skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What's wrong with my site? Did I just pick a bad idea?
I suspect that I am in a position that a lot of the users of this site have been in, or will be in.

About 1 year ago, my wife was looking for a small business she could run to make a few extra dollars. I had seen a few custom trail mix websites, and realized that I could beat them all with a site that showed you what your mix was gonna look like BEFORE you order. I took two weeks off from work and coded the site. Here's a link to the coolest part of the site http://www.trailmyx.com/createMyx

Once the flurry of orders from our friends and family died down, we settled into about 1 order per week. Not very exiting.

We tried advertising with Google AdWords, but nothing I tried was profitable. Furthermore, everyone I've ever attempted to contact (food bloggers mostly) have either ignored us, or flaked out on us.

I'm taking the next two weeks off from work to work on the site. What should I do with this time? What is it missing? At what point do you throw in the towel and try something else?
More battery and less heat using a two video card macbook pro
Introducing the Week Chart
Some sites lowercase all passwords after they are input to "help" users who hit caps lock or are otherwise challenged by case sensitivity. Then you have DES crypt (as once used by Gawker), which only uses the first 8 characters of the password. A site which uses either or both of these methods may happily let you type in a password of any length or complexity, but the version they use will have significantly lower entropy. I've even seen sites silently strip special characters.
I often wonder if Amazon's acquisitions of Zappos and Quidsi (Diapers.com, Soap.com, etc.) are simply to experiment with different "features" without risking changes to Amazon.com.
Nigger gibberish.

How do I put this... you know tinker-toys and legos? Electical engineering is like tinker-toys. You don't seem to have the knack for how they are used.

God says...
sharper morning foundation brute Guadeloupe indexes Defects
poor Affrighted sank real divination Commandments Rhetoric
displease ill wilfulness calleth Master abhorred contradictory
refund manner provisions unseen bewailing recollect similitude
seductive eight taughtest high stars strangely whereas
unstayed readiness outset mockery agonised folly sayings
bestowed acknowledge proof Bangladesh privately ice_cream
abase wallow prescribes incurred multiplying shoulders
remaining rouse Same kludge testimonies one_more_time
wondering mother Vermont strengthenedst incurable cakes
inspired repose Alexandria to_infinity_and_beyond enthralled
full morrow Omnipotent destroyers lowlily heresy of solemn
pursued auditors Catholics harsh vent extremely dear consciousness
augmented Legal overcast I'm_beginning_to_wonder basket_case
circles sever Romania blessedness herein observes trusting
Solomon enlightened Courage statue imports failing monastery
mute sorrowfulness True enlarged Powers believed Indonesia
Egyptian purpose Redemption silversmiths departest many
sublimely shouted restest Apostle conversations joining
obscurely suck these_cans_are_defective mentioning Somalia
consulters contented does thankful waged mingle sanctuary
discordant prayed Colombia grief replied Universe Thee
leisure enounce DOMAIN gate remission lesser because thanks
dejectedness images True forsakest stormy profligate

You want an FPGA and digital logic. Analog and IP numbers is gibberish. You gonna have a D-to-A convertor with 4 billion voltage levels and a comparitor. Gibberish.

Needs to be boring digital logic, not analog.

For analog, go study OP-AMPs and signals and systems.

God says...
uncertainty trembled pursues perfected besprinkling charioteer
sings substantial entireness garlands fretted Before mistaken
monstrous giving discretion self father thrown school
Italian Deity town mislike parties wives indemnify loosen
descend payest insult forsakest victorious sits dispute
hesitating defile round qed confidentially announcement
listen_buddy beggary

Go study a push-pull power audio amplifier. Transisters seem to be used in only a handful of configurations -- emmitter-follower is common.

God says...
happy instinctive councillor younger Jordan striking rejected
departed reconcilement surmount makers corner recorded
spread justly fiercest freed anyone willed commendable
sometime incorruption now_that_I_think_about_it real
> Because blogging and marketing is so very tough?

