skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My thought process has evolved over the last few years for deciding what to spend my time on.

I've realized two important things: that I am capable of making a lot of money from my own products, and that there can be important differences between ideas that impact the potential for the former.

I like to build things that improve on past or present solutions, mainly because the market is already there and you aren't pulling teeth to convince people they have a problem you are solving. I also am building products right now in the same space with my current company (simple web development and hosting tools/services).

But when I come up with a new product, it's largely something that I know can be made really simple to start, and then built on over time. If I can ship an MVP or proof of concept in a month or two of 20-40% full-time work I am satisfied. Anything longer than that and I risk making something no one wants.

I also try to learn and be better with every project I do. That means starting with libraries instead of building from scratch, or being more diligent about the architecture. One small example is that I used django-compressor on a recent project instead of hacking that myself. Another is baking referrals and drip email campaigns directly into the MVP instead of pushing this off.

The benefit is that the more you do this the more natural it becomes, to the point where you get higher quality in less time, but I don't dwell on the technical quality too much since your customers generally don't care, so it's a fine line.

At the end of the day though, the new products I've developed have largely been fits of desire to work on something new. Once my co-founder builds a design for it and I implement a simple PoC, the momentum pushes it to become reality.

The difference between what ideas I choose now and what I used to choose is I start looking ahead and see problems or opportunities related to the business model. Things like retention patterns, market potential, etc. I don't measure or predict these things with numbers because I think that's a waste of time, but since I've had experience with those issues, I can get a better feel for them before I start to work on a project.

Also, now that I've achieved and surpassed my initial desire to build my own company and hire a few people, my ambition is pushing me towards achieving bigger milestones. Some ideas are harder to grow than others.
Have you looked at https://www.circuitlab.com/editor/
I wish those retargeted ads were smarter. They should reset the given "intent" after an action is taken.

Early this year, I bought a watch for my girlfriend as a surprise gift for our anniversary. I made the mistake of doing some prior research to find the best price... on her laptop! I bought the watch online, using the same computer, but the advertising software was incapable of recognizing this action and kept showing her exactly the same watch ads all over the Internet. Long story short, my gift was not a surprise anymore.

That happens to me all the time, I always look the best deal before buying something online, buy it, but then have to deal with ads that are not of my interest anymore for about an extra week. I guess is more cost effective for advertisers to show completely irrelevant ads even if the purchase already materialized, but it gets so annoying to the point of starting to dislike the brand a little bit more every time. At least in my case.
Yes I'd like to know too. As the top post mentions, the documentation really needs to hightlight the benefits over established popular libraries.
Note that tuples are immutable in python. I usually use tuples as default values for collections:

def f(x=()):
x = list(x)
...

def g(y=(()))
y = dict(y)
...

f() is the pattern for lists, g() is for dicts. Note that you can pass in regular lists to f() and regular dicts to g().
I am not of the opinion that classified information should necessarily be disclosed under FOIA. However, one could make a strong argument that because these programs have been officially acknowledged (which is inconsistent with the procedures for handling classified information), that their existence is no longer classified. NSA didn't have to make any public comment on the leaks at all; nevertheless, they chose to not only acknowledge the programs but also release a fair number of details, which would seem to have the effect of declassification. There is a similar principle in trademark law: failure to enforce the trademark results in a waiver of any rights granted by it.
Can someone elaborate on the method they use?
Thats borderline malpractice, or perhaps more properly, very aggressive monetizing practice: a stone, or any renal cause, is always investigated initially with ultrasound.

I wonder if there is a role for disputing charges on the basis of unnecessary investigations (especially in the ED setting) based on a standard of care- sort of opposite a medical malpractice suit.

But I'm in Australia and don't need to worry about having 2 years worth of debt from an emergency illness..
So, You Want to be a Front-End Engineer - David Mosher
Maybe you could work on your own projects as if it is a client, i.e. take 2 hours out of your 40 hour billable work week and deliver as if it is a client.

To make it even more real you can take some savings, draft a contract with someone you trust and tell them to only pay the money back as you deliver the 'client work' to yourself. If you fail to deliver, the money goes to charity.

Also, once you have some revenue from your own app, divide by your hourly rate to know how many hours you will spend on it per week.
When you write an authentication system with username and password you never display an error like "that password is incorrect", because then the attacker knows that the username is a valid one.

Why does everyone here assume that it's a vast conspiracy when, if they returned everything they had on you, it would be a giant red flag to anyone who was denied that they were being explicitly monitored?

