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show hn: we made a spam-free lyric search engine
| lots of ajax with no state in the url. means i can't send my friends to a search results page (bad) or to a lyrics page (worse). | what is your view on copyright?in 2006 the mpa had a crackdown on tablature and lyrics websites. i am not a lawyer, but i am pretty sure you can't just publish all lyrics, without infringing here and there.what is your view on scraping?it is unlikely you entered all lyrics yourself, but used an existing database. i personally wouldn't feel comfortable scraping or fetching my content from a site that hosts advertisements, and then republish those without advertisements. did you find access to an opensource database, or is the service here more like a reversed adblock? |
show hn: we made a spam-free lyric search engine
| what is your view on copyright?in 2006 the mpa had a crackdown on tablature and lyrics websites. i am not a lawyer, but i am pretty sure you can't just publish all lyrics, without infringing here and there.what is your view on scraping?it is unlikely you entered all lyrics yourself, but used an existing database. i personally wouldn't feel comfortable scraping or fetching my content from a site that hosts advertisements, and then republish those without advertisements. did you find access to an opensource database, or is the service here more like a reversed adblock? | i remember someone once posted about running one of these lyrics sites. i can't remember if i found it here or elsewhere.anyway, their point was that with a lyrics website, someone only wants to go to the website to find the lyrics. once they have the lyrics they have no desire to look at other other lyrics - they arrive and then leave/bounce immediately. that is why the adverts on these sites are so spammy. they have to hammer you with adverts in that brief moment you are on the website, because you are not going to click through and engage with the site anywhere else. also, since you probably don't even know what website you are on, you don't have any "lyric website loyalty", so it doesn't even matter if the ads are massively spammy.i guess then the challenge is to make a website that somehow encourages engagement so the it doesn't have to be so spammy. |
show hn: we made a spam-free lyric search engine
| i remember someone once posted about running one of these lyrics sites. i can't remember if i found it here or elsewhere.anyway, their point was that with a lyrics website, someone only wants to go to the website to find the lyrics. once they have the lyrics they have no desire to look at other other lyrics - they arrive and then leave/bounce immediately. that is why the adverts on these sites are so spammy. they have to hammer you with adverts in that brief moment you are on the website, because you are not going to click through and engage with the site anywhere else. also, since you probably don't even know what website you are on, you don't have any "lyric website loyalty", so it doesn't even matter if the ads are massively spammy.i guess then the challenge is to make a website that somehow encourages engagement so the it doesn't have to be so spammy. | according to the legal, you are not storing the lyrics. if that is the case, where are you sourcing them from? can you give a little background on how the site works, what it runs on and other interesting details? |
show hn: we made a spam-free lyric search engine
| according to the legal, you are not storing the lyrics. if that is the case, where are you sourcing them from? can you give a little background on how the site works, what it runs on and other interesting details? | add chord charts, and i'll be a regular user. the existing tab/chord sites are just as bad as the lyrics sites for spamminess and nasty flash ads (they're the one site i use regularly that leads me to want to install adblock). |
ask hn: my younger brother wants to get into web engineering. where to start?
my younger brother is getting really interested in web engineering/becoming a 'hacker'. he's a sophomore in highschool and exceptionally bright and driven. all he knows right now is a little bit of python. he has no tangible goal in mind, he just wants to eventually be able to build apps, etc.<p>my question is, where should i start him off? my initial suggestion was for him to learn html/css in and out ("head first html with css 8 xhtml by eric t freeman").<p>what do you guys think? my background is more in finance/investment banking so i'm pretty ignorant on how to start him off and not the greatest of mentors in this situation.<p>also, if any of you are willing to be an 'email mentor' to him, let me know.. id be glad to reciprocate the mentorship in my area of expertise.<p>thanks! | i think the best way to go about learning, especially because he is young, would be to have something that he wants to build and then to learn what he needs to do it. maybe a game, a facebook app, a chatbot, or if he has an idea for a web app he thinks would be cool.python is a great place to start, and learning html/css is a really good idea too.because he already knows a little python, google app engine might be a good place to start because they have good docs, it is relatively simple, and hosting will be free. | try google apis (instant visual feedback, control over instantly recognizable tool such as youtube video player and google maps) <link> out some courses at <link> related to html and javascript |
ask hn: my younger brother wants to get into web engineering. where to start?
my younger brother is getting really interested in web engineering/becoming a 'hacker'. he's a sophomore in highschool and exceptionally bright and driven. all he knows right now is a little bit of python. he has no tangible goal in mind, he just wants to eventually be able to build apps, etc.<p>my question is, where should i start him off? my initial suggestion was for him to learn html/css in and out ("head first html with css 8 xhtml by eric t freeman").<p>what do you guys think? my background is more in finance/investment banking so i'm pretty ignorant on how to start him off and not the greatest of mentors in this situation.<p>also, if any of you are willing to be an 'email mentor' to him, let me know.. id be glad to reciprocate the mentorship in my area of expertise.<p>thanks! | try google apis (instant visual feedback, control over instantly recognizable tool such as youtube video player and google maps) <link> out some courses at <link> related to html and javascript | learn how basic coding works using any of the languages that are out today. such as python or ruby or php or any of them. learn loops and dates and databases and logic and the like. i would be open to tutoring him as well. send me an email at startupz.net@gmail.com. look forward to hearing from you. |
ask hn: my younger brother wants to get into web engineering. where to start?
my younger brother is getting really interested in web engineering/becoming a 'hacker'. he's a sophomore in highschool and exceptionally bright and driven. all he knows right now is a little bit of python. he has no tangible goal in mind, he just wants to eventually be able to build apps, etc.<p>my question is, where should i start him off? my initial suggestion was for him to learn html/css in and out ("head first html with css 8 xhtml by eric t freeman").<p>what do you guys think? my background is more in finance/investment banking so i'm pretty ignorant on how to start him off and not the greatest of mentors in this situation.<p>also, if any of you are willing to be an 'email mentor' to him, let me know.. id be glad to reciprocate the mentorship in my area of expertise.<p>thanks! | learn how basic coding works using any of the languages that are out today. such as python or ruby or php or any of them. learn loops and dates and databases and logic and the like. i would be open to tutoring him as well. send me an email at startupz.net@gmail.com. look forward to hearing from you. | best hands-on introduction i can think of is from the google app engine documentation.<link> |
ask hn: my younger brother wants to get into web engineering. where to start?
my younger brother is getting really interested in web engineering/becoming a 'hacker'. he's a sophomore in highschool and exceptionally bright and driven. all he knows right now is a little bit of python. he has no tangible goal in mind, he just wants to eventually be able to build apps, etc.<p>my question is, where should i start him off? my initial suggestion was for him to learn html/css in and out ("head first html with css 8 xhtml by eric t freeman").<p>what do you guys think? my background is more in finance/investment banking so i'm pretty ignorant on how to start him off and not the greatest of mentors in this situation.<p>also, if any of you are willing to be an 'email mentor' to him, let me know.. id be glad to reciprocate the mentorship in my area of expertise.<p>thanks! | best hands-on introduction i can think of is from the google app engine documentation.<link> | the best way to learn programming is to program so if it's me, i would let him start with a small project and let him explore bit by bit. no need to rush. |
ask hn: do you register on your competitor's site...
would you register and log on to your competitors' site as a customer to check out their features? or have you found out your competitors registering on yours as customer to check out your features? would you use a real name? is it immoral? | 22 would you register and log on to your competitors' site as a customer to check out their features?yes, if it is possible, i have done so and will do so again.22 or have you found out your competitors registering on yours as customer to check out your features?yes. this is a common practice with any company that has competition.i don't see how it's different than apple buying up androids or vice versa. blindness doesn't help your business nor does it help your industry as a whole.22 would you use a real name?no.22 is it immoral?morality is relative. if you have personal objections to doing this, that is one thing, but when you consider that:a) everyone is spying on everyoneb) you are looking out for a company interest and not your own... your personal ethics should be separated from the work you do, within reason.it would be immoral if you managed to log in and sabotage their business. for example, you can place an order of 1,000 widgets and then "change your mind" a week later after the company, in good faith, placed the product on hold, preventing them from filling the order with a legitimate customer. seeing what your competition does, signing up for mailing lists, or ordering a product catalog, or similar non-destructive behavior is fine in my book. | any serious company should learn as much about its competition as it can by operating within legal boundaries. you should absolutely use competing products -- deep understanding of the other options available to your potential customers allows you to differentiate your service.with my current project, we've learned about every product out there that even touches on a portion of what it is that we're trying to do. we have and will continue to learn the competition. if the existence of a feature is a competitor's entire advantage, then they either will have ip protection or they'll be out of business soon.use the site according to their tos and use your real name. if you aren't abusing their service, there's nothing to fear.information on the web is public. i see nothing immoral about using information that your grandma could find. |
ask hn: do you register on your competitor's site...
would you register and log on to your competitors' site as a customer to check out their features? or have you found out your competitors registering on yours as customer to check out your features? would you use a real name? is it immoral? | any serious company should learn as much about its competition as it can by operating within legal boundaries. you should absolutely use competing products -- deep understanding of the other options available to your potential customers allows you to differentiate your service.with my current project, we've learned about every product out there that even touches on a portion of what it is that we're trying to do. we have and will continue to learn the competition. if the existence of a feature is a competitor's entire advantage, then they either will have ip protection or they'll be out of business soon.use the site according to their tos and use your real name. if you aren't abusing their service, there's nothing to fear.information on the web is public. i see nothing immoral about using information that your grandma could find. | it is very much to everyone's benefit to know as much about what is going on in your space. so i would try every product that is comparable to see what people are doing, what makes each product different, why people might choose to use one product over another, and where your product fits into the overall space that you are in.it is a regular practice for all companies, as it should be.i don't think it should matter if i use my real name or not honestly. i am becoming a user to get an idea of the space. i think that is a completely reasonable thing to do, and besides, if the company is searching their users for their competition then i think that they are not spending enough time on their product and more on trying to stop their competition.it is by no means immoral, you are doing research on the space you are in by looking at the publicly available products out there. now if you were somehow getting access to internal documents or development releases of the product then i would say yes that is immoral but looking at a competition's available product is perfectly fine in my opinion.now a couple points i'd like to bring up about this is that a) you should not be doing things such as writing negative reviews of the product b) you shouldn't be using the product to make other users' experience with the product negative c) use the information gained to get an idea of what is out there, what users like about the product, and how your product is similar and different. not as a new feature list. |
ask hn: do you register on your competitor's site...
