skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: what lifestyle business could I help to create for my mom?
My mom is a travel agent working in a physical travel agency. Needless to say their business isn't going well, and she'll have to look for another job, which can be hard for a 50+ woman.

So my goal right now is to help her create some kind of a lifestyle business where she could work from home.

Right now I could only think of helping her to set up some kind of blog/e-magazine about travels and hopefully make money from hotel lead generation / affiliation. Though that would require to have some critical mass. I also thought about ebay, but I don't have any experience on the seller side so it's hard to see what's possible.

Any HNer set up a business lifestyle for his mom before ?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks !
You can comply with PCI DSS by storing NO MORE THAN the first 6 and last 4 digits.

You can also by-pass the requirements by storing a (somewhat non-reversible) hash of the entire card (or last x digits, in this case 5)... As long as the hashing and the storing is done on two separate systems.

http://superconductor.voltage.com/2009/05/hashing-and-the-pc...
Colloquay on mac, but I prefer mIRC for windows.
If you're running Windows, then I guess the best option would be mIRC.

http://www.mirc.com/
Thanks for your comments so far. I acknowledge the design issues and facebook competition questions.

Apart from that, I would like to know: were you able to create a billboard and add something to it? Do you think less tech savvy people can use the platform? Or is it too complicated? Is the principal idea clear from the initial explication, or did you expect something different after reading it?
Did they support that with anything in terms of how they'd arrived at that number?

I'm guessing it's based on additional ad revenue driven by mobile searches but there are a lot of variables in there which would be open to debate and I'd be really interested in seeing their working.
Ask HN: Please recommend the best tools to build a test plan management tool
I have mostly worked on hardware testing in my professional career and would like to get onto the software development side. I thought working on a practically usable project will help motivate me and help acquire some skills. I have decided to build a test plan management tool for the QA team I work in (We use excel sheets!).

The test plan management tool should be browser based and should support this:
There would be many test plans, each test plan having test sets, test sets having test cases and test cases having instructions, attachments and Pass/fail status marking and bug info in case of failure. It should also have an export to excel option. I have a visual picture of the tool I am looking to build but I don't have enough experience to figure our where to start.

My current programming skills are limited to C and shell programming and I want to pick up python.

What tools (programming language, database and anything else?) would you recommend for me to get this done? Also what are the key areas in the recommended programming language that I should focus on to build a browser based tool like this?

Thanks.
What you described is still not going to be faster than just using the file system. It's just an unnecessary layer on top of it.
Is it ethical for customers to through legislation enforce the business practice of a service provider they simply do not have to deal with and can fully opt out of using?
I didn't get it.

But your point being that php code doesn't get commented much is right on.
Wow, that's really bad as well. However, that particular bug appears to be rather difficult to reproduce, so I can understand why they haven't been able to address it yet.
http://irccloud.com
> Calm down.

It's hard to remember this is HN when walking into threads like these. As I mentioned elsewhere, if PHP is mentioned, HN maturity takes a nose dive as people make what amounts to dick and fart jokes. It's embarrassing.

> I don't believe you were downvoted for saying painful truths (which I don't think you did), but more on the form of your statement. I believe most downvoters didn't pass the first sentence. I believe this is a good thing - poor form is bad for discussion. We shouldn't get emotional.

It's not because of his tone. It's because he's defending PHP. Look at other posts in this thread. Look at the bitches thread. Littered with immaturity and a far worse tone than the parent here. Sure, the tone didn't help here, but if his tone had been the same, but defending Ruby, or Lisp, or some other fashionable language, he wouldn't have been. Even your post smells like this.

One more thing...

> I expect programmers interested in Lisp, Haskel, Erlang, Python, Ruby, Lua, Scala, Forth, Smalltalk to be, on average, better than those who choose Java, C#, PHP or Visual Basic.

