skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Recommendation for Online Store Software
My friend's parents own a (physical, actual building) adult clothing store[lingerie/costumes]. It's extremely profitable.

They asked me (10+ years programming on Linux, mastery of C; familiar enough to hack x86 assembly / GPU / ruby / python / haskell code; can read php / javascript / actionscript) for assistance with building an online store.

They already have an artistically talented graphic designer. The question is, what software to use for:

1) running the backend of the online store
2) processing credit card / payments
3) automatically sending orders for shipment
4) logging everything [for data mining & finding consumer patterns]

Given background knowledge of:
1) I have worked through parts of the Ruby on Rails 3rd edition book for fun and
2) They aren't 'innovating' in building a better online store / better web2.0 website; the goal is just to sell online what they're already selling in the physical store

I believe the right solution is to:

1) find some existing open source / commercial ( < $100 / month) software that handles all this
2) throw the store online, see how profitable selling this online is
3) rewrite everything [server, credit card processing, shipment] if the commercial solution's over head (inefficiency, or transaction costs) is a big deal (i.e. when volume is high)

The questions are:

1) does the analysis for using pre-existing online software instead of rolling our own sound right?

2) if so, what existing solutions [open source or commercial] do you suggest

3) if not, why? and what should I read up on / learn?

Thanks!
Geez, how elitist can you get? I just started coming here because there's more programming related stuff that sometimes doesn't hit /r/programming, but I haven't seen any evidence that people here are somehow more sophisticated or something than people on reddit. Seems about the same to me, except without the pun threads, and the layout is similar but slightly worse than reddit (like how replying opens a new window).
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You could probably turn that into 100 reasons to (or not to)...

A big one is that these are businesses more difficult to sell.
Because it's very stressful.
Not everyone can work at Google or Fog Creek, and outside of the protected bubbles of the major tech centers, software work tends to be a tedious grind.

My experience is that it doesn't matter where you work; 90% of programming isn't on the "cool" parts, the parts that other people see. It's on the bread and butter, the nuts and bolts. Working on a trading system at a bank probably isn't so different from working on AdSense at Google, or on a telco switch at Ericcson or WoW at Blizzard.
I wonder how Joel would react to someone using gay as a pejorative on his forums.
The same guy who predicted collapse of USSR, is predicting the collapse of U.S.
I doubt those types continue pushing and exploring

Ageism is rampant in the IT industry. Can you blame people for migrating to "safe" jobs when they have families to support?

I've often thought, if I ever start a company, I'm going to exclusively hire 50-somethings (I'm in my 30s now).
Indie Game Developer does 100 day protest Nintendo
Although based on his "map"....I have no idea how anyone is taking him seriously.
In a previous life (before I had a wife and kids), I had both money and balls and used to do a lot of dirt bike riding.

This same argument used to come up then too, in regard to the European bikes (KTM and Husky) vs the Japanese ones. Essentially, people would get upset that their new European bike, for which they had paid a substantial premium over an equivalent Japanese bike, would still break and require maintenance. I've owned both a KTM and a Husky (plus a Honda and a Kawasaki), and can attest to the fact that they are just pieces of machinery, like everything else. But... (and this is the bit people find hard to understand) ... the Euro bikes had something the Japanese ones didn't; something that made you forgive their mechanical woes and their extreme price. Man I miss those days...
This is why I hugely prefer shopping online to shopping at a store. Even not counting the time it takes to drive there, at a real store you are the store's bitch, to manipulate for maximum benefit. An online store, on the other hand, is your bitch--it has to attract you right away to the things you're looking for, rather than prolong contact with those for as long as possible.
You find them at big companies. I knew some great coders in their 40s and 50s at SAP. They mostly weren't the "I could rewrite this whole subsystem this weekend" sorts, more "I've solved variations on this problem since before you could write your name. If you'll shut up for a second I'll show you how it's done."

I think there are plenty of places where coding wisdom is valued. They're just not the same places, generally, that thrive on geek bravado.
They're covering tax on it, and doing an extra payroll run to make sure this gets to Googlers hands in time for Xmas. Seems pretty okay to me.

People have to realize, Google's stock has not only flatlined in the past year, but has taken a massive pounding. Their spend-now-ask-later methodology had to go at some point. I know many companies who wouldn't give their employees a cell phone, or any sort of bonus.
<shameless_plug>
You can always come to Hackers and Founders if you're in the Bay Area. We have a Meetup coming up on the 13th. http://www.hackersandfounders.com/
</shameless_plug>
They're easier to sell; they just sell for much less.
Seems like what he's describing as anticresis is a form of <a href="http://www.nolo.com/definition.cfm/Term/639E3D61-87F1-4663-9...">shared equity mortgage</a> enforced by some interesting informal arrangements.