would you register and log on to your competitors' site as a customer to check out their features? or have you found out your competitors registering on yours as customer to check out your features? would you use a real name? is it immoral? | it is very much to everyone's benefit to know as much about what is going on in your space. so i would try every product that is comparable to see what people are doing, what makes each product different, why people might choose to use one product over another, and where your product fits into the overall space that you are in.it is a regular practice for all companies, as it should be.i don't think it should matter if i use my real name or not honestly. i am becoming a user to get an idea of the space. i think that is a completely reasonable thing to do, and besides, if the company is searching their users for their competition then i think that they are not spending enough time on their product and more on trying to stop their competition.it is by no means immoral, you are doing research on the space you are in by looking at the publicly available products out there. now if you were somehow getting access to internal documents or development releases of the product then i would say yes that is immoral but looking at a competition's available product is perfectly fine in my opinion.now a couple points i'd like to bring up about this is that a) you should not be doing things such as writing negative reviews of the product b) you shouldn't be using the product to make other users' experience with the product negative c) use the information gained to get an idea of what is out there, what users like about the product, and how your product is similar and different. not as a new feature list. | it's a good question, and one that just recently came up for me at work in a slightly different way. my feeling is that it would be morally ok to register at a competitor's site. it would not be ok to use a false name or somehow attempt to hide your identity/affiliation with your company.the paper at this link has some good information about issues and attitudes around competitive intelligence - <link>, there is a society of strategic and competitive intelligence professionals (like, who knew that was a thing). their code of ethics is here - <link> |
ask hn: do you register on your competitor's site...
would you register and log on to your competitors' site as a customer to check out their features? or have you found out your competitors registering on yours as customer to check out your features? would you use a real name? is it immoral? | it's a good question, and one that just recently came up for me at work in a slightly different way. my feeling is that it would be morally ok to register at a competitor's site. it would not be ok to use a false name or somehow attempt to hide your identity/affiliation with your company.the paper at this link has some good information about issues and attitudes around competitive intelligence - <link>, there is a society of strategic and competitive intelligence professionals (like, who knew that was a thing). their code of ethics is here - <link> | it is fair game to register whenever possible with your real id and when required with anonymity.unnecessarily placing orders leading them to believe you are a genuine is customer would be immoral though.i had a hilarious incident when a new user signed-up 8 responded to my welcome mail saying, she is part of a stealth startup 8 needs guidance with choosing payment gateways. silly part was her rapportive profile clearly showed her linkedin profile, that she joined competitor as product manager just a few months back. we had a hearty laugh 8 let it go. |
our security auditor is an idiot. how do i give him the information he wants?
| definitely seems less like a auditor (i believe asking for some of that is flat out illegal) and more like a hacker posing as a auditor, trying to get passwords/creditcard #'s. | this is a case of social engineering, not of a security auditor, but of the poster. the poster wants to know an easy way to collect public and private ssh keys and fake 6 months of inbound traffic. there is no auditor.maybe the poster is writing a book on cracking systems? who knows. but it smells like a hoax. |
our security auditor is an idiot. how do i give him the information he wants?
| this is a case of social engineering, not of a security auditor, but of the poster. the poster wants to know an easy way to collect public and private ssh keys and fake 6 months of inbound traffic. there is no auditor.maybe the poster is writing a book on cracking systems? who knows. but it smells like a hoax. | am i the only one who thinks the story is a little too perfect and ridiculous? it is much more likely that the author simply fabricated the story.he did manage to start a very popular thread, and get a ton of people with really high rep to respond and get a link on hn. he just threw out some bait, and the community swarmed like starving fish. |
our security auditor is an idiot. how do i give him the information he wants?
| am i the only one who thinks the story is a little too perfect and ridiculous? it is much more likely that the author simply fabricated the story.he did manage to start a very popular thread, and get a ton of people with really high rep to respond and get a link on hn. he just threw out some bait, and the community swarmed like starving fish. | everyone so far has focused on the auditor, but i want to know why the op thinks faking the requested data is an acceptable response. that disturbs me and nobody else commented on it! |
our security auditor is an idiot. how do i give him the information he wants?
| everyone so far has focused on the auditor, but i want to know why the op thinks faking the requested data is an acceptable response. that disturbs me and nobody else commented on it! | perhaps the auditor is smarter than everyone thinks and is expecting the sysadmin to come to him empty handed and with an explanation as to why the requirements aren't reasonable. |
warner bros: we issued takedowns for files we never saw
| this is a fun problem.issuing takedowns for things you don't control is wrong, and it's easy to verify that it costs the host time and money to resolve their mistakes. suing material, basically.meanwhile, having penalties for issuing faulty takedowns means it's impractical for owners to police things fast enough - the uploaders can always out-pace them. so it's essentially the same situation, in reverse.i side with the hosts on this, especially as issuing a takedown seems equivalent to a company claiming ownership of something that's definitively not theirs - a bit of a no-no, i hear. and since issuing the takedowns is easily poorly-automated, but not actually performing the takedowns or dealing with unhappy paying customers, it seems (completely) unfairly weighted against hosts unless they're explicitly protected.but really, there's absolutely no way to make everyone happy in this, unless illegal sharing goes away entirely on its own. hosts can't catch everything, owners can't watch everything, and removing user-uploaded content sites would massively cripple the internet. | 2"given the volume and pace of new infringements on hotfile, warner could not practically download and view the contents of each file prior to requesting that it be taken down."this seems to be the same line of reasoning that protects youtube from legal responsibility for users' content.youtube won't (and doesn't have to) police everyone's uploads, because there are so many. well now the media companies can spam dmca takedown notices, but "there are too many to verify"... putting the costs of verification/validation of content back on the hosting sites? |
warner bros: we issued takedowns for files we never saw
| 2"given the volume and pace of new infringements on hotfile, warner could not practically download and view the contents of each file prior to requesting that it be taken down."this seems to be the same line of reasoning that protects youtube from legal responsibility for users' content.youtube won't (and doesn't have to) police everyone's uploads, because there are so many. well now the media companies can spam dmca takedown notices, but "there are too many to verify"... putting the costs of verification/validation of content back on the hosting sites? | re: the 'stop online piracy act': "given the cavalier way that warner brothers has used the powers it already has under the dmca, policymakers may be reluctant to expand those powers even further."should read: "they should be reluctant to expand those powers even further ... but they probably won't." |
warner bros: we issued takedowns for files we never saw
| re: the 'stop online piracy act': "given the cavalier way that warner brothers has used the powers it already has under the dmca, policymakers may be reluctant to expand those powers even further."should read: "they should be reluctant to expand those powers even further ... but they probably won't." | a company can send non-legally binding notices to copyrighted content it does not own?what legally stops me from filing it against all of warner bros' legitimate content like trailers then? |
warner bros: we issued takedowns for files we never saw
| a company can send non-legally binding notices to copyrighted content it does not own?what legally stops me from filing it against all of warner bros' legitimate content like trailers then? | it'll really be fantastic when media companies like wb are just a bad memory. |
a basic guide to when and how to deploy https
| if you want another reason for enabling https, even for shitty blogs - on one of my visits to the us, i stayed at a motel that was snooping on my wifi traffic, injecting their own ads in google's searches and displaying their own banners in the websites i was visiting.if you're the owner of a wifi network, there are already available solutions for monetizing users' traffic, by injecting ads, like this one: <link> you, as the publisher of a shitty blog or website, do you really want isps, motels or any other third-party to mess with your own content, to inject their own scripts and frames in your html, to degrade the experience for your readership?one easy way of fixing that is https. https is not just for security or privacy, it's also for digitally signing the content that's being served. | q: when to deploy https?a: always. |
a basic guide to when and how to deploy https
| q: when to deploy https?a: always. | that's a good beginners guide. to take it a step further, check out the documentation that we maintain at mozilla: <link> |
a basic guide to when and how to deploy https
| that's a good beginners guide. to take it a step further, check out the documentation that we maintain at mozilla: <link> | the biggest barrier to https is the fact that it's a royal pain in the ass for someone who's not an ops guy to set up. unless you're on a shared host or some sort of paas that sets your certificates up for you, it's basically a big "go fuck yourself" to get everything installed and configured properly.even the mozilla article linked in the top comment asks you to choose a ciphersuite. who the heck has time to know and understand what to use, and then figure out how to make it work on their own server?oh, the version of apache you're running combined with the version of openssl that comes pre-installed on your linux distro causes "re-negotiate handshake failed" errors? good luck finding the answer to that on stackexchange.for most folks that are just trying to ship something, unless security is a huge issue https doesn't come first because it's simply too much work. and if http works out of the box, there's little incentive to turn on https. |
a basic guide to when and how to deploy https
| the biggest barrier to https is the fact that it's a royal pain in the ass for someone who's not an ops guy to set up. unless you're on a shared host or some sort of paas that sets your certificates up for you, it's basically a big "go fuck yourself" to get everything installed and configured properly.even the mozilla article linked in the top comment asks you to choose a ciphersuite. who the heck has time to know and understand what to use, and then figure out how to make it work on their own server?oh, the version of apache you're running combined with the version of openssl that comes pre-installed on your linux distro causes "re-negotiate handshake failed" errors? good luck finding the answer to that on stackexchange.for most folks that are just trying to ship something, unless security is a huge issue https doesn't come first because it's simply too much work. and if http works out of the box, there's little incentive to turn on https. | i have dozens of unique domain names to secure and growing. the cost of buying an individual cert for each one is prohibitive. what can be done instead? |
elite anti-terror police went after megaupload’s kim dotcom
| i think this is just the tiniest bit of spin here.in new zealand, like the uk, police don't regularly guns. most officers aren't trained with firearms. you have a number of elite armed response units who are. in addition to the various piracy offences, kim is also charged with possessing an unregistered firearm. apparently he also had some legal, registered firearms. there seems to be some confusion there, but the bottom line is the guy had guns.now, i don't know about you, but if you're going to arrest someone who you know has a gun maybe - just maybe - you'll want to send some officers with guns as well. because even if it's the smallest, tiniest chance things are going to kick off you don't really want to be at a disadvantage.and since your regular officers don't carry guns you send along your specially trained officers.so you can make a very good argument that the guy shouldn't have been arrested. but i'm not totally convinced you can have a go at the police for sending some armed officers along to arrest somebody who was known to have guns and was also known to be a flight risk. | i joined eff yesterday. i don't have a clue about megaupload [this is just something that reminds me of a much more general problem], but something is clearly wrong when commerical interests start to be "enforced" by counter-terrorism forces [and governments get strong-armed into passing laws and people have to launch campaigns to stop other laws and ...]. i don't know what else to do; eff seemed like one obvious player on the side of sanity.<link> [jeez; paranoid life - perspectives is flagging the cert as a bad one - anyone else?] |