Ruby is the language people go to for work now. Why? Because it's the in language, especially in the context of HN. And its' not just Ruby, but RoR specifically.
So your point being that Googles Software aside from AdSense should be in general more defective because their incentive structure isn't as well aligned?
> it's not a decision that's under my control, is not going to change

Kind of guessing here, but this leads me to believe you have investors. If so, have you asked them about this? Seasoned tech investors usually have contacts to facilitate such things. (I'm sure you'll get some useful, actionable input here too.)
Since they don't sell Android to consumers, that billion was made of licensing fees from Hardware makers + ads + Android market revenue. These will bring in revenue even if SMS doesn't work and SMS is not essential for them.
> I can't tell whether this is a serious post or not,

I am only half-joking

> If you let Windows Update do its thing

I find the "don't turn off the computer just now, applying update 10 of 130" very annoying. I am glad I only see it in VMs these days

> Backup and Restore. It's not as pretty nor well marketed

Time Machine (and the time slider in Solaris) allow you to see and restore last week's version of any file without you consciously having to back it up.

> You have a choice of whether to buy a Latitude or the pink Alienware XPS Mega 8000 with the Lady Gaga vinyl faceplate

You have a strange notion of what would be a pretty computer.

> Windows comes with a jolly bald guy and an awesome well known philanthropist

Both of them accused (and found guilty) of monopoly abuse. I stay with Jobs.

> Except when something goes wrong

The only time I had to reinstall a Mac was when upgrading hard disks. With Windows it's so frequent I keep disk images and VM snapshots to help me.

> It really depends on what you're developing for, of course.

Indeed. Windows is the best platform for developing for Windows.

> IE (...) is by far the most popular and reliable method for downloading Firefox.

Can't argue with that, but, unless I am developing on the Mac, I stick with Safari.

> My first experience with the App Store

Give them some slack. It's a first attempt. Too bad they couldn't decide to just copy what Linux has since the early 2000's...
>Yes, you can do some Chinese Math and convince yourself

WTF does Chinese Math mean?
The data suggests to me that "mental" has at least two, narrower peaks - the Mathematician/Physicist peak (maths are theroetical physics are quite similar in practice) is quite distinct from the Novelist's peak, and that therefor they exercise different mental abilities.
Watch South Africa vs West Indies Live World Cup 2011 Match Streaming
Watch South Africa vs West Indies Live World Cup 2011 Match Streaming
Telling candidates why they are not a good fit is not the company job, it's your job as a candidate to figure out why you are not a good fit. Also it would open them to some liability, which is something that anyone prefers to avoid.

I sometimes made interviews with potential candidates, and if you do it at a time you'll learn that it's really not something personal. I just say this, so that you know that you don't suck actually. Most companies are looking for someone who know their stuff (surprisingly hard to find ) AND is nice (someone you can work with ).

If you do the two above thing for a long enough time, have a good CV, ideally some personal project to show, you'll land up a good job in the end.
Switching to Plan J (From Scala back to Java)
> A Mechanic does not fix you car based on a total cost, they charge a hourly labor rate + parts. A lawyer bills for his services by the hour. Both will provide a best guess at what they think it will take, but if you add some work or they find some problems you eat that cost not them.

You're not a Lawyer or a Mechanic, you're (possibly) a Web Developer and it's fairly standard to charge based on project, as referenced by countless guides, online resources and notably within SitePoint's Web Design Business Kit. I've already stated the reasons why you do this, because it confirms the overall cost with the client, it ensures the project will not overrun at the clients expense, and in the end the client has an overall budget for this work, not a certain amount to spend per hour.

As time has shown, paying by the hour is a poor and dated way to do business on the web because building software isn't an exact science and many projects overrun. In the same vein I cannot understand why people have to treat software development as a "profession" like Lawyers or Doctors. You're selling a software solution to a client, so you should charge for that solution, in the same way that people who offer products or solutions charge.