I agree with the rest of your comment, to an extent, but I strongly disagree with this line.

The act of blogging is easy, sure - it's just typing. The act of marketing, or at least some subset of it, can be easy, I'm sure. Doing these things effectively, so that they actually drive business, is hard.

Dismissing blogging and marketing by sarcastically saying they're "so very tough" is the same sort of bullshit that we get pissed off about when people say "I have this great idea for a website/app, all I need is a coder!"

You're dismissing an entire profession without regard for the hard work that those in that profession put into their jobs.
I only read it to find out what "monocarpic" means. It failed to explain so I had to go look it up. To save everyone else the trouble of reading this rather content-free excessively-large-fonted self-referential not-quite-blog-post:

Monocarpic plants are those that flower, set seeds and then die. Other terms with the same meaning are hapaxanth and semelparous.

The antonym is "polycarpic", but as far as I can figure out the whole concept is unrelated to Polycarp:

Polycarp (69 – 155) (Ancient Greek: Πολύκαρπος) was a 2nd century Christian bishop of Smyrna.[1] According to the Martyrdom of Polycarp he died a martyr, bound and burned at the stake, then stabbed when the fire failed to touch him.[2] Polycarp is regarded as a saint in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran churches.
The Flame Explained
Platforms for Big Data
A real developer who loves his project would never outsource major aspects of the project.

Obligatory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

Secondly, I'll posit that a "true developer" (whatever that means) certainly might outsource "major aspects of his project," if he's trying to make a successful business from his project, and he needs to dedicate bandwidth to other areas of the business. Creating a business is more than just writing code.

As the old saying goes "The scarcest resource in a startup is founder bandwidth." If you can amplify your bandwidth by doing some tactical outsourcing, then you do it, as far as I'm concerned.

In fact, this post got some gears turning in my own head, and has me considering whether or not Fogbeam Labs could justify outsourcing some development work, to help speed things along. All three of the founders still work dayjobs at the moment, so a little additional development help could actually be a good thing. I'm not saying we will do it, just that I'm seriously considering the possibility for the first time.
Forty years after Watergate, investigative journalism is at risk
In making an animated movie heaps of money goes in all sorts of places besides the animation itself. Writers, directors, actors and all the other production crew folks etc... distribution, advertising and so on...

Who knows what the break down is - and whether the choice to use source is based on cost efficiencies alone. Perhaps they are going for a particular visual style... I would have thought the source engine is sufficiently old enough to give such a film an interesting retro aesthetic...
Whether a particular build of MySQL or MariaDB is vulnerable, depends on
how and where it was built. A prerequisite is a memcmp() that can return
an arbitrary integer (outside of -128..127 range). To my knowledge gcc
builtin memcmp is safe, BSD libc memcmp is safe. Linux glibc
sse-optimized memcmp is not safe, but gcc usually uses the inlined
builtin version.

How do you know, how the Ubuntu devs compiled their mysql server?
Sal Khan's MIT Commencement Address
Local Motors Rally Fighter: The First-Ever Creative Commons Car
Do the Eyes Have It?
My thoughts:

- "Trailmix" is too generic. Do an alternate version of the site named hackersnacker.com or something like that and market it as the perfect food to have in a bowl next to your keyboard. In line with this, add chocolate-covered coffee beans to the mix along with other hacker-freiendly treats (sweet tarts, etc). Sell it to the audience you know.

- Anti-alias the various ingredients so that the images look more natural. The white boarders around the nuts don't make it seem very appetizing.

- Add a facebook "like" button so your friends and family can get the social graph rolling.
I'm really wondering if your post is sarcasm. But I'll bite. To wit:

>A real developer who loves his project would never outsource major aspects of the project.

Excuse me, but that's just the 'No True Scotsman' fallacy. You don't get to decide what makes someone a 'real developer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

>while dealing with IMPORTANT issues such as database architecture, setting up the server, etc.