That writeup includes some of today's most astounding terminologizing. I believe "habitation services" sits in logical place of "housing" at some point there.
Pure devil Haskell is awesome(not as a real candidate obv), my new desktop background.
"Notice how all the garbage fake quote sites out there never cite any references?" - DHH.
> They're ugly and crap because of the extra cost.

Crap, maybe, but not ugly. I find it hard to believe that the complicated ugly of US cars is less costly to manufacture than the clean lines of a VW. I think it's far more likely that the people deciding who designs what and what designs make it to production have no taste.

Ford trends better at design than the other two. Is that because they don't suffer as much extra cost, or because they're just more competent?
better is a really subjective term here, they aren't really the same car. (e.g. the IS300 is ugly and fast, the IS250 AWD is luxury and more useful than the rear wheel drive IS300)
where would they be getting it from? It's not at the top of piratebay.
Ask HN: New Years Resolution(s)?
I want to know what your resolutions are for 2009. I know these lists are bullshit most of the time, but what's the harm?

I'll start first:

- Get Healthier (not just losing weight, but eating better and drinking less soda/sugar drinks)

- Learn how to use Photoshop

- Read more Marketing/Business/Entrepreneurship books that I tend to push off/forget about (the pile under my desk)

- Start blogging...(again)

- Start coding again + learn a new language (I'm thinking Python)

- Make a full time income online and move out (currently making a part-time income)

- Get onto the HN leader board (long shot)

I have more but I want to keep the list short and knock off one at a time. What's on your list?
The guy seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of "how stuff works" and seems to have predicted a future similar to the fate suffered by the USSR although the circumstances under which each was forged are completely different.

I also like how he tries to deliver this theory as completely devoid of anti-American sentiment.
Actually, your title is not correct. Igor Panarin predicts the collapse of the US. Emmanuel Todd predicted the collapse of the USSR in 1976. They are two different people.
- live healthier

- learn Python (I wrote this one before I read the 5th item of the above)

- save/invest more money

- spend less time on HN

- figure out how to monetize my free time and then do it

- set up linux and mac os x boxes in addition to my windows box
"They’re losing because every car costs $2,000 more to build due to higher wages and health care. That’s it. End of story."

If this is really the case than the US government should have agreed to some sort of specific bailout for the health care and benefits wages which are really dragging these companies down. If Toyota can work with US labor (well kind of, see source below) than there is no reason that the big three should not be able to.

Interesting side story. Toyota is worried because "Labor costs as a percentage of sales are growing faster than Toyota's profit margin" and there is now talk of unionizing to sustain labor wages. One of their own senior employees is quoted as saying, "I'm more than willing to work with that company to keep my job. But when they just take it because they want more, I don't agree with it at all."
(http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008112120001)

If Toyota gets caught up in this UAW mess too, I'm not sure how any company will produce in the US. Is there any foreseeable way jobs can stay here if the unions won't let the companies operate profitably?
Don’t be a Facebook whore
Oh I am (and I voted for you guys), but what Github has done in under a year is nothing short of amazing. IMHO they should be a contender for startup of the year.
Right, but that's sort of a strawman. I was mainly referring to this:

But he said he has enough anecdotes that it feels statistical to him.
They forgot the lack of codec support. Having to convert any movies I want to watch is a bitch.

Why I spent $250 on it? I have no idea.
Every village needs an idiot pg. see OP's handle
I think this statement is mired in sample bias.

What companies are you comparing YC companies to? Other successful companies or a random sample of other startups that are non-YC? Particularly with the examples of Microsoft and Google, your analysis is historical. In their pre-public-company days you may have been lured into making the same type of statement in regards to them because any business they were involved in at the time was probably minimally visible from the outside just as it is with many YC companies now. There is a lot going on behind the scenes that you probably don't know about and thus cannot consider. That is the nature of private companies.
- get things done instead of thinking what new year resolutions I want for next year.
I'm another student / designer / entrepreneur. Maybe it'd be worth talking? My portfolio: http://sicret.net

My email is in my profile.
I predicted that a tower I made out of toothpicks would collapse a few years ago. And it did.

Now I'm predicting that the Empire State Building will collapse. I must be right, I've done it before.

Even if he is the guy who predicted the USSR's collapse, that's meaningless now.

Also, Mexico is nowhere near powerful enough to control/influence that much of the US, so that part is clearly wrong.

The other parts are at least theoretically possible but still pretty unlikely.
Ask HN: Thoughts on Zoho CloudSQL?
I just heard about this from a friend yesterday. You can effectively use this with Zoho Creator as a MySQL database in the cloud. The latency, especially with some of the caching magic they do, seemed really good from what I saw. Does anyone have any theories/experiences on how well this would perform at scale?
- getting things done instead of listing an item declaring the un-usefulness of writing a list.
Bullshit.