> Ignorance of the discipline of software development is the employer problem, a good software developer can show them how scope creep, change in priorities and adjustments to specification has a negative impact on their expectations. If they feel cheated that is their problem to deal with, software development is not charity and if it takes twice as long to build and a developer puts in twice as many hours then they should be paid twice the hours just as any other service professional is.

That's a fantastic way not to get hired for a project.

It cannot be more simple than setting a price on your time per hour, estimating how long a project will take and charging what you feel your time is worth as a lump sum. The client should not get to dictate that, because you're the expert and you'll have the better idea of how long it should take.
I encountered this recently. Really exceptionally poor engineering for a communication device.

My solution: flash Cyanogen ROM, force all apps to install to the SD card. No more concerns about running out of internal memory.
I wouldn't know how to write this bug...

It should serve as a testimony on how hard it is to implement Office Open XML. Not even Microsoft can get it right.
Swearing and cursing aren't the same things.

Damn is a curse, but not actually considered a swear word in most parts of the world.
Listening to the Universe: LOFAR Is the Largest Telescope on Earth
GeoHot Confirmed on not having exploit for iPhone 4 unlock 2.10.04 and 3.10.01
I agree those words were a bit harsh, but come on. All he said is that it is a little shady to hide the total until you've "fallen" for a place. I love Airbnb and use it all the time, but I wish they were a little more transparent with their pricing.

Not to say this is unique. California hotels never disclose the 16% hotel tax until you swipe your card.

A lot of European countries have laws that make companies advertise real prices to make it easier for the consumer to pick the best value. Keeps businesses honest. How is that a bad thing?
Companies won't do it because they fear being taken to court for discrimination. When hiring we were specifically advised by our legal team not to tell people why they were unsuccessful. It doesn't matter how careful you are, anything you say can be leapt upon by an unsuccessful candidate and used as an excuse to drag you to court claiming that they were discriminated against. This is especially true in these days of "No Win, No Fee" lawyers.

Sometimes, of course, the prospective candidate really has no skills at all in the required areas. I'm reminded of the Tom Lehrer quotation:

" ... one of the many fine things one has to admit
is the way that the army has carried the American
democratic ideal to its logical conclusion in the
sense that not only do they prohibit discrimination
on the grounds of race, creed, and color, but also
on the grounds of ability. "

But I'd love to tell people why they were unsuccessful. I'd love to give them the opportunity to learn, to grow, to improve, or in some cases simply to say "Well, I guess we weren't a good fit."

However, the age of litigation prevents me from doing that. And I'm not allowed to say "Sorry" either, because that could be taken as an admission of culpability.

(edited to add the Lehrer quotation)
Not sure the HR department point is a 'pithy one liner'. If they didn't have their power I'd be singing along with Kanye too (there's a difference between using the word 'nigger' which is not racist, and calling someone a 'nigger', which is).
Official Kinect SDK - who needs it?
I was searching for graphical libraries. I found the demos interesting, like the "Wolf Sheep Predation" model.
So, to recap:

- I bought a product that needed a license key;

- in order to use it, I was sent to a 3rd party site I had never dealt with before that provides the keys;

- the site requires me to enter part of my credit card as my proof of purchase to use it;

- it then takes me to a totally broken page, which, thankfully, has a license key;

- that license key is rejected for some indeterminate amount of time by vmware.com due to a known slowness problem with their key distribution system;

- once it’s finally not rejected, vmware.com still merrily asks me to give it an email that it knows damn well it didn’t give me but still accepts just the correct key from the key distro site anyways

There, I fixed it so it's not such blog spam, buy software much?
I have a server placed on a co-location where i use GNU Screen and Weechat for irc
Project Demo that made me go Crazy
I didn't really think of "Oh maybe some companies DO want to give feedback, its just better that they dont, for say perhaps, legal reasons". The sorry part makes total sense though, I've seen that a lot.

I guess there are those kind of people who feel discriminated against what might only be some helpful feedback, it's a shame, because it's one of the most educational means of response I've come across, in my experience.

