skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think his point is that browsing to their website, it's not entirely obvious how to quickly share a file. When you initially go to sendoid.com, their link to share a file is the most prominent element on the page.

Having the native hook into context menus is great in the file system, but if your users can't even install the app, what's the point? Having a dead simple browser experience is easier for users because it's one less step to do what they want to do - share files.
You've got my vote and support guys. This is a great idea. Which part of the Hamptons are you thinking?
but they seem blind to class-related phenomena such as the rapidly growing divide in wealth

It's still true there's have-now and have-laters. This is especially prevalent in technologies. Your smartphone will someday become common in third world countries.
A. Because managers, for the most part, don't have the courage to do it. It's emotionally difficult to fire, so they look the other way.
Kenneth Waltz has argued nuclear weapons spread peace. The strongest evidence supporting him is the lack of any nuclear conflict in the last sixty years and the way the weapons have brought peace between India and Pakistan. If he is right the best prospects for long-term peace in the middle east will probably come through a nuclear-armed Iran.

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

That said, there are two core ironies in the politics of proliferation that make this suggestion uncomfortable. The first is that at least at present the most vehement opponents of nuclear proliferation are often the most vocal critics of gun control. So few people who talk about the importance (or insignificance) of deterrence really seem to believe it logically.

The second irony is that the Nash equilibrium for rational-actor based models of deterrence is not peace, but random violence. The reason for this is that a certain amount of "demonstrated irrationality" is required to make the prospect of mutual assured destruction convincing to all players. Which means that if the world were truly rational we would expect some use of nuclear devices. And yet we don't see any, or haven't seen any yet.

All of which leads us to the strange observation that nuclear proliferation seems to bring peace, but not because of a rational deterrent effect.
Open Networking Foundation Pursues New Standards
I think you missed the point of my comment. Though running tor or other technical solutions are possible, getting penetration into the non-techie world is very difficult.

You're proposing a technical solution to a legislative problem. Working with the law (constitutional or otherwise) creates the environment where you aren't trying to work around the issue or 'hide' from anybody.

Privacy laws are there for your protection. As another commenter mentioned, you wouldn't accept the gov't or private corporations reading your mail, e-mail shouldn't be any different.
Agree with you on this one!

I know people who themselves cannot program but know what the hell loops are and stuff that you learn when you open a basic programming books. The stuff that tells you what the hell complexity of a program. If I were to tell them write a simple for loop they would not end up doing it, but when the programmers tell them that some task is taking time, they break down each task so logically that they would make a damn great programmer themselves.

Every reason is analysed and possible directions put infront of the developers. If they say the servers we are using are not fast enough, they are quick to ask back, if it is the code or the servers themselves, since they know of people who are doing just fine using the same servers.

Another great thing in a company is that there will always be smarter developers who will do the same task effectively and faster. Then of course it becomes quite evident if the other guy was at fault or had a genuine issue.
This is a bit of a tangent from the original issue which was about the ability of a non programmer to judge programmers. I still hold that the good ones can, and if they cant then how do you propose they pick their technical cofounder?

Regarding technical debt, I think we're conflating a few things under this umbrella. There can be code that is easy to read and maintain, but won't scale to millions of users. Then there is spaghetti code which is brittle, hard to read and modify, but may or may not scale. I think it's ok to have the first before you know if you need to scale.

When you guys got to the point that you realized it needed to scale was it fixed immediately? If not, would it have been that hard to fix it then.

Btw, thank you for talking about this stuff. It's great to hear insights from someone that's been through such things.
I use it for RubyPython.
One is not an experienced manager until one has had to fire someone. One is not a good manager until that happens either.
Have signed up! Waiting for the invite. My bro is tech averse and hence Dropbox averse. I always find it difficult to share docs with him. Hope receivd solves it for me!
We just found it intriguing because our system wasn't optimized or configured to show thousands of vouchers for a single person (imagine thousands of pins on a map or how long it'd take to load a page). Never thought anyone would have so many vouchers! But we've managed to fix that.
Invited! Email us at contact@receivd.com if you need anything at all :)
Spinning media is the way of the dodo. If there is ever a replacement it will be in the form of an SD card or memory stick. But then again, streaming killed it before being even born. Video cameras went from tape to cd, dvd, hd and now flash mem. If we could insert removable flash memory in different devices like our own TV and play it, then there might be a slight chance for it to start a new era, but I doubt it.

