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An FBI Counterterrorism Agent Tracked Me Down Because I Took a Picture of This | I think his quote is absolutely spot on about how this stuff works:"I lived through the McCarthy era, so I know how false accusations, surveillance, and keeping files on innocent people can destroy their careers and lives."I'm actually rather amazed at the number of "so what?" comments I'm seeing here. I thought we were all much more conscious of how these types of programs start to spin out of control.I've read about this happening to a guy that photographs underground missile silo's/bunkers already. That was admittedly pretty soon after 9/11, however. | We don't know what the security guard told the FBI.I'd be willing to bet that if a security guard bothers to report a 72 year old with a high-quality camera for taking pictures of obvious artwork to the FBI that the guard exaggerated the encounter.I've heard of several of these FBI followups in the past ~10 years but the person being interviewed always said nothing but positive things about how professional and calm the FBI agents were. They didn't send a 30 person SWAT team like the DEA would or multiple agents to your door with exposed guns threatening you. Yes, I've personally seen multiple instances of the DEA raiding homes while I was in college, good peoples lives were ruined because "someone smelled marijuana at a party".It's the FBI's job to follow up on these types of instances. They were heavily criticized after 9/11 that they received tips but didn't properly follow up, now they follow up and everyone complains that they shouldn't bother anyone.Does anyone think the FBI would simply leave a card asking for a phone call if they really believed that person was any real threat?I'm just offering another possible perspective to the story that doesn't fit the mainstream "all law enforcement are bad" group-think going around. Think before jumping on the bandwagon guys.The security guard who over-reacted is the issue here, not the FBI. Yes, the Patriot Act needs to be revisited or even thrown out and the NSA needs to go back to having very strict limitations on sharing with other agencies and allied nations, but that's a different conversation. |
An FBI Counterterrorism Agent Tracked Me Down Because I Took a Picture of This | We don't know what the security guard told the FBI.I'd be willing to bet that if a security guard bothers to report a 72 year old with a high-quality camera for taking pictures of obvious artwork to the FBI that the guard exaggerated the encounter.I've heard of several of these FBI followups in the past ~10 years but the person being interviewed always said nothing but positive things about how professional and calm the FBI agents were. They didn't send a 30 person SWAT team like the DEA would or multiple agents to your door with exposed guns threatening you. Yes, I've personally seen multiple instances of the DEA raiding homes while I was in college, good peoples lives were ruined because "someone smelled marijuana at a party".It's the FBI's job to follow up on these types of instances. They were heavily criticized after 9/11 that they received tips but didn't properly follow up, now they follow up and everyone complains that they shouldn't bother anyone.Does anyone think the FBI would simply leave a card asking for a phone call if they really believed that person was any real threat?I'm just offering another possible perspective to the story that doesn't fit the mainstream "all law enforcement are bad" group-think going around. Think before jumping on the bandwagon guys.The security guard who over-reacted is the issue here, not the FBI. Yes, the Patriot Act needs to be revisited or even thrown out and the NSA needs to go back to having very strict limitations on sharing with other agencies and allied nations, but that's a different conversation. | The solution to this is really simple. Photography is never illegal. It literally infuriates me every time I enter the midtown tunnel in NYC to see the "PHOTOGRAPHY PROHIBITED" signs at the entrance[0]. No, it fucking isn't.Don't put it in public if you don't want people taking pictures of it. We use that argument for Street View, for aerial photographs, for countless other things. There should never be reason to harass people for photography, regardless of what Tom Clancy told you in his latest novel.[0]: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.745975,-73.974759,3a,75y,86....(The irony of being able to link to a publicly-accessible image of the "STRICTLY ENFORCED" no photography sign is not lost on me.) |
An FBI Counterterrorism Agent Tracked Me Down Because I Took a Picture of This | The solution to this is really simple. Photography is never illegal. It literally infuriates me every time I enter the midtown tunnel in NYC to see the "PHOTOGRAPHY PROHIBITED" signs at the entrance[0]. No, it fucking isn't.Don't put it in public if you don't want people taking pictures of it. We use that argument for Street View, for aerial photographs, for countless other things. There should never be reason to harass people for photography, regardless of what Tom Clancy told you in his latest novel.[0]: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.745975,-73.974759,3a,75y,86....(The irony of being able to link to a publicly-accessible image of the "STRICTLY ENFORCED" no photography sign is not lost on me.) | The underlying issue probably requires a reformulation of the Constitution to resolve.The problem is that the police can investigate anyone for any reason. Arresting them is harder, but not that hard. You have no redress for this; investigations and arrests that don't lead to a conviction (or indictment) can waste an infinite amount of your time. The Constitutional protections (however weak these days) only prevent you from being punished without a trial. If no charges are filed, you can effectively be punished without the Constitution mattering.I'm not sure what the solution is -- I'm not a lawyer or political scientist or whatever -- but something seems not right.(I've been investigated before; it really wasn't as bad as people say. I thought the agents were extremely competent and professional, which is not quite what you hear from the average Reddit commenter. Some things need to be looked at in detail before being dropped on the floor; asking the person suspected can be a good way to decide whether or not to continue the investigation.I think I've posted the details to HN before, but I'm not sure how to filter that out from my many other comments :) |
An FBI Counterterrorism Agent Tracked Me Down Because I Took a Picture of This | The underlying issue probably requires a reformulation of the Constitution to resolve.The problem is that the police can investigate anyone for any reason. Arresting them is harder, but not that hard. You have no redress for this; investigations and arrests that don't lead to a conviction (or indictment) can waste an infinite amount of your time. The Constitutional protections (however weak these days) only prevent you from being punished without a trial. If no charges are filed, you can effectively be punished without the Constitution mattering.I'm not sure what the solution is -- I'm not a lawyer or political scientist or whatever -- but something seems not right.(I've been investigated before; it really wasn't as bad as people say. I thought the agents were extremely competent and professional, which is not quite what you hear from the average Reddit commenter. Some things need to be looked at in detail before being dropped on the floor; asking the person suspected can be a good way to decide whether or not to continue the investigation.I think I've posted the details to HN before, but I'm not sure how to filter that out from my many other comments :) | Do terrorists actually take pictures of potential targets?
I know that's what happens in the movies, but have there been documented accounts of terrorists taking photos before an attack--is it common? If it is common, is the false positive rate low enough to justify classifying this kind of photography as suspicious behavior?Pictures of most likely targets are readily available online, and they can get those without exposing themselves to countersurveillance. Why would they stand around taking pictures? |
Limiting passwords to 12 characters is "secure enough" | As I see it, character limits aren't so much about security, as just a dumb way to be hostile to the user. All of my passwords are site-specific unique passwords generated by a password manager. I don't care if you store plain-text passwords, because if someone steals passwords out of your database then they already have all the access that my password to your site would've given.But if a site rejects the password that my password manager generated (16 chars [a-zA-Z0-9]), then I have to work around it, make a password manually, and it's generally a pain in the ass that shouldn't be necessary. And since I'm doing it right and these sites doing it wrong, I'm not inclined to be forgiving. | Ah, yes, there's nothing quite like a condescending representative entirely out of his depth telling you to "do the maths" to show your customers that you really care about their security and privacy. I wish you good luck in getting them to listen to you. |
Limiting passwords to 12 characters is "secure enough" | Ah, yes, there's nothing quite like a condescending representative entirely out of his depth telling you to "do the maths" to show your customers that you really care about their security and privacy. I wish you good luck in getting them to listen to you. | This is far from the worst offender.Banks are typically the worst. All sorts of gimmicky password requirements. 8-12 characters. Must have one capital letter. Must have one number. No special symbols.So "I can't believe it's not butter!" won't work, yet that would probably be a pretty secure password, and be entirely rememberable. In fact I could come up with a silly pun-filled sentence for each site I visit and make passwords fun again. |
Limiting passwords to 12 characters is "secure enough" | This is far from the worst offender.Banks are typically the worst. All sorts of gimmicky password requirements. 8-12 characters. Must have one capital letter. Must have one number. No special symbols.So "I can't believe it's not butter!" won't work, yet that would probably be a pretty secure password, and be entirely rememberable. In fact I could come up with a silly pun-filled sentence for each site I visit and make passwords fun again. | Even if they were brute-forcing, a new GPU cluster can do 350 billion guesses per second. http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/12/25-gpu-cluster-crack... That means an average of 78 days to crack an individual password, even with no heuristics about which passwords are more likely. |
Limiting passwords to 12 characters is "secure enough" | Even if they were brute-forcing, a new GPU cluster can do 350 billion guesses per second. http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/12/25-gpu-cluster-crack... That means an average of 78 days to crack an individual password, even with no heuristics about which passwords are more likely. | When I complained to my bank about their 12 character limit they told me..."12 characters is already hard enough to remember."Sigh. |