Thanks for your response
That is a standard practice AFAIK.

Think of it... All previous MS OSes really became feasible after SP1 and started to shine after SP2.

Win 7 seems to be a notable exception (truthfully it is a Vista SP2). Anyways one supper happy Win7 user here - although 64 bit is STILL not what it should be - Firefox memory leaks are a bit worse and it is noticeably slower (I have 32bit W7 on laptop) plus some other minor issues - but that is hardly Microsoft's fault.
Deciding whether to start a business
So your saying that Apple should simply drop a protocol they invented in 2004 for one that came wasn't developed until 2006 and didn't gain any traction until 2010?
America has an extremely litigious society. I won't tell you why you suck, because if I do you'll find a way to sue me.
معمر القذافي‎
If you have an android phone and aren't using Google Voice, you are truly missing out.
Also, for real, about 8 out of 10 people take it badly. I've tried it. It just doesn't work.

Why don't you ask for it though? A quick reply: "I'd love to hear why I was rejected, won't take it badly, but as an opportunity to learn". Don't make them do all the work.
Could there be a common root to this issue, and that the phone stop syncing emails when the "low storage" warning comes on? No more incoming or outgoing emails, not even the manual "come on darn phone get my message" button does it. For me the warning kicks in around 14.85 MB (hit it so many times).
When it works it's awesome, but the installer almost always hangs on me also -- I think it's during some network card driver bit. It's an old problem that doesn't seem to be getting fixed.
Every NDA contract I've seen (bigCo) have an "automatic lift off" when the object of the NDA become public. Say: "you cannot talk about product X while it is not announced".
It's your experience different or, simply, your works are still not public (ie: have not been used)?
Three words: trust, Non-disclosures, and contracts. And work with a US firm or firm in another jurisdiction where you know that the force of law (and the power of the lawsuit) is much stronger if they violate any of the above three.

Of course, you know that it's very hard to truly protect an idea. This is why trust matters the most.

Oh, and don't be cheap. Expect to pay a premium for keeping things quiet. If you play lowball cheapskate, don't be surprised if the other party at some point finds it more economically advantageous to run with your idea in ways you can't / won't.

So, pay well and trust few. Then cross your fingers.

And you're right when you say this will spawn conversation about stealthiness for startups. I have rarely seen stealth matter. But you probably already know this.
This comes up a lot in these types of discussions, but I have a (major) gripe with this: Laws differ. There are some large (and overrepresented on this site?) countries in the world that have a "sue them" culture and, obviously, laws to back this type of behavior.
Lots of countries don't, though - and there I'd expect this kind of feedback.

I know, I'm not a lawyer and I might even be a bit naive here, but telling me that I seemed to lack the required understanding in technology X or couldn't convince them that I'd get up to speed in Y shouldn't open any chance to drag in a lawyer. Of course, things like 'you didn't fit the team' or 'your personal hygiene is not good enough for our corporate standards' might be something that is harder to disclose..

Bottomline: I hate your easy way out, giving no valueable feedback at all/in general.
His website spells it "Al Gathafi"
My Pro account expired and never prolonged it.Haven't uploaded pictures for a very long time now.
I want to get one tablet, and a new phone. I also want one iOS device, and one Android device. As soon as it is clear which combination of OS and form factor is optimal I will buy. Probably leaning towards Android phone, and iPad at this stage, but still not quite ready to buy.
The manager wanted to see 40 hours reported against his main project.

He did not want dishonesty, but probably would not mind some tweaking in how work activities are categorised in a timesheet.
30 of the Best Font Foundries
Typography is one of the most important parts of any design, whether it’s digital or in print. Good typography can take a mediocre design to new heights, while bad typography can make what would be a great design lackluster or even bad.
I love the interface. I give you my up-vote.
Not everybody is in the USA :(
There's also the fact that there's multiple candidates for one position. You might have been a good choice, but someone else had more experience, or another diferential.
A very good point. It's actually the UK, but to be honest.. The same can be said in most countries nowadays
I think HN is actually improving.
Note that nobody implements Office Open XML as in the ISO standard.