elite anti-terror police went after megaupload’s kim dotcom
| i joined eff yesterday. i don't have a clue about megaupload [this is just something that reminds me of a much more general problem], but something is clearly wrong when commerical interests start to be "enforced" by counter-terrorism forces [and governments get strong-armed into passing laws and people have to launch campaigns to stop other laws and ...]. i don't know what else to do; eff seemed like one obvious player on the side of sanity.<link> [jeez; paranoid life - perspectives is flagging the cert as a bad one - anyone else?] | it took a lot of "think of the children" politics to get to the place where we send armies after white collar criminals... and then nobody thought of the children, bashing into the nursery and pointing assault rifles at them. i'm just glad they decided not to use the dogs. |
elite anti-terror police went after megaupload’s kim dotcom
| it took a lot of "think of the children" politics to get to the place where we send armies after white collar criminals... and then nobody thought of the children, bashing into the nursery and pointing assault rifles at them. i'm just glad they decided not to use the dogs. | these accounts are strikingly different. i'm sure the true lies somewhere between "he was locked up in a safe room with a sawed-off shotgun" and "all you had to do was ask".i don't really know about that dumb waiter though. it certainly does not look like the entrance to a safe room and i'm not even sure kim could fit through it. |
elite anti-terror police went after megaupload’s kim dotcom
| these accounts are strikingly different. i'm sure the true lies somewhere between "he was locked up in a safe room with a sawed-off shotgun" and "all you had to do was ask".i don't really know about that dumb waiter though. it certainly does not look like the entrance to a safe room and i'm not even sure kim could fit through it. | there were weapons on the property and kim made sure everyone knows that and he had (armed?) bodyguards and was obviously prepared for whatever assault that might occur on his property, hence the "plan" where to take and hide him. let's just say that those two facts are enough to put this case out of the regular patrol officers' yard into the hands of "some-sort-of special ops" unit. what would lapd do if they have to deal with a suspect locked up in some place, with guns and bodyguards? they would sent swat and run a boat anchor through the wall, just like we saw in the movie we downl... saw in cinema.why is it so extraordinarily strange then that the new zealand police sent their own special unit? quote wikipedia: "...formerly known as the anti-terrorist squad, is the full-time tactical and counter-terrorism group of the new zealand police." a police unit was sent, not the military. and they probably just have that one unit, so that unit has to counter actual terrorism and measly secure private property with armed douche bags on it.so, they sent a team of specialists to take control of an unknown situation with an armed suspect - sounds very rational and calculated, exactly what any efficient police would do. you do not endanger regular patrol officers in potential close-quarters gun fights.and to claim now that kim would have invited them in and talked to them is completely besides the point. an arrest warrant was out on him, the police had to deal with it and it is not for kim to "negotiate" or comment on how he would have dealt with being arrested. his potential hospitality is irrelevant. he was a suspect, he was knowingly armed with bodyguards and they had to seize him - they obviously decided this arrest was more than an average patrol officer should handle. end of story.everything else is nothing but speculations and propaganda and feeds right into the natural suspicion that a lot of us americans seem to have of the police. as a european, i am glad they are there and do their job. was it a bit "too much"? probably... but that unfortunately comes with the terrain.and i am speaking as a former paramedic who has seen a similar situation and was glad we had the police special ops there to secure the apartment before we could do anything about the patients in there. |
a crash course in startup metrics
| if you care at all about this stuff, do yourself a favor and read "the lean startup: how today's entrepreneurs use continuous innovation to create radically successful businesses". [1] eric ries shines a light on vanity metrics, tells you what you should be tracking, and ways to track it. [2] he goes into detail about how companies, big and small (himself included), often track the wrong metrics, which in turn give wrong indicators, he helps you turn that around.[1] <link>[2] <link> | good article. i know of a startup who had revenue as a kpi but did not include ad-spend or margin.as a result they hit their quarterly revenue target (and got their quarterly bonuses) by amplifying their ad-spend to hundreds of thousands a month and buying customers for 110% of what they made from them.this might seem like madness but when people's salaries and jobs depend on it, the line "what gets measured, gets done" is as true as true can be. |
a crash course in startup metrics
| good article. i know of a startup who had revenue as a kpi but did not include ad-spend or margin.as a result they hit their quarterly revenue target (and got their quarterly bonuses) by amplifying their ad-spend to hundreds of thousands a month and buying customers for 110% of what they made from them.this might seem like madness but when people's salaries and jobs depend on it, the line "what gets measured, gets done" is as true as true can be. | this doesn't really give you any help with what metrics you should actually be choosing. when i mentor startups we spend a lot of time on this, but for most web companies a good starting point is dave mcclure's pirate metrics: <link> |
a crash course in startup metrics
| this doesn't really give you any help with what metrics you should actually be choosing. when i mentor startups we spend a lot of time on this, but for most web companies a good starting point is dave mcclure's pirate metrics: <link> | if anyone needs a free dashboard tool for displaying their metrics in realtime, i made this one, which is available on github: <link> |
a crash course in startup metrics
| if anyone needs a free dashboard tool for displaying their metrics in realtime, i made this one, which is available on github: <link> | i think when you mentioned about pr and how hard it is to measure. i think some kind of customer/potential customer survey is probably the best metric. have you heard about us? what do you think of us, etc. i remeber reading about a process where you ask your customer's would you refer us to someone you know if so why if not why not? then focus your engergy on the why nots until it falls of the list. also, will you have a post of hiring good sales people? |
why canvas is not an obvious choice for web games
| i'm with this guy. canvas is great, but it's an element to include in your scene to render vector graphics, not a container for you to render your scene inside. often you'll have dozens of them layered about the place, happily doing their thing and unaware of each other.use it right and it's a great tool. try to use it as a panacea flash replacement and you're in for a bunch of headache. | i think he is comparing apples to oranges here. using html as the "rendering device" works on a different (higher) level of abstraction. the additional layer of abstraction in html has already solved the complexity of doing efficient partial redraws based on changes to a subset of a scene graph. this isn't something that the canvas api was meant to handle. if one were to use a scene graph (or display list) abstraction on top of canvas, it would shield the application developer from this complexity just as well as the html does now. however, the html abstraction, although more general, is implemented in native code while a canvas based scene-graph would need to go through java-script, so it is at a disadvantage as to how far it can be optimized. basically, what he needs is svg. :-) |
why canvas is not an obvious choice for web games
| i think he is comparing apples to oranges here. using html as the "rendering device" works on a different (higher) level of abstraction. the additional layer of abstraction in html has already solved the complexity of doing efficient partial redraws based on changes to a subset of a scene graph. this isn't something that the canvas api was meant to handle. if one were to use a scene graph (or display list) abstraction on top of canvas, it would shield the application developer from this complexity just as well as the html does now. however, the html abstraction, although more general, is implemented in native code while a canvas based scene-graph would need to go through java-script, so it is at a disadvantage as to how far it can be optimized. basically, what he needs is svg. :-) | this depends on the type of the game, but a fellow developer is beta-testing a canvas based game <link> . it's works quite well, with the exception of mobile safari to my recollection which is supposed to perform better with the next ios update. |
why canvas is not an obvious choice for web games
| this depends on the type of the game, but a fellow developer is beta-testing a canvas based game <link> . it's works quite well, with the exception of mobile safari to my recollection which is supposed to perform better with the next ios update. | for anyone wondering what happened to dextrose (the company bakaus founded to make the aves html5 game engine), it was bought by zynga back in may. he is now the cto of zynga germany. |
why canvas is not an obvious choice for web games
| for anyone wondering what happened to dextrose (the company bakaus founded to make the aves html5 game engine), it was bought by zynga back in may. he is now the cto of zynga germany. | webgl should fix this problem. |
ny times articles on hn
is it me or are there now lots of ny times articles on hn? the titles are always "interesting", of course you click and you get hit with the paywall. seems like someone is intentionally submitting "interesting" ny times articles on hn to get traffic and hope for a conversion rate. are they being submitted by a few users or is it randomly distributed? is there a way to crack down on this? | just to add some facts to your speculation, and as a quick check, in the last 7 days there have been 86 submissions from the ny times. of those, 61 were by single submission authors. those who have submitted more than one are: 4 danso
4 001sky
3 wallflower
3 rougefemme
3 rosser
2 the_economist
2 panarky
2 kanamekun
2 ibsathish
there was even one submitted by pg: <link> | in general paywalls from large, prestigious organizations scare me. for now i can ignore them, as there are hundreds of other sources of interesting content that generate revenue from traditional means (advertising, selling your information, etc.). but if the paywall scheme is successful for such organizations, others will follow suit, and the abundance of “free” quality content will dry up. the rolling snowball effect, i hope the snowball melts before it has a chance to gain momentum. |
ny times articles on hn
is it me or are there now lots of ny times articles on hn? the titles are always "interesting", of course you click and you get hit with the paywall. seems like someone is intentionally submitting "interesting" ny times articles on hn to get traffic and hope for a conversion rate. are they being submitted by a few users or is it randomly distributed? is there a way to crack down on this? | in general paywalls from large, prestigious organizations scare me. for now i can ignore them, as there are hundreds of other sources of interesting content that generate revenue from traditional means (advertising, selling your information, etc.). but if the paywall scheme is successful for such organizations, others will follow suit, and the abundance of “free” quality content will dry up. the rolling snowball effect, i hope the snowball melts before it has a chance to gain momentum. | i have no trouble with the "paywall", try configuring your browser to clear cookies after a session ends (personally, i use <link> or just use private browsing mode for nyt. |
ny times articles on hn
is it me or are there now lots of ny times articles on hn? the titles are always "interesting", of course you click and you get hit with the paywall. seems like someone is intentionally submitting "interesting" ny times articles on hn to get traffic and hope for a conversion rate. are they being submitted by a few users or is it randomly distributed? is there a way to crack down on this? | i have no trouble with the "paywall", try configuring your browser to clear cookies after a session ends (personally, i use <link> or just use private browsing mode for nyt. | i used to love reading the ny times and would still argue that it is a quality newspaper (or as good as one there is these days) but even i would have to agree that the paywall is rather annoying and articles with the paywall should be tagged as such. |
