skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Beta users flocking over to competitor
Hi all,

We recently discovered a competitor that launched much earlier than us and have more traction. We then even noticed that some of our earlier Beta users have also moved on to said competitor. We know, because we require a domain name to sign up for an account, and, since they use a stealth iframe pointer/redirect on their domain name, it's easy to find out what platform they are currently using. Think JanesCustomJewelry.com switching from Volusion to Shopify.

My question to all is: what next? Clearly our users are choosing our competitors because they have better features and more customization options, which are crucial for a white-label solution, even though their price point is higher. It will be hard to differentiate via a features battle; they have an army of developers.

Any advice? Or do we just do our thing, engage with our users, and reiterate until product/market fit? It's hard to ignore a competitor and very tempting to copy what they do. We have a feeling that whatever paying customers we have are only paying customers because they have not discovered our competitor. That is pathetic.

Update: indirect link to our site - http://www.fezzl.com
I can easily imagine looking up my colleagues salary, because here in Norway you actually can. (Well, you can look at how much tax they pay, and various websites convert that into an estimated salary)

I don't find it particularly interesting, though. People earn around what you expect them to earn.
Social Media and SEO Are Closer Together Than You Think
In fact, addons.mozilla.org automatically bumped the maxVersion field for extensions that didn't touch any of the APIs changed in Firefox 5. Later, they did the same trick for Firefox 6 (currently the Aurora branch). I'm running Aurora right now, and almost all of my extensions are marked as compatible.
I don't think so, this is the government that wants to pass the Freedom Bill: http://freedom.libdems.org.uk/
Thx -- in my experience it really takes a week to get into it. If you can stick it out I'd love to get your additional feedback after that point.

Point of fact: it isn't MapQuest, it is OpenStreetMap served via OpenMapquest, which uses their resources to forward that project. You can read more about it at http://openstreetmap.com/ (left column) and http://open.mapquestapi.com/ - in any case, maps are relatively new and in process.
I happen to prefer the web in the main with JS turned off. I may be in a minority here, but surely it's not much effort to design with graceful degradation in mind?
Ask HN: Review my startup, pegby.com
Get stuff done collaboratively, from small tasks to complex projects.

http://www.pegby.com

We're a small team based in Chicago who've built a GTD web app that allows you to manage all your to-dos and projects in a simple visual interface that emulates "pegging" 3x5 cards to a board.

Boards can be customized according to the way you think, scaled to meet even the most robust project management requirements, and shared to get groups of people working together fast and efficiently.

We've learned so much from the HN community over the years. With Pegby now in open beta, we figured the time was right to ask for your thoughts on where we're at, and how best to improve.

Thanks in advance for all your help!

Stephen, Matt and Jerry
Note: I'm founder of the startup

If there are any of our users here on HN, please share your experience. Meanwhile, if you are looking for honest testimonials and reviews, this is a third party site that collects feedbacks on Visual Website Optimizer (and other multivariate testing tools): http://www.whichmvt.com/visual-website-optimizer/

Hope you find it useful.
Clickable: http://www.pegby.com
Design Usability and All About It
It is not a big thing that you design anything, it is the main thing that how much attractive can you make it. What kind of things you should keep in mind during designing? If you don't know that here is article for you explaining what fonts you should apply, what color you should use etc.
Massive agreement. "Yes, Minister" and the follow up "Yes, Prime Minister", despite being just over 30 years old now are brilliant satires of politicians and the civil service.
http://www.pegby.com

Beaten to it, oh well :)
No, though I have had thoughts about how I might use the space.