Microsofts implementation is incompatible to what ISO specified, mainly because in the ISO standardization process, ISO dropped some of the byzantine stuff in OOXML. Microsoft never adjusted its implementation to that, so AFAIK today there is no implementation of the standard in existence.
I'm not sure I see your point. While this bug alone will not be enough to hurt Android adoption, enough quality issues stacked up certainly will.

The buffer that they are given because of manufacturer QA and patching will only go so far.
"as I understand it a large part of the point of Open XML is to preserve fidelity in archived documents"

No, the point was to preserve a monopoly. The stuff about preserving fidelity was just a smokescreen since anyone paying attention knows that Word has a long history of changing formatting depending on which printer you have plugged into a machine. If you want that kind of archival then use the PDF/A standard.
She should just stick with what she knows, since she has some expertise in that.

A few possibilities there:

1. a business that organizes all these business nomads out there. Does all the necessary research, finds out all the services that are needed etc. Instead of 1 person moving at a time, it'd be a group of 200. Instead of arriving and knowing noone in the area, you arrive with 200 people you know. Instead of getting the first available apartment, you have one rented by the time you arrive. etc etc.

2. a business that does something as above, but for big 3 month long vacations aimed at those who want to see the world.

3. concierge vacationer for rich folks, figures out exotic destinations etc.

4. just answer for travel questions

5. unbiased travel destinations reviews for $10/yr
Blogging may work, as long as she treats it like a business and not just a hobby. Within a couple of years she could establish an authority blog on the subject. And don't let her limit herself to hotels either. There are all sorts of affiliate programs for that demographic (language courses and software being one of them). And she can create her own products, as well as organizing trips, etc. The blog side attracts the audience, the business side sells something valuable to them.
Couple issues:

1. Some quotes don't match up with their movie/TV show- as an example, the movie at the bottom of this page ( http://www.subzin.com/s/torchwood ) isn't at all related to the show the quotes are from ("Sleeper" from Torchwood).

2. Why do the Netflix recommendations all have "!!!" after them? It's very exciting, but weird.
1. There is no position. We're just "feeling out" the marketplace.

2. There is no position. This was a headhunter building his database.

3. We were planning to promote from within, but HR made us post the position anyway. We didn't read or respond to any of the resumes.

4. We already had the perfect candidate, but HR made us post the position anyway. We didn't read or respond to any of the resumes.

5. We posted the position as required by HR, but when an executive saw it on the intranet, he made us hire his son/nephew/family friend. We didn't read or respond to any of the resumes.

5. We were planning to hire someone, but by the time the resumes started arriving, the perfect candidate presented himself. We didn't read or respond to any of the resumes.

6. We were planning to hire someone, but the budget was cut. We didn't read or respond to any of the resumes.

7. We got 1,200 resumes in 2 days so HR ran them through a filter with almost no correlation to potential suitability for the job. Your resume didn't get through the filter. Next time, add buzzwords from the ad.

8. Your resume made it through the HR filter, but we only had time to read 20% of them. Yours wasn't pretty enough.

9. Your resume didn't stick out in a field of many that did stick out. You probably should have some kick-ass differentiator FRONT AND CENTER.

10. We read many great resumes. Yours was substandard compared to many of them for one or more of many possible reasons. Have 5 friends proofread it and give you brutally honest feedback for next time.

11. Your resume sucked but you don't. Find 5 friends. See #10.

12. You interviewed well, but someone else absolutely kicked ass. We loved him/her. Tough break for you, I guess.

13. You didn't interview well, but we can't really put our finger on it and don't have time to respond. Tough break.

14. You interviewed well and are still under consideration. But we are waiting on corporate for 27 other things. You'll probably find another job before we get back to you.

15. You really do suck. (No you don't. Chances are the process never got this far.)