skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I did start with the same as everyone else - then I remembered the HN oath - critique the startup not the entrepreneur.

Summary: it looks pretty good, but you are not explaining yourself front and center - pitch to landlords, get the money quote from down the bottom of the page, and please, this is a long haul business - get someone with deeper pockets behind you - you have traction, you have clients, you have committed your last penny - you hit tick every box. Go to SV, find angels. Get a longer runway. Put this on ANgelList now.

So, in the spirit of HN, a critique :

1. Explain the pitch better on the front page - "Landlords - get tenants to fill in applications online. Quicker, easier, can see status of all applicants instantly, and we conduct bank checks and update you in real time"

I had to dig around to understand that (and I may be wrong of course)

(Whats the competition like - I would guess this is something realtors offer routinely)

2. Front page again - no one rents the Golden Gate bridge. Try something that says rental please - give me subconcious cues to what you are selling. look at http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-illustration-13635470-your-... - ten second search brought up hundreds of possibilites.

3. The learn more page - the images on the right look like misaligned iframes - put think borders around them to indicate they are screenshots - try putting them at 45o angles to make it clearer

4. the online application - break it into manageable chunks - bootstrap does tabs - it was daunting on PC - in my iphone its pretty bad.

4. If there ever was a case for having people sign in with facebook or linkedin - this is it. Half of the info wanted from a tenant is in their profile.

5. and back to the front page <<<
"More applications per vacancy, faster inventory turnover and rapid closings. Rocket Lease has saved me $6,000 this year!">>> - its three scrolls down ! Put in in place of the iphone image. or carousel it. sell yourself on your front page. Please.

Its pretty good - I have no idea of the market in the US, but you seem like you are on a long grind to market acceptance, rather than a viral explosion. So I thin your 40K may be a short runway but good luck - and please explain yourself in the front page. As a landlord I would have walked long before understanding or seeing the money testimonial.
cperciva wrote a blog post about this: http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2009-06-24-encrypt-then-mac....
Cancer is a digital disease [VIDEO]
This is a disgusting abuse of user trust! It makes assumptions about other software and posts insinuations about you on your own twitter account!? I hope they have repercussions enough to make others considering this either think twice or be very upfront about what it intends to do.
I went through the same issues as you, and most everyone else here. Not getting e-mailed that it'll be available for purchase, vague error messages during checkout, cart randomly getting emptied, etc.

Before it was available for purchase, I was on the fence about whether or not it was actually a worthwhile purchase for me. I ultimately decided it was, but Google did everything in their power to prevent me from giving them my money. Depending on how quickly they actually get new stock in, I will probably just end up deciding that I don't actually need the phone after all.

Disappointing.
After the bait & switch and excuses for production delays with Brydge I'm very suspicious of kickstarter's with high production value videos.
Starcraft 2 HOTS Beta Key - From Amazon w/ pre-order 
Pre-order Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm and get beta access. We will email your code within 4 business days after you place your pre-order for Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm Standard or Collector’s Edition. Offers are valid when shipped and sold by Amazon.com. This offer will be extended to all existing pre-orders. Limit one per customer. Amazon reserves the right to change or terminate this promotion at any time.
What about the organizations that can't afford this pricing model? There are quite a bit of non-profits and small businesses I follow that simply can't afford to sustain this. They're not spamming me if I voluntarily chose to Like their page. I did that so I can get updates, coupons and specials. Costs will force them back to email marketing, and if that's the case we all lose.
I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine the day after he got his MBA from Pepperdine. He had been working as an engineer for about 20 years when he decided to go for the MBA. I had come across a number of MBA's in my business and was less than impressed.

At one point I asked him: What's an MBA good for?

His answer: Absolutely nothing.

He then argued that an MBA devoid of solid experience in another field, well, just didn't get reality. Academic studies don't necessarily converge with reality, at least not perfectly. In his case, having spent so many years in various engineering disciplines the advantage was that he came into the MBA program with a great deal of context in reality and came out of it with knowledge that was well founded, modulated and qualified by the reality filters he had developed over the years.

That portion of the discussion matched what I had seen. The only MBA's I had come into contact with that "got it" seemed to be those who went into the MBA program after having worked in the real world for a good while.

Would I hire an MBA? They'd really have to show me that they get reality and are not living inside of some star-trek-ish distortion field.
Understanding The Customer Data Prison
Best. Descriptive. Images. Ever. (Which best describes you?)
https://www.rocketlease.com/accounts/register/

On a serious note, I'd recommend changing those.
Getting product pricing right
No, I think it's a real issue.

The typical routes out of MBA programs are managerial or consulting roles. That's great; the degree was designed to give future managers a broad, intellectual understanding of business as practiced by large American corporations.