I don't think I need any reason to support my claim. Anyone who read the article will know why.
Don't make me write you an open letter. ;p
Never seen Die Hard. Never really wanted to... I didn't think it was that big a movie.
The American people are too united by a love of their nation for this to occur.

While Soviets often had a patriotic admiration of their country, it was often framed in the sense of the USSR being better than someone else, rather than on its own merits. Also, people were more locally pariotic: Russians were more Russian and Ukrainians more Ukrainian than Soviet.

Do Americans strongly identify themselves by their home state? In my experience (as an outsider) they do in a somewhat relaxed manner, but nowhere near the extremes of their pride and hope in the United States of America as a country. The strong inter-state migration also appears to support this.
I don't believe in New Year's Resolutions, much like I don't believe in a state of "I _will do_ something." You won't do something if you aren't already doing it, unless a major force compels you.

Going to the gym and having a healthy diet is not a "new year's resolution." It's a lifestyle. You have to do it for your entire life, otherwise why even bother starting?
Kind of... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152...
It's funny how similar some of mine are. Or maybe it's not funny at all, maybe that's why we're all here...

- Start blogging again

- Learn Python properly (I know a bit, but would like to be comfortable/fluent)

- Lose some weight

but also (and these are optimistic/long-term, but hey):

- Really work to grow my client base, further my business's reputation, etc

- Release one of my as-yet-unfinished SaaS apps for some passive income

- Get an office and my first employee (currently freelancing from home office)
I paid someone in India to delete all Facebook wall posts for about $40, and then I removed all of the people I don't talk to anymore. It feels pretty good--gets rid of a lot of crap I wouldn't have been interested in seeing or reading anyway.

Aside from that, my Facebook usage has declined quite a bit and I don't really feel like I'm missing anything. I do hang out on HN a lot though ;)
I just heard about this from a friend yesterday. You can effectively use this with Zoho Creator as a MySQL database in the cloud. The latency, especially with some of the caching magic they do, seemed really good from what I saw. Does anyone have any theories/experiences on how well this would perform at scale?

Link to architecture page here: http://cloudsql.wiki.zoho.com/Zoho-CloudSQL-Architecture.htm...
A new slinkset for New Year's resolutions:
http://resolutions.slinkset.com/
"The professor says he's convinced that people are taking his theory more seriously. People like him have forecast similar cataclysms before, he says, and been right."

I was going to say that this is obviously rubbish and if the professor is spouting it then it reflects very badly on his hypothesis. But then I thought about what I would say if some journalist asked an insightful question like 'this is all rubbish and can't possibly be true, right?'

The most charitable way of looking at it is: maybe he was trying to remind people how wide the bounds of possibility are and that ruling out the prediction without examining his methods would be premature.
The award itself doesn't matter, but the press the winners get is very valuable (especially for bootstrapped startups).
One of my resolutions is to move out. From your logic, since I'm not already living on my own and I don't have anything forcing me to move out (getting kicked out, etc) then I won't ever move out. You're discounting self-motivation from your equation. I want to move out, I have set my mind to it and have started putting the pieces together to do so, therefore I will.

I totally agree with you that getting healthy/losing weight is a lifestyle change, but you have to start at some point. It's something I am working to continue into the new year, not just a task to work towards starting Janauary 1st.

You don't have any goals in your life?
I use HN and twitter a lot more than facebook. Facebook's best use for me personally has been sharing links with friends, and when I go to X city I can click on it to see if I have any friends there.
One of the best features FB ever added was "block all invites from this person". Problem solved with minimal drama.
I think these days 'gay' is just used to mean 'lame'.

For example. "You're using VB? That's so gay".
"You use K&R style? Don't be so gay".

I wouldn't take offense personally. Just like being called a girl/boy/whatever isn't offensive, just funny.
I think that was just like a shock tactic to really get people's attention at the presentation. It might be more of good presenting (start with a bang so people will be interested) than actually taking delight in America dying to that extent.

(That said, some of his comments make it seem that maybe that is why he made the map.)
"He based the forecast on classified data supplied to him by FAPSI analysts, he says."

How credible is his source?
And now IBM is one of the biggest linux supporters. If MS ever loses its walled garden, you'll see it preaching standards & open protocols loud as anyone else.
DHH was probably paraphrasing Kay's quote, and assuming the readers of the interview would be familiar with the original.
Texas alone would be more powerful than Mexico.
I like that he's asking you to accept a theory of his, but I want to hear both sides. Preferably, with evidence that makes sense, not just preconceived notions.

Nations have fallen to civil wars and dissolution before. I'm a little skeptic to just think that we're vulnerable to that, but at the same time, we're not invincible either. It would be silly to think that nothing bad could happen to the US.

Right now, it's just speculation based on classified information that may or may not be true.
This would be a much more interesting question if you were to give specific examples of how specific YC startups are "spineless", and perhaps how they could be less "spineless". Without that, I'd simple respond: "They're not."
The usual arguments against using money as motivation are that (a) money is not enough to keep you motivated during the "darkest of times" and (b) even if you get there the money will probably not make you happy.