The only way to guarantee secrecy for records that should rightfully be secret (whether you agree with the collection methods or not) is to deny everyone's request.
Having been a medical technician, I'm aware of the cost of equipment, consumables, wages, rent, and so forth. The consumables in the bulk of stress tests are minimal - you're basically paying equipment and wages, and there's no real reason why a stress test should be an order of magnitude more than what I used to do (all my tests required vendor equipment). Where I worked had a two-week waiting period instead of a one-week, but there were spaces for emergencies. It's certainly not worth 10x more in order to chop your wait from 2 to 1 weeks.

That it's still $2k for uninsured patients is still very much the problem. It's not particularly mollifying that 'only some people' get hit with that bill. No-one should be fleeced simply because they're unwell.

I think a better tactic is to break the student cap. As long as the students remain high quality and there are facilities to train them, there is no reason to limit the number of graduates. It's basically cartel behaviour if that's happening. Doesn't solve things in the short term, though. This being said, in healthcare, there is no golden bullet. Fixing a failing system requires multitudinous tactics.
I am not an expert on this topic. However, I don't agree based on OP that alieves necessarily 'go away' with elaborate conscious thinking. Note, that OP also says the concepts applies to some religious believes.

So, I would actually argue it applies here too: In OP's terminology the person believes there is a dragon in their garage, but alives the opposite.
You sound as close-minded as some of the people you're railing against.

A square? What does "an American" look like? I look pretty "normal" or at least my outward appearance is intentionally low-key and non-descript.

For me it is the internal that is important though someone who puts a high priority on external ornamentation as an indicator of personality and character would never know if you just went by my external appearance.
Hey Tam,
I'm exactly the same. Maybe we can form a support group for such people (i'm serious)?
That is a very cool story :-)

P.S. trying to work out what proof is being used here... Proof by contradiction perhaps?
Uh they fake them? It looks less obvious this way as when they end with ^unhelpfulbot.
Great post. I think a similar issue is when an engineer feels they need a certain set of infrastructure or algorithmic features before they can start building their program. If you end up finding out that most potential users have a different problem though it can all be for waste. I've met many programmers who seem to have forgotten (or never learned) how to prototype, and can't imagine building something with a fundamental security or scalability flaw.

There's also a far more difficult one to become aware of, which is building an overly complex solution when a simpler one exists for the problem.
Hmm, that seems to say that social drinkers (people who go to bars once per month) make more.

So it's not really the drinking aspect, it's specifically the socializing aspect. You could go to bars and drink only non alcoholic drinks and probably have the same effect, assuming you can still be sociable without alcohol.
12 year old breaks down Egyptian troubles in 2 minutes
I think a support team is supposed to work with the bot and the bot only initiates contact that the team can then follow up on. Or at least, that's what I'd hope. It seems the support team was afk during that conversation though...
The backend is not the hard or alien part.

Just use Postgres if you don't have very specific, very unusual, and very well understood needs.
That is where source maps come into place. Not sure about support for GS though.
Ask HN: Why don't companies open-source the source code of their old products?
I'm not talking about products like the first iPhone, I'm talking about products (like gameboys) that are still cool and interesting, but completely irrelevant for the company that invented them.

Why don't these companies open-source their old products?
Great link on AngularJS injection. Unfortunately the code shown is also an example of the kind of thing that makes me less-than enthusiastic about a lot of the blogs I see on web apps. Right at the top (of the code) we have:

<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.4/angular.js"></script>

When https would have worked just fine. Instead, because it's referenced with http, we're basically saying - insert some random code in our page, if there's anyone that can spoof packets.

It's like Microsoft Office Macros all over again -- only much worse.

Later he calls the github api over https -- but (and this is a genuine question, I don't know) -- what would happen if github redirected from https to http? Would it fail, or would we get random insecure data import?:

$http.get('https://api.github.com/repos/angular/angular.js/commits')

(Now, redirecting to http would obviously be, well, bad form at least -- but conceivable to stave off slashdotting by an overworked sysadmin, perhaps?).
This seems to fix every small issue and even a few large ones that I had problems with in JS! It seems like it will be super easy to integrate with my current "build tools" for the few dynamic languages I run (built into Komodo as macros and plugins).

Heck, I could probably write the build tools plugins in Komodo WITH GorillaScript. Of course, not quite the same as a brand new self-hosted compiler, but I'd like to think that it's circular-referency is adequate to be in the vein of functional programming tradition :)

I was never excited about Coffeescript. This is JavaScript: The Good Parts And Even The Best Brand New Parts
What does MVP mean in this context? Obviously it's related to a PoC, but I can't really find any acronym that fits the context...
In no way did I imply that. I am responding to the central "story" of this article, which is about denied FOIA requests. My point was that FOIA is expressly not the right tool to attempt to get the USG to give you their signals intelligence due to a specific exemption (which is logical, or at least logically consistent) for classified information.