Startups don't have those roles. At all. If you've hired right, everybody has smart opinions and nobody needs much management. What you need is people who can get things done right now. People with experience in designing interfaces, in interviewing users, in banging out prototypes, in running ad campaigns.

MBA programs teach a lot of great stuff. But none of my friend with MBAs got significant hands-on practical experience there.
Oh certainly.

I learned a lot by doing the coursera course on it earlier this year including an intro to a whole new area of mathematics. Some sort of intro to crypto techniques and uses really ought to be mandatory for a lot of devs, certainly anyone tempted to use anything other than a well-coded TLS API or pre-provided GCM interface.

--edit--

In fact it's also very important that even when you do know what you're doing (to a greater extent than the entirely uninitiated), you don't implement this stuff yourself, because there are more attacks than you can possibly imagine.
I have used SoftLayer for years and have nothing but great things to say about them. Nothing but speed, stability, and excellent service. Thank you SL!
I recently discovered you can buy those cables for a buck each in dollar stores.
Not necessarily, if this is a Roth-401(k), then there are certainly penalty free distribution options for your personal contributions. If not, there are legal, but backdoor, ways of "investing" your traditional-401(k) into the newly found startup corporation (a family member did this recently). I think you can also take loans against a 401(k).

Either way, please consult a CPA before taking any action.
why aren't they taking pre-orders and/or back-orders?
Because it's still not worth it. I find it inconvenient too, so I'm not disagreeing with you that it would be great, but I disagree with the attitude I've seen in several comments that this Netflix isn't being open here. They've released everything they feasibly can. They're under no obligation to develop a client for the operating system you and I happen to use.

edit: I just noticed you did acknowledge the small user base. So, that being the case, are you actually arguing that some executive at Netlifx is like, "Nah - screw open source - we totally have the spare resources to develop a Linux client that will have a negligible return on investment, but they can suck it?" If it's not worth it, they won't do it. It's like accusing Linus Torvalds of not being open because he hasn't yet supported your feature-of-choice from some other OS.
If I'm not mistaken (and haven't read up on this stuff in years, so probably), the majority of encryption modes rely on XORing the stream of bits from the cipher with your plain text.

In that way, both sender and receiver need only generate the same cipher bits and apply XOR to encrypt and decrypt (meaning encryption and decryption are actually identical operations!). A side effect of XOR is that a single bit flip in the ciphertext corresponds exactly to a single bit flip in the cleartext. An attacker with knowledge of your cleartext can therefore modify it without ever needing to know the cipher parameters.

Imagine a session cookie that contains a single 32bit integer, the user ID. Now attacker knows his user ID, so he merely needs to XOR the cookie with his ID, then XOR it again with his desired ID and voila admin privileges. Wrapping the cookie in a MAC prevents this kind of manipulation.
Ask H1Bs working at startups: Has your employer filed for your greencard?
Is it mandatory for employers to file for green cards or is it optional; and thus, potentially part of the offer?

Do you intend to be with the company for the length of the greencard process, which could take years?

To founders who hire foreign workers, how do you deal with the filing of the green card?
Same.

It's probably a bit much, but I'm going to go ahead and say...

It seems somehow fitting that a company which feels entitled to $50 for a dictionary app would also feel entitled to commandeer a supposed pirate's Twitter account for public embarrassment or do something equally smug [1].

1: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4778847
True - I didn't argue it wasn't worth it.

I just stated that they do it.
Cynicism and Personal Brand
"Sandboxed" apps that can even look at the system drive and inspect its contents? Doesn't sound like much of a sandbox to me.
There are other ways to limit the onslaught of spam: user-defined filters. Facebook could have gone that way, but then, giving users control isn't lucrative.
Who cares about the phone? I will be mildly upset for a few days about their lack of care in these matters, but I will move on.

It is unacceptable because its Google, and the image that they want to convey as a trusted partner in financial transactions. Do they really think that I (or anybody else) should trust a company that exhibits this kind of attitude towards transactions with handling my mobile wallet? Not me.
Well crapbaskets.

Authentication and crypto are areas where I know I'm nowhere near good enough to tell if what i'm doing works or not, other than trying to find out what the best practices happen to be and use what seems to have a good reputation. But the only constant in this field seems to be that everything I thought I knew was fatally horribly flawed from the start and that I might as well have just stuck all of my passwords in a plaintext file called "passwords.txt" because the only thing keeping my site from getting rooted was just having a terrible site nobody ever goes to.

Still this should be an informative thread.

Crushingly depressing and informative.
I also experienced a failure of Google Wallet on another purchase.
I've used both. SoftLayer in my opinion has faster and more price efficient offerings. Always gone with them and never regret it.
Crypto: If you don't know exactly what you're doing, you're not doing it at all, no matter how hard you try. It's very hard to know if you know.