ny times articles on hn
is it me or are there now lots of ny times articles on hn? the titles are always "interesting", of course you click and you get hit with the paywall. seems like someone is intentionally submitting "interesting" ny times articles on hn to get traffic and hope for a conversion rate. are they being submitted by a few users or is it randomly distributed? is there a way to crack down on this? | i used to love reading the ny times and would still argue that it is a quality newspaper (or as good as one there is these days) but even i would have to agree that the paywall is rather annoying and articles with the paywall should be tagged as such. | another way to view ny times articles articles without the paywall is to drop the title into a google search. going through google drops the paywall for me. |
how not to write an api
| short version: <link> sells access to their api for apps. any api account can retrieve a list of all users it registered on the site, then retrieve the cleartext password for each user it created.there are so many wtfs in this whole situation that it's a wonder criticker has managed to keep the website online. which is a shame, as it looks like a really useful website. | whenever i get that plaintext password "vibe" on a site, i like to make my password something somewhat degrading go the site; like "thissitesux!", but slightly more vulgar. it's not my fault if they see it.once after having gotten the vibe, i ended up on phone support with the site in question. at some point i was instructed to "log back in with ummmm that uhhh same password you signed up with...." i could tell that my plaintext-dar hadn't failed me that time :) |
how not to write an api
| whenever i get that plaintext password "vibe" on a site, i like to make my password something somewhat degrading go the site; like "thissitesux!", but slightly more vulgar. it's not my fault if they see it.once after having gotten the vibe, i ended up on phone support with the site in question. at some point i was instructed to "log back in with ummmm that uhhh same password you signed up with...." i could tell that my plaintext-dar hadn't failed me that time :) | could someone with a solid security background provide a example of how to properly handle the issues that this api fails so badly at?while some developers may be able to clearly identify bad practices, best practices may not always be so clear.i'd love to know what a best practice would be for things like authentication to an api and some of the other issues brought up here. |
how not to write an api
| could someone with a solid security background provide a example of how to properly handle the issues that this api fails so badly at?while some developers may be able to clearly identify bad practices, best practices may not always be so clear.i'd love to know what a best practice would be for things like authentication to an api and some of the other issues brought up here. | somebody is trying to outshine mt. gox in terms of amateurism. i wouldn't be surprised to find a number of other vulnerabilities (sql injection ?). who the hell thinks it's ok to store non-encrypted passwords in this day and age? it's not like you don't have a major security breach every month...also, i like the 'handler.php' endpoint returning some kind of ugly pseudo-soap. ugh. |
how not to write an api
| somebody is trying to outshine mt. gox in terms of amateurism. i wouldn't be surprised to find a number of other vulnerabilities (sql injection ?). who the hell thinks it's ok to store non-encrypted passwords in this day and age? it's not like you don't have a major security breach every month...also, i like the 'handler.php' endpoint returning some kind of ugly pseudo-soap. ugh. | <requestprocessingtime>-0.036264</requestprocessingtime>wait, did their api return a negative processing time? |
skeleton: a coffeescript node.js project generator
| it's bad news, running coffeescript without compiling it to javascript first. if your code throws an exception it won't print line numbers. don't take my word for it: <link> also take issue with the name. node is extremely popular among front-end devs and others have pointed out the popular skeleton css base library.finally sprockets is obsolete for javascript, with commonjs/amd and tools like browserify and requirejs. it's also obsolete for stylesheets if you're using less or sass. | the namespace for foss is getting crowded:
<link>
not a bad thing. |
skeleton: a coffeescript node.js project generator
| the namespace for foss is getting crowded:
<link>
not a bad thing. | very cool; i'll be playing around with this a bit, looks like a nice and fast way to get started with a node web app.side note: generally good practice to throw your name into google (for example, "skeleton framework" or some combination of relevant words) to see what was returned before landing on your name (<link> |
skeleton: a coffeescript node.js project generator
| very cool; i'll be playing around with this a bit, looks like a nice and fast way to get started with a node web app.side note: generally good practice to throw your name into google (for example, "skeleton framework" or some combination of relevant words) to see what was returned before landing on your name (<link> | i've been using a quite different approach at structuring my node.js applications: <link> nodext you build the application out of multiple modules (extensions), which you then "mount" into the url structure you want to use.helps keeping code more decoupled and reusable. |
skeleton: a coffeescript node.js project generator
| i've been using a quite different approach at structuring my node.js applications: <link> nodext you build the application out of multiple modules (extensions), which you then "mount" into the url structure you want to use.helps keeping code more decoupled and reusable. | just yesterday i was searching for a decent coffeescript node.js generator, but the one's i've been using lately[1] haven't been up to date and this is exactly what i've been looking for. thanks!![1]<link> |
anthropology of mid-sized startups
| i doubt that the phrase "masculinity vs. femininity" means the same thing to modern eyes that it did to hofstede. it would probably be better to call this dimension something else, although i'm not sure that the alternative "quantity of life vs. quality of life" label is helpful either. | if you're in london and enjoy talking about topics like this, consider joining the london ribbonfarm readers meetup group <link> |
anthropology of mid-sized startups
| if you're in london and enjoy talking about topics like this, consider joining the london ribbonfarm readers meetup group <link> | it's weird how the term "tribe" is now used to describe just about any set of people that has at least one thing or interest in common, even just temporarily... |
anthropology of mid-sized startups
| it's weird how the term "tribe" is now used to describe just about any set of people that has at least one thing or interest in common, even just temporarily... | kevin simler, the post author, also blogs at <link> |
anthropology of mid-sized startups
| kevin simler, the post author, also blogs at <link> | some more observations:- the branch of industry is important: games/media are more likely to fire quickly than a shop that does networking gear.- background of founders may be very important; if you are on the same wavelength or not with the management team, that's very important while working for a startup.- most important: the way that conflicts are resolved/kinds of crisis 'management'. to what extend is the company going into dirty politics mode once that things get tough? i guess the problem here is that things like integrity/honesty are impossible to classify; not tangible enough.interesting if someone has thought about good questions that could help to get a better picture with regards to the integrity thing while doing interviews; during interviews everyone looks so reasonable ... go figure how things will turn out in the end... |
why do most programming languages only return a single value from a function?
| common lisp has multiple return values and it's quite useful: (let x (f 12) ...) ; bind x to the first value returned by (f 12) and silently drop the others
(let (x y) (f 12) ...) ; bind x to the first value and y to the second.
that way, i can return more information without breaking existing code. that point is really important: in python i can gracefully add an extra argument, from def foo(x):
...
to def foo(x, y=none):
...
but i can't return an extra value without changing (and uglifying!) all calling code to handle the tuple.the answer to the op is probably that all computer languages derive from fortran, and fortran derived from maths, so it chose f(x, y) as the notation for function application. with that notation, there's no elegant way of handling more return values, and language designers might feel that the extra complexity/ugliness isn't worth it. that, and intellectual inertia. | link to the actual page, instead of the blogspam version:
<link> |
why do most programming languages only return a single value from a function?
| link to the actual page, instead of the blogspam version:
<link> | the given answer is a hack.the real answer is "most languages can return multiple values", since whenever structs were introduced. and if you're bugged by the fact that there are multiple input parameters, well, just think of the list of params as a tuple. which you could picture as anonymous structs anyways.so that in the end, all functions take one tuple and return one tuple, where tuples can be called structs, classes, or, well, tuples.the real question being, why is it that there is a syntactic sugar for anonymous input structs but that the sugar for output structs is just being introduced.and there i have to admit i have no idea why. |
why do most programming languages only return a single value from a function?
| the given answer is a hack.the real answer is "most languages can return multiple values", since whenever structs were introduced. and if you're bugged by the fact that there are multiple input parameters, well, just think of the list of params as a tuple. which you could picture as anonymous structs anyways.so that in the end, all functions take one tuple and return one tuple, where tuples can be called structs, classes, or, well, tuples.the real question being, why is it that there is a syntactic sugar for anonymous input structs but that the sugar for output structs is just being introduced.and there i have to admit i have no idea why. | a proof by contradiction:assume a language where functions do not only return one value. now, consider each function in this language. it either returns the same number of values each time, where each has a specific meaning, and they are distinguished either by order or by name. or it returns an arbitrary number of values, where the semantics of each are the same. but that means the return values are equivalent to a tuple, a dictionary, or an array, which are single values. therefore we have a contradiction and such a language does not exist. (yes, i know about values in lisp and this can be a bit nice. mostly joking.)more seriously, ask the question: what relationship between multiple values is useful for returning from functions but not useful enough to be a data structure that can be used in other parts of code? |
why do most programming languages only return a single value from a function?
| a proof by contradiction:assume a language where functions do not only return one value. now, consider each function in this language. it either returns the same number of values each time, where each has a specific meaning, and they are distinguished either by order or by name. or it returns an arbitrary number of values, where the semantics of each are the same. but that means the return values are equivalent to a tuple, a dictionary, or an array, which are single values. therefore we have a contradiction and such a language does not exist. (yes, i know about values in lisp and this can be a bit nice. mostly joking.)more seriously, ask the question: what relationship between multiple values is useful for returning from functions but not useful enough to be a data structure that can be used in other parts of code? | the stated reasons are all stupid. the real answer is likely that programming language design is largely a cargo cult exercise and early languages only had single return values, which are easier to implement. |
ask hn: how profitable has news.ycombinator.com been for you?
so far, if you can somehow convert the time spent on news.ycombinator.com into dollars, how profitable has visiting and/or contributing to this site has been for you?<p>examples: i got a hired from a $100k job posted here. i found a technology which saved me weeks of work and thousands of dollars. i though i would need to buy this $2k software but this site showed me a cheaper alternative.<p>things like that. | in the sense that i have become smarter and wiser from blog links and ask/show discussions, very valuable - in terms of $ i would est $10k in savings from not pursuing bad ideas (no market demand, etc).as an aside, hnews is valuable in terms of time spent and money saved or earned. whereas fb is a black hole and linkedin has some value, and twitter the most. | - learned a lot about enterpreneurship, startups 8 hacking (would have otherwise taken me 3-4+ years)- started blogging because of hn- started and made money on mvpfor1k thanks to hn 8 it's members ($5-10k)- got some freelance work while i was in high-school....- met a good friend a couple years ago on hn that later on became my first customer, and a powerful testimonial.- acquired some customers because of it ($10-20k value)- got into a seed incubator because of it ($20k+ value) |
ask hn: how profitable has news.ycombinator.com been for you?
