skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Enough is enough on screwing your loyal customers: re: Pingdom
I wanted to get the communities opinion on what is a good balance between screwing your existing customers by offering insane discounts/incentives to new ones.

What do I mean? Example:

Pingdom is currently offering 70% discounts for new customers. You pay for a year, you get a 70% discount.

Normally I would be OK with this. But with Pingdom, your not only screwed by the discount if you choose to remain with them but your screwed upon your renewal that you do NOT get the text messaging bundle.

With Pingdom, if you have an outage you can tell it to send you an SMS message as well as an email.

When you sign up for Pingdom you get 250 of these included with your signup. If you RENEW though, which happens automatically after your year is up. You DO NOT get these text messages.

You have to buy them separate, and the cost is an additional ~$40 I believe.

So not only do you NOT get the 70% discount. You do NOT get your text message allocation refilled.

You are literally getting screwed every time you renew. So what do you do? Delete the account, sign up as new, and re-enter all of your hosts, settings, checks, etc. It's a pain in the ass.

Is this acceptable and reasonable?

To me, it is not. I voted with my dollar. I went to a competitor and I've been very happy. I went to nodeping.

I emailed Pingdom about it and while I think they run a good service -- they don't know crap about building loyalty. In the email, they essentially said they have no plans to change it... and I'm guessing they never will until more customers switch.

/end rant
If you make at least $34,000/yr after tax, you are in the global 1%
Call for Applications to Founders Network | fnBlog
Los Angeles, CA - Full Time, Part Time and contract.

Contender.com is a high-growth, early stage company, that provides a fully-automated, turn-key platform for buyers and sellers to negotiate prices and purchase event tickets. Read more about why Everything’s Negotiable on our blog: http://www.contender.com/blog/contender/welcome-to-contender...

Job Perks
* Play a big role on a small team
* Work closely with founders and executives from some of the largest media companies in America
* Leave your fingerprint on a huge industry
* Have stock options in a company that is fixing a broken model

Requirements
* Experience making web applications that scale
* Experience with MVC design patterns and frameworks
* Demonstrated fanatical attention to detail
* Familiarity with source control systems (Git)

Pluses
* Appreciation of software development best practices, but knows when it is important to deliver code
* Experience with git flow, Vagrant, Memcached, Amazon Web Services
* Comfortable working on the command line
* SQL optimization chops

We are looking for a PHP Developer and also a Frontend Developer. Please use the following link to apply for either:

http://contender.theresumator.com/apply/Iui6yk/Frontend-Web-...
Aisle50 (YC S11) raises $2.6M, August Capital leads.
We increased our revenue from $1.2 million in the second quarter of 2009 to $430.2 million in the third quarter of 2011. We generated these revenues from gross billings of $3.3 million for the second quarter of 2009 as compared to gross billings of $1,157.2 million for the third quarter of 2011. We had net income of $21,000 for the second quarter of 2009 as compared to a net loss of $10.6 million for the third quarter of 2011.

Source: Groupon, Inc. Form 424B4 Prospectus (http://investor.groupon.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1047469-1...)

Edit: So to answer your question, exacerbate its losses.
Google isn't causing this. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that if there were anything negative related to Obama like this, Google would remove it.

My hunch is correct (taken from the above poster): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/24/michelle-obama-phot...

This is an example of state-controlled media (IE: Google is in Bed with the Obama administration). How is this in any way okay?
Jensnockert: I need $185k, to register the .js TLD, anyone wants to donate?
Might have to do with national security.
NASA is a US government agency, where the US government probably would not like all their code in the hands of countries using it in ways the US government will not like.
Well, what Nokia has done is better than the way Google has it set up. At least for advanced machines that can run it. But I'm sure Google will catch up when it's a reliable standard.
spelling in headline: Colombia
I should add: Pingdom has given discounts to "new" customers, I believe continuously for the past 3 years. So this isn't a temporary promotion, it's always there. Usually 50% or greater discounts.
Apple vs. Barnes & Noble: Game Not Over
... Project?

Probably not the best ever at anything, but it does that and quite a lot of other stuff. You could skip the details you're not interested in ( resources allocation etc) and keep it simple.

Also, it fits great if your day job is a structured environment.

If it's not, or you use Mac (as I do) you can try gantter project, it's a google apps add-on. Great for collaboration.

Just my 2c...
Indie game developer resource list
Such a remarkable human being - I hope someone can help speed up his ability to communicate. If this does not happen, we may miss out on a lot of great wisdom Hawking has to share (during the [what is sure to seem like a] short remaining he has left).
Such a remarkable human being - I hope someone can help speed up his ability to communicate. If this does not happen, we may miss out on a lot of great wisdom Hawking has to share with the world (during the remainder of his time with us).
Yes.

Also this: "Let me know your passionate or don’t waste my time." (you're!)