Perhaps a lawsuit would be able to accomplish what you suggest. I have no idea.
Except this isn't the international experience.

In Aus we have a mixed public private system- everyone is treated free but if you want an elective procedure or to see a doctor of your own choice you can pay to do so. I have private health insurance and it costs me $1,500 a year (get dental and optical rebates etc, if I was to require serious treatment it would cover anything under the sun to be done my way)
We have public hospital elective surgery waiting lists but the upside is people with no money can actually get the medical treatment they deserve in order to live functional lives.

I have been involved (as a medical student) in the us system- I know a little about it- and the creation of 'the medical poor' - there are probably better terms for it but basically those unable to get the treatment they need and thus unable to live their lives as functionally as possible - strikes me as sad and unjust.

BTW any comment along the lines of 'but doctors don't get paid for their services so less people will be willing to do it' - next year I will be practicing, in 4 years I can expect to be earning $150,000 and in 10-15 I will expect to be earning $350,000 inflation adjusted. More than enough for a comfortable life in my chosen specialty
"We need to make crypto easier, we need to provide tools everyone can use."

If that succeeds, you still think encryption will be legal? (without support from the government (read: backdoor enabled))
It can be precompiled but it has not been optimized to do so: https://github.com/google/traceur-compiler/issues/307 It seems the project is not very active.
> You can take any bitstring (but not all bitstrings) of any length, including infinite, and assign a specific shorter (and finite) bitstring to represent it. You then have a finite encoding for that specific infinite sequence of symbols which can henceforth be used to describe it. You just can't do it for every infinite bitstring because you have insufficiently many finite bitstrings with which to represent them.

I agree with your general idea, but, won't you run into a problem already before you run into the pigeon-hole principle?

How do you do that, even for a single one?

I mean, how do you "take" an infinite bitstring to assign a symbol to it, without first having to have a finite description of this infinite bitstring?

You can't say "this infinite bitstring is now represented by the symbol 01101", without directly or indirectly specifying what "this infinite bitstring" refers to, and you need to do that specifying in a finite amount of symbols.

So it seems to me that, if you were to (foolishly) try the above infinite task, you'd run out of infinite bitstrings (that you can describe) just as fast as you'd run out of finite bitstrings that you'd like to compress them with?
Unfortunately, it seems that the public are the adversaries.
MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product
An API for the U.S. Treasury
GCHQ Surveillance: The Power of Britain's Data Vacuum
Maybe that's how it should work, but I don't think it's a good idea and, anyway, that's definitely not what FOIA law says.
How do you usually test if your project ideas have market fit?

I'm writing a book about this very topic so I'm very interested obviously :)
I can't say I'm a pro at this (I don't freelance and don't have a personal marketing page), so take this with a grain of salt:

> My claim to fame is that I shipped a large-scale Ember.js application, backed by a RESTful Rails API, tested all the way down to ie6, and somehow lived to tell about it.

While I find this funny, because I know what all the buzzwords mean, not everyone knows what RESTful, Rails, API, Ember.js, or IE6 is. Even if they know what IE6 is, they don't know what a pain it is to code for it.

> (From the other thread) I want to do code and marketing for local businesses, and coaching in project management. No hi-tech startups for now. The tech stack would be my advantage right now, I think, among all the other small web shops.

How is this tech stack and advantage? Why not wordpress and PHP, and slap some websites up in half a day? Local businesses definitely don't know what Ember.js is, and why should they care that you "live on it"?

You make this mention of "before I got into startups". Why not tell the story of how you've run/been in a small business just like them, and you've made some webapps that helped your brand. Then mention that pampelmoose and spiral16 (who they heck are these people, do they have real names or better known websites?), wrote some reviews on the marketing.

Change the passive voice to active (e.g. prefer "I did" to "it was done")

> I build high quality web applications that run a long time and sell more software despite having relatively little marketing or a low budget.

Good selling point.

> Thanks in advance for your time and consideration, and looking forward!

You missed a few words after "forward".
Anyone can file a federal FOIA request; you don't have to be a US citizen.
I'm confused. The NSA has basically unlimited powers under the premise that it does not spy on US citizens. So if US citiziens ask what data the NSA has on them, what other legal answer could there be other than 'none'? And what secrets would be revealed in that answer, given that the NSA has been mandated not to spy on US citiziens?
MITx's 6.002x hax an online circuit sim. There's also QUCS for the desktop.
Go through lean canvas process, refine, and once it's okay, try it out. If you fail, whoops. Try again. Hopefully you didn't burn that much time.