Blu ray? I hardly knew ya.
Comcast has 40mbit+ in Miami. Think it hits 50. Just fyi
Wow, yes. Another pet peeve of mine is just websites with no prices on them. You click, and arrive at a web contact form or phone number with "our sales associate will be happy to help!". No, goddamnit. I don't want to and don't have the time to get schmoozed by your associate. That's okay for one off, large, custom deals but for your daily routine sale, this is not okay. I'm just about to make a decision, and now it finally hinges on the price. I lack information on your product. The other one wins.
Agreed. We were just surprised, since our highest user at that point only had 85 vouchers (It's 149 now), then this guy comes around with thousands. We thought it was a fake account, but it turned out to be a real user.
I'm not going to pretend to be typical (I've been resisting Twitter until just today), but I find audio to be highly inconvenient (you need to be able to hear it, you need to not be disturbing others when you play it, it doesn't random access or search well, etc). As far as I can tell, a large part of twitter is the convenience of broadcasting and receiving. The two don't seem very compatible to me. What misconception or mistaken premise is stopping me from seeing how this works?
I don't understand how people that don't understand Dropbox shared folders would understand Receivd, a more complex app?

However, some people I share folders with do use it as a transfer mechanism and remove the files from it.
I've never fired anyone (though I did give a student an F), but I think I could manage it. You just have to establish a process.

* Do evaluations

* If someone isn't performing, start a process to make them improve. Usually called a PIP. Manage them more closely, set standards but help them improve.

* Give feedback often, rather than all at once on a podcast several years after the problem has manifested itself.
Tried a VPN with exits in the US?
Thanks. I would have missed it. Google didn't consider it important enough for it to be in my priority inbox
Ask HN: Is there still a market for (new) visual HTML/CSS editors?
I've been considering this for a while, and would like to know your opinion:

The existing graphical/WYSIWYG HTML+CSS editors are either targeted at amateurs/absolute beginners (iWeb-like apps, that offer very little flexibility) or are too expensive for semi-professional use, if you disregard piracy. (Dreamweaver-like apps)

Furthermore, pretty much every single visual tool I've tried generates terrible, messy, unreadable and unmantainable code, making them unsuitable for professional use. (Dreamweaver has made some improvements recently, but it's still far from good) Most tools also have limited or no HTML5+CSS3 support.

Because of that, graphical tools are now almost completely irrelevant, having been replaced by things like CSS frameworks.

My question is:

If a tool were designed that addressed these issues (flexibility, price, code quality) would you use it? Furthermore, would you pay for it? If so, how much? What features would you consider essential?

Thanks in advance.
I don't get it. It's a protocol for managing router forwarding rules. Except every provider out there already implements this in the way that suits them best, and that's the kind of capitalist outlook that made the internet as big and useful as it is today.

I don't see how this will redefine anything for anyone, though it might make routing protocols a little bit simpler to manage. Which I guess might be important if you're a huge corporation having problems keeping your clouds from disappearing now and then.
A "C" coder is someone who writes bad code. It's relatively easy to detect and fire a "C" coder.

A "B" coder is one who for the most part writes good code, but doesn't design a good long-term architecture, or makes many small mistakes that add up in the long run, or leaves the code riddled with small bugs that eventually cause frequent problems. The "B" coders are the dangerous ones because really you should fire them or fix them, but it's too easy to ignore them.

An "A" coder writes solid code and is dependable, but doesn't hit the high notes, as Joel Spolsky says.

A star coder is an "A" coder who hits the high notes.

(I don't know what a "D" coder is, but perhaps our scales are offset by one letter grade.)
Your argument is poorly put together sir.

> the reason the US attacked him was (Hussein), ostensibly, because he was a threat (defined as vaguely as possible)

> The reason why Libya was attacked was that Gaddafi is also a threat

----

So why hasn't Ahmadinejad been attacked ... he is so much of a 'threat' (defined as vaguely as possible) that he makes surrounding Arab states nervous ... (see wikileaks for reference)

> However it should be carefully noted that in spite of the fact that the Bush administration and a number of world governments asserted and believed that Saddam Hussein had chemical and/or biological weapons, they attacked him anyway.

---

Yep ... but he didn't have nuclear weapons did he?

>In other words, even possessing these weapons weren't a deterrent against attack by the US.

-----

I like how you tiptoe around that last bit about nuclear weapons

The central point of the article is pretty solid ... if you have nuclear weapons or even look like you have them, America isn't coming after you.

The part about them getting you to disarm so they can attack you is a bit of a stretch though.
Related: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2353140
Wikipedia claims "RTMFP will not support file or document sharing.[citation needed]". Ha.

Well done, that's a great idea.
One of the things I learned is that readability is a key part of scalability. One or two programmers can figure it out, but when you get to 20 or 30, if the code isn't clear, it costs time and money. Clever hacks need to go by the wayside, in favor of clear code.