This is why I love being a contractor / consultant. Clients don't ask for a little lap dance and a smile before we can do business, like this guy seems to expect.

They have a job to do that they think I can do, I give a quote, they say yes or no (usually yes, if we went this far). I do it, they pay me.

No resume-this, resume-that, what's your vision, are you passionate, what do you love or hate. I hate being in an office with a stranger in the middle of the afternoon, talking about my passions.
Of course not. It's not a trivia question to see if you happen to know the term. Or a trivia question to see if you happen to remember some particular trick to solve the problem. It's just an arbitrary task that will have you solve an easy problem that you probably have not done before, and write code for it. As such, the interviewer would obviously give the necessary background information. Either up front or when requested.
Fans Would Love To Pay For Music (Or The Tale Of The Reluctant Pirate)
Mixergy Top 10 Interviews
> If you can't write a function that gives me a row of Pascall's triangle, that's a problem.

I've developed high-performance medical imaging applications. I've build large distributed financial systems. I've built 2D/3D games. I've done a ton of stuff. Hell, I'm a software engineering hiring manager at my company. Yet I have no idea what a Pascall's triangle is, or how to give you a row of them.

I consider questions like that to be as useless as brainteasers in determining whether or not to hire someone. Sure, it can help give clues about a candidate, but if you're seriously considering rejecting a candidate on that point alone, I think you've got a problem in your hiring process.
Tagged logging for Python,Ruby,PHP and Javascript
My guess is the vast majority of the talent Google has gotten through acquisitions would have failed miserably going through Google's traditional hiring process.

That's a very good point that I've not seen made so well before.
What Microsoft Should Do in 2012
Department of Defense Takes Another Step Towards Android
Don't worry, the "github or git out" attitude is only common among people you wouldn't want to work with anyway. They're the ones who will change languages or frameworks according to what's fashionable, rat-hole the team on fun but irrelevant projects, and not talk to you unless you dress like a hobo and swear like a sailor. They're over-represented here on HN, but real engineers know that most good code isn't on github and never will be.
> Can anyone explain why software developed by a government agency would not be in the public domain, once open?

While US govt authored stuff isn't subject to copyright, I don't know how US govt stuff derived from copyrighted material is treated. (The copyright for derived work ordinarily stays with the original author, but the US govt is special.)

BTW - Which not-US countries have the "no copyright on things that we do" rule/policy/law?
I've asked the Pascall's triangle question, but I always go to great length to explain what it is, as even if someone does know it, they probably haven't thought of it in quite some time.
Although under US copyright law all federal works are in the public domain, that does not prevent the government from having valid foreign copyrights in its works that are enforceable abroad.

Some more information is available at http://www.cendi.gov/publications/04-8copyright.html#317.
Tailor a Perfectly Fitting Website in 6 Steps
First, construct a phase 1-blackout. Where any users sees a large screen with info to contact their reps (and then allows them to proceed to the app).

The outcome of this less-abrasive approach may be enough - and if not, Plan B can then be implemented; a complete blackout.
Great job! Makes it easy to get all of the information in one place.

I just made a call to my representative (whose position was not stated) and the person who answered was "not allowed to comment on it."
> The new Couchbase Server is based on Membase (it adds JSON documents and incremental Map Reduce).

That is good news. I will look into it some more.

What would really be helpful is to have a bullet point comparison of features between Apache CouchDB and Couchbase as well as between Couchbase and Riak ,Redis, MongoDB, Membase. Basically an updated and extended :

http://www.couchbase.com/products-and-services/overview

So someone can basically figure out, "Hh look JSON documents, map-reduce and the speed of key-value storage, I could use this".
> Pro tip: unless you're really popular, no one cares how you power your blog... they care about what you write on it.

Anyone who is trying to set up a Jekyll-based blog might be interested this method for hosting it.
Take a year and go travel. Set aside an amount for a healthy runway when you return, then you will have better clarity if you want to start something new or go work on someone else's idea. There are many companies that segment the workforce into "can code" and mba/product people. Try not to work for one of those places. You can find someplace that values both skills in an individual however it may take a while.
I think that 750 limit resets every month for a year though. Thus you could get by on one of their micro instances for a year for free. Not sure if GAE or Heroku has a similar limit.
> Google most assuredly does have signals as to which of the results on that first SERP are the ones users are actually looking for.

Yes, and the spreading santorum site is the first result. So unless you have some actual counterproof, I think the reasonable assumption is that Google is giving the people what they ask for, as usual. Especially since Bing returns the same top result.