so far, if you can somehow convert the time spent on news.ycombinator.com into dollars, how profitable has visiting and/or contributing to this site has been for you?<p>examples: i got a hired from a $100k job posted here. i found a technology which saved me weeks of work and thousands of dollars. i though i would need to buy this $2k software but this site showed me a cheaper alternative.<p>things like that. | - learned a lot about enterpreneurship, startups 8 hacking (would have otherwise taken me 3-4+ years)- started blogging because of hn- started and made money on mvpfor1k thanks to hn 8 it's members ($5-10k)- got some freelance work while i was in high-school....- met a good friend a couple years ago on hn that later on became my first customer, and a powerful testimonial.- acquired some customers because of it ($10-20k value)- got into a seed incubator because of it ($20k+ value) | -$10,000 from the unproductivity. |
ask hn: how profitable has news.ycombinator.com been for you?
so far, if you can somehow convert the time spent on news.ycombinator.com into dollars, how profitable has visiting and/or contributing to this site has been for you?<p>examples: i got a hired from a $100k job posted here. i found a technology which saved me weeks of work and thousands of dollars. i though i would need to buy this $2k software but this site showed me a cheaper alternative.<p>things like that. | -$10,000 from the unproductivity. | i got a couple of good sugestions for my project. other than that its a social media to me. why shoudl i try to value it in terms of money? i like ideas, talks about those ideas. thats good enough for me. |
ask hn: how profitable has news.ycombinator.com been for you?
so far, if you can somehow convert the time spent on news.ycombinator.com into dollars, how profitable has visiting and/or contributing to this site has been for you?<p>examples: i got a hired from a $100k job posted here. i found a technology which saved me weeks of work and thousands of dollars. i though i would need to buy this $2k software but this site showed me a cheaper alternative.<p>things like that. | i got a couple of good sugestions for my project. other than that its a social media to me. why shoudl i try to value it in terms of money? i like ideas, talks about those ideas. thats good enough for me. | got a new job through one of the hiring threads. got a compensation boost from previous job so hn has been thousands of dollars profitable for me. |
schumer bashes bitcoin, wants to shut down silk road drug site
| the most interesting thing about bitcoins is that when the cops come and seize your big pile of bitcoins, if it's on a truecrypted drive, and you don't give them the password, or they shoot you because you appeared armed with a usb drive, that just increases the value of the bitcoins in general and the cops can't use it to buy a new police helicopter. this is the most dangerous aspect of bitcoins by far. if properly protected, they cannot be confiscated. | that's the whole point of bitcoins. anonymous, hard-to-trace payments. you can't get that kind of "freedom" without also being really attractive for illegal uses.bitcoin is designed to be subversive, and subversive means illegal as far as the government is concerned.this is the main/only reason i'm not making any long term investment in bitcoin. |
schumer bashes bitcoin, wants to shut down silk road drug site
| that's the whole point of bitcoins. anonymous, hard-to-trace payments. you can't get that kind of "freedom" without also being really attractive for illegal uses.bitcoin is designed to be subversive, and subversive means illegal as far as the government is concerned.this is the main/only reason i'm not making any long term investment in bitcoin. | i like how senator's statement sounds more like a positive site review:even more amazing, said schumer, is that users rate their delivery performance and the quality of the drug on the site. |
schumer bashes bitcoin, wants to shut down silk road drug site
| i like how senator's statement sounds more like a positive site review:even more amazing, said schumer, is that users rate their delivery performance and the quality of the drug on the site. | drugs are a great market for bitcoin. if you're speculating against fiat currencies, you'll want to use a combination of gold, mining stocks, and bitcoins, but if you're just buying drugs on the internet, and bitcoins are an option, i don't know why you'd use anything else. |
schumer bashes bitcoin, wants to shut down silk road drug site
| drugs are a great market for bitcoin. if you're speculating against fiat currencies, you'll want to use a combination of gold, mining stocks, and bitcoins, but if you're just buying drugs on the internet, and bitcoins are an option, i don't know why you'd use anything else. | chuck schumer exemplifies the nanny state: you aren't enlightened as we politicians are. therefore, we will make the decisions regarding your health for you.democracy should exist to create/manage public goods, not private ones. a drug or an electronic store of value that a group of adults voluntarily use isn't any of my business. everything is schumer's business, apparently. |
can homomorphic encryption be practical?
| here is a question that’s puzzling me. since this thread has already dropped off the front page, and it probably won’t be seen by many people, i’ve also posted it at <link>’t-und...the homomorphic encryption techniques seem to allow the computation of arbitrary polynomials over various finite rings, and – at least in everything i’ve read – it’s always treated as obvious that this is equivalent to allowing arbitrary computations. is that actually true? if so, is it really obvious? i’d love some enlightenment here.a related source of confusion is that clearly any encryption scheme that 0em2actually0/em2 supported arbitrary computations on encrypted values would be hopelessly insecure. for example, suppose you have encrypted a ten-character ascii password. i then run the function that extracts the first character. the result i get is still encrypted, but since there are only 128 possible values for an ascii character, i can encrypt each of these values and compare the result to the result of my computation. (i can do this because i can always encrypt any data of my choice, just by running a constant-valued function inside the encryption.) then i do the same for the second character, and so on, till i have your complete password. encryption fail!the only reasonable conclusion i can draw from this is that fully homomorphic encryption does not really permit arbitrary computations on the encrypted data. in that case,1. why do people keep saying it does?
2. what is the class of computations that are in fact permitted? is it just the evaluation of polynomials?anyone? | i'm kind of new to this, but here's my understanding of this idea -"fully homomorphic encryption" allows a computer to run an encrypted program without knowing what goes on inside. it's like a true black box, without any feasible way of accessing the internal components. i assume there are also ways of sending unencrypted inputs into the black box, and receiving unencrypted outputs, otherwise it would be relatively useless.if i understand it correctly, then i see at least one application in web games. you could have the client run the entire game, by sending user inputs into the black box, and then later saving their game by sending the black box back to the server. this would allow cheat-proof gaming without any server validation required (until saving). |
can homomorphic encryption be practical?
| i'm kind of new to this, but here's my understanding of this idea -"fully homomorphic encryption" allows a computer to run an encrypted program without knowing what goes on inside. it's like a true black box, without any feasible way of accessing the internal components. i assume there are also ways of sending unencrypted inputs into the black box, and receiving unencrypted outputs, otherwise it would be relatively useless.if i understand it correctly, then i see at least one application in web games. you could have the client run the entire game, by sending user inputs into the black box, and then later saving their game by sending the black box back to the server. this would allow cheat-proof gaming without any server validation required (until saving). | i sat through a recent presentation about this at m.i.t. while it's a long way from practical implementation, it does seem like it is at least feasible that we will get there. |
can homomorphic encryption be practical?
| i sat through a recent presentation about this at m.i.t. while it's a long way from practical implementation, it does seem like it is at least feasible that we will get there. | we've looked into this at social fortress and while homomorphic encryption could have interesting uses there are more practical approaches for the enterprise in the use cases presented in this paper.kudos to the researchers as there is valuable information contained. |
can homomorphic encryption be practical?
| we've looked into this at social fortress and while homomorphic encryption could have interesting uses there are more practical approaches for the enterprise in the use cases presented in this paper.kudos to the researchers as there is valuable information contained. | i'd love to have some explain a few simple walkthroughs of why it's not doable. for instance couldn't you do you distributed text search by scrambling text content and then doing search on scrambled search terms? or is that not secure due to being able to infer text content by analyzing the frequency of certain sequences(certain letters/phrases will show up.) anyone?in general there must be classes of symbolic manipulation that is jus abstract pattern matching that doesn't have to unencrypted to work.what are some concrete examples of it just not working. |
signs of life from gnu hurd
| grits teeth...it's _still_ pointless. there's no chance of displacing linux or the bsds in practical terms, and there's no particularly interesting ideas in it. we already know you can build a unix on top of a microkernel and it will sorta work.enough, already. kill this late-1980s design and build something interesting already. surely at least one of the things that have happened between 1990-2011 in hardware, software and networking warrants a rethink of os assumptions rather than this stale rehashing? | arch linux^h^h^h^h^h has had a hurd variant for some time.<link> installed it on virtualbox. smelled like unix. |
signs of life from gnu hurd
| arch linux^h^h^h^h^h has had a hurd variant for some time.<link> installed it on virtualbox. smelled like unix. | interesting! if they can really get it ticking this time, it would be really interesting to see how a microkernel plays out in 'popular' use.it's sort of funny how the major kernels are primarily monolithic (please correct me if i'm wrong wrt recent versions of windows), but academic research says microkernels are better. worse is better? first-mover advantage? |
signs of life from gnu hurd
| interesting! if they can really get it ticking this time, it would be really interesting to see how a microkernel plays out in 'popular' use.it's sort of funny how the major kernels are primarily monolithic (please correct me if i'm wrong wrt recent versions of windows), but academic research says microkernels are better. worse is better? first-mover advantage? | would've been awesome in 1980 on a timesharing system. now i've got as much control of all my personal devices as i want and i don't want any more control of devices at work than what i need to do my job (with control comes responsibility). |
signs of life from gnu hurd
| would've been awesome in 1980 on a timesharing system. now i've got as much control of all my personal devices as i want and i don't want any more control of devices at work than what i need to do my job (with control comes responsibility). | something relevant: symbian has had a microkernel architecture for most of it's life: <link> a brief shining moment, it was open source. it's legacy is very interesting, worth a read to see just how far the little os that could has come along since it first ran on pdas. in fact, it's atypical architecture gives symbian some advantages over contemporary oses in terms of absurdly low power and cpu requirements. it is also quite secure, offering granular security settings for almost anything - the only symbian malware that ever made the news were those that the user installed him/herself. sadly this also gives it a very complex programming model (for example, it uses an obscure variant of c; also many basic services like audio need to be accessed through a server running on device) and a difficult threading model. qt provides a beautiful api that wraps over the native layer these days, but it seems it's simply not fashionable among the majority of developers. |
the first congressman to battle the nsa has died
| a bunch of people posting here seem to be misreading the point of the article. the point is not that he died old but that he died in obscurity in the midst of issues that came to light in part following his work decades ago.the article suggests he was ahead of his time in finding and exposing problems with the nsa (and cia, fbi, etc), which seem egregious then and poignant now. the article suggests the nsa worked against him, contributing to his obscurity.i found the article interesting, informative, and relevant. | before everyone rushes to the flag button because the author is biased (he is), consider that this article discusses a historical context i've seen missing from a lot of the nsa analysis. i find this article, even in its breathless hyperbole, more informative than the latest "what the nsa is capable of" version. it shows a historical continuity with the actions intelligence agencies pursue, and what happened when people tried to stop them (right or wrong). no, this article is not the rational enquiry i wish it were. but as someone who is conflicted about nsa activities, i found it shaped my perspective more than most submissions i've read.yes, everyone mentions that telegraphs entering and exiting the country were tapped, but i was unaware that in the 70s they were already mining for keywords, not calling it eavesdropping, and refusing to show up for congressional inquiries.when i saw clapper's now infamous testimony, i assumed it was a new, emboldened post-9/11 intelligence community that surpassed the cold war era. i'm not sure that's the case now.there's also an argument to be made by those in favor of nsa activities: we've managed to have an nsa with extraordinary power that defies congress for a long time, but we still haven't seen too many secret police.ultimately, it focuses the debate to some degree not on nsa goals (which have historically been to collect as much relevant information as possible, and resist congressional oversight with vigor), but on how much easier it now is to collect that information. |
the first congressman to battle the nsa has died
| before everyone rushes to the flag button because the author is biased (he is), consider that this article discusses a historical context i've seen missing from a lot of the nsa analysis. i find this article, even in its breathless hyperbole, more informative than the latest "what the nsa is capable of" version. it shows a historical continuity with the actions intelligence agencies pursue, and what happened when people tried to stop them (right or wrong). no, this article is not the rational enquiry i wish it were. but as someone who is conflicted about nsa activities, i found it shaped my perspective more than most submissions i've read.yes, everyone mentions that telegraphs entering and exiting the country were tapped, but i was unaware that in the 70s they were already mining for keywords, not calling it eavesdropping, and refusing to show up for congressional inquiries.when i saw clapper's now infamous testimony, i assumed it was a new, emboldened post-9/11 intelligence community that surpassed the cold war era. i'm not sure that's the case now.there's also an argument to be made by those in favor of nsa activities: we've managed to have an nsa with extraordinary power that defies congress for a long time, but we still haven't seen too many secret police.ultimately, it focuses the debate to some degree not on nsa goals (which have historically been to collect as much relevant information as possible, and resist congressional oversight with vigor), but on how much easier it now is to collect that information. | it is disheartening to know that multiple people fought hard against a system, lost, and were knowingly, maliciously attacked, rendering their careers over. this sort of obvious corruption and immorality in character present in a group that has so much power with very little oversight is repugnant. to arms...seriously. |
the first congressman to battle the nsa has died
| it is disheartening to know that multiple people fought hard against a system, lost, and were knowingly, maliciously attacked, rendering their careers over. this sort of obvious corruption and immorality in character present in a group that has so much power with very little oversight is repugnant. to arms...seriously. | dead at 92. the nsa sure got him good. i'm not sure why it took them 40 years though. probably to deflect suspicion. |
the first congressman to battle the nsa has died
| dead at 92. the nsa sure got him good. i'm not sure why it took them 40 years though. probably to deflect suspicion. | "and no one seemed to notice or care."<link> |
any way to "hack" the google lunar x prize?