It's so hard that even when you try to "leave it to the experts" you often do that wrong as well. There seems to be no other place in programming where best practices are more important to study and observe.
The Stanford Class That Is Humanizing Silicon Valley
Here's another way to look at this.

When I subscribe to a page, I expect to get updates on new postings.

Because Facebook is using their EdgeRank to filter out those postings, I'm no longer get updates on all the postings. As such I've to go to the subscribed page manually.

No wonder I'm getting so few updates lately. Because Facebook is filtering out everything. How backwards is that?
how can be a markup language disappointing?
The Interpreter in this case IE10 can only be disappointing...
I tweeted, tried to sign in with twitter which didn't work, then eventually created a standard account via email/pass to get into the content. The majority of the content is either a direct copy as cited or in reference to a post on a different site [1]. Not really ground breaking information, other than an Excel worksheet with mildly helpful formulas relevant to the topic.

[1] http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-metrics/
My main reason: actively and repeatedly using TOR when you're a relatively high-profile military person will likely raise eyebrows, maybe even focused effort to figure out why. There are many ways to get information out of computers - taking over their account and checking their activity is probably one of the harder ones.

Other than that, you have to be very careful to use it correctly without revealing who you are, and all TOR would do in this case is (essentially) randomize your IP address. If e.g. you're consistent with using TOR for gmail and there's a time that doesn't correspond to your TOR activity, it's basically a guarantee that someone else accesses the account, though you haven't found out who.
I'm not sure I totally follow this (you seem to be talking about an attack on CBC mode, but the mode you're describing sounds more like CTR mode), but a good rule of thumb is, without explicit authentication, attackers can alter and often rewrite messages even though all they can see is ciphertext.

But there are even more problems than that with unauthenticated encryption. If you don't authenticate there is a good chance attackers will be able to decrypt your messages wholesale.
Recently Chrome and Firefox also added an experimental
feature currently being standardised to also allow point
sampling in their Canvas 2D renderer

Anybody have a source or reference for this?
This - it's so dumb to cry about that. Build your brand on our website, your own social network, & your own smart phone apps. They can push/pull/interact with any other - but not building your own with that type of budget is assinine.
Or exactly because he cries about paying $3000 is the reason why he is a millionaire.
Scalable technology meets the eCommerce challenge - Raghav Sibal
It does?

Can you give an example?
Personally, I don't. For one thing, his hard analytical skills (read: Excel hacker) were obviously honed by working in finance. I also feel his background gave him tons of real world, high stakes experience in using Excel to turn data into decisions, which is hard to replicate. Also, I think working a shitty ibanking job with crazy hours can make you both willing to grind and appreciative of how fun being a tech pm can be.
One thing I learned from China while being in there: You can get goods of any quality there. The cheap stuff is what most westeners buy, and it is mostly not so good quality. But if you are willing to pay proper prices, you can get quality products.

And there are exceptions on the cheap stuff too, for example I just bought an Aoson M11 Android tablet for 125€ from there and the overall quality seems very good.
Well I waited and didn't even see the screen flicker to available! Apparently it was released 20 minutes early and sold out within 10 minutes in Canada... although I was constantly checking. Looks like I'll be waiting for the next batch!

Any one else manage to bag one?
"Product Manager", like "User Experience Designer" or "Software Architect" is one of those abstract, higher level roles that doesn't really exist on small teams.

I do think that these folks can add value in much larger organizations, but in my experience, the only good ones are the ones who would be useful on small teams. In short, a "software architect" who couldn't immediately transition to a highly productive role writing code almost certainly isn't a good software architect. A "user experience designer" who couldn't immediately sit down with a programmer and start creating a polished site almost certainly isn't a useful "UX Designer". And by could, I also mean would. The good designers and architects are kind of delighted to get a chance to get their hands into code again.

It sounds like the problem with MBAs (based on this essay) is that they seek those higher level roles 1) where they don't exist, or 2) without the more hands-on background that seems to be a prerequisite for success at a more abstract level.

I do sympathize with the people who object to the "black mark". A black mark is a conviction for embezzlement, not a degree honestly earned (albeit of potentially dubious value). But you know, filters are both a luxury and a necessity. Some people won't look at any resume that doesn't have a CS degree from a top school. If you're so deluged with candidates that you can afford to (and need to) do this, obviously you're in a position or real strength.

