doesn't work. (I think we're OK here; Microsoft is in a poor position. They write their plugins for Windows only, but most web designers use OS X and most programmers use Linux. So although most users can use MS technology, the people making the content can't.)
I thought it was odd Rails wasn't mentioned as well, as that has quite a bit to do with twitters scalability issues.
Soundflavor Wants To Be IMDB For Music
Arrays: Core or Library Type?
Top seven reasons "Why I love to write code"
Nice job! I made a related project when I first began web programming and javascript about 2 years ago, though I've since mostly abandoned it (http://boxily.com) -- it's only javascript so I couldn't do all the neat flash things you do here.

I'm with you though, most digital whiteboards do suck, and everyone seems to try to do one :)

A couple features that would be cool:

1. SVG export? Maybe not in high demand, but the engineer in me loves vector graphics.
2. Line thickness? Something to think about.
3. I like what crescendo mentioned as well.

Good luck!
-Justin
I wonder how this latest SDK release ties into the upcoming release of the 3g iphone...
Agree with most of the other comments, especially around uploading images / objects as a base.

I've used www.vyew.com a few times as a guest - the other super feature they have which you might consider is inbuilt VoIP.

Great effort!
Thanks! I have a UI problem with resizing. If you have to see a drawing made by a friend who used a bigger window, you'd see a truncated drawing. The obvious solution here is to have canvas you can zoom-in/zoom-out of, AND allow horizontal/vertical panning (like Google Maps). I think that would clutter the UI and make using it annoying.

So I decided to support only the size that I felt would fit in 95% of browser windows. The Dabbleboard drawing+drawing_toolbar+drawing_title fit exactly in a 1024x768 window with the browser's address bar, bookmarks bar, and tab bar all enabled.
Ask YC: How do you convert a gasoline car to natural gas?
... and is it worth it? In Utah, natural gas is only 79 cents per gallon and this seems like a cool opportunity.
Trailer of "August", about an aggressive .com entrepreneur who fights to keep his start-up afloat.
Very nice. Some small comments (my apologies if some of these are there already and I just didn't notice):

1. Tooltips or a statusbar at the bottom which tell you what a button does when you mouse-over it.

2. Some visual differentiation between normal buttons (new, download, etc.) and toggle buttons (freehand, arrow mode, etc.)

3. Proportional resizing with shift or control (as others have mentioned)

4. Easier way to multiple-select objects rather than shift-clicking each one

5. Snapping between different objects (perhaps toggleable) and/or a grid

6. What software did you use for creating the demo screencast? It looks good (and I might need to record a screencast for my startup soon...)
I didn't realize I should click and type. Instead I looked for a toolbar button. But once a figured out how to do it (by reading another comment, actually), I really liked it.

To accommodate that style of learning, you could have a 'text' button in the toolbar whose only purpose is to give the user a message stating that they need to simply click and type.
Ask YC: Entreprenuership for Intl. Students
I am an international student and I am involved in a web startup. We have yet to go live, but there is a possibility that once it does, we will start to generate an income. As an intl. student, will I be able to earn equity? Will the university be able to help me, or do i need to get into OPT? What are some of the problems I may face?

Thanks YC!
Actually nowadays, firefox is 1/5th of the browser market. It's a significant chunk of the market.
Google Pushes to Make Browser Applications More Powerful
This is basically flamebait, but I disagree. Dell are the biggest low-end computer manufacturer which are, for the most part, significantly cheaper than their competitors. You sacrifice build quality and design to get that.

I actually think their build quality has improved recently too after a dark period - their newer laptops feel better built for the cost - and the M1330 is well-designed well-built at a very competitive price and is among the best products Dell have ever come out with.

There's too few details to make any opinion on this product, but writing Dell off is foolish.
shadows are useful. just make your block-shapes have a shadow by default (like omnigraffle) and it completely changes how smooth and professional even the simplest of diagrams look.
Actually, it's refreshing because despite what most commentators say, most insiders I've talked to don't think Rails has anything to do with the scalability issues. Rails just serves the web pages. If you give it the right data it'll scale just fine. The problem is getting it the right data. You'll notice right now that some features on the web are off and they're all because they're intensive queries in the current architecture.

IM is disabled right now. That doesn't touch Rails in any way.