Anyway, the whole thesis of this thread is factually wrong, since the top result today on Google for "santorum" is actually the Iowa caucus results table from the Associated Press. So Google has, in fact, manually inserted a search result in response to the surge in interest in Santorum the candidate. (Bing, by the way, has not.)
Exactly what we've seen. Our first Groupon was at a 50/50 split, no exceptions, no wiggle room. Our latest was at 70/30 in our favour.
Induction Launcher for Golf Balls
> But the thing that bugs me about this is that nobody seems to think that I'm anything more than a code monkey. They don't realize that, in addition to engineering, I actually started something new, managed the product, a whole team, did a fair bit of design, promotion/press, successfully exited, all sorts of stuff that doesn't really fall under "Objective-C developer." Not exactly covered in the Stanford course. I'm not usually so arrogant, but it's frustrating.

Do you market yourself that way? You have to tell people what they're supposed to see you as, and then they'll decide whether it's true or if you're just pulling their leg.

That said, I agree with the other posters and think you should definitely take a break and allow yourself to drift into the next big thing.
It's not just DB. What about 3rd-party Web Services (Facebook, Amazon, etc).

Also, can you run the whole thing in your continuous integration build? Setting up Database to run on a CI server sometime is problematic (depending on how you setup your CI, if you're using Amazon EC2 instances...). Rails solved this problem to some extend by using SQLite but one needs to install + configure SQLite for various machines.

Speed is another thing. The more you write tests that hits the DB, your automation-test will take a performance hit and you'll have to do something eventually.

What if you have caching by utilizing some sort of caching server? that needs to be installed and configured as well.

What if the only way to test the code is to deploy it to the server and write raw HTTP GET/POST because those are the only entry point?

In 2011, where there are better tools and known practice, I don't think we should labelled some of these practices as YAGNI and Premature Optimization.

First of all, it's not YAGNI if you have to refactor or write another framework, tools, or some sort of patches in order to have an acceptable build time.

Second, it's not Premature Optimization if the tools, the libraries, and the environment provide you with ways to implement them in no time.

I think the excuse of Premature Optimization is used a lot in a context where it doesn't mean what it supposed to mean.
The Human Cost of Deadlines
If you have the runway, bum around. Take the time and enjoy it. Work on what interests you. And don't let yourself be jerked around by some false "engineering background" stigma, you are clearly a kick ass hacker. Hack away. Good things will come (again).
I think that Microsoft will be find themselves forced to support WebGL.

Why?

Games.

WebGL is really impressive technology. The combination of a widely-deployed widely-used language (Javascipt) with high performance graphics (WebGL) make for a surprisingly capable platform for cross-platform game development. Once WebGL arrives on mobile and a full screen gets added on the desktop, I think it will become very, very popular.

Of course, the graphics capabilities aren't ask good as full-power OpenGL or Direct3D, but they're plenty good enough for a lot of applications.

This is why I think that Microsoft will be forced to support it: they'll have a hard time convincing the public to buy into Microsoft's platform if the public can't play their favourite games on it.

In the meantime, Chrome Frame provides WebGL inside Internet Explorer and you don't even need admin rights to install it :-)
It's great how the same sort of folks who put out these diatribes on how easy it is to run afoul of their hiring processes will also complain about how very difficult it has been to find qualified candidates.
To save everyone some time, this is a link to the wikipedia article for passenger pigeons, a once plentiful but now extinct species that inhabited north america in large numbers. The cryptic headline is a reference to a questionable sighting of a large flock of these bird potentially numbering 3.5 billion (billion with a b).
I believe you are misunderstanding.

Pascal's Triangle is not some obscure and difficult mathematical formula you are expected to have memorized...This is not "construct Pascals Triangle and if you don't know what that is, too bad..."

It's a very simple concept and doesn't require the knowledge of anything other than simple arithmetic; any competent programmer should be able to write a program to construct one once the concept is explained to them...it's just a couple of for loops, some printfs, and straightforward logic.

That's the whole point the poster was making...really simple programming problems like fizzbuzz etc are useful at quickly weeding out people who lack very basic programming ability.

Constructing Pascals Triangle is obviously not a part of normal programming, but the ability to take an algorithm that has been described to you verbally and translate it into code is at the heart of all programming...that's what programming is basically.

If you can't do it, you are ipso facto not a real programmer.
A Letter to Code Academy students
Well designed and well organized might be a better goal. As you suggest, there does is some bound on the minimum amount of complexity inherent in the problem. The goal is to reduce the unnecessary complexity in your code. Being able to recognize and remove unnecessary complexity is difficult.
Seems pretty reasonable to me. It's obviously bad business to get involved in politics, but for these companies it's either "Take ourselves offline for temporarily or face the chance of getting put out of business forever."
I've been putting food on the table writing code every day for almost two decades along similar lines as king_magic and I also do not know what a Pascall's triangle is.
I really wish that all technology challenges were as easy to overcome, as you think they are. That would be a beautiful world.

And then it would be easy to blame companies for having products that weren't perfect.