warning: this question is likely so stupid that i'm going to wish i had posted it anonymously to avoid ridicule, but what the hell :)<p>i find the subject of space exploration and colonization fascinating, but the incredible costs for access to space seem to be a nearly-insurmountable obstacle to true progress in these areas. i've recently become interested in the google lunar x prize and started looking at the teams who are competing. while these teams are probably going to accomplish some amazing things, i suspect they're going to do it on the back of tens of millions in funding...is that truly the only way?<p>i guess my question is something like this: is there any <i>theoretical</i> way to win something like the lunar x prize for $1 million? $100k? $10k?<p>here are some ridiculous thoughts that i've had:<p>1. using high-altitude balloons to cut down on launch costs.<p>2. going small. very small. like a pound or two for the rover. maybe smaller.<p>3. getting the cost low enough that you can launch multiple missions, knowing that most will fail.<p>4. travel to the moon over a period of months...would this reduce launch difficulty?<p>i'm sure i'm probably missing the scale of the problem here, and perhaps the simple laws of physics dictate that there's no cheap solution that we know of yet. or is there? | if your rovers were small enough, you might be able to make a gun-launched or gun-assisted scheme work. if you could engineer your probe/launch vehicle to withstand 20 gs, for example, a linear acceleration at that level would get you to mach 1.2ish in 400 meters or so. you come out of the barrel cleanly in ramjet territory and, what's better past the point where your shock wave angles are highly dependent on mach number. you could start out in subcritical mode for the engine and progress through critical and supercritical, buying hardware simplicity with some loss of efficiency. you might even be able to shed some of the diffuser cowling in stages at the lip for a q8d variable geometry engine. by the tme you hit m = 5-7, you'd probably be out of the atmosphere and would have to switch to rocket mode anyhow. your mass fraction for the booster stage would be pretty amazing because you'd shaved 2000-2500 m/s off your delta-v with the gun/air-breathing phase. (that matters a lot to the rocket equation. i'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to work out the actual benefit.)the limiting factors here are obtaining a guidance and control system that is small enough to fit down your (admittedly large bore) low-pressure launch gun. also, your gun would have to be pretty dang straight or your vehicle would have to be wrapped in a vibration-absorbing sabot.the benefits are: 1) once you have the gun, you can launch as many as you like; 2) mass fraction as mentioned above; 3)the possibility of production-lining launch vehicle construction.not that i've given this any thought.btw, bruckner et. al. at the university of washington have been working on a ram accelerator, a type of launch gun, for years. the only thing slowing them is funding. they omit an airbreathing stage in favor of obtaining all the delta-v in one shot, subjecting the payload to 700-1e3 gs. | had the privilege of hearing a presentation by brian binnie, the test pilot for scaled composites (<link> shortly before they won ansari xprize back in 2004.his description of their team sounded like the ultimate group of hackers. and his description of their process sounded exactly like the questions you ask above... discarding all preconceived notions, how do we make this happen in the cheapest, simplest way possible?he also advised that teams adopt a mantra of "question, don't defend." in other words, it's more important to realize that something is wrong and get it fixed than to assign blame or respect egos. |
any way to "hack" the google lunar x prize?
warning: this question is likely so stupid that i'm going to wish i had posted it anonymously to avoid ridicule, but what the hell :)<p>i find the subject of space exploration and colonization fascinating, but the incredible costs for access to space seem to be a nearly-insurmountable obstacle to true progress in these areas. i've recently become interested in the google lunar x prize and started looking at the teams who are competing. while these teams are probably going to accomplish some amazing things, i suspect they're going to do it on the back of tens of millions in funding...is that truly the only way?<p>i guess my question is something like this: is there any <i>theoretical</i> way to win something like the lunar x prize for $1 million? $100k? $10k?<p>here are some ridiculous thoughts that i've had:<p>1. using high-altitude balloons to cut down on launch costs.<p>2. going small. very small. like a pound or two for the rover. maybe smaller.<p>3. getting the cost low enough that you can launch multiple missions, knowing that most will fail.<p>4. travel to the moon over a period of months...would this reduce launch difficulty?<p>i'm sure i'm probably missing the scale of the problem here, and perhaps the simple laws of physics dictate that there's no cheap solution that we know of yet. or is there? | had the privilege of hearing a presentation by brian binnie, the test pilot for scaled composites (<link> shortly before they won ansari xprize back in 2004.his description of their team sounded like the ultimate group of hackers. and his description of their process sounded exactly like the questions you ask above... discarding all preconceived notions, how do we make this happen in the cheapest, simplest way possible?he also advised that teams adopt a mantra of "question, don't defend." in other words, it's more important to realize that something is wrong and get it fixed than to assign blame or respect egos. | not a stupid question at all. i remember cringely writing something about hacking that particular prize, as well... i'll add a link once i find it. |
any way to "hack" the google lunar x prize?
warning: this question is likely so stupid that i'm going to wish i had posted it anonymously to avoid ridicule, but what the hell :)<p>i find the subject of space exploration and colonization fascinating, but the incredible costs for access to space seem to be a nearly-insurmountable obstacle to true progress in these areas. i've recently become interested in the google lunar x prize and started looking at the teams who are competing. while these teams are probably going to accomplish some amazing things, i suspect they're going to do it on the back of tens of millions in funding...is that truly the only way?<p>i guess my question is something like this: is there any <i>theoretical</i> way to win something like the lunar x prize for $1 million? $100k? $10k?<p>here are some ridiculous thoughts that i've had:<p>1. using high-altitude balloons to cut down on launch costs.<p>2. going small. very small. like a pound or two for the rover. maybe smaller.<p>3. getting the cost low enough that you can launch multiple missions, knowing that most will fail.<p>4. travel to the moon over a period of months...would this reduce launch difficulty?<p>i'm sure i'm probably missing the scale of the problem here, and perhaps the simple laws of physics dictate that there's no cheap solution that we know of yet. or is there? | not a stupid question at all. i remember cringely writing something about hacking that particular prize, as well... i'll add a link once i find it. | i had a crazy idea too, and i'll probably get ridiculed, but what the hell.i think it is fairly straightforward to get something tiny to the moon. the challenge comes in making it broadcast back to earth. for wireless transmissions, you need considerable bulk and you add a lot of cost.wouldn't it be cool if, instead, it was connected to earth by a ridiculously long insulated wire? then you might even be able to cut down the size to well under a pound for the rover itself (not including the fuel needed to get there). it shouldn't have problems transmitting as long as the wire is insulated well enough, right?some back-of-a-napkin calculations lead me to believe that you wouldn't need more than 60 cubic miles to store enough wire to reach the moon (200,000 miles long, 1 inch thick).what do you think? flame away :) |
any way to "hack" the google lunar x prize?