Ask HN: I think I've been scammed - what now? | You met someone on the internet. You sent them money. Presumably, you have no contract (at least you didn't mention it). The person who has your money isn't doing what you want. You've realized doing this was amazingly stupid.Consider the money you've spent and the time you've wasted extra credit for your "how to do business" degree. Seriously, you should know better. If you want to start and build a company stop looking for people to implement your ideas and go find a true collaborator. Find someone you can sit down with over coffee and look in the eye. Find someone that shares your vision and complements your skills. Don't just be the "guy with an idea and money" because those guys get taken by slime balls like this. Be the guy that recruits a team, manages the business, forms the company, drives the team, finds early customers, gets the logo designed for nothing by hustling hard--the guy that does everything else. This guy is useful to coders. IMO, your money and your ideas are worthless to people with good intentions. You have to bring more to the table than that. The good news is "all the other stuff" requires only that you have a brain and work really hard to make things happen.Don't waste another moment worrying about this. Drop it. Move on. Spend your time and energy on creating something positive and always remember why this happened.Assholes are everywhere. Starting a business is risky and hard. The ONLY risk you can conceivably reduce (never eliminate) is the interpersonal risk between you and the people you choose to spend your countless hours of blood, sweat, and tears with. | Hi there, you mention my name, even though I just gave you free help, but you withhold the name of the person who scammed you? Not cool man.If you know this person is a known scammer and has minimum of two accounts, as you said, PLEASE OUT HIM. Sheesh. |
Ask HN: I think I've been scammed - what now? | Hi there, you mention my name, even though I just gave you free help, but you withhold the name of the person who scammed you? Not cool man.If you know this person is a known scammer and has minimum of two accounts, as you said, PLEASE OUT HIM. Sheesh. | At the risk of adding to the intrigue here, I think it's best if this community knows that there might be someone unsaviory amongst us. It is jiganti's perogative whether or not to out the person responsible for this. However, nothing stops a bit of detective work.Whois on both wikizu.com and crushtease.com reveal: Registrant:
Sink Float
P.O. Box 820
Beijing, Beijing 100837
China
Administrative Contact:
Float, Sink [email protected]
P.O. Box 820
Beijing, Beijing 100837
China
+20.13352074153 Fax --
A few tests of user profile pages shows us there is a user here named 'sinkfloat'. Strange, but not conclusive by any means. Another search using searchyc.com using 'sink float' reveals another user, 'pinksoda' making some outrageous claims about sites he/she has built [1] [2]. Also, a link to a new business they started, www.sinkfloat.com [3]. Ok, now we're getting somewhere. Whois on sinkfloat.com reveals the same contact information as wikizu.com and crushtease.com.Knowing that jiganti mentioned this user has at least two handles here, a lot of evidence points that pinksoda and sinkfloat are one in the same and likely the person jiganti partnered with on this venture.[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1299723[2]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1299094[3]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1269276Conclusive? Maybe not. Certainly enough, IMO, to make anyone thinking of doing business with pinksoda or sinkfloat think twice. Unsavory business practices, scammers, etc are not welcome here, as far as I'm concerned. I welcome pinksoda and/or sinkfloat to chime in here if this analysis is wrong. If so, I apologize. |
Ask HN: I think I've been scammed - what now? | At the risk of adding to the intrigue here, I think it's best if this community knows that there might be someone unsaviory amongst us. It is jiganti's perogative whether or not to out the person responsible for this. However, nothing stops a bit of detective work.Whois on both wikizu.com and crushtease.com reveal: Registrant:
Sink Float
P.O. Box 820
Beijing, Beijing 100837
China
Administrative Contact:
Float, Sink [email protected]
P.O. Box 820
Beijing, Beijing 100837
China
+20.13352074153 Fax --
A few tests of user profile pages shows us there is a user here named 'sinkfloat'. Strange, but not conclusive by any means. Another search using searchyc.com using 'sink float' reveals another user, 'pinksoda' making some outrageous claims about sites he/she has built [1] [2]. Also, a link to a new business they started, www.sinkfloat.com [3]. Ok, now we're getting somewhere. Whois on sinkfloat.com reveals the same contact information as wikizu.com and crushtease.com.Knowing that jiganti mentioned this user has at least two handles here, a lot of evidence points that pinksoda and sinkfloat are one in the same and likely the person jiganti partnered with on this venture.[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1299723[2]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1299094[3]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1269276Conclusive? Maybe not. Certainly enough, IMO, to make anyone thinking of doing business with pinksoda or sinkfloat think twice. Unsavory business practices, scammers, etc are not welcome here, as far as I'm concerned. I welcome pinksoda and/or sinkfloat to chime in here if this analysis is wrong. If so, I apologize. | This reminds me a little about about what happened with Mark Zuckerberg and the Winklevoss twins. Communication was cut off for a while and many excuses were made. However, if it makes you feel better, the twins now have a $150 million stake in Facebook. [1]Anyways, I'm not sure if I have much advice. First thing should definitely be hiring a lawyer, though. You should probably refrain from posting anymore information here on HN as well. I've seen you've already removed some, which is good. We only need to hear the gist of the situation (for future reference).Hope everything turns out well! -
[Added in edit]I traced back to when you were first starting this project. One of the people commented and wrote: I see these types of posts and it astonishes me that people will look for
cofounders "on the street."
I can't imagine that [ increases the odds of being successful -- but maybe I'm
wrong. Employee number 5 can be an unknown quantity,
but employee number 2? That would terrify me. [2]
This should be a warning to everybody else.[1] - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/01/04/...[2] - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1625890 |
Ask HN: I think I've been scammed - what now? | This reminds me a little about about what happened with Mark Zuckerberg and the Winklevoss twins. Communication was cut off for a while and many excuses were made. However, if it makes you feel better, the twins now have a $150 million stake in Facebook. [1]Anyways, I'm not sure if I have much advice. First thing should definitely be hiring a lawyer, though. You should probably refrain from posting anymore information here on HN as well. I've seen you've already removed some, which is good. We only need to hear the gist of the situation (for future reference).Hope everything turns out well! -
[Added in edit]I traced back to when you were first starting this project. One of the people commented and wrote: I see these types of posts and it astonishes me that people will look for
cofounders "on the street."
I can't imagine that [ increases the odds of being successful -- but maybe I'm
wrong. Employee number 5 can be an unknown quantity,
but employee number 2? That would terrify me. [2]
This should be a warning to everybody else.[1] - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/01/04/...[2] - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1625890 | I don't think I follow the whole story. What exactly did you pay for? Did you pay him for his time, because when you say "I paid for that, plus some sort of marketing campaign..." I wonder what that is. If you paid for advertising, who got the contract? Is there no invoice?Are you sure the terms were clear? If the other party kept the money in exchange for his efforts--and that seems likely--then I don't think there's a lot too this.If the money was for an advertising campaign, I'm not sure why you feel that you're owed the money. What you're doing comes with risk of failure.Perhaps I missed something in there. I think it's awfully aggressive to make public accusations of wrongdoing without explaining the arrangements that were made.----I re-read your account, just to make sure I didn't miss the point, and I pretty sure I did not. This really sounds like you offered money for a stake in something that didn't take off, and you admit that you were not diligent in entering into this deal. That's the game. I suppose it's up to how your contract is written. |
Facebook acquires Instagram | This is very reminiscent of Google/YouTube circa 2006. When Google bought YT it was a small team of people and a pretty nascent product that people really loved, and the usage numbers were out of control. They left the product mostly untouched and let it grow on its own. Though there was major criticism at the time, it is one of the best tech acquisitions of the past decade. | So, I found something very interesting in Mark Zuckerberg's post about acquiring Instagram:> we're committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.Facebook has always integrated whatever it purchased (that I know of) very tightly into the core product, or just done an acqui-hire. Instead, they've taken what is arguably the best way to share photos and decided to keep it as a product that exists on its own.This is a major strategy change for Facebook and speaks to something I have suspected for some time - they now understand that in order to continue spurring growth, they cannot just acquire and roll in every product. As the ecosystem starts to hit a long-term maturity cycle, other products that fulfill particular functions better will be key to maintaining dominance over the market as a whole.Let's face it: G+ cannot topple Facebook (though it probably wasn't intended to anyway), Twitter is fairly specialized and Pinterest has come up with a new way to share that fits neatly with the other two. Instagram makes immense logic as a purchase for Facebook as they'll control one of the most important ways people share photos outside their product, neatly roping everyone that uses it right into the FB circle without feeling forced to do so. |
Facebook acquires Instagram | So, I found something very interesting in Mark Zuckerberg's post about acquiring Instagram:> we're committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.Facebook has always integrated whatever it purchased (that I know of) very tightly into the core product, or just done an acqui-hire. Instead, they've taken what is arguably the best way to share photos and decided to keep it as a product that exists on its own.This is a major strategy change for Facebook and speaks to something I have suspected for some time - they now understand that in order to continue spurring growth, they cannot just acquire and roll in every product. As the ecosystem starts to hit a long-term maturity cycle, other products that fulfill particular functions better will be key to maintaining dominance over the market as a whole.Let's face it: G+ cannot topple Facebook (though it probably wasn't intended to anyway), Twitter is fairly specialized and Pinterest has come up with a new way to share that fits neatly with the other two. Instagram makes immense logic as a purchase for Facebook as they'll control one of the most important ways people share photos outside their product, neatly roping everyone that uses it right into the FB circle without feeling forced to do so. | According to WSJ price is $1Bsource: http://allthingsd.com/20120409/breaking-facebook-to-acquire-...Edit: Direct Source: http://newsroom.fb.com/Announcements/Facebook-to-Acquire-Ins...The total consideration for San Francisco-based Instagram is approximately $1 billion in a combination of cash and shares of Facebook. The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close later this quarter. |