Aside from my "black mark" objection, I think the rest of this essay is spot-on. The rejection is based more on a conversation than a rigid filter, he engages with the interested candidate a bit to see how they might fit.
Ask HN: Technical Question: Django for web/mobile app
Hi Guys, I have a question related to the framework I am using to develop an app (webapp, mobile). I have a webapp with front end written in GWT and backend written in php and I use the same backend for my ios/android app as well. The backend has php scripts that either return json objects or simple responses.
Now I was thinking of moving the whole framework to django because I wanted to make use of multi-threading provided by python and also to learn a new framework.
So my question is, can I use django in such a setting? Basically, can I use the same server side code for both my webapp and mobile app?
Has anyone from HN done it before? Can you please share your thoughts on how to go about it?
Thanks a lot, appreciate your responses.
Website is a great place to host content, but they still need sources to drive traffic. They should be using all of the platforms to drive people there and then capture their emails and other data.
It's very good that the author is trying to get the word out, but it would help tremendously if he tried to at least give some indication (or links to further material), of why certain modes are insecure.

The people who already know this information don't need this blog posts, and the ones that don't get no information that helps them to understand the problem. I think stating what can go wrong with, for example, ECB, would make it much easier for people to remember which mode is good and which is bad. As it is at the moment one would have to remember a few cryptic acronyms as "good" and others as "bad", without any context. (Or go look it up somewhere, but the people looking these things up are not the ones in need of being alerted...)
>"I haven't bought and I wouldn't buy here. I think they have to determine what their business is right now and how they will make money at it. I don't believe they are clear about either."

Odd. I distinctly remember Cuban saying how he bought FB stock as a trade, and exited the position at a loss when he saw that the initial rally wasn't going to materialize.
Well, the Darwin layer does not bring that much for scientist used to customize Linux distributions for high volume data processing.

Java, which was used a lot on my CERN days for data visualization was kicked out, after having a first class status on the platform.

OpenGL was frozen for several years in version 2.1, while Windows and Linux were having OpenGL 3 and 4 drivers available.

OpenCL although designed by Apple has better support in the other platforms.

The development experience seems to be oriented towards development of iPhone applications.

Finally the Apple tax, which doesn't bring much, when compared with hardware volume licenses plus Scientific Linux installations.
I think you might be taking everything a bit too literally and you might be way too pedantic. What they meant is that the equipment is compact and that in principle it wouldn’t be complicated or outside the capabilities of the current cargo vehicles (ATV, HTV, Dargon, Progress) to bring it to the ISS.

I also think that you can’t really compare the ISS to anything else. The ISS is not some random satellite. It has many cargo ships bringing massive amounts of cargo to it all the time (thus allowing necessarily for much more flexibility – human lives are at stake, so your cargo capabilities better be more than ample for the job, allowing for contingency plans). There simply isn’t anything like it in space.
This post does not go at all into the "why" of authenticated encryption. If you're interested in more of the reasons for authenticating, including actual attacks it protects against, I found http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2012/05/how-to-choos... to be a good explanation of this.
You're just falling into Facebook's ostensible justification for aggressive monetization tactics. This is content that users voluntarily signed up to receive. Facebook is already setup for users to curate what content they receive. They chose who to friend, what personalities to follow, and what fan pages to like. They have the additional option to limit certain types of posts from certain people. They also have the ultimate means to limit content by blocking, un-friending, un-following, and un-liking pages.

This is simply a weak excuse given by Facebook to charge brands, which they have every right to do. But to say their motivation is to stop spam is simply dubious.
sad thing is, most people don't realize how slow they are. once they move off to dedicated w/ SSD, their site starts to run blazing fast (plus at a fraction of the cost) and say to themselves why they haven't done this sooner.
Disgusting? That's a strongly negative word. Mistakes are made. Fail happens. Tell them about it, show them this thread, tell them we want them to fix it and be awesome.

Google does a LOT of things right. Let's cut them some slack here and see if they fix it and then talk about why it broke for us. Wouldn't that rule?
spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam
I agree that the UX for the error messages and the infrastructure crapping out was bad, but I think the marketing strategy of a limited supply selling out so quickly makes some sense (everybody's talking about it and the 2nd round will probably sell a lot of units).
Ironic considering the content of the article is in praise of simply functional design.
However as you can see from that screenshot, a brand can target fans and friends of fans, so even if you don't like it a brand, you can see see the ad if your friend does
The point is:
You invest in funds that invest in companies that use transfer pricing to minimize taxes.

You could say you don't want to be invested by not investing in mutual funds/ETFs etc.

But, almost every American with savings does invest and is the direct beneficiary of transfer pricing.

You and others could decide to allocate a portion of your capital gains back to the UK government as a gift, but I think that is "very, very unlikely".

[Also] One strategy could be to only choose small cap names, then you are unlikely to hear of any of the "evil" things the corporations you own are doing... Obviously that would create problems with risk in your portfolio.
Works fine

(Source: I have a US iTunes account and I'm living in Germany)
> decrypt your messages wholesale.

Eek, that sounds fun :) Tell us more?