The primary focus of the founder should be to get paying customers. These paying customers could care one iota about Codd's 12 Rules, 3NF, and Chef/Puppet configuration. If you truly believe that those things are more important than getting paying customers, then you, my friend, have a hobby, not a business. The IMPORTANT thing is "getting them to sign on the line which is dotted." Not mucking about at the CLI.

>To suggest that you want to concentrate on the "business aspect" simply means that you don't want to do the hard part. By outsourcing, the article states: "I have more time and I can spend this time for marketing and blogging". ... Right. Because blogging and marketing is so very tough?

Sigh. The common engineers fallacy of thinking that creating is enough. It is not. Steve Jobs was a salesman. And I can assure you that marketing is not as simple as throwing up a wordpress blog and a facebook page. It takes real work. Which I suspect you would know if you'd ever done it.

HN: You don't get rich by agonizing over data structures and algorithms (unless you're Google). You get rich by leveraging resources so the multiplier effect works to your advantage. If the most efficient path to getting paying customers is to outsource, then do so. Kudos to OP.

</rant>
Time is the real currency.
> a complete medical record is worth more on the black market than a credit card number.

Whoa! I had no idea. Why are complete medical records valuable on the black market?
Good thinking, the only listing is by me and it's just a test post. Will add this, thanks
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Yeah, my immediate reaction to this is that I just want a real Bushido Blade sequel. The most underrated fighting game of all time IMO.
I see your points here and understand your frustration. Marketing / blogging are still important to the success of a project.

Though in order of importance, I feel it's behind the actual codebase. For the author to suggest that it's okay to outsource development to have more time doing marketing and blogging when he refer's to himself as a developer is just plain ridiculous.
I could believe it.

The period from 1996 to 2000 had many many hundreds of Mac OS programmers rewriting and adapting existing technologies over, much of it C++ not ObjC -- classic apis (aka Carbon), Quicktime, Sound Manager, Quartz, font management, speech, probably lots more I can't think of.

So that's hundreds of programmers over two years or more. And to introduce C++ compatibility into shedloads of new code takes a single person half the time? Probably while simultaneously teaching himself about the intricacies of a new hardware platform and hundreds of big libraries he's probably never coded for before?

I think it sounds impressive.
Running SAP projects - the path from waterfall to agile
Well put, especially the last line section: at least be familiar and competent enough in the language your product or company uses. As he says, no need to be an expert, but be able to at least understand it.
Shift + right-click, not Ctrl.
How the hell does this warrant a patent? There seems to be nothing that is either novel or innovative about this particular "invention". Oh wow, unique codes as a way of limiting free participation, absolute genius. Somebody give this guy a Nobel and Tenure, oh wait...
I think you're underselling the challenge in the parts of the business that aren't coding. Which is exactly why this guy's decision is such a bad one.

He's basically said "I have skill set X, which I'm trained in and have been honing for years. For my company, I need skill sets X and Y. So I'll do Y and find someone else to do X."

No matter what X and Y are, that's just the wrong way to solve that problem. The key issue in this case being that he is assuming the marketing/user acquisition stuff is so easy that he can just pick it up on the fly with no prior experience.
I once read a Citibank's report on China's real estate market that might give insights to the answer to that. The report is lengthy, as it addresses many questions, but the core argument for the craziness in China's real estate market is that it is the most common form of (long-term) investment in China, and the government is the biggest beneficiary of it.

Basically, if you look at an asset breakdown of personal wealth, real estate will account for 65% of all investments in China, while in other countries like the US or in the EU, that number is close to 20% (source: World Bank & Citibank's Investment Research and Analysis). Other than that, because of a reform on the tax sharing mechanism (in 1994), local governments are highly dependent on the real estate market, as 40-55% of their direct income comes from land sales and property-related taxes. That gives the government a very high incentive to keep property prices up and the real estate market booming.