Facebook acquires Instagram | According to WSJ price is $1Bsource: http://allthingsd.com/20120409/breaking-facebook-to-acquire-...Edit: Direct Source: http://newsroom.fb.com/Announcements/Facebook-to-Acquire-Ins...The total consideration for San Francisco-based Instagram is approximately $1 billion in a combination of cash and shares of Facebook. The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close later this quarter. | Some of you might find this useful:https://instagram.com/accounts/remove/request/ |
Facebook acquires Instagram | Some of you might find this useful:https://instagram.com/accounts/remove/request/ | Anyone got some bad news about their startup that they need to release? Get that press release out, stat. |
My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report | The top answer has it exactly right. This should be Root Cause, since ultimately even bugs caused by human errors are really caused by systemic flaws. Some examples: * SQLite has 1177 times as many tests as code (not a typo)
* Live television is broadcast with a 5-10 second delay
* IMVU automatically reverts commits pushed to the site if regressions are detected
* Netflix implemented a system called the Chaos Monkey, which randomly shuts
down processes. Ensures the system can survive any failure
* VLC, Unity3D, Windows, 3D Studio Max and many more applications phone
home crashes, which allows developers to quickly patch frequent issues
* Code reviews and pair programming ensure no one person's mistake
can break critical code sections
* Similarly, multiple people should sign off on copy written. For newsletters
and press releases the whole team should, since they can't be withdrawn
* Well designed systems automatically backup, and those backups are
automatically tested, so nothing is deleted forever
Change "who" to "why" and a horrible idea turns into a brilliant one. Well designed systems can reduce the risk of almost any mistake, at the cost of speed and flexibility.Ultimately it's up to the company to decide where the balance lies, and to live with the consequences. Startups will accept a drastically different risk profile to banks and Fortune 500 companies. | Joel Spolsky refused to add a "blame" field to FogBugz for years, he used this as an example of how you should not give the customers every feature they demand, and he said it was one of the top most requested features. He explained that once you add that field it will be the end of fixing bugs and making honest bug reports. Developers will work with QA so that bugs don't get entered into the system. Long arguments will ensue about whose fault a bug really is, and massive time will be wasted on this. One of the jobs of a software designer is to construct a tool that encourages good ways of working and not dysfunctional ones. New features need to be evaluated with this in mind.Eventually though after he turned over project management of the software to the employees, they responded to the constant bug reports about the lack of this feature and added the ability to have this field. I recall he made a note about it on his blog, but that the project belonged to them and it wasn't his project to micromanage, so now they have the feature whether he likes it or not.Caution: I probably have half the details wrong, I'll try to find some links.Update: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/news/20020912.html |
My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report | Joel Spolsky refused to add a "blame" field to FogBugz for years, he used this as an example of how you should not give the customers every feature they demand, and he said it was one of the top most requested features. He explained that once you add that field it will be the end of fixing bugs and making honest bug reports. Developers will work with QA so that bugs don't get entered into the system. Long arguments will ensue about whose fault a bug really is, and massive time will be wasted on this. One of the jobs of a software designer is to construct a tool that encourages good ways of working and not dysfunctional ones. New features need to be evaluated with this in mind.Eventually though after he turned over project management of the software to the employees, they responded to the constant bug reports about the lack of this feature and added the ability to have this field. I recall he made a note about it on his blog, but that the project belonged to them and it wasn't his project to micromanage, so now they have the feature whether he likes it or not.Caution: I probably have half the details wrong, I'll try to find some links.Update: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/news/20020912.html | My senior at work loves to ridicule every little mistake (no matter how inconsequential it is) that I (or others) make.Being a part of really small team, this fear of ridicule resulted in me:- not talking to anyone about any doubts I had.- not discussing new ideas with anyone.- going down in productivity because I was afraid to ask questions about what I was supposed to do. Chalked this one up to not being sure about whether it was something I was supposed to know and didn't or something I was not expected to know and was expected to look it up. This was mainly a result of being a fresher.- Just being defensive in general and not trying stuff. And as a result, not learning as much as I could have been.It's a couple of years since then now and I've learned to 'not give a fuck.' |
My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report | My senior at work loves to ridicule every little mistake (no matter how inconsequential it is) that I (or others) make.Being a part of really small team, this fear of ridicule resulted in me:- not talking to anyone about any doubts I had.- not discussing new ideas with anyone.- going down in productivity because I was afraid to ask questions about what I was supposed to do. Chalked this one up to not being sure about whether it was something I was supposed to know and didn't or something I was not expected to know and was expected to look it up. This was mainly a result of being a fresher.- Just being defensive in general and not trying stuff. And as a result, not learning as much as I could have been.It's a couple of years since then now and I've learned to 'not give a fuck.' | I was a senior manager in an organization where one of my peers essentially inserted a similar blame regime into our incident management process. It is a poisonous practice, but I actually loved my job and wanted to improve the place. So my team fought back.The way that you defeat a system like this is to use it. Be humble, honest and calm, and go out of your way take the hits. But refuse to be blamed for things that aren't your responsibility. Force the problem people to do the same.That undermines the system, as your putting the problem person in the uncomfortable position of taking responsibility for his actions. The whole point of "blame assignment" is to deflect blame from the golden children.In my case, the blame regime lasted a few months. It collapses when the person pushing the regime is on the defensive too often. |
My boss decided to add a “person to blame” field to every bug report | I was a senior manager in an organization where one of my peers essentially inserted a similar blame regime into our incident management process. It is a poisonous practice, but I actually loved my job and wanted to improve the place. So my team fought back.The way that you defeat a system like this is to use it. Be humble, honest and calm, and go out of your way take the hits. But refuse to be blamed for things that aren't your responsibility. Force the problem people to do the same.That undermines the system, as your putting the problem person in the uncomfortable position of taking responsibility for his actions. The whole point of "blame assignment" is to deflect blame from the golden children.In my case, the blame regime lasted a few months. It collapses when the person pushing the regime is on the defensive too often. | The more blame you try to place the fewer commits you're going to get (and the ones you do get will be larger and full of "defensive code"). Less commits, less often will make the problem worse, not better because the merges will be larger and more painful, and more subtle systemic errors will become the norm.This is one of those solutions that causes more of the problem its trying to solve. Management will love it. |
Ask HN: issue tracking for open source project? | Github + Lighthouse works pretty seamlessly for us. I wouldn't go back to self-hosted system. Why are the team members concerned? Lighthouse+github really beats the pants off of Trac IMHO. | If you want to keep it private only, I love Eventum from Mysql (found at http://eventum.mysql.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page).However, for just a good solid bug tracker, you can't beat Mantis in my opinion.Not sure how it integrates with GitHub, they use git to manage the code, and the latest version of Mantis has the ability to have plugins, so you could always write a plugin for git. |
Ask HN: issue tracking for open source project? | If you want to keep it private only, I love Eventum from Mysql (found at http://eventum.mysql.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page).However, for just a good solid bug tracker, you can't beat Mantis in my opinion.Not sure how it integrates with GitHub, they use git to manage the code, and the latest version of Mantis has the ability to have plugins, so you could always write a plugin for git. | I've come to the conclusion that a mailing list is the correct bug tracker, together with a file in the repository. The cool part is that unless people make an effort themselves, their "problems" are not likely to influence development.By the way: This is not a joke. Think a bit about it and you will see that it is a possible alternative. |
Ask HN: issue tracking for open source project? | I've come to the conclusion that a mailing list is the correct bug tracker, together with a file in the repository. The cool part is that unless people make an effort themselves, their "problems" are not likely to influence development.By the way: This is not a joke. Think a bit about it and you will see that it is a possible alternative. | I guess I'm surprised to hear anyone moving away from Trac (I've moved projects toward it), and am curious as to why.But for open-source projects I've relied on SourceForge, which certainly has a reasonable issue tracking system; and apparently it allows plug-ins for at least Bugzilla. |
Ask HN: issue tracking for open source project? | I guess I'm surprised to hear anyone moving away from Trac (I've moved projects toward it), and am curious as to why.But for open-source projects I've relied on SourceForge, which certainly has a reasonable issue tracking system; and apparently it allows plug-ins for at least Bugzilla. | I have been very pleased with Mantis. |