As the saying goes "Always assume that the next guy to maintain your code is a psychopath who knows your address."

That is not something I knew in the early days of digg. I know it now.
How to Drive More Revenue From Your Remote Salespeople
> However it should be carefully noted that in spite of the fact that the Bush administration and a number of world governments asserted and believed that Saddam Hussein had chemical and/or biological weapons, they attacked him anyway.

Nobody really thinks that anyone in the Bush administration actually believed this, right?
Heh, good catch. Should have said 1000s of times per minute.

60k is 3x the RPM of an F1 motor.
Thank you for the detailed reply.
Good to hear that there is still activity there.
Social-circles network model
If a business plan can only succeed with "A" developers, then perhaps it is not a very good plan.
Chubb and Son Insurance Group. It would be my second year there, and I found it to be at a slower pace than I was expecting. I guess the insurance industry isn't at a fast pace compared to a software engineer industry.
Dammit U.S. and international patent law for enabling Microsoft to pull something like this.
Dropbox Could Generate $100 Million In Revenue This Year
Best programming language to learn starting from scratch?
No programming experience but want to learn to help myself with prototyping. Is there a clear winner or any pros/cons would be appreciated. Thanks.

Will
> but then I end up doing a lot of yak shaving

You say that like it's a bad thing. ;)
Not surprisingly, there's an "iso rip" available for pretty much every Blu-Ray disk ever released. It's like iTunes... but cheaper, higher-quality, and without DRM.
Can you merge the ideas of sendoid desktop client with a pinch of dropbox, so we can sync folders with other computers, other people's computers (multiple folders, multiple computers) without a central server?

i.e. sendoid, but semipermanent links and folders instead of files.
Disagree with the first part. If you're a great manager, in general, you can and should try to work with high-end developers. Why waste your life trying to make gold from lead?
Fair enough. What do you think would have improved the company, be it hiring decisions, management style, or something else?
http://audioboo.fm/

Sorry to be a spoilsport, but am I missing how this different/better than the above?
I've had FedEx sign for packages left at my front door with "Mr F. Door".
As told by a noob js developer: closures
Racial disparity doesn't just result from racism or "like preferring like". There are many institutional and structural issues that are partially causal and a frank discussion could help uncover them as they relate to the startup world. Sadly, frank discussion of race is very difficult in this country.

Btw, I do agree that the valley is very meritocratic so I don't think racism is a big factor.
I wish it could work for me. I love the idea of sharing directly with PCs in our network. Our setup is that we are travelling with my wife and constantly sharing files , now we use dropbox for that, but that means outside connection that relies on slow wifi. if your tool worked - it would be genius

unfortunately, it doesn't and sharing between Windows 7 chrome browser -> Mac .. just getting Waiting for the peer.

I can't say more specifics about network topology as its a hotel wifi.
Hiring poor developers is not the cause of what went wrong with Digg, but a symptom of what really went wrong.

The problem with Digg is they stumbled onto a formula that drove them to success overnight, but the company never had a true vision that they believed in and followed as a company.
Clearly Zappos' famously awesome customer service isn't good or memorable enough to make the off-the-top-of-your-head list there. Interesting!

(They always keep saying "Whoa, Nellie! We upgraded you to express shipping free!" on my orders -- it was a delightful surprise the first time, but now I suspect it's standard..)
"In some states, the great bulk of government expenditures for schooling come from the state budget"

Interesting, I didn't know that.

But doesn't my point still stand? If each state has its own byzantine policies for paying for schools, it makes no sense to say the US spends $X on education. All you can say is that the federal govt spends x, california spends y, and so on.
I like this line, although it may be a bit close to home for some:

TD: What I'm seeing now with a lot of these Web 2.0 companies is that they're not based on technology, but on a dog-and-pony show. Under the surface, there's nothing noteworthy going on. The majority of them are just rolling the dice, and they know it. These are the people who will go to parties just to suck up to Arrington and say, "Hey come look at my startup. Please plug me." For these guys TechCrunch is going to make or break the company. If you look at a company's traffic graph on Alexa when it hits TechCrunch, there's a huge spike that day and then a month later it's down to almost nothing. In this world it's all about creating the buzz. It doesn't matter about revenues or profits. It's just about how many users you can get.
The Linux graphics stack from X to Wayland
I travel overseas too, but I'd not want to face the roaming charges (I guess I could swap sims, but I have a phone hotspot anyway).

Getting an iPad that works in the US (especially when there's a high density of Apple users, aka AT&T can't cope) is way more valuable to me - I'm only considering the Verizon version.
Au contraire, licensing does nothing of the sort. It's most always a system that both guarantees a certain minimal level of competence, and by design limits the number of professionals in a field for various political reasons. There are plenty of licensed but only marginally competent (i.e. bad) architects, engineers, doctors, lawyers, and other professionals.