This isn't to say that Rails has been without problems. I'm sure they've had to make many adjustments and probably dealt with some reliability problems. But I can't think of and haven't heard of a convincing argument for why Rails is the bottleneck to their scaling.
Yeah I should do the https thing. At least makes the transfer secure.

I already do a bit of random strings. Try sharing a drawing, the link it produces includes a 16character code that must match for the sharee to be able to access the drawing.
Thanks for the feedback!

1) This is planned. Will also snap to grid when moving objects.

2) I want to do this. But as I said in another comment, I just need to figure out the UI for enabling the user to change the curvature of the line.

3) You're now the fourth person that asked for this :). It's definitely on my to-do list now.

4) I'm hoping the community will produce this. Anyone can do "Share -> Make Public" and then the drawings will show up in the Public Library. You can then copy anyone else's drawing into your own personal library. (I do plan to add better functionality for searching/tagging items in the public library eventually. It just didn't matter yet coz no one has anything there so far.)
8. The moment of birth, the first time ever that something has existed. When all your hard work works. Sure, other fields have moments of clarity, but there's just something so binary about a program running the first time. Moments that I live for.
There is one reason I can think of for adding profile pictures: reducing anonymity.

People say a lot of things online that they wouldn't say face-to-face because of anonymity. I'm not sure if profile pictures would be a step towards anonymity, but I think it would be a good experiment.

For example, comments written on a wall on Facebook are much less hostile than comments at YouTube or MySpace. I don't recall seeing the words gay or faggot used at all on Facebook, ever.

Even adding more text info may be a good idea.
Eg: pkaler. Vancouver, BC. Smartful Studios Inc.
I'm trying to solve this problem by loading my default drawing (which loads when you aren't signed in), the one with all the instructions. I should make the instruction for how to enter text ("Click anywhere and start typing to enter text") more visible I guess.
awesome, when i click freehand and arrow, it uses the freehand.

how do i add more image assets on the left?
The sum of Microsoft’s fears
1. svg export would be easier than visio export, but has less market value. So overall I don't know which to do first :).

2. There's just 2 thicknesses supported so far. How much more control do you think you'd need (3 levels?, 4 levels?)? I'm intentionally limiting your options so you don't have to waste time trying to decide what thickness line to choose. We don't have this problem with a real whiteboard :). (Plus it keeps the toolbar simple and uncluttered.)
locked up my browser... os x 10.3.9 on firefox 2.0.0.14
Alex Martelli Interview
Israeli/Palestinian web start-up
Ideal from the point of view of the entrepreneur, perhaps, but why is this ideal from the point of view of the investor?
Thanks!

1. You're referring to the move/replicate/scale/delete handles, right? I could probably add that.

2. The visual differentiation so far is that the toggle buttons are clumped together. There's one "bug" though: the top and bottom edges of a group should be straight lines. (I actually have a good reason for this bug :).)

3. You mean resizing in quantized amounts (e.g. 10pixels) rather than continuously right? If yes, this is planned.

4. Yeah this can be annoying, and I don't have a good solution for this yet (I'm reluctant to add a "select" button in the toolbar like all other drawing apps). But I'm hoping you don't have to do this often since you can use "Group" functionality.

5. Snap to grid is planned.

6. I used iShowU on the Mac and uploaded to Viddler (thank God they eat the BW cost for nothing in return). When you embed your Viddler video, make sure to select the same resolution as your original capture; scaling it will ruin it. I used the built-in mic on my MBP, so the audio sucks; will invest in a better mic soon.
The problem is that no one is going to remember your site when they actually need a whiteboard or share it with their friends. To fix that, give it a purpose instead of leaving it as a blank canvas for people to use. For example, you could use the whiteboard as the basis for a iSketch (http://isketch.net) ripoff, while making it clear that people can use the whiteboard on its own. People will use it and share it with their friends and you'll end up with more users for your core product. There are plenty of other ways to achieve the same goal.

The downside is that whatever you come up with to get users may suck away too much time and effort from improving the product itself. You can always outsource the building of such add-ons by providing an API and directing users to your site that way.
That's what I liked about Mike's blog. The ideas are good and detailed.
Sorry about that. I've heard one or two other instances. So much for the Flash player being consistent :(.