Ask HN: How to start coding my product? | Here's my take from having gone through a similar problem, it may or may not be relevant to you.A few years ago I had a great idea for a product and would pitch it to whoever would listen. I had the domain, had a plan, just had to execute. I'd barely gotten started when I ran into a wall, instead of working I would just stare blankly at my computer. I had zero motivation to do any actual work.And yet, I was still passionate and believed in the idea, which led me to a similar place as you where I'm wondering "what gives?"This situation showed me that I had an internal problem, that while I could function in environments with external motivational factors, if I removed them, I had nothing. Something inside was holding me back.It was only through a combination of months of therapy and soul searching that I was able to find the source of my motivational short-circuit, I had given up on the first thing I ever truly wanted without even trying to achieve it. After that epiphany, motivation has been the least of my concerns. Heck, I'm working on my plans for world domination at this very moment.So here's my advice, take the time to debug your brain, it won't be easy, but it beats having that error message pop up for the rest of your life. | >I have everything already set, I bought my domain, I bought a VPS, S3This is your problem. By taking these preliminary, preparatory steps, you are satiating your brain's motivational desire for action without taking any actual constructive steps. Thus you do not have the will or urge left to write the code.Stuff like buying a VPS or setting up S3 is easy and quick, therefore your reptile brain makes it easy for you to do such things first, as it prefers instant gratification. This unfortunately depletes the motivational neurotransmitters that signal you to take action, because as far as your brain is concerned, action has been taken.The answer is to do that stuff last. Or, in a business setting, get someone else to be responsible for it.This is an extension of some ideas from the great Derek Silvers, which he relates in this TED talk, which you should definitely watch: http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_you... |
Ask HN: How to start coding my product? | >I have everything already set, I bought my domain, I bought a VPS, S3This is your problem. By taking these preliminary, preparatory steps, you are satiating your brain's motivational desire for action without taking any actual constructive steps. Thus you do not have the will or urge left to write the code.Stuff like buying a VPS or setting up S3 is easy and quick, therefore your reptile brain makes it easy for you to do such things first, as it prefers instant gratification. This unfortunately depletes the motivational neurotransmitters that signal you to take action, because as far as your brain is concerned, action has been taken.The answer is to do that stuff last. Or, in a business setting, get someone else to be responsible for it.This is an extension of some ideas from the great Derek Silvers, which he relates in this TED talk, which you should definitely watch: http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_you... | Cut back scope, pick something you can deliver in your typical attention span, then sit down and do it. If you have one little feature that makes lives better enough to pay, then just a wee bit more work adds the ability to charge for it. Just a wee bit more work gets you the first cut of a marketing site. ... repeats ad nauseum |
Ask HN: How to start coding my product? | Cut back scope, pick something you can deliver in your typical attention span, then sit down and do it. If you have one little feature that makes lives better enough to pay, then just a wee bit more work adds the ability to charge for it. Just a wee bit more work gets you the first cut of a marketing site. ... repeats ad nauseum | I suspect the stakes are too high for you with this personal project. You've been planning it for so long, you imagine it will revolutionize the industry and make you a billionaire. And sitting down to start coding makes it feel like, well, just another web app. So any small steps toward your goal feel, paradoxically, as though they're destroying that goal.All you can do in that situation is step back and remind yourself that this project probably won't change the world but might be fun to make. Consciously work on replacing the grandiose fantasy with a more realistic one: Imagine yourself ... coding a neat little Rails app in your free time! Staying up late to fix an annoying bug, and then feeling satisfied when you've fixed it! Not being a billionaire but being a guy who made a cool little web app!And then sit down and start coding, even if you're not really in the mood. |
Ask HN: How to start coding my product? | I suspect the stakes are too high for you with this personal project. You've been planning it for so long, you imagine it will revolutionize the industry and make you a billionaire. And sitting down to start coding makes it feel like, well, just another web app. So any small steps toward your goal feel, paradoxically, as though they're destroying that goal.All you can do in that situation is step back and remind yourself that this project probably won't change the world but might be fun to make. Consciously work on replacing the grandiose fantasy with a more realistic one: Imagine yourself ... coding a neat little Rails app in your free time! Staying up late to fix an annoying bug, and then feeling satisfied when you've fixed it! Not being a billionaire but being a guy who made a cool little web app!And then sit down and start coding, even if you're not really in the mood. | You're letting the lack of requirements blind you. Depending on who you are, there's 2 ways to fix it:1) Write some requirements! Clarify in your mind where the project is heading both in the short-term and the long-term. Agile-style user stories is one way to do both of those.2) Start with the basics. Get the Rails framework set up. Get the DB set up. Start writing the schema. Etc. Once you've got the basics of every app (mvc, authentication, ACL, etc) then move on to what makes your app unique. Start with things that will provide benefit for you or your customers. |
Framer: Prototyping Toolkit | Demos are totally broken on Firefox (OS X)... Better hope you don't have to demo it anywhere besides Chrome.... This is one of my pet peeves as I'm almost sure it'll work on Chrome.By targeting only one browser, for no good reason, we're (we being engineers/developers) going to end up with the IE 6 situation all over again. Standards are our friends, not enemies. | I really like what you guys did there. prototyping is important to show your ideas to clients or friends. But im asking myself for what type of user is this framework?As a coder i can do mostly the same with jQuery or any other animation framework and have at the end maybe some code i can extend or reuse in the finished product. Also from the example code it looks like it needs still a fair amount of time do get something ready (much code).As a designer you have to learn code and have to learn this framework to work mostly non visual inside a code editor.So what is the target audience for this tool? |
Framer: Prototyping Toolkit | I really like what you guys did there. prototyping is important to show your ideas to clients or friends. But im asking myself for what type of user is this framework?As a coder i can do mostly the same with jQuery or any other animation framework and have at the end maybe some code i can extend or reuse in the finished product. Also from the example code it looks like it needs still a fair amount of time do get something ready (much code).As a designer you have to learn code and have to learn this framework to work mostly non visual inside a code editor.So what is the target audience for this tool? | I downloaded the app and tried to open it but I got a message saying "Framer Generator is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Trash."Edit: It looks like Mac OS X is rejecting the apps signature. I was able to open the program by going into Package Contents, modifying the executable to remove the signature and then manually allowing it to open despite the warning about opening apps from unidentified developers. |
Framer: Prototyping Toolkit | I downloaded the app and tried to open it but I got a message saying "Framer Generator is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Trash."Edit: It looks like Mac OS X is rejecting the apps signature. I was able to open the program by going into Package Contents, modifying the executable to remove the signature and then manually allowing it to open despite the warning about opening apps from unidentified developers. | Is it just me or has Apple become more open than before. Just the other day I saw another website listing Apple as it's customers.Looks great btw, I am looking forward to play with it at work today. |
Framer: Prototyping Toolkit | Is it just me or has Apple become more open than before. Just the other day I saw another website listing Apple as it's customers.Looks great btw, I am looking forward to play with it at work today. | Really great. AFAIK, there is no windows/linux support. I know OS X is pretty universally used by designers but is there a chance we'll see a windows/linux port? |
Ask HN: Remote encrypted backup recommendation? | The only encrypted backup solution I've ever recommended is Tarsnap. | You didn't mention your operating system.I use EncFS and my preferred syncing service, the [1] tutorial was helpful for me.[1] - http://www.howtogeek.com/121737/how-to-encrypt-cloud-storage... |
Ask HN: Remote encrypted backup recommendation? | You didn't mention your operating system.I use EncFS and my preferred syncing service, the [1] tutorial was helpful for me.[1] - http://www.howtogeek.com/121737/how-to-encrypt-cloud-storage... | Well ... it seems that tarsnap http://www.tarsnap.com/ is the only one I know of that is for the paranoid. |
Ask HN: Remote encrypted backup recommendation? | Well ... it seems that tarsnap http://www.tarsnap.com/ is the only one I know of that is for the paranoid. | how about - https://github.com/yradunchev/dbackup...and it depends how much data you intent to backup... |
Ask HN: Remote encrypted backup recommendation? | how about - https://github.com/yradunchev/dbackup...and it depends how much data you intent to backup... | Spider Oak?Bittorrent Sync? |