The hammock takes up significantly less space than a mattress bed, especially the queen-sized mattress bed I usually need, so I find myself with a big empty space in my room where bed frame might have been.
> I don't want to name an innocent person, but will link to someone who thinks they know who it could be: [link]

That makes as much difference as "I'm not hitting you, this stick I am holding is hitting you".
Thank you (both!)
Founders: What do you hate MOST about hiring?
I've been working on a new concept to identify highly relevant candidates through semantic matching. It works pretty well, but I wondered, if there is anything in particular, other than digging through batches of inhomogeneous resumes trying to find the "skills" section - that you, as startup founders or experienced entrepreneurs really HATE about the recruiting process? Thanks guys.
FBI raiding activists as terrorists
That was my thought as well. Bay Area cabs are disgustingly overpriced already, especially with that slimy 50% surcharge they include if you go to, e.g. Palo Alto.

Anything that destroys the medallion mafia I support, however. Cabs aren't expensive because cabbies are living it up, but because of a class of parasitic rent-seekers who really need to be washed into the ocean.
YouTube - Fine sign
Darn I guess he was not Anonymous afterall..

Like I said before attacking a decentralized system with lots centralized stakeholders at some point in time makes you their bitch..
I wonder how many Chrome developers develop in Win7 vs OSX.
Some thoughts:

1. The vertical navigation is a complete fail.. I almost missed it and have to tilt my head to read the links

2. Instead of having a video (it's also not apparent that I need to click on the black box to play the video), have some screenshots that show how your app works.
Maybe they patented it to stop anyone from implementing it, did you think of that?
The most important disadvantage seems to me that you cannot comfortably sleep in it with two people. Or can you?
There's always going to be winners and losers, bubbles and busts, but governments playing a role in monetary policy only exacerbates these problems. Recoveries come in spite of intervention in the economy, not as a result of it. See Rothbard's The Panic of 1819 for an example from the early days of these disastrous ideas: http://mises.org/resources/695
In all likelihood it was probably compromised through some other means than the software. I'm sure the software got a lot of attention in terms of security but surrounding systems were neglected.
Ardent monopoly fans? heh. I not particularly skilled in javascript but surely multiplying by 7 would return a number between 0 and 6 inclusive? Which is much more like rolling two 7 sided dice numbered from 0 which yields a different value in the pattern.
So, after I was strongarmed into filling out the damn thing, now all my identity data is in the wild. I will be joining in a suit of Lockheed if this is true.
As Requested, I received the response about an hour after I posted this/sent the email. Can't say the response is terribly reassuring, but I suppose if no authentications have happened I don't have to be concerned about THIS incident.

We're working around the clock to gather additional data. We will notify affected users if we detect any unusual logins or activity in their account. We are reviewing our logs that record password authentication events in accounts. We have not been able to detect any relevant account activity for your account during the time period in question, so we believe that your account was unaffected by the bug.

Regards,
Thank you. "Scab" is inappropriate because a scab is someone who works for the company that the strike is against.
I use this stand: http://amzn.com/B00092M27I
And this hammock: http://amzn.com/B000NHQK4K

I also use a small cylindrical neck pillow and a twin-size down comforter.

I've been using this setup since mid-April with great success.
I share you views. Making a web app is easier for the developer: just one platform to support, no restrictions on implementation, etc. But a desktop app is nicer for the users (the ones we're supposed to care about, right?). In the very best case a web app would be able to function as good as a desktop app. The best case is usually not achieved.

Imagine if a person at your job said they had just made a new client app for your business users workflow. When you ask how it's implemented the person says that the GUI itself is just a skin that reads everything from the database. The GUI layout, how the buttons behave, all of it is stored in the database and the actual GUI is nothing more than a kind of platform for what's in the database. I've actually seen this done and the team who did it were sacked, their application deprecated. As far as I know it's still running because the team in charge of replacing it still doesn't completely understand it. But this is what web apps are. Model, view, presenter, they're all stored in the same place.