I have 10.5.2 and the same version of Firefox. I don't have a way to debug this right now (can only afford one mac), but I'll try to replicate the hang in other browsers.
Just drag your selection to the pane on the left.
I’ve got too many followers on Twitter
Any other users prefer this "middle ground" of selection versus drawing disambiguation? :) I can add it right easily enough.
Sure, I could consider a default shadow. But I'm reluctant to clutter the UI by giving the user a gazillion options for shadows, none of which help you communicate your ideas any better.
http://www.amazon.com/Probability-its-engineering-uses-Thorn...

is an excellent introduction to the subject
I haven't used the other ones much but they always seemed a lot slower then drawing on paper. This does seem super easy. I like it. congrats.
One thing I do when I'm bored is to prove the equations I've been taught in my math classes but have never seen derived (like many people, I often skip past the proofs in the textbook when I'm in a rush to finish my homework). Deriving these is enlightening and gives me a nice feeling of "oh, that's why." Also, understanding the derivation of the fundamental math theorems can actually come in handy, in contrast to some contest questions, which can be contrived and arcane in comparison.
Instantly Build a Useful Macro Library for Firefox
Hey, you're the guy with the randomly generated user name!!
The Fork in the Road for Social Media
Definitely. That's half the fun for me. Especially when someone has posted a really elegant solution.
The eXile's John Dolan on online audiences
Web Start-Up a Joint Israeli-Palestinian Venture.
You can also upsell various built-in templates/drawings (finance, coding, etc.).

Add sub-accounts if you target SMBs.
I can't define a robot, but I know one when I see one
Jerry Yang Says He’s the Best Deal in Town.
Contrast: "Bringing up George Bush is a pretty sad straw man, so please skip it." VS "I know Canada is all-too-willing to imprison people for speech violations, and I'm quite happy it hasn't come to that here yet."

Doing exactly what you just scorned me for is definitely bad style.

And you'll have to prove Canada imprisons people for "speech violations" a lot while the US doesn't.
Ask HN: What are some good biographies to read?
I enjoy reading biographies. I'm reading "Classic Feynman" right now and it's great! Which ones would you recommend? Thanks!

Update: Thanks for the recommendations, thus far!
Monkeys Control a Robot Arm With Their Thoughts.
I think that it should stay in the auto-shape mode by default. Its really the killer feature of your product and I'd keep it that way.

If you added a sick & quick way to do circuit diagrams, a lot of EE students would love you. They might not pay a lot for it, but you'd get their mindshare.
* I know the shared library feature is for that. Somebody would make a bunch of circuit elements and I could use them. For circuits, thinner lines would be necessary (or less fuzzy lines at least).
Yes. On first thought, at least, this seems like exactly the right way to do it.

Very nice job, by the way. It might be the first "critique my startup" post I've seen here where I took a look and (a) it made sense, and (b) didn't suck. Actually, it's a lot better than not sucking; it's fast and immediately usable and generally feels better than average.

Edit: the name dabbleboard is sort of crowded by dabble.com and dabbledb.com, though. My first thought was that it was an offshoot of one of these.
Also worth checking out is USACO. The USACO training gate allows you to start with easy problems and the build up to the point where you can do the ioi problems. Finish the entire thing and I can guarantee that you will at least have a good understanding of the ioi problems. http://ace.delos.com/usacogate
If you want to go philosophical, read Gandhi's My Expirements with Truth.
Glasses are horribly, horribly overpriced in North America. They only really cost $15 dollars max to get a decent looking frame with anti-reflective & anti-scratch coating with a prescription as high as -8. (zennioptical.com)
I don't believe that leaves room for a "low cost" competitor at the bottom.

This is precisely the thinking that leads to getting disrupted by a different business model.
WalMart can help by offering inexpensive pharmaceuticals. I don't know if they can help overcome a larger problem. The problem seems to be that health care providers do not compete on value delivered. Until we effectively measure value (long term benefit divided by cost) delivered and compare it across providers we will have no way to use the market to stimulate improvement.

Right now we don't measure long term benefits and decisions are insulated from costs.