Tinke: Heart rate, blood oxygen level and more at your fingertip | I love the idea for the device itself. But I absolutely do not want this data to be social, or transmitted anywhere besides a secure, encrypted repository under my own control that I can optionally grant selective access to. Here's why.My mother has something called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. My aunt also had it. Their mother also had it. It kills as many people as breast cancer every year, by progressively scarring the lungs until it's impossible to breathe. There's no cure except for new lungs. (My mother is waiting for a double lung transplant right now.) As you might expect, measuring blood oxygen efficiency is a good way to track the progress of the condition.As a result, carrying a smart blood oxygen meter that also measures number of breaths and general health / stress levels really appeals to me. But the health situation here in the States, and in many countries, is fucked (albeit a little better than it was, thanks to our friends at the Obama Administration). Let's say I contracted the condition (although there's no proof that there's a genetic link), or it looked like I might be beginning to succumb, going by my vital signs. The consequences of this information falling into the wrong hands could range from an impact on my career to my insurance standing. It could potentially ruin my life.Photos of my last Blue Bottle coffee, checkins at Bourbon & Branch, or Lift goal ticks are one thing. This kind of data should not be on a centralized service, in a database I can't directly access. Not ever. And the rise of this kind of product makes me think that there needs to be a sort of WordPress for encrypted personal data, sooner rather than later. | I really want this. But I'm not going to buy it, because of the form factor, iOS-only connector, closed-source hardware, firmware and application.You might be familiar with sleep apnea, which is a condition in which (one way or another) you stop breathing while asleep, for ten seconds to a few minutes. The cause could be something in your nervous system (we still don't really understand what), or an obstruction in your airways. The result is that you wake up, sometimes with a fight-or-flight (i.e. adrenaline) response. Sleep apnea sufferers wake up several times per night, sometimes not remembering every episode. The net result is that even though, on waking up 'finally', you think you've had a solid 8 hours, you actually had a large number of disrupted sleeps. It's annoying and harmful, and the worst thing is that you might not even know you're a sleep apnea sufferer—when you wake up due to an apnea event, you're typically unaware that it was because you stopped breathing.This is relevant because, during an apnea episode (and before waking) blood oxygen saturation will drop noticeably. So an easy and accurate way of self-diagnosing is to monitor blood oxygen saturation over the course of the night. Cross-reference those data with a Zeo, say, and you have a cheap, accurate method of self-diagnosis.I've suspected that I have sleep apnea for a while now. But I don't have an iPhone any more (I sold it and got a Nexus 4), the Tinké doesn't support taking a continuous passive log (since you need to actively press your thumb to it), and I want to do more interesting things with the data than this company's app developers and designers will ever think of, or allow me to. So I guess I'll have to wait until someone else builds something that addresses this need, or build one myself. |
Tinke: Heart rate, blood oxygen level and more at your fingertip | I really want this. But I'm not going to buy it, because of the form factor, iOS-only connector, closed-source hardware, firmware and application.You might be familiar with sleep apnea, which is a condition in which (one way or another) you stop breathing while asleep, for ten seconds to a few minutes. The cause could be something in your nervous system (we still don't really understand what), or an obstruction in your airways. The result is that you wake up, sometimes with a fight-or-flight (i.e. adrenaline) response. Sleep apnea sufferers wake up several times per night, sometimes not remembering every episode. The net result is that even though, on waking up 'finally', you think you've had a solid 8 hours, you actually had a large number of disrupted sleeps. It's annoying and harmful, and the worst thing is that you might not even know you're a sleep apnea sufferer—when you wake up due to an apnea event, you're typically unaware that it was because you stopped breathing.This is relevant because, during an apnea episode (and before waking) blood oxygen saturation will drop noticeably. So an easy and accurate way of self-diagnosing is to monitor blood oxygen saturation over the course of the night. Cross-reference those data with a Zeo, say, and you have a cheap, accurate method of self-diagnosis.I've suspected that I have sleep apnea for a while now. But I don't have an iPhone any more (I sold it and got a Nexus 4), the Tinké doesn't support taking a continuous passive log (since you need to actively press your thumb to it), and I want to do more interesting things with the data than this company's app developers and designers will ever think of, or allow me to. So I guess I'll have to wait until someone else builds something that addresses this need, or build one myself. | "It also brings personal wellness to a social platform."Fuck everything being social. I am super interested in my health and fitness but for my own edification, not to broadcast it to the world.(I'm sure it's an optional feature, but, seriously, being social has to make everyone's MVP now.) |
Tinke: Heart rate, blood oxygen level and more at your fingertip | "It also brings personal wellness to a social platform."Fuck everything being social. I am super interested in my health and fitness but for my own edification, not to broadcast it to the world.(I'm sure it's an optional feature, but, seriously, being social has to make everyone's MVP now.) | Excellent presentation, but leaves me with two questions.1. Why the iPhone-only connector?2. My stepfather, back in ye olden days, tried to create a similar product (albeit, this was before ubiquitous mobile computing devices) and ran into all sorts of regulatory FDA issues because they classified it as a medical device, and required the construction of a hoop factory before you were allowed to even start jumping through them. |
Tinke: Heart rate, blood oxygen level and more at your fingertip | Excellent presentation, but leaves me with two questions.1. Why the iPhone-only connector?2. My stepfather, back in ye olden days, tried to create a similar product (albeit, this was before ubiquitous mobile computing devices) and ran into all sorts of regulatory FDA issues because they classified it as a medical device, and required the construction of a hoop factory before you were allowed to even start jumping through them. | Why does this cost $80 more than other similar devices[1]? The website is doesn't show any useful added features other than iPhone support and all the screenshots are at an angle so it's difficult to see what the readout and graphs look like compared to the normal devices that are out there on the market. I guess having it automatically record each session is easier than having to manually open up a spreadsheet on your phone/PC and record the data, but that doesn't seem like $80 worth of features and some of the other higher end devices have various levels of history and exporting of data.And the website causes my slick-marketing-plus-low-useful-information-implies-crappy-product sense to tingle due to the lack of upfront pricing, the avoidance of useful screenshots of the app, and phrases like "Zen index" and "social platform"[1] http://www.amazon.com/s/?keywords=pulse-oximeter |
How to make wifi work at tech conferences | Overall a good article, although the claim that "WiFi has 11 channels and can give you 220Mbit in the air" is just wrong. You'll never deploy on all 11 channels without causing massive adjacent channel interference. 802.11 likes 25 MHz per AP, and the 2.4GHz channels are only 5 MHz apart. Deploying on anything other than 1, 6 or 11 will cause more problems than it will solve.Additionally, dismissing the 5 GHz channels by claiming "those have lots of issues with many devices" is a facile argument. Deploying 5GHz channels (of which there are many more than 2.4GHz) is an excellent strategy in many cases - it enables you to offload 5GHz-capable clients (laptops, tables) from the 2.4GHz radios, freeing them up for 2.4GHz-only systems (smartphones, old laptops).Anybody looking to deploy WiFi at a large conference needs to read Aruba Networks' High-Density Validated Design Guide, regardless of the hardware vendor you choose:http://www.arubanetworks.com/pdf/technology/DG_HighDensity_V...Appendix B and C contain some excellent information on planning and theory. | I don't know about this conference, since I wasn't there. But speaking as someone who has helped organize conferences attended by a few thousand people, there are two points I would like to respectfully make:1. Sometimes, the conference is about PEOPLE and the content of the sessions. I confess that at more than a few of the events I helped organize, it was no accident that the WiFi was wonky or non-existent. Yes, some people bitched and moaned, but the overall effect was that that attendees and speakers felt engaged with each other because everyone put their laptops away and actually paid attention to one another. In conversations and after-event surveys, the #1 bit of positive feedback was, "Hurray for having an event where the WiFi was turned off."Yes, we all know that a lot of people attend events and use Social Media to bring in a larger audience from those who could not attend (I do), but all too often, I see people sitting there with laptops open to work e-mail. They're not there to add anything to the discussion, and really, what's the point of even being there?Of course, a good conference organizer has already worked to insure that the speakers are well-prepared, moderators are trained and will actually do their job, and the content is valuable (not a sales pitch). It pains me to no end when I attend an event that waste my time by not having those three items checked off.2. "Now you booked a venue and they say that they can handle the WIFI for you. Chances are, they are lying."Respectfully, there's no conspiracy here. If your event is taking place at a hotel or conference center, then more times than not, WiFi is an expensive add-on (all things are expensive add-ons in the hospitality industry, but that's a subject for a much longer post). You have no control over it, and in fact, if you try to rig up a few routers and roll your own hotspot, you're often in violation of your facility's contract which means fines or blacklisting from future events.Just my two cents from my own experience. Yours may differ, so we may disagree, but no flames, please. |
How to make wifi work at tech conferences | I don't know about this conference, since I wasn't there. But speaking as someone who has helped organize conferences attended by a few thousand people, there are two points I would like to respectfully make:1. Sometimes, the conference is about PEOPLE and the content of the sessions. I confess that at more than a few of the events I helped organize, it was no accident that the WiFi was wonky or non-existent. Yes, some people bitched and moaned, but the overall effect was that that attendees and speakers felt engaged with each other because everyone put their laptops away and actually paid attention to one another. In conversations and after-event surveys, the #1 bit of positive feedback was, "Hurray for having an event where the WiFi was turned off."Yes, we all know that a lot of people attend events and use Social Media to bring in a larger audience from those who could not attend (I do), but all too often, I see people sitting there with laptops open to work e-mail. They're not there to add anything to the discussion, and really, what's the point of even being there?Of course, a good conference organizer has already worked to insure that the speakers are well-prepared, moderators are trained and will actually do their job, and the content is valuable (not a sales pitch). It pains me to no end when I attend an event that waste my time by not having those three items checked off.2. "Now you booked a venue and they say that they can handle the WIFI for you. Chances are, they are lying."Respectfully, there's no conspiracy here. If your event is taking place at a hotel or conference center, then more times than not, WiFi is an expensive add-on (all things are expensive add-ons in the hospitality industry, but that's a subject for a much longer post). You have no control over it, and in fact, if you try to rig up a few routers and roll your own hotspot, you're often in violation of your facility's contract which means fines or blacklisting from future events.Just my two cents from my own experience. Yours may differ, so we may disagree, but no flames, please. | "Deploying on anything other than 1, 6 or 11 will cause more problems than it will solve,"This is a fundamental mistake. You are correct that the transmit mask of WiFi allows for 3 'non-overlapping' channels in the 2.4GHz band, but the receivers won't allow simultaneous operation on these three channels since the advent of 802.11g (and 802.11n made the situation worse.)The receivers don't have enough adjacent channel rejection (ACR) to deal with a strong (i.e. closer or high-EIRP) signal on an ajacent channel.At 6Mbps, the IEEE standard requires 16 dB of adjacent channel rejection. The amount of ACR required by the standard is lower as the modulation rate increases. At 18Mbps the IEEE standard requires 11dB of ACR. At 54Mbps, the ACR required by the standard is -1dB. While some chipsets perform above these requirements one has to assume that the clients perform at the minimum, since there is no way to control what client will wander into the room next.Nobody wants to believe it, but the way to make 2.4GHz WiFi work for large conferences is to run all the APs on the same channel (in any given 'band') |