I recall a story about a flight instructor who said to a freshly licensed pilot something like, "Now you've got your license to go out and really learn how to fly".

The point is that true competence and most certainly brilliance requires individually driven effort and expertise that is unlikely ever to be measured by government or professional organization administered exams.

Put it another way: Do you feel that licensing assures us that all drivers on the road are "good"?

(Sorry if my argument sounds abrasive; the subject's a pet peeve of mine.)
Twitter 5th anniversary mockumentary
Does anyone still have a copy of this and able to mirror it? The link on dropbox is dead now and I'd love to hear this.
That's really cool of you guys. I apologize for doubling my email, because I saw this right after.

Your product is slick. I can see myself convincing a customer to use this, which is not something I could say for Dropbox.
Historical video: the early days of Twitter
There were a lot of people who believed this (remember the # of people who voted for Bush). And people assert that they believed it to this day. I'm not sure what the point is of not taking their word for what they believed. They can still be mendacious, intelligence fixing idiots, while being true believers.
Why? How come using an <input type="email"> —that in Safari Mobile activates a custom keyboard and in IE si treated like a regular input— it's such an improbable scenario?
Business Card 'Etiquette' is an abomination at SXSW
You may be our GodSend...
Have a look at this.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2350347
Let me know if interested. Coding is not my specialty, but I can learn everything in IT. However, I will need a tech lead/overlord to tell me/us what to do.
Fewer side projects. More focus. Less empire building.

Instead of "we need to scale to a 100 million,", there should have been incremental improvement.

"we need to serve the next 5% (growth) better than the last 5%." To do that we have to be a better company (incrementally).

And repeat.
Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
soo. Tried to install the desktop app on both W7 and Mac..but didn't help..the transfer doesnt work..not good
Thanks for bringing that to our attention, gotta fix that real quick :)
Although none of us are enamored with North Korea, there was a fair share of atrocities that were committed by UN forces on the NK population and the South Korean government against communist sympathizers in their own country. The Wiki article goes into it in some detail. (No, it doesn't make it OK because "they were doing it".)

(As an aside, I sometimes bitterly contemplate how many great Korean minds were lost in that war because of their personal politics)
Is there before or after you've taken on VC, planned a project roadmap, and realized there was no way you'd hit your goals?
i'm drawing a blank on how to find introductory textbook recommendations faster than google.

i just googled "typography introductory textbook" and found at list one list of 15.

of those the earliest publishing date was 1999, but if something worthwhile happened in the field of typography before then i suspect it will be reposted in newer books. plus reference to any recent issues in typography.
Should say [2007] in title.
If Sendoid is completely relying on RTMFP then the core security technology would have to be coming from Adobe. Check out Matthew Kaufmann's two year old talk on the subject:
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/max-2008-develop/future-of-communi...
Or Tom Krcha's blog which contains a number of Flash P2P entries:
http://www.flashrealtime.com/
RTMFP is pretty fascinating technology that originates with a couple of very smart guys that Adobe brought on board (Matthew Kaufman and Michael Thornburgh).
I'm curious if the Sendoid team has a non-Flash solution for 'restricted' devices.
I need to be able to upload files from the *nix/OSX command line. Is that supported?
The Mac app feels unfinished — connections, files, etc. aren't draggable, reshare doesn't work (can't even select the files), but all of that is stuff you'll obviously get around to.

I'm using it now, and it's so close to being exactly what I need, with two necessary pivots that seem almost predestined to happen from your current position. The current basis of it being an inbox for files is already on the right track, and something I haven't seen attempted before, but it needs a little more verisimilitude to email:

1) The requirement to invite / induce signup / confirm "connections" needs to be ruthlessly optimized out — I should be able to just send a file to any email easily, forming a 'weak' connection. Maybe they have to do a 3 second signup to download the file, but it needs to be all in one motion. This obviously brings up a ton of issues like how to display the now 4 types of connections and unsolicited files, but it's essential to you getting traction.

2) 'sent' files need to behave like a outbox — remember that one of the biggest uses of email attachments is just sending stuff to yourself. Really you should just implement that straight up, it's the biggest use I'd have, and one I think you would find yourself as soon as you get the iOS client going. The dropbox iOS app's UI is terrible for it (pick one photo at a time and wait), plus really the filesystem metaphor is all wrong anyway! I actually want the transactional inbox feel of email here. If you don't explicitly support this I'm just going to end up using it with a computers account and an iPhone account.
Great job Kyle! I'm sure this feature has your hands all over it :)
Lie to Get Ahead