warning: this question is likely so stupid that i'm going to wish i had posted it anonymously to avoid ridicule, but what the hell :)<p>i find the subject of space exploration and colonization fascinating, but the incredible costs for access to space seem to be a nearly-insurmountable obstacle to true progress in these areas. i've recently become interested in the google lunar x prize and started looking at the teams who are competing. while these teams are probably going to accomplish some amazing things, i suspect they're going to do it on the back of tens of millions in funding...is that truly the only way?<p>i guess my question is something like this: is there any <i>theoretical</i> way to win something like the lunar x prize for $1 million? $100k? $10k?<p>here are some ridiculous thoughts that i've had:<p>1. using high-altitude balloons to cut down on launch costs.<p>2. going small. very small. like a pound or two for the rover. maybe smaller.<p>3. getting the cost low enough that you can launch multiple missions, knowing that most will fail.<p>4. travel to the moon over a period of months...would this reduce launch difficulty?<p>i'm sure i'm probably missing the scale of the problem here, and perhaps the simple laws of physics dictate that there's no cheap solution that we know of yet. or is there? | i had a crazy idea too, and i'll probably get ridiculed, but what the hell.i think it is fairly straightforward to get something tiny to the moon. the challenge comes in making it broadcast back to earth. for wireless transmissions, you need considerable bulk and you add a lot of cost.wouldn't it be cool if, instead, it was connected to earth by a ridiculously long insulated wire? then you might even be able to cut down the size to well under a pound for the rover itself (not including the fuel needed to get there). it shouldn't have problems transmitting as long as the wire is insulated well enough, right?some back-of-a-napkin calculations lead me to believe that you wouldn't need more than 60 cubic miles to store enough wire to reach the moon (200,000 miles long, 1 inch thick).what do you think? flame away :) | join the a-rocket mailing list for extremely high snr discussion: <link> |
just ask hn (or more precisely, url-less) posts
| great feature, thanks.a parallel feature for "rate my startup" posts would be useful; those self-posts also tend to get lost. | a worthy feature for sure, but moving something that's been commonly used for years to squeeze something else in is a negative ui experience. the "threads" link is no longer where it used to be. i'd guess the earliest it should go would be before "jobs" as i doubt the average hn user clicks "jobs" or "submit" more than once a day (if that often), whereas "threads" is the way to a common activity.twitter did something like this when they added the new "retweet" feature. they pushed the "reply" link aside and put the "retweet" in its place. i had to write a greasemonkey script to resolve this due to years of muscle memory built up on how it was. |
just ask hn (or more precisely, url-less) posts
| a worthy feature for sure, but moving something that's been commonly used for years to squeeze something else in is a negative ui experience. the "threads" link is no longer where it used to be. i'd guess the earliest it should go would be before "jobs" as i doubt the average hn user clicks "jobs" or "submit" more than once a day (if that often), whereas "threads" is the way to a common activity.twitter did something like this when they added the new "retweet" feature. they pushed the "reply" link aside and put the "retweet" in its place. i had to write a greasemonkey script to resolve this due to years of muscle memory built up on how it was. | is it possible to have it as a link at the top of the page too? because people are sure to forget - or new users won't find out about it for ages :) |
just ask hn (or more precisely, url-less) posts
| is it possible to have it as a link at the top of the page too? because people are sure to forget - or new users won't find out about it for ages :) | wow, i literally just posted a comment in a separate thread about how much i value ask hn posts. and half hour later i see this - assuming it's a coincidence, but either way, thank you, thank you, thank you.edit: just saw the other post and saw that this is not a coincidence. as i wrote there, your responsiveness to this community is truly impressive. |
just ask hn (or more precisely, url-less) posts
| wow, i literally just posted a comment in a separate thread about how much i value ask hn posts. and half hour later i see this - assuming it's a coincidence, but either way, thank you, thank you, thank you.edit: just saw the other post and saw that this is not a coincidence. as i wrote there, your responsiveness to this community is truly impressive. | does anyone have the link for the page where the guy categorized all the ask hn posts? |
linux guy tries out a mac for a weekend for the first time
| osx has definitely won me over. my background is primarily in linux. about 5 or 6 years of exclusive linux use on my personal machines. most of my needs are mostly online or a terminal window so i can adapt to new platforms pretty quickly. i don't really care what os i use for the most part. linux lost me on good power management support. i really need to be able to sleep a machine and have it wake-up quickly and properly 99% of the time. osx is the only os out there today i've found can do that reliability. the system is back up with networking in the time it takes to open the lid and put your hands on the keyboard. i still run a linux vm though because macports 8 fink are not all that fantastic. i still want the safety of a familiar linux environment from time to time. | "i'm sure that i could hook up an external usb mouse, but i wanted to do things the 'mac' way, so i worked without it."i keep reading this same sentiment from everyone who tries out a mac. please don't bother. the first thing every mac user does is throw away that useless mouse. i imagine a landfill somewhere filled with nothing but little blobs of white plastic. |
linux guy tries out a mac for a weekend for the first time
| "i'm sure that i could hook up an external usb mouse, but i wanted to do things the 'mac' way, so i worked without it."i keep reading this same sentiment from everyone who tries out a mac. please don't bother. the first thing every mac user does is throw away that useless mouse. i imagine a landfill somewhere filled with nothing but little blobs of white plastic. | the op's biggest problem is his unfamiliarity with the os. i'm sure if he spent some more time with the mac, he could easily get used to it. if it helps, i'm going to post the solutions to some of his problems here.about the xcode problem: there is something wrong with apple's servers. i never had problems downloading xcode, but one of my friends had to retry several times before his xcode download succeeded. his downloads failed in exactly the same way as the op's. (btw, osx also comes with wget.)mouse: contrary to popular belief, you can right click on a stock osx install. if you have tap-to-click enabled, just tap the trackpad with two fingers. otherwise, put two fingers on the trackpad and press the button. if you're using an apple mouse, you can enable right-clicking in the mouse preferences.torrent client: i have never heard of or used tomato torrent. the most popular torrent client on the mac is transmission, and it sports a beautiful ui. btw, if you're looking for apps, the best place would be http://osx.iusethis.compackage management: use macports, which is something like gentoo's portage. the trouble with macports is that it doesn't use osx's default packages, so you have two versions of perl, two versions of python, etc. the good thing about macports is that it installs everything in /opt/local/, which means you can just rm -rf the directory to get rid of everything.i don't use macports. i prefer to compile all my packages from source and install them in /opt/.under the hood, os x is a good ol' unix distribution. it took me about a week to get used to os x when i purchased my first mac last year (this was after 4 years of using linux a pc).the only problem with os x is that once you get used to it, going back to a hardcore linux distro like debian is not easy :) |
linux guy tries out a mac for a weekend for the first time
| the op's biggest problem is his unfamiliarity with the os. i'm sure if he spent some more time with the mac, he could easily get used to it. if it helps, i'm going to post the solutions to some of his problems here.about the xcode problem: there is something wrong with apple's servers. i never had problems downloading xcode, but one of my friends had to retry several times before his xcode download succeeded. his downloads failed in exactly the same way as the op's. (btw, osx also comes with wget.)mouse: contrary to popular belief, you can right click on a stock osx install. if you have tap-to-click enabled, just tap the trackpad with two fingers. otherwise, put two fingers on the trackpad and press the button. if you're using an apple mouse, you can enable right-clicking in the mouse preferences.torrent client: i have never heard of or used tomato torrent. the most popular torrent client on the mac is transmission, and it sports a beautiful ui. btw, if you're looking for apps, the best place would be http://osx.iusethis.compackage management: use macports, which is something like gentoo's portage. the trouble with macports is that it doesn't use osx's default packages, so you have two versions of perl, two versions of python, etc. the good thing about macports is that it installs everything in /opt/local/, which means you can just rm -rf the directory to get rid of everything.i don't use macports. i prefer to compile all my packages from source and install them in /opt/.under the hood, os x is a good ol' unix distribution. it took me about a week to get used to os x when i purchased my first mac last year (this was after 4 years of using linux a pc).the only problem with os x is that once you get used to it, going back to a hardcore linux distro like debian is not easy :) | the interesting part is that the author is apparently the last living user of cvs. |
linux guy tries out a mac for a weekend for the first time
| the interesting part is that the author is apparently the last living user of cvs. | for power users, it really is nice to have somebody just point to the few non-default options and say "here, just check that box". for instance, the two-finger-right-click is elegant and simple, but not on by default. (keyboard -2 shortcuts -2 check the box at the bottom "all controls") same for making it more linux-like (macports for wget, and prce is the most reliable imo). |
ask yc: four year roadmap
over the last week i've submitted several questions to yc regarding startups and programming. your responses have been intelligent, thoughtful, and inspiring -- thank you.<p>i realized my questions all revolve around a central issue and i should have just addressed it from the start. i'm 23 and work as a manager in a nontechnical field and won't be able to pursue another career full time for another 4 years. i have a computer science degree and consider myself a very good hacker, but my web programming experience is currently limited to html, css, php, mysql, and some javascript.<p>in four years i either want to be able to work at a tech startup (or a company like google) or have the technical and business savvy to start my own. the question is: how should i spend my time to give myself the best chance of success? | why wait 4 years? why not join a startup (or technical company) now and start doing the things you want full-time instead of fitting them in around a job you don't value? you can learn a lot getting hands-on at the ground level, and if you want a mix of tech skills and business savvy then why not work at several startups (over time) and help grow them - you may get to do everything and anything from software/service design to marketing and pr. it is probably the best experience you can get if your aim is to start your own startup and will also equip you well for applying to places like google.if you really have to stay at the job for some reason, then i'd say in your spare time practice programming and building web apps around what you are interested and that solve problems you face. launch them and see what happens. you may suck/fail at first, but over time you will definitely learn a lot, and will get better with each iteration you take - you never know one of them may really take off. you can practice business skills in growing your apps and once you have done it a few times, try doing it for other businesses (ideally in other fields too for some diversity to other markets). there are many courses/books that can teach you the skills, but if possible, find someone whose expertise you respect to mentor you.many successful businesses were, and still are, started by people in the same boat so please don't let worries about lack of skill/experience stop you from starting. | "you can't wait for inspiration. you have to go after it with a club." - jack londonfirst of all congratulations for having a long-term plan. you know where you want to end up. that's big. and you're flexible enough that it can be a startup or a prestige company.micro-apps. build something small like a twitter visualization (twistori.com was built in a day, twittervision.com in 4 hours!), release it, build a blog to record your projects.and i'd like to suggest broadening your portfolio: if it's all technology, it's all in one basket. entrepreneurship is about taking on and managing risk. outside the controlled world of compilers and stack traces, there is opportunity.consider taking on activities of varying risk. what are you scared at getting better at? does it scare you to give a presentation? join toastmasters. or ask a question at the microphone in a public forum (that's p.s.) does it scare you to mingle in a room of strangers? get a group of guy friends and go practice. nothing to lose. or start by going to a lecture and talking with the person you sit down next to. does not having control scare you? mentor or tutor a teenager. or be the new guy in an interest group. |