It's like shooting in the dark. Once in awhile, you'll hit something. Hopefully it's a bear.
Although I'm not in exactly the same boat (i.e. I do finish projects but I'm slow), I'd love to be a member of such a group: a mutual accountability forum or weekly lab-meeting where everyone declares what they've done this week.

I know that the Micropreneur Academy has such a forum as one of the attractions, but I think it can be open and free for anyone who's not too worried about their ideas getting pinched (speaking for myself, I wouldn't be worried).
>I made the mistake of doing some prior research to find the best price...

Doing research to find the best price is never mistake. It sucks that your surprise is ruined. I dont know if advertisers can know if action is taken on other website.
I guess you should delete cookies to "reset intent" or do research in private tab.
Walks And Walking - Top 5 Walking Trousers Reviewed
The fact remains that as more and more information about the programs is leaked to 'adversaries', the more pointless the program becomes. You wouldn't play hide and seek if everyone could see you, right? Or if anyone shouts "Marco, FOIA!" they have to respond "Polo, docs!"

Most of the specifics here are still under wraps (who's being targeted, what specific patterns they search, etc) so the programs are still in pretty good shape. It's far too early to throw in the everyone-knows-everything-already towel. What's maddening is that the leaks on Capitol Hill are exactly the same, criminally, but are usually pre-filtered, pro-US and condoned by the Administration.
Mistaken clicks are probably part of it, but lots of people on Facebook are there to waste time anyway.

For me, the most interesting part is that these ads are interactive (users can Report them or Like them). Hopefully Facebook will learn from Google here, and make advertisers pay more to show shitty ads.
Thanks for this great response! Really agree with the bit about about making it quick and resourceful. Kudos about not pulling teeth to convince people they have a problem you are solving. This is particularly difficult for many first timers and can be incredibly disheartening for some.
I have a friend that sends these out for bank of America, he works in the office of the president of the company. The company has been ahead of the curve contacting twitter complainers and finding a resolution. These form comments are actually submitted by a person, attempting to keep boa positive as an aggregate of total tweets with mention. No bot included.
I wouldn't. It's amazing how quickly you go from "simple spreadsheet" to "this is a real pain - I need proper accounting software".
Any technical problem you face [survey]
How to Make Android phone look like 3D Home
How can you be sure all of the intelligence programs are public, and that the information you request is all the information that they have on you?
I would say that & is a fine choice (much better than +) for a concatenation operator. It allows numbers to be built like strings in an interesting way and keeps the meaning of the & consistent. It really is past times that every language needs to conform to the choices made by C.
For what it's worth. Gnome is designed to make this choice easy for you. https://extensions.gnome.org/ hosts a large number of javascript extensions which change the functionality of the desktop.

Fixing alt-tab is one of the first things I do.
The court was created during the cold war. It has basically been repurposed for the war on terror. The original foe had sophisticated intelligence agencies and keeping the rulings secret was at least a plausible argument in the spy-vs-spy mindset of the era.

But the war on terror involves a handful of college kids and peasants. They don't have anything more than the ability to do google searches. Joe Paranoid doesn't need confirmation from guys like Snowden, he just assumes the worst and goes from there.

The massive secrecy around the war on terror (there are now over 4 million active clearances, nearly 1.5 top-secret clearances, that's twice the population of DC) is an artifact of the cold-war regulations that provides little to no tactical advantage but practically eliminate oversight.
Do you know how your refrigerator works? automobile? What about the mechanization of the lock on your front door? could you construct a radio from base components?

Alas, no. I think we will have a generation of computer programmers just as likely as we would have a future one of plumbers, electricians, home-builders, or even exercise and health specialists.

I think it may be the opposite. Yes, fewer programmers by 2050 than today.
Good point ... perhaps the marked public toilets are those maintained by the government?
Google Reader may come to mind..
I agree with the NSA here. Any data they give you about yourself would necessarily tell you what sort of data collection methods they use, which would make it harder to collect data about anyone.
one of the comments goes to great lengths explaining that
those controlling the data collection are duly elected.

And how powerless are they? The unelected Clapper did anything, while the elected Wyden could do nothing. The technologist Snowden did everything. Democracy didn't bell the cat of the government bureaucracy. Technology did. Technology is more powerful than both democracy and bureaucracy, as it is not subject to dilution and co-optation.
Clicks and sign-ups, leave alone purchases, are very different things. FB sells clicks, but a user just hits "back" button. Eventually, there will be no demand for clicks, because even being very cheap and abundant, they will not create enough money.

Profit = revenue - cost. So, FB pays all its costs from selling ads? Since when?)
> why is it so important to separate our cognitive system into infinite units

It isn't. It depends entirely on the specific school of psychology. For example the school of Behaviorism states that only observable behavior matters; cognitive stuff like this is unimportant.