But Mark Cuban _was_ motivated enough to take his company public. And Mark Cuban likes to make extravagant purchases (e.g. The Dallas Mavericks). In a nutshell - he seems to enjoy the billionaire's lifestyle. So money was probably the right motivational force for Cuban.
Sometimes a related articles widget comes in handy -- came across this when looking at the page for osCommerce (probably the most widely used OSS shopping cart):

http://pedia.directededge.com/article/Comparison_of_shopping...

Actually, some of the other related articles are more useful. Magento looks cool.

http://pedia.directededge.com/article/Magento
"Anticresis"is both the legal and the folk term for these things. I didn't just make that name up. I really mean "folk"-- people with semi-functional knowledge of essential finance. As for "services flow", that's straight out of microeconomics 101. Otherwise, I'm usually too preoccupied about avoiding repetition, so I keep trying to find synonyms. I don't believe I'm coming up with any pseudo-fancy neologism, but if I did, that's just because of my deficient english. Me try to write good but sometimes me makes mistakes.

Shared equity mortgage is somewhat similar to anticresis, only entirely different. No equity or property rights are transferred in anticresis, on one hand, and on the other habitation rights are kept until the loan is repaid, so it's more like collateralized debt, other than the collateral is ex ante "transferred" (but not really).
Interview of Emmanuel Todd (2005) http://www.truthout.org/article/emmanuel-todd-the-specter-a-...
Last year's NYR was to quit smoking. A year later I'm happy to report I've been smoke free for a year and am now actually disgusted by the smell of smoke.

So this year's resolution is to focus on making a bunch of mobile games and make a million by this time next year. I figure since I'm on a roll...

Can't be that much harder than quitting smoking.
The word gay is an interesting example mainly because it originally meant happy or carefree then also meant homosexual and now also means stupid/dumb (for some people).
I believe New Year's resolutions are like the fast food of goals/personal development: easy to come up with, may make you feel better in the short-term, and like fast food.. exit your system quickly.

Do yourself a favor and work towards your goals every day. Even fifteen minutes a day accumulates compound interest over time.
Two things come to mind:

1. Reach profitability with tarsnap. (This shouldn't be hard... I'm almost there already.)

2. Be a better friend to my friends. (This will hopefully be easier once resolution #1 is achieved, due to lower stress levels.)
Agreed. I know it's still not politically correct, but when I land in the US and get a rental car, I still ask politely for anything as long as it's not an American car :/

Well, I try to scoot around the issue asking for "anything japanese", or german, etc etc

If you get saddled with an American car, it can only go in straight lines, and probably has a big sofa as the front seats. They're just ridiculously bad cars. It's like they froze time in the 50s and kept making cars exactly the same.
Not making resolutions. Whatever happens, happens.
* Attend lots of comferences/meetups
* Get funded
* Launch paid for product
* Grow advertising revenue
* Sell the company
* Profit!!
This is why I love Hacker News. Bullshit is made known.
Nope, it was an Inspiron, and I was expecting a big hassle, delays, and the whole messy dance, but it was quite easy. The German support guy who I reached checked my information, and asked whether I'd prefer someone to come around or for them to mail the disk, and both being free, I chose to have someone come by with the disk as it was faster.

I guess I may have gotten lucky, but it really left a good impression on me.
Yeah, it looks pretty dumb.

On a somewhat related note, if we folded the federal government and signed a free-trade and migration pact between the 50 states, would we miss anything?
I've observed my naturally social friends (some of whom can go up to a group solo and initiate conversations) and I have come to the conclusion that it is a combination of (1) pattern recognition and (2) confidence. (1) - They have done it so many times they don't consciously grok about what they are doing, letting them be more truly aware/in the moment. (2) - In Daniel Goelman's "Emotional Intelligence" he cites studies where if you are nervous you can make someone else feel your nervousness/unease and make them feel uneasy (because their brain is empathizing at a sub-conscious level). Bonus observation - the universe rewards boldness.

As always, easier to read than to do.

I'd like to share a bonus tip from a master conversationalist/networker I met:

If you find yourself stuck with another solo person in a lagging interaction/conversation - do not shake hands and say "it was nice to talk to you. See ya" Instead state your intention and let them make a choice: "I'd like to talk to that group starboard. Come with me" This is powerful because you are taking the lead - and people always will appreciate leadership. If they do not want to continue hanging out with you, you've given them a graceful exit stage-right.
I'm not sure that online shops are any less likely to try "to manipulate for maximum benefit". The palette may change (fresh bread smells & video surveillance get replaced by cookies and Referer fields) but the motivations and biases stay the same.
1. Collect underwear

3. Profit