Personally, I prefer having a back end RESTful server with native... shall we say "fit" clients (not fat but not thin either) using it. The browser gets a simplified, default version of the app which has a link to the appropriate native client somewhere visible.
Is Ryan Cleary Lulzsec?
How the new html 5 form attribute willingly breaks html structure
As an aside, how do you go about finding projects to submit quotes for in your smaller market? I'm in a similar situation and thinking about going back to freelance route (did this in Chicago for a while but I'm now in a smaller market.)
If the flickr image is the actual size, then no wonder it was not noticed. No matter how much I customize all my interfaces -- and with the increasing pixel count of displays -- interfaces are constantly populated with immutable 8 point fonts. Any font less than 14 points is fine for 1985 and VGA displays; but not anymore.
Ahh latency is what I'm afraid of because my cable modem is in my office and I'd like to hook up my xbox 360 wired using MoCA. 2-3ms isn't bad, but any extra latency for gaming isn't good.
19 years old & English - this was kind of obvious, really.

In my experience, people interested in hacking and infosec over the age of 25 are more likely to know about 2600 and hold it in some regard, unlike those younger than 25. Hence, it was pretty clear that lulzsec was comprised of under 25 year olds.

They also engaged in some very unlulz-y personal wars with a few people, and didn't quite seem to know limits - very much a young person trying to prove themselves too hard sort of thing.

Similarly, they hacked a number of British sites, and something about their use of langauge sounded to me, as an former forum moderator, to be rather British. 2600 is also less well known over here.
This sentence stood out for me ...

My basic (starter) understanding of Functional
programming tells me that there should be more
object churn in a functional language ... and
thus Scala should have trouble with GC not the
Java implementation.

My experience is that in an OOP language, objects are brought forth, used, then discarded, oft-times requiring GC. My experience of well-implemented FP languages data streams through functions that have, in the large part, been optimised away.

I don't have deep or broad experience, and it's ceretainly true (as I see it) that naive implementations provoke lots of GC. But it didn't seem obvious to me that OOPLs should provoke less, and it does seem reasonable that FPLs might easily provoke less.

I'd be interested to hear some of our more experienced HNers comment on this.
Build a better product. Pretend they don't exist.
Uber does not owe the medallion owners a damn thing, and neither do the people of SF.

There is something owed the medallion scumbags, but it hasn't been in fashion since Paris 1793.
FANTASTIC TIP! This drives me (and 3 co-workers who will want to buy you a beer) insane - I travel a lot, and use proxies - so google is constantly swapping languages on me.

Though it makes me less worried about them collating all my personal information if they can't figure out I didn't suddenly learn to speak German ;)
I think a lot of places would drop google apps before they let google dictate what software they use.
I agree, the badge and comment pop-ups are useful, yes, but when I'm not logged in (which seems to be most of the time as Chrome on Linux simply cannot remember me (cookies enabled)) the "hello guest" pop-ups are just unnecessary.

However the "Welcome back [user], click to refresh" is incredibly useful, because of my cookie issue.
ProFlight Simulator: Advanced Flight Simulation Game
There are some flight simulator games that are serving us a poor quality graphic and scenery, just like the game we used to play during our junior school. Searching for the most realistic flight simulator games is not an easy thing because we have to try on it to determine whether the game is good or not. It means we have to buy the game first and if the game is not as good as we thought, then we should take it as our risk. The price of flight simulator games is not as cheap as the other games, which can even be found for free. It is because there are so many features we can get on the game and they are impossible to be served for free. One of the most recommended games is ProFlight simulator. It might look like other flight simulator games, but there are so many things that are able to make the game better than other passanger airplane games.
Unless Wickford is a hot bed of hacking this must be Ryan Cleary:
http://www.thehackernews.com/2011/05/anonymous-irc-hacker-ry...
There is already a guide on how to take a case under the Data Protection Act:

http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/data_protecti...
New York Stock Exchange European trading brought down by computer glitch
Nick Stamoulis to Speak at SEO and Social Media Online Seminar
And what is exactly that is of your concern?
Or a husband explaining to his wife about last nights escapades...
Please change the title. "Lulzsec suspect arrested scotland yard" implies to me that it was the suspect who arrested scotland yard, whereas the suspect was actually arrested by scotland yard.