How to make wifi work at tech conferences | "Deploying on anything other than 1, 6 or 11 will cause more problems than it will solve,"This is a fundamental mistake. You are correct that the transmit mask of WiFi allows for 3 'non-overlapping' channels in the 2.4GHz band, but the receivers won't allow simultaneous operation on these three channels since the advent of 802.11g (and 802.11n made the situation worse.)The receivers don't have enough adjacent channel rejection (ACR) to deal with a strong (i.e. closer or high-EIRP) signal on an ajacent channel.At 6Mbps, the IEEE standard requires 16 dB of adjacent channel rejection. The amount of ACR required by the standard is lower as the modulation rate increases. At 18Mbps the IEEE standard requires 11dB of ACR. At 54Mbps, the ACR required by the standard is -1dB. While some chipsets perform above these requirements one has to assume that the clients perform at the minimum, since there is no way to control what client will wander into the room next.Nobody wants to believe it, but the way to make 2.4GHz WiFi work for large conferences is to run all the APs on the same channel (in any given 'band') | I think the most interesting bit here is "At JSConf we introduced social traffic which links all traffic to Twitter identities."[0][1] That is pretty... epic.Hey @BandwidthHog stop hogging all the intertubes. You making puppies cry![0]http://social-traffic.streamie.org/preso/static/#slide17[1]https://github.com/cramforce/social-traffic |
How to make wifi work at tech conferences | I think the most interesting bit here is "At JSConf we introduced social traffic which links all traffic to Twitter identities."[0][1] That is pretty... epic.Hey @BandwidthHog stop hogging all the intertubes. You making puppies cry![0]http://social-traffic.streamie.org/preso/static/#slide17[1]https://github.com/cramforce/social-traffic | The problem is that if your event only has 100 people, that means that every attendee has to be willing to pay an extra $50 in order to have someone guarantee that the WiFi will work. That's why most event organizers just take their chances. |
Assange 'to run for Australian senate' | I think the point is that the auspices of diplomatic immunity will force even the USA to handle him with kid gloves.It's kind of hard to charge someone with espionage when they are running another country. Unless the USA is also planning on snapping up Mikhail Gorbachev for espionage the next time he's in town, I think it's a brilliant play. | One of the advantages of being a member of parliament or a senator is that you have Parliamentary Privilege for anything you say in the house or senate. Perhaps if Assange got in he could leak stuff in the senate without having to pretend to be a journalist. Quite a big advantage if you live in a country with only an implied constitutional freedom of speech limited to political matters vs punishing defamation laws.If he were to enter politics it might be as effective a way to neuter him as a show trial or assassination. Peter Lalor was one of the rebels at Australia's only real civil insurrection/revolution, the Eureka Stockade, but when he got into parliament he became an anti-democratic protector of wealth and privilege. Then you have Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil "US forces give the nod, its a setback for your country" fame who is a Labor minister and not at all outspoken these days. |
Assange 'to run for Australian senate' | One of the advantages of being a member of parliament or a senator is that you have Parliamentary Privilege for anything you say in the house or senate. Perhaps if Assange got in he could leak stuff in the senate without having to pretend to be a journalist. Quite a big advantage if you live in a country with only an implied constitutional freedom of speech limited to political matters vs punishing defamation laws.If he were to enter politics it might be as effective a way to neuter him as a show trial or assassination. Peter Lalor was one of the rebels at Australia's only real civil insurrection/revolution, the Eureka Stockade, but when he got into parliament he became an anti-democratic protector of wealth and privilege. Then you have Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil "US forces give the nod, its a setback for your country" fame who is a Labor minister and not at all outspoken these days. | I wonder what the US will spend to defeat him.....I bet the CIA is working out funding ideas right now.....This being said, I wish him the best of luck. It's quite possible such efforts might backfire if folks trace the money back far enough. |
Assange 'to run for Australian senate' | I wonder what the US will spend to defeat him.....I bet the CIA is working out funding ideas right now.....This being said, I wish him the best of luck. It's quite possible such efforts might backfire if folks trace the money back far enough. | I'd personally like to see, how a hacker runs a government. |
Assange 'to run for Australian senate' | I'd personally like to see, how a hacker runs a government. | First he would need to live in Australia. He doesn't seem able to do that. |
HN reader | Thanks mrsebastian for posting this and everyone else for the feedback.I created this project several months ago as way to dive in and learn node.js. I found it useful and enjoyable to use for myself and decided to throw it on the web. For anyone interested, the code is available at https://github.com/jhuckabee/hn_reader. Pull requests welcome.Unfortunately a lot of sites don't like to be framed which makes the interface annoying to use at times. Also, don't try to open it on a mobile device. It flat out doesn't work. I hope to fix that in a future version. Despite these annoyances, I still use it as my primary means of reading HN. | I found a bug! I can't click on the HN Reader story more than once and go in total recursion! :-DHere is a screenshot https://img.skitch.com/20111223-dx69ix74wimn8twwmrqg1urm6j.p... |
HN reader | I found a bug! I can't click on the HN Reader story more than once and go in total recursion! :-DHere is a screenshot https://img.skitch.com/20111223-dx69ix74wimn8twwmrqg1urm6j.p... | BTW, just to clarify -- this isn't my project. I noticed some clickthroughs from this URL on one of my sites, checked it out, then submitted to HN :)Hopefully the actual developer sees this thread and jumps in... |
HN reader | BTW, just to clarify -- this isn't my project. I noticed some clickthroughs from this URL on one of my sites, checked it out, then submitted to HN :)Hopefully the actual developer sees this thread and jumps in... | Underscores aren't legal in hostnames. |
HN reader | Underscores aren't legal in hostnames. | Lovely to access.Comment icon feels a little minimized, is it better for power users?Importantly, unlike official 'comments' links, it is always clickable in same place. |
Are You An Entrepreneur? My five traits of an entrepreneur. | I used to love posts like this, but now I see them for what they are: something to read so you feel good about being an entrepreneur, instead of actually starting or building your business.Here's my own version:Are you an entrepreneur? Do you have a business? Then congratulations, you're an entrepreneur. Don't have a business? Start one, and then you'll be an entrepreneur. | Do entrepreneurs really ponder lists of traits of entrepreneurs in order to decide whether they are one? |
Are You An Entrepreneur? My five traits of an entrepreneur. | Do entrepreneurs really ponder lists of traits of entrepreneurs in order to decide whether they are one? | They are:Self-MotivationPersistencePlays Well With OthersAttention To DetailQuick Thinking |
Are You An Entrepreneur? My five traits of an entrepreneur. | They are:Self-MotivationPersistencePlays Well With OthersAttention To DetailQuick Thinking | This is a great roundup of what traits you need. One other I will add is the ability to give and get feedback. This is slightly different than "plays well with others" because it is the ability to take and iterate on feedback from 1. your market, 2. your potential users 3. your friends and family and 4. everyone else.This is helpful in the early stages for product justification but also later on when larger decisions come up. You have to know how to seperate the advice from those that just don't believe you can achieve what you set out to do.This is turning into its own blog post so ill stop there... |
Are You An Entrepreneur? My five traits of an entrepreneur. | This is a great roundup of what traits you need. One other I will add is the ability to give and get feedback. This is slightly different than "plays well with others" because it is the ability to take and iterate on feedback from 1. your market, 2. your potential users 3. your friends and family and 4. everyone else.This is helpful in the early stages for product justification but also later on when larger decisions come up. You have to know how to seperate the advice from those that just don't believe you can achieve what you set out to do.This is turning into its own blog post so ill stop there... | - somewhat independent- money earned outside of employment forms the basis for day to day life- looks towards creating value in equity or goodwill rather than take-home pay- long term view- re-invests a substantial portion of proceeds of previous successes in to future projectsThere are probably as many definitions of entrepreneur as there are entrepreneurs! |