(Yeah, I drink the Kool aid: http://www.amazon.com/Redefining-Health-Care-Value-Based-Com...)
He makes good points, it is true, but what everyone on this thread is reacting to is how he makes them. When he uses words like 'bullshit' and 'fanboy' it feels like he's going out of his way to insult me the reader. Even when I read something I agree with him on.

After the instinctive reaction subsides I'm still left with the sense that some of his wording is calculated to arouse knee-jerk comment/traffic. That intention is at the heart of the troll mentality. Which is a pity, because he really doesn't need to do this.
Titu Andreescu has some good problem books. You might like 102 Combinatorial
Problems, http://www.amazon.com/102-Combinatorial-Problems-Titu-Andree...,
if you like Concrete Mathematics, and it's fairly small to carry.
Joi Ito, Bernard Lukey, Matt Flannery, Sanjeev Bikhchandani at Zeitgeist Europe 08
See also, e.g., http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ProgrammingIsFun and for counterpoint, http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ProgrammingIsNotFun
So? Block them!
The Man Who Knew Infinity, about Ramanujan, is a biography that I reread regularly, if only as an example of somebody who continued to do what he loved against all odds. Whenever I get overly frustrated with a math or programming problem that I can't seem to overcome, I go through some of my favorite passages in there, if only to remind myself how lucky I am to be able to what I love with the support of the people in my life.

Also, I can now safely say that reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X in high school was a key moment in my personal development.
I've heard that it's cyclical, and doesn't have a beginning.
Venture capital, entrepreneurship, big companies, and innovation
Talking about Windows is so very tiring. I just want the most efficient computing experience possible, but they're not going to give that to me.
I would let skype do the VoIP, or hidefconferencing, or freeconference: it will be enough work to continue to evolve the whiteboard features.
Just first impressions:

I had the same thing on #1, just assumed I could draw freeform first.I didn't expect it to take my freehand and make it into a line or circle.

I'm not sure that's a "bad" thing, because people figure it out pretty quickly. Made me hesitate at first, though, because I thought maybe there was no freeform drawing at all which turned me off. Might be more intuitive if you lit up the Freeform button with a speech bubble when they draw their first item and it autoshapes for them. Or maybe turn the cursor or somesuch into something that indicated we were drawing shapes.

Looks pretty slick. Good work.
I haven't seen the M1330, but I have been burned twice by buying Dell laptops. This is after a run of about 3 great ones. The problem started when they went to the thick unrounded two-tone cases with silver on top (at least in the Inspiron line). A friend ordered one of their newer ones (with the led backlight, core 2 duo, etc.) and in spite of its > $2K pricetag it has terrible build quality and flexes and groans when picked up. It feels like a toy.

I am not totally writing off Dell, but it's going to take a lot to win me back as a customer. To make matters worse, a few years ago I ordered a bunch of servers from their small business division and the way they do sales is totally annoying. The only person you can talk to is your own rep and if he's on the phone or out of the office you get voicemail. Also, if you don't negotiate hard (or buy small business stuff online) you get ripped by about 20% -- why can't they just publish a good price on the web and let people order it w/o having to talk to someone 3 times just so they take off that 20% markup?

Back to laptops -- I got a high end Toshiba and it's been great.... surprisingly, far better (battery life, heat dissipation, build quality) than any of the Dells I've had.
Tim Pat Coogan's "Michael Collins" is good -- it's as much a condensed history of Ireland from 1916 to the mid 1920s as about Michael Collins.
An Investigation of the Therac-25 Accidents
I had two junk insprions (9200 and I forget the model number of the other one). A friend just bought one of the newer high end laptops and it performs great but the build quality is sub-par and a piece fell off the front in the first week (not to mention that it flexes and groans when picked up by one edge)....

It just seems to me that Dell is trying to squeeze every penny of profit out of each laptop and is not thinking about build quality.

Also, painting the bottom half of the laptop black and showing it on a black background to create the illusion that it's thin when in fact it's quite thick is just plain dishonest.
Along the same lines, "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers", about Paul Erdos. Very enjoyable.
Zuckerberg: The end goal isn't to sell the company or IPO
Gandhi's autobiography is great

Also Jan Swafford's biography of Charles Ives is amazing (genius American composer who was also an early 20th century multimillionaire insurance tycoon)
Had I read it I would have seen this, I suppose. But frequently users just don't read the text.