I can email the report to anyone interested in it (sorry, can't just upload to the public here, I worked at Citibank once, could get me into trouble), just send an email to me (rafaelcamera@gmail.com) and remember to put HN on the subject.
I didn't say I didn't understand your point. I get where you're coming from, and I don't necessarily disagree. I just didn't like the sarcastic dismissal of an entire profession.
The value of IP laws doesn't depend upon the (fabricated) motivations of those who created it.

So, yeah, it is an ad hominem.
Please tell me that paint program UI picture is for real (as a UI) and is not just a cute photo.
Hitting up 99 Designs is like throwing spaghetti at a wall in hopes that something sticks, well that's an almost apt description. I guess the biggest difference is that you are hiring N-'designers' who probably aren't very skilled at their craft so they have to lock into gladiatorial combat for mere dollars to each make a noodle and throw it at the wall for you. They won't care about your identity, and the quality of what you get will largely depend on how good you happen to be at scoping an illustration project and wrangling amateurs to get results.

With this method you will have some sort of graphic to slap on a site or slather on a t-shirt, but you will be extremely lucky if it stands the test of time or even stands out in your market. A good logo is one thing that sets apart the amateurs from the professionals. Facebook knew this and that's why they went to Cuban Council (http://www.cubancouncil.com/).

You could just find a designer/firm who's work you admire, see if they do identity work, speak with them about your brand, and collaborate with them (they will guide you if they are any good at what they do, and they will always have your best interest at heart) to create something everyone (including your customers) will love.

Sadly, OP's description of "Startup" logo design is what is currently popular, and many people don't realize that this is not how the best logotypes/icons are made.
The Great Startup Migration to San Francisco
Cool. :) "HackerSnacker.com"... Or perhaps "BackPackerFuel.com"... You know, chocolate covered espresso beans are already on there.
You are not paid based on these metrics, they are there so that the employer can have an idea of what's happening. I'm sure everyone will be very pleased when you deliver a project update on time even if you record 0 key strokes.
I think the post you were responding to was just nit-picking the logic that illegal == immoral (or wrong). I don't see anything in that post that states what you are railing against here.
> I accept to take this risk to be able to reach developers that I will pay 4 to 5 times less than the local developers in my country.

And you'll typically need 4-5x as many of them, and/or they bill 4-5x as many hours. This is not theory. I've seen this happen in reality, over and over again. Does this happen in all cases? No. But I've seen it happen enough that I make decisions based on it. And look at Mythical Man Month for a primer on why larger teams tend to be worse than smaller ones (worse efficiency, more communication overhead, more cheese-moving, etc.)

Having flashbacks to the worse quality startups I've seen that had 5+ person teams in Uruguay, Pakistan, etc. when they could have had the same work accomplished by 1-2 more elite, and local, same timezone, same culture/language, more "expensive" (nominally, but not overall) Americans or Europeans.
It would be interesting to analyze a large body of headlines to see whether exist many pairings of similarly worded headlines with and without question marks.
Rob Go: What to do instead of founding a company. Part II.
Why didn't they go with Unity which is much much cheaper?
The blog described the problem. But basically, you have to click more to go to where you want.
Try to connect to MySQL as root with a made-up password several hundred times. If you successfully connect, the bug is present and you know how it was compiled.
Jobs with memory (and their effect on our well-being)
What's wrong with tab bars? I mean, most iOS apps use it and if you need more navigation items, you devote one tab for "More". the Android version of Instagram does this the right way.
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Twitter’s First TV Ad Is Aimed at Advertisers
Source is a pain to work with for animation. Just ask this guy: http://accursedfarms.com
Excellent viewpoint. The business aspect and getting paying customers is important. A marketers job is important as well. I don't mean to step on toes. However, keep in mind that the author of this post refers to himself as a developer.

It's like Steve Jobs saying he is a great salesman but wants to outsource selling his vision. It makes no sense to me.

Therefore that is why I wrote what I wrote.
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I'm interested in what you guys have to say about this topic.