Don't Build APIs | OP here.When I wrote this post, I didn't imagine so many people would react by saying, essentially"Screw the customers. Just break 'em."One of the reasons I have my panties in wad over this topic is the Web has made it far easier for people to create APIs that get used by others. Back in the olden-days you HAD to be Microsoft or similar to get the kind of traction a kid in his parent's basement can get with a little Python and a Heroku account.But something else has changed along the way: Composability.Yes, I worked on COM, OLE, ActiveX and all that crap. I was thinking deep thoughts about composable software back in the stone ages (and even then, it had all already been done by others smarter than I in the 70s & 80s).But today it is REAL. The Web technology stack has actually, finally, enabled massive distributed systems composed of loosely coupled components from multiple independent parties! The dream of my computing youth has become reality!These things are connected by APIs.(Which, by the way are not just function calls. A API can be a REST end-point, a file format, or a database schema, amongst other things).Yes, you as an API provider can choose to deprecate your API anytime you want. Use kill-dates, warnmessages, etc... You can even create new, independent & parallel versions. It will help.But you will find that someone else has built something that uses your API, that exposes its OWN API and now there's a 3rd party indirectly dependent on you. Be prepared for it.APIs are actually easy to build. That is the problem. The solution is to realize that statement is actually false. | This post is very accurate. I build APIs for a living (CUDA), and this lines up pretty well with my experience. Writing APIs is very tough, you will get a lot of things wrong, and the fixes available to you after you realize your mistake are all ugly at best.One quick example:In CUDA, you have to explicitly copy memory to and from the GPU. We have two basic kinds of memcpy functions--synchronous and asynchronous. Asynchronous requires some additional parameter validation because the GPU has to be able to DMA that particular piece of memory, etc. After we had been shipping this for a release or two, we noticed that our parameter checking for the asynchronous call was missing one very particular corner case and would silently fall back to synchronous copies instead of returning an error. We thought, okay, let's just fix that by returning an error because surely no one managed to hit this.Absolute carnage. Tons of applications broke. This particular case was being used everywhere. It provided no benefit whatsoever in terms of speed; in fact, it was just a more verbose way to write a standard synchronous memcpy. People did it anyway because... they thought it must be faster because it had async in the name? I don't know.In the end, we made the asynchronous functions silently fall back to synchronous memcpys in all cases when the stricter parameter validation failed. |
Don't Build APIs | This post is very accurate. I build APIs for a living (CUDA), and this lines up pretty well with my experience. Writing APIs is very tough, you will get a lot of things wrong, and the fixes available to you after you realize your mistake are all ugly at best.One quick example:In CUDA, you have to explicitly copy memory to and from the GPU. We have two basic kinds of memcpy functions--synchronous and asynchronous. Asynchronous requires some additional parameter validation because the GPU has to be able to DMA that particular piece of memory, etc. After we had been shipping this for a release or two, we noticed that our parameter checking for the asynchronous call was missing one very particular corner case and would silently fall back to synchronous copies instead of returning an error. We thought, okay, let's just fix that by returning an error because surely no one managed to hit this.Absolute carnage. Tons of applications broke. This particular case was being used everywhere. It provided no benefit whatsoever in terms of speed; in fact, it was just a more verbose way to write a standard synchronous memcpy. People did it anyway because... they thought it must be faster because it had async in the name? I don't know.In the end, we made the asynchronous functions silently fall back to synchronous memcpys in all cases when the stricter parameter validation failed. | At some point, we need to kill the myth of backwards compatible. This has caused more problems than it fixes. Further, at this point in history, app updates are trivial and built into everything, so retaining backwards compatibility is not so much of a necessity.When designing APIs, use versions and have a kill date in place. Even if you don't change the API, release the same one under a new version number. Kill access to the old version on the kill date. Keep N versions accessible at a time, to reduce the burden on app writers, but don't slack on the kill date. This will give you a timeline and procedure to avoid hacking in crazy backwards compatibility, and targets for total rewrites.Yes, people will still complain. It's OK though if you provide a reasonable balance. |
Don't Build APIs | At some point, we need to kill the myth of backwards compatible. This has caused more problems than it fixes. Further, at this point in history, app updates are trivial and built into everything, so retaining backwards compatibility is not so much of a necessity.When designing APIs, use versions and have a kill date in place. Even if you don't change the API, release the same one under a new version number. Kill access to the old version on the kill date. Keep N versions accessible at a time, to reduce the burden on app writers, but don't slack on the kill date. This will give you a timeline and procedure to avoid hacking in crazy backwards compatibility, and targets for total rewrites.Yes, people will still complain. It's OK though if you provide a reasonable balance. | The key problem here is that "backwards compatibility" means "backwards compatibility for people abusing the API in undocumented ways".Don't do that. That way lays insanity. Be very, very clear up front that you will break backwards compatibility for those folks. Don't sweep it under the table, be very vocal about having done it. There will be short term pain as important customers (eg Adobe) learn the hard way that you really mean it. And long term relief as you don't have that legacy headache growing so quickly.One estimate is that a 25% increase in requirements results in a 100% increase in software complexity. (See Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering for a source.) That means that the complexity grows as the number of requirements cubed. Therefore the key to a good API is that it be short and simple. When you start to add implicit requirements on top of explicit ones, it quickly becomes long and complex, and the necessary software to support it and make future modifications becomes much worse.This does not mean that designing APIs is not hard. But don't let your API become what is published and quirks that are not. Just don't. |
Don't Build APIs | The key problem here is that "backwards compatibility" means "backwards compatibility for people abusing the API in undocumented ways".Don't do that. That way lays insanity. Be very, very clear up front that you will break backwards compatibility for those folks. Don't sweep it under the table, be very vocal about having done it. There will be short term pain as important customers (eg Adobe) learn the hard way that you really mean it. And long term relief as you don't have that legacy headache growing so quickly.One estimate is that a 25% increase in requirements results in a 100% increase in software complexity. (See Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering for a source.) That means that the complexity grows as the number of requirements cubed. Therefore the key to a good API is that it be short and simple. When you start to add implicit requirements on top of explicit ones, it quickly becomes long and complex, and the necessary software to support it and make future modifications becomes much worse.This does not mean that designing APIs is not hard. But don't let your API become what is published and quirks that are not. Just don't. | Upvoted because I find it interesting, not because I agree with it.FreshBooks has a very significant amount of their usage/profit from their API. These are just their endorsed/vetted add-ons, let alone all the ones out there in the wild: http://community.freshbooks.com/addons/?header_addons=1 and they clearly built an app AND an API.The API for FreshBooks was a major portion of their (very successful) strategy, so I can't see why people can't do both, provided they do it intelligently. |
Netflix Regains 600,000 U.S. Subscribers | I bought Netflix @ $75 last year. It was the first time I ever bought stock, but I had to do it out of sheer confidence.> "You are never as smart or dumb as they say," Hastings said in a Wednesday interview.This is exactly why I bought. Everybody and their mother was jumping all over themselves to talk about how stupid Netflix was. I figured the stock was pummeled about as low as it could go because at the end of the day Netflix has amazing infrastructure and product assets (I say this as a direct competitor). It's certainly the case that they are being squeezed mercilessly between price expectations of customers and profit expectations of the content cartels, but at the same time, Internet streaming is an irresistible force and no one is positioned better to capitalize on it than Netflix. | Fun fact: Netflix now has almost the same number of subscribers as Comcast (21.67 million versus 22.4 million for Comcast).I find that amazing, because it means Netflix has the same distribution power as a major cable TV provider. |
Netflix Regains 600,000 U.S. Subscribers | Fun fact: Netflix now has almost the same number of subscribers as Comcast (21.67 million versus 22.4 million for Comcast).I find that amazing, because it means Netflix has the same distribution power as a major cable TV provider. | Netflix is magic. It has the only recommendation engine that actually works. I'm a streaming subscriber, and the only problem is their somewhat limited catalog: many movies I look for are only available on DVD. There are very few recent releases.But their catalog will inevitably expand.It's incredible how one comes to love something that works so consistently and dependably. |
Netflix Regains 600,000 U.S. Subscribers | Netflix is magic. It has the only recommendation engine that actually works. I'm a streaming subscriber, and the only problem is their somewhat limited catalog: many movies I look for are only available on DVD. There are very few recent releases.But their catalog will inevitably expand.It's incredible how one comes to love something that works so consistently and dependably. | Would be interesting to know how many returned vs. how many of those are new and of the returning how many left due to the price increase. |
Netflix Regains 600,000 U.S. Subscribers | Would be interesting to know how many returned vs. how many of those are new and of the returning how many left due to the price increase. | sighhttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3512413 |
Mark Pincus memo to Zynga employees | I'm glad to hear that anyone at Zynga is meritocratically given a chance to lead, rather than it being based on how early someone got in. Looking forward to hearing more about the process that will be used to determine whether Pincus should stay on and retain his shares, or whether he should be replaced with a different leader. | Pure spin: Pinkus is trying to make this story about merit and reward. But really its about not honoring contracts.The stock options given to employees were part of their employment contract with the firm. They were based on imperfect knowledge of future facts on both parties, i.e. taking risks. Zynga attempted to use its power to revise the contract post-hoc.If I have to negotiate a deal of any sort with Zynga in the future, I'll be wary of them honoring it. |
Mark Pincus memo to Zynga employees | Pure spin: Pinkus is trying to make this story about merit and reward. But really its about not honoring contracts.The stock options given to employees were part of their employment contract with the firm. They were based on imperfect knowledge of future facts on both parties, i.e. taking risks. Zynga attempted to use its power to revise the contract post-hoc.If I have to negotiate a deal of any sort with Zynga in the future, I'll be wary of them honoring it. | This is an official memo to Zynga employees and Pincus can't even take the time to use proper grammar and capitalization? |