Edit: Thank you!
I think it would come down to a matter of degree. A slight change in the order of results is pretty meaningless either way. But major alterations, where some pages are relatively inaccessible, could obviously be an impediment to getting the results we want.

Let me try this example: Suppose your searches are primarily academic. Let's say that whenever you search the term "momentum" you are looking for something scientific- ballistics, elementary particles, whatever. But one day you are writing a blog in which you want to search for background, but you need to use a non-scientific meaning of the same word. Perhaps a psychic used the term and you are debunking. The particular case is irrelevant. The point is tha if personalization is too aggressive you may not find the info most relevant to your interests.

This isn't privacy FUD or anything, just a pragmatic warning. The FUD comes when you start thinking about how their algorithms might actually decide which results you are "interested" in. Thinking of Google, what bu siness are they in? What about you behavior on the web most interests them? Would they decide that the most interesting things to you are the ones on which you clicked the most ads?
After all, Apple does have a strong tradition of altruism!
It can't be totally anonymous, otherwise there's no way of enforcing the legal requirement to complete it.

Each census form had a unique ID, which is obviously linked to your address as it was sent to you through the post.
What a bunch of lies this is. Silverlight has nothing to do with XNA linked by the author. But even if we assume that SL5 uses XNA, XNA does not expose raw buffers in the code the way WebGL does and it does not allow one to write shaders on the mobile devices (one of the attack vectors mentioned in the MS article). SL itself does let you write PS (FS if you're from OGL crowd) and yes, this is an attack vector. But comparing this to WebGL is a false equivalence.

I find it amusing that even John Carmack (strong OGL supporter) agrees with MS on this one yet it is some random Google employee who gets his word spread. This author knows FUD very well, I give him that. He's proficient in spreading it.
I'm leaning toward "hoax." Lulzsec has been reasonably competent writers so far, and the bizarre placement of "blissfully" makes that either incompetent or some kind of steganography. That, added to the lack of tweet, makes me doubt.

Of course, it could still be some anon who actually does have the census data, and considers himself lulzsec-affiliated.
nice! What are your future plans for it? E.g. which features do you plan to add for my grand-mother :-) ?
Well, it would be bonkers for them to have this "feature" when no other handset manufacturer did.
Wedding Insurance
Covermywedding.co.uk offers wide range of covers like wedding insurance, wedding cover and honeymoon insurance which starts from £18.99 across UK.
(p.s. -- I'm the Stephen mentioned in the post)
There's no alternative, you must build a better product.
Nice idea!

Personally, I really liked the presentation, as it is very clear. You may want to put it on the top of the page!

Else, nice MVP!

+1 for the name: I'd suggest to change it to something less similar to another popular service.
Yes you are right and the new bill won't be used against bloggers who embed a video. I'm afraid i've heard that song.
I think Apple wants the content providers on its side (which is legit) so this can be another brick on its side against the rest. For that being valid i think they will have to enforce it.
That is quite nice, good work!
Full, noontime sunlight with the panel optimally aimed delivers less than 50 watts to an area the size of that solar panel. Multiply by solar panel efficiency and you are under 8 watts of charging power.
Air Curtains
New range of air curtains, sensor tap, fly insect killer, hand dryer, air curtain, currency checker with price list.
Actually, it's not easy. It's incredibly difficult to have a webapp with a wide range of functionality that doesn't leak data to SQL injections. There's plenty of stuff that can get past the precautions you listed[1][2], although pornel is closer to the mark.

[1]http://ha.ckers.org/sqlinjection/

[2]https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.ihteam.net/pap...
Findings from The Survey for People who Make Websites 2010
It's impossible to answer this properly without seeing your site. With that in mind, here are a few thoughts:

1. Features don't matter in the abstract. You can succeed with fewer features by being, for example, simpler. That's the 37signals "do less" line. You say features are crucial for your white-label solution. Are you so sure? Why do you think this is? How do you know this is why you are losing customers? ("Clearly" is a dangerous word). Who do you think your customers are? What if your customers were somebody else? (See point 3).