You could discount all of their efforts to try to make something new, original, and helpful - if it weren't absolutely perfect in its first iteration.

Let's all switch to the search engine that is perfect, and does everything you describe. Since it's so easy to do, clearly there must be a search engine like that. Which one is it?

...or maybe, it's actually a really hard problem.
عالم اون لاين | المدونة الاولى فى عالم الانترنت
Damn! I even googled Signal to Noise, but didn't search hard enough. I need to pick up a copy of the book, I only own the sequel.
Same here. My impression is that the puzzle lovers turn out to be the algorithm geeks. You need a bunch of those, but I can't see how a room for of complexity analysis experts necessarily creates well-structured software.

I'm an API design geek. I've never seen a cool puzzle about API design, or something remotely related.
Dan, I remember seeing your story those 1394 days ago (only to join a few days later) and it's amazing to see what you've accomplished.

I've been working on trying to get out and do other interesting things around that aren't tech-related, mostly outdoor and alpine-related. NY area isn't exactly the outdoor paradise that some other places are, but I'm working on getting some like-minded people together to get away from the glare of displays. Get in touch with me if you're interested.

edit: If anyone else is interested, please feel free to get in touch.
I give a short and fairly simple whiteboard programming problem when I interview programmers, and I feel like the results have correlated really well with the programmers' eventual success at our company. Of course, there could be false negatives.

I watch them work and help them out as they go; I'd get a ton less info if I just looked at the finished product.

We do also have a couple of "off line" coding tasks, which are even more informative (if I had to ditch one, I'd ditch the live one).
Great idea. I'll mention that. He was coming at it from a somewhat arbitrary expanding-skillset approach, wanting to get his feet wet on the web side of things. I was explaining to him the difference between a creation that "looks" a certain way vs a creation that that "does" something.
That's a good point. If there were some openings for "startup douche", I'd apply to those. I think I'd be very qualified. :)
Was it a difficult negotiation?
Insurance Sales Jobs Are A Great Place To Start
The Biggest Mystery in the Universe According to Physicist Stephen Hawking
I think you're misunderstanding. This is not a test to see if you know what Pascals triangle is....it's a simple test of your ability to take a simple algorithm that has been explained to you and translate it into code. This is the essence of programming.

Pascal's triangle is simple a triangle which starts at 1 and where each number in the next row is the sum of the two numbers above it, with 0 being assumed for numbers on the edge.

A program to produce one is nothing more than a couple for-loops, printf, and some basic logic.
Smart but unmotivated in school?
Focus On What You Do Best
What's most surprising here is that these lawmakers are being bought off for so little, especially when you consider how much money the backers of these special interest groups have, and even more so when you consider how much financial damage these laws will cause to the average Joe and Jane Internet.
Take a break. Volunteer your times and do things you wouldn't have done or never had time to do before. Life is funny in that if you keep on walking, you'll end up somewhere surprising :) Good luck.
I have no idea what Pascall's triangle is. But I'm able to write bookkeeping/accounting software and webframeworks. So I guess we'll have to look for jobs elsewhere :)
Are you responsible for the puzzle involving the historical sites search with a google instant style interface? This was a long time ago and it's no longer in the archives.

I worked on that one for a looong time, and what bugged me was the screenshot of the expected interface had a result returned in like 0.05675ms or something, and I couldn't figure out how to get it that fast. It took be forever to convince myself that it was just a mock and probably should have read 0.05675s (seconds instead of milliseconds).
Out of curiosity, is there a desktop OS that provides the same level of "multitasking" application control? I mean, sometimes I want to minimize an application and I'm not interested in it doing any work. In other words, I'd like to "freeze" it at will.
Short Hair Styles for 2011,Short Hair Styles
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Nice article.

I've found too many companies lack the ability to setup a proper team in house which uses consultants beneficially to retain their intellectual capital in house.

Fun example:

I've had a recent project where I have been hired as an outsider to develop and run the core of the software to the company. At that time the customer saved money because they were only paying a part of a yearly salary to me.

As the business grew, and fast forward 5 years later, I'm still the core developer. Our relationship has matured to the point where I'm kind of an inside-outsider.

Lately they're doing a lot more work with me. They're growing. The 5 years I've invested and billed honestly through has paid them dividends.

What happens? They want to save money by bringing in a developer in house. Someone's been calculatoring a little much. The most interesting part, they want me to manage (but not manage) that person.

I let them know that I can't run a second off-site daycare because I have to be on call 8 hours a day for someone outside my office. If they choose to transition to an internal team and no longer use my services, I'm happy to do the knowledge transfer and training as they would like, but I can't change my business.

A lot of companies are in this boat -- quite often getting into custom software development, not knowing the first thing about software. I believe this partly happens because there's a lot of business problems people are trying to solve with technology, without understanding how technology is built or maintained.