ask yc: four year roadmap
over the last week i've submitted several questions to yc regarding startups and programming. your responses have been intelligent, thoughtful, and inspiring -- thank you.<p>i realized my questions all revolve around a central issue and i should have just addressed it from the start. i'm 23 and work as a manager in a nontechnical field and won't be able to pursue another career full time for another 4 years. i have a computer science degree and consider myself a very good hacker, but my web programming experience is currently limited to html, css, php, mysql, and some javascript.<p>in four years i either want to be able to work at a tech startup (or a company like google) or have the technical and business savvy to start my own. the question is: how should i spend my time to give myself the best chance of success? | "you can't wait for inspiration. you have to go after it with a club." - jack londonfirst of all congratulations for having a long-term plan. you know where you want to end up. that's big. and you're flexible enough that it can be a startup or a prestige company.micro-apps. build something small like a twitter visualization (twistori.com was built in a day, twittervision.com in 4 hours!), release it, build a blog to record your projects.and i'd like to suggest broadening your portfolio: if it's all technology, it's all in one basket. entrepreneurship is about taking on and managing risk. outside the controlled world of compilers and stack traces, there is opportunity.consider taking on activities of varying risk. what are you scared at getting better at? does it scare you to give a presentation? join toastmasters. or ask a question at the microphone in a public forum (that's p.s.) does it scare you to mingle in a room of strangers? get a group of guy friends and go practice. nothing to lose. or start by going to a lecture and talking with the person you sit down next to. does not having control scare you? mentor or tutor a teenager. or be the new guy in an interest group. | one option would be to do what joshua schachter did. he built delicious in his spare time. when he was ready to quit his job, he transformed delicious from a hobby into a startup by raising money. |
ask yc: four year roadmap
over the last week i've submitted several questions to yc regarding startups and programming. your responses have been intelligent, thoughtful, and inspiring -- thank you.<p>i realized my questions all revolve around a central issue and i should have just addressed it from the start. i'm 23 and work as a manager in a nontechnical field and won't be able to pursue another career full time for another 4 years. i have a computer science degree and consider myself a very good hacker, but my web programming experience is currently limited to html, css, php, mysql, and some javascript.<p>in four years i either want to be able to work at a tech startup (or a company like google) or have the technical and business savvy to start my own. the question is: how should i spend my time to give myself the best chance of success? | one option would be to do what joshua schachter did. he built delicious in his spare time. when he was ready to quit his job, he transformed delicious from a hobby into a startup by raising money. | i hadn't really done any web programming before starting tipjoy. with a full time commitment, we went from start to launch in 3 months.you should certainly be able to do side projects. the best part is that you don't need to try to make money, so you should focus on building something interesting and useful.if you want to do tiny free projects for tipjoy, let me know :) |
ask yc: four year roadmap
over the last week i've submitted several questions to yc regarding startups and programming. your responses have been intelligent, thoughtful, and inspiring -- thank you.<p>i realized my questions all revolve around a central issue and i should have just addressed it from the start. i'm 23 and work as a manager in a nontechnical field and won't be able to pursue another career full time for another 4 years. i have a computer science degree and consider myself a very good hacker, but my web programming experience is currently limited to html, css, php, mysql, and some javascript.<p>in four years i either want to be able to work at a tech startup (or a company like google) or have the technical and business savvy to start my own. the question is: how should i spend my time to give myself the best chance of success? | i hadn't really done any web programming before starting tipjoy. with a full time commitment, we went from start to launch in 3 months.you should certainly be able to do side projects. the best part is that you don't need to try to make money, so you should focus on building something interesting and useful.if you want to do tiny free projects for tipjoy, let me know :) | make something. the only way to keep your skills current is to use them, and the best way to expand your skills to to build something.a great video interview appeared here a while ago. it's about how it takes a couple of years to really get good enough at a creative field to produce good work. you go through a period of creating work that's not as good as your ambition would like it to be. here's the link: <link>'s worth the time to go through the process of creating a body of work. after doing it for a couple years, you'll be able to focus far more on doing something wonderful, rather than just doing /something/. |
an incremental approach to compiler construction
| this is similar in spirit to this much more detailed series of text files, which is a great introduction for a beginner:<link> spends a bunch of time on parsing, since it isn't lisp. | that paper is epic. it's actually a tutorial for undergrads on compiler construction, however, ghuloum does nothing but code generation. from start to finish. |
an incremental approach to compiler construction
| that paper is epic. it's actually a tutorial for undergrads on compiler construction, however, ghuloum does nothing but code generation. from start to finish. | as someone who knows very little about compilers, is there any good place to read up on the very basic terminology and such (what a parser is, what they mean by code generation, and get a rough outline how code goes from language to something the processor can understand) that is on a slightly more abstract level than this paper? |
an incremental approach to compiler construction
| as someone who knows very little about compilers, is there any good place to read up on the very basic terminology and such (what a parser is, what they mean by code generation, and get a rough outline how code goes from language to something the processor can understand) that is on a slightly more abstract level than this paper? | i'm assuming most compilers don't ship nasm/masm/whatever with them. how do compilers do actual "assembly to executable" step? |
an incremental approach to compiler construction
| i'm assuming most compilers don't ship nasm/masm/whatever with them. how do compilers do actual "assembly to executable" step? | here's something similar, more tutorial-like in ruby:
<link> |
ask hn: good math books / activities for children?
my 5 year old son knows a lot of math for his age. he seems very interested in exploring it further (e.g. making up his own math problem, asking questions, etc.) we gave him a few kumon books, but they are quite repetitive (and i don't want to associate math with boring in his mind.) i'm trying to spend time with him and show him interesting things (e.g. geometry, negative numbers, fractions, roman numerals, playing board games, etc.) but i can't be with him 100% of the time. do you know any good, interesting math books / workbooks for young children, that encourage problem solving, thinking, and the love of math? ideas for home-made activities are welcome too.<p>thank you! | cuisennaire blocks / rods are useful to show fractions etc. available in wood or plastic. here's one cheap set but many others are available. <link> o dice: you can buy a pound (weight) of dice with diiferent numbers of sides from amazon and ebay etc. these are usually chessex (a quality brand). they are bright and shiny and fun. don't eat them. you can work out your own dice games and problems. button men is a simple quick game to play <link> estimation in everysay life - how many bricks in that wall, how many leaves on that tree, how many cookies in the packet?rules and tape measures are fun and lead to simple arithmetic. how many cm taller is a than b?math teaching techniques might be different now than when you were taught. heres a good book
<link> | dreambox is a good online option for self-directed math exploration. otherwise the best results will come from interaction... be prepared to answer lots of questions, and ask lots of interesting questions.there are plenty of fun games you can introduce, one of my favorites is graph-paper racing: <link> also monopoly or any money-based game where you can learn to make change. set and quirkle are good logic-based games. i'm experimenting with some tabletop gaming with my 7yo, starting with battletech quick-start rules. it's a hit so far. not very challenging math-wise, but a lot more fun than monopoly. :) |
ask hn: good math books / activities for children?
my 5 year old son knows a lot of math for his age. he seems very interested in exploring it further (e.g. making up his own math problem, asking questions, etc.) we gave him a few kumon books, but they are quite repetitive (and i don't want to associate math with boring in his mind.) i'm trying to spend time with him and show him interesting things (e.g. geometry, negative numbers, fractions, roman numerals, playing board games, etc.) but i can't be with him 100% of the time. do you know any good, interesting math books / workbooks for young children, that encourage problem solving, thinking, and the love of math? ideas for home-made activities are welcome too.<p>thank you! | dreambox is a good online option for self-directed math exploration. otherwise the best results will come from interaction... be prepared to answer lots of questions, and ask lots of interesting questions.there are plenty of fun games you can introduce, one of my favorites is graph-paper racing: <link> also monopoly or any money-based game where you can learn to make change. set and quirkle are good logic-based games. i'm experimenting with some tabletop gaming with my 7yo, starting with battletech quick-start rules. it's a hit so far. not very challenging math-wise, but a lot more fun than monopoly. :) | life of fred is pretty entertaining. though you may need to read the stories to your son. teaching textbooks, my older daughter's favorite, has video tutoring. singapore math is good, too. there are programs you can look for that have lots of manipulatives. don't recall the company names.learning how to use an abacus was something the kids enjoyed and helped with ways of thinking about numbers quite a bit.you may find researching what home schoolers are doing for math programs helpful. |
ask hn: good math books / activities for children?
my 5 year old son knows a lot of math for his age. he seems very interested in exploring it further (e.g. making up his own math problem, asking questions, etc.) we gave him a few kumon books, but they are quite repetitive (and i don't want to associate math with boring in his mind.) i'm trying to spend time with him and show him interesting things (e.g. geometry, negative numbers, fractions, roman numerals, playing board games, etc.) but i can't be with him 100% of the time. do you know any good, interesting math books / workbooks for young children, that encourage problem solving, thinking, and the love of math? ideas for home-made activities are welcome too.<p>thank you! | life of fred is pretty entertaining. though you may need to read the stories to your son. teaching textbooks, my older daughter's favorite, has video tutoring. singapore math is good, too. there are programs you can look for that have lots of manipulatives. don't recall the company names.learning how to use an abacus was something the kids enjoyed and helped with ways of thinking about numbers quite a bit.you may find researching what home schoolers are doing for math programs helpful. | the miquon math materials<link> a playful spirit of exploration and go well with the cuisennaire rods already recommended by danbc, a recommendation i heartily agree with. my children all began their initial math instruction with the miquon math materials, and my oldest son, grown up and working as a hacker, definitely benefited from playing around with mathematics a lot as he grew up. |
ask hn: good math books / activities for children?
my 5 year old son knows a lot of math for his age. he seems very interested in exploring it further (e.g. making up his own math problem, asking questions, etc.) we gave him a few kumon books, but they are quite repetitive (and i don't want to associate math with boring in his mind.) i'm trying to spend time with him and show him interesting things (e.g. geometry, negative numbers, fractions, roman numerals, playing board games, etc.) but i can't be with him 100% of the time. do you know any good, interesting math books / workbooks for young children, that encourage problem solving, thinking, and the love of math? ideas for home-made activities are welcome too.<p>thank you! | the miquon math materials<link> a playful spirit of exploration and go well with the cuisennaire rods already recommended by danbc, a recommendation i heartily agree with. my children all began their initial math instruction with the miquon math materials, and my oldest son, grown up and working as a hacker, definitely benefited from playing around with mathematics a lot as he grew up. | art of problem solving is a good web site for math enthusiasts, and their "beast academy" books may interest your son. a math curriculum i like is singapore math.i suggest searching the davidson gifted forum <link> for posts about math resources and posting there. |