2. "...even though their price point is higher..." - this suggests you don't know that high price is often precisely why customers choose things. High prices suggest high quality, and in the absence of other ways of distinguishing between products, it's a very easy one for people to follow. Perhaps you charge so little that you give the impression of not being serious? And, relatedly, perhaps if you charged more you would be able to spend more to acquire users?

3. Pick a niche and own it. If your site works for user types X, Y and Z, just pick some subset of X to go after. Your product will be more targeted to them, which makes it easier for them to see it as something they could use, and it also should make it easier for you to market. See, for example, the many sites that offer build-your-own-websites for photographers, as opposed to simply just build-your-own-websites for everybody.

4. Win on design, on copywriting, on user experience, on humour, on speed, on sociality, on security, on reliability, on locality, on trust, on friendliness. Win on anything that's not what you can't win on. On the internet, there's room for more than one winner.

But, like I said, if we could see your site you'll get better answers.
Knowing about competitors who beat you to market, have traction, and have an 'army of developers' is probably something to do before you build a product.

At this point all you can do is work on your product. Maybe you can find a pain point of people using your competitor and cater to the users who are chafing under that pain point.
just do our thing, engage with our users, and reiterate until product/market fit

^^ This.

It seems like you haven't considered the possibility that your users who haven't "jumped ship" so to speak actually use something that your competitor can't provide. You just have to figure out what that something is. Build a bunch of tests and try to gather data on what that something is.

Don't try to copy the competition. That difference could be your distinguishing characteristic.
What happens when opening an Excel sheet in Excel Web App or Google Spreadsheets
Targeting Mobile Users? Build a Mobile App, Not a mobile site. Here's Why.
Sounds like a tough position to be in. I'm not sure that outright ignoring your major competitor is such a great idea. You could perhaps use them to differentiate yourself in the eyes of your customers?

For example I'm currently working on a language learning app that will be a direct competitor to (what once was) smart.fm. When I discovered their app (a long way into my project) I was at a loss because they have millions in funding and an army of developers.

I realized that their approach to language learning is prescriptive, i.e. they decide what you should learn. To differentiate myself from them, I'd have to go for the opposite approach, in other words, provide a much more exploratory experience for my users. There are a number of other fights I could have picked, but this is something that my users wanted and an easy way to set myself apart from my big hulking competitor.

Is there some fight along these lines that you can pick with them? Could you perhaps play the less/simpler features card instead of trying to compete on features? Is it that their marketing is just better?
[Hiring] Web front-end Designer in Cape Town
Novo separador
Engage with lost customers and ask them what made them leave and what would make them come back.
Some perspective on the houses... have you noticed how bad 85 is every day? That is all the RIM employees that live in Milton or further away. Most of them did not move to town.

Sure RIM laying off all employees would kill Waterloo but they have a lot of cash in the bank ($8 Billion?) and have been ramping up R&D -- they aren't going anywhere for a while.
Other handset manufacturers could license the patent to use it, if Apple allowed it.
I could see police lobbying to have this kind of technology required in all mobile devices. Just look at the DMCA and how it is used to enforce anti-consumer technologies like region coding.

However, the IR technology described in the patent is so easily circumvented that it's hardly worth anything. So, that's good news if our country takes another (probably unsurprising) huge step in the dystopian direction.
Multiple object extend pattern in JavaScript
I don't think that's an easter egg, I think it's just pretty good zero-click info :)
Has it occurred to anyone that the reason Mt Gox may want to rollback the transactions is because the account that was hacked belonged to Mt Gox or someone affiliated with Mt Gox???
Lots of other events in Waterloo too:

http://watcamp.com/calendar

...for those unaware of how much more awesome Waterloo has become.