A recent post on HN, "A good day's work" (http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3180-a-good-days-work), reminded me of this issue, specifically the problem of not being able to mentally disengage from work if you have a certain type of job.

Do you know of any studies as to the level of happiness of people with "jobs with memory" (long term projects) vs "jobs with no memory" (e.g. waiters, cashiers, ER doctors)?
My thoughts on MessagePack
I'm interested to see how this pans out - the reality is, the lions share of the costs for animated features have nothing to do with rendering. I'm concerned they are buying the worst of both worlds with this approach: they still have to create good looking art assets, they still need to animated them well, but they are further constrained by the confines of what they can do in a realtime engine, with a toolchain that is not optimized for this type of work.

I do think that there is a ton to be gained from tightly coupled previs pipelines that don't incur rendering overhead. Ideally the artists should be able to see what they are working on in a form that is as close to the final render as possible, but without the wait. Systems that can offer this with low overhead cut down on the amount of time the artists need to get the results they want tremendously, especially in situations where your team isn't big enough to have modeling, texturing, animation, fx and lighting departments that are completely siloed.
My favorite joke about this adage is that the following headline goes with it perfectly.

A news editor prints a story about the adage, with the headline: Betteridge's Law of Headlines, is it true?
Valve has a working relationship with production studio Brown Bag Films, according to Kotaku, and agreed to license the engine for Deep.

I'm curious if you actually need a license to use an engine in a film. Presuming you produce all your own assets and otherwise have an appropriate license for the engine to render it once, is there any precedent for requiring a license to perform it as well? I'm assuming you don't need a performance license for NLE software like premiere or vegas?
This is exactly why the outsourcing craze fizzled out for the most part. I remember when I was in school for CS in 2002/2003 there were people who would tell me that I was earning a useless degree, as all programming jobs would end up overseas.

The bottom line is that outsourcing looks great on paper but then just murders you with hidden costs. Delays to market, code maintainability, number of bugs, etc all go the wrong way once you outsource, but none of that is quantified on any C-level report.
In this case, I hired people to perform sentiment tagging of status updates for the training of SVM regression models. oDesk allowed me to interview more carefully and ended up working better. I wrote a quick Rails scaffold that let people rapidly tag statuses.

Edit: Something like CloudFlower might also have worked well, but I didn't want to pay for it. The key was that I needed to ensure a baseline level of quality in all of the taggings. (Although, to some extent, I could take consensus labels.)
I had the impression that NeXT had very high coding standards[1] including endian-neutrality and processor portability; I guess that went by the wayside during OS X development.

[1] Perhaps too high, considering the failure of original NeXT.
No matter what X and Y are, that's just the wrong way to solve that problem.

I don't know, If I can't do Y how am I going to hire an A player at the Y game. Being good at X means I can evaluate others in skill X.
First off, the images on the site load slowly and also are scaled into wrong aspect ratio. Pre-scale those thumbnails and set proper caching for faster loading. Every time the item is added to the mix, all the images load again for some reason. Also, please upgrade to a faster server, that's just really slow.

I'm not sure that the 'approximate image' of the mix is a huge selling point (while cool). In general, I would work on the design of the site, now it comes of a bit 'amateurish'. Try to find a nicer typeface, use larger fonts, align everything, and remove all unnecessary items (like site news, and login). Concentrate on the images in the design.

Why there's login option? I think you should just allow people to create mixes and share them easily without logging in. Just create unique url for every mix like trailmyx.com/mix/dji4r and let people share that.
Supplement Reactions During AutismTreatment
Biomedical autism intervention specialist physician, Dr. Kurt Woeller, explains how supplement reactions can happen and although they are not usually serious, they can cause behavioral issues. Certain supplement types are more likely to cause reactions than others.
Given Mr Stephenson's extremely solid knowledge of the foundations of capitalism (e.g. the System of the World trilogy) it seems especially rich. Or maybe he learned a thing or two while writing that.