Mark Pincus memo to Zynga employees | This is an official memo to Zynga employees and Pincus can't even take the time to use proper grammar and capitalization? | That didn't really say anything.Perhaps someone could find another company that has threatened firings unless employees give back options, and Pincus can copy their CEO's memo to employees. |
Mark Pincus memo to Zynga employees | That didn't really say anything.Perhaps someone could find another company that has threatened firings unless employees give back options, and Pincus can copy their CEO's memo to employees. | The whole situation can be fairly simply explained: a conflict exists between rapidly-growing companies and their early employees. It's kind of a flaw in the way the system works, and it's not really just for pre-IPO companies.A common situation is an early "non-essential" employee receives something like 0.25% of the company, vested over 4 years. Suppose that at the time the employee is hired, this 0.25% is worth $10,000 or so ($4 million valuation). If the company manages to grow 100x in value, the company is now paying a non-essential employee $250,000/year in stock. With at-will employment, the company can legally fire them.The conflict arises because there is no legal incentive for the company to keep this employee at this point. Fortunately, it's not all that bad for the employees as long as they have some vested stock since this problem only arises if the stock value gets too high. |
A Mac OS X-style Dock In JavaScript | I've never liked the auto zooming of the dock. Unless you have incredibly small icons I don't see a point. Most people I've seen get sick of it pretty soon and turn it off.This is a really nice demo of doing this in Javascript (I just hope nobody actually uses this on a site). | I'm not so sure about this code. Personally, I'd use jQuery, which has stuff to make this a lot easier. I haven't looked at the code, but Google turns up http://www.ndesign-studio.com/blog/design/css-dock-menu/ |
A Mac OS X-style Dock In JavaScript | I'm not so sure about this code. Personally, I'd use jQuery, which has stuff to make this a lot easier. I haven't looked at the code, but Google turns up http://www.ndesign-studio.com/blog/design/css-dock-menu/ | A similar thingy for galleries:http://en.gibney.org/scalable_gallery/ |
A Mac OS X-style Dock In JavaScript | A similar thingy for galleries:http://en.gibney.org/scalable_gallery/ | dojo has this too ... [http://dojotoolkit.org/demos/fisheye-demo] |
A Mac OS X-style Dock In JavaScript | dojo has this too ... [http://dojotoolkit.org/demos/fisheye-demo] | why is your name orange? |
Y Combinator tally: 511 startups, $11.5B valuation | My understanding is that these "valuations" are calculated by taking the price per share of the most senior tranche of preferred stock and multiplying that by the total number of shares outstanding (+ the option pool) of all classes.This kind of "valuation" may be useful and the way business is done, so if everybody is wise to the game, it's not clear anybody who matters is being deceived. But as far as an outsider or accounting geek is concerned, this is not an appropriate way to value the equity in a company with multiple share classes. Common shares and less-senior preferred shares are simply not as valuable as the most senior preferred stock. You can't apply the same per-share value to everything.These same companies are not claiming $11.5 billion of "valuation" when they set a per-share value for 409(a) purposes. In broad strokes, these companies claim to have low valuations to the IRS (which helps their employees when they grant options) and high valuations to the press (which helps them look good and attract employees) at the same time.Which may all be fine, but the press (and prospective employees) should be as wise to the game as the investors and company are. | I've asked this before but does anyone know (or has anyone bothered to calculate) the median valuation of YC companies? |
Y Combinator tally: 511 startups, $11.5B valuation | I've asked this before but does anyone know (or has anyone bothered to calculate) the median valuation of YC companies? | On a completely unrelated note - has anyone noticed the numbers actually form a palindrome? |
Y Combinator tally: 511 startups, $11.5B valuation | On a completely unrelated note - has anyone noticed the numbers actually form a palindrome? | And what percent of that can we assume Paul owns? He certainly is a rich man. |
Y Combinator tally: 511 startups, $11.5B valuation | And what percent of that can we assume Paul owns? He certainly is a rich man. | I like that there's kind of a subtle dig to the post-Jobs Apple in there. |
When 'Right-Sizing' Vacant Properties Goes Wrong | The power of government can be terrifying, when it's turned against you.It would be nice to have a third-party opinion from someone who lives in Clarksburg to fill in the details that this article is missing.It's not possible to tell if this guy is really a victim of overbearing local government or a shady businessman who finally had his underhanded practices catch up with him. | My town is on an aggressive knock-down strategy as well. One problem they ran into was people trying to "save" houses on the chopping block after the tax sale. Since then they are clearly tagging the houses where the PROPERTY is for sale but the HOUSE is condemned.In certain neighborhoods, the city wants the excess houses GONE. They don't want them fixed up and barely hanging on.. The city wants to collect enough empty lots that NEW BUILDING is worth while... And just sit on empty lots until then.The problem for somebody like this owner.. When is he city happy to take your tax sale money but leave the block on their "knock-down" list.. And why isn't the list more public.. Who's getting benefits of knocking Dow YOUR HOUSE but not others? |
When 'Right-Sizing' Vacant Properties Goes Wrong | My town is on an aggressive knock-down strategy as well. One problem they ran into was people trying to "save" houses on the chopping block after the tax sale. Since then they are clearly tagging the houses where the PROPERTY is for sale but the HOUSE is condemned.In certain neighborhoods, the city wants the excess houses GONE. They don't want them fixed up and barely hanging on.. The city wants to collect enough empty lots that NEW BUILDING is worth while... And just sit on empty lots until then.The problem for somebody like this owner.. When is he city happy to take your tax sale money but leave the block on their "knock-down" list.. And why isn't the list more public.. Who's getting benefits of knocking Dow YOUR HOUSE but not others? | Absentee slumlord gets his comeuppance, claims corruption and sues. What's news here? |
When 'Right-Sizing' Vacant Properties Goes Wrong | Absentee slumlord gets his comeuppance, claims corruption and sues. What's news here? | With the complete lack of details about the state of the plaintiff's properties there's no way to take an informed side... |
When 'Right-Sizing' Vacant Properties Goes Wrong | With the complete lack of details about the state of the plaintiff's properties there's no way to take an informed side... | At one time I was studying to become an urban planner. The article caught my eye because of the opening:At the end of May, a task force convened by the Obama administration suggested that Detroit needs to "right-size" its housing stock. That’s a phrase often used in reference to cities that have spent decades in the midst of population decline; in Detroit’s well-documented case, it was a city built for more than 1.8 million people that’s now home to about half that number. The task force suggested the city should tear down 40,000 properties left vacant in the exodus.It seems to me the detailed story about what happened in Clarksburg is a case study. It is unfortunate that the article never returned to its opening thought to make a real point related to Detroit (using the case study to support the point). But as someone who founded and ran a sub-forum on Cyburbia for a time and who, thus, used to talk a lot with people who enforced city codes, etc, this looked to me like a cautionary tale and a suggestion that "If things can go that wrong on such a small scale, surely we need to be concerned when something similar is being suggested by the federal government for a city the size of Detroit." |
Dictionary of Navy Slang [pdf] | Former submariner here. I'm glad they included my favorite Navy definition, which I think can be important for startups, too."50/50/90: Used to describe the phenomenon whereby a question that statistically has a 50/50 chance of being answered correctly is actually answered incorrectly 90% of the time. Used primarily in reference to nuclear operators, who tend to over-think ("nuke") a problem." | One of the first things to hit me when I began working for the Navy was the frustrating amount of acronyms and slang they used. And I'm talking about the engineering headquarters (a very white-collar place), not some base or ship.At first it frustrates the heck out of you, because you have to look up definitions all the time. Then, before you even realize, you're talking just like everybody else and nobody outside of your organization can understand you.And I came to the Navy with seagoing experience and education... I can't imagine how confusing the language must be to someone coming from, say, a regular engineering school. |
Dictionary of Navy Slang [pdf] | One of the first things to hit me when I began working for the Navy was the frustrating amount of acronyms and slang they used. And I'm talking about the engineering headquarters (a very white-collar place), not some base or ship.At first it frustrates the heck out of you, because you have to look up definitions all the time. Then, before you even realize, you're talking just like everybody else and nobody outside of your organization can understand you.And I came to the Navy with seagoing experience and education... I can't imagine how confusing the language must be to someone coming from, say, a regular engineering school. | "Beer ticket" is hilarious.
I will be in the same situation up on arriving to my motherhood: I've been abroad for 3 years already and devaluation of the local ruble is about 10%/year.
Good beer could cost more than 100 000 in local currency. |
Dictionary of Navy Slang [pdf] | "Beer ticket" is hilarious.
I will be in the same situation up on arriving to my motherhood: I've been abroad for 3 years already and devaluation of the local ruble is about 10%/year.
Good beer could cost more than 100 000 in local currency. | Did not know the Navy also had such slang - here's some from the Marine Corps: http://4mermarine.com/USMC/dictionary.html |
Dictionary of Navy Slang [pdf] | Did not know the Navy also had such slang - here's some from the Marine Corps: http://4mermarine.com/USMC/dictionary.html | As a submariner, this is very accurate. |
Where does Ruby go from here? | I think this is a great idea. The ruby community is a wonderful thing, and part of that is reflected in the technology.However, the original Agile Manifesto was powerful because it made tradeoffs. "We value X over Y", even when Y is a valuable thing. For this HDD thing to take off, it has to make the similar tradeoffs explicit.For example: We value readable code over runtime performance.
We value open-source frameworks and libraries over developing for popular ecosystems.
We value inclusiveness, diversity, and respect over pure meritocracy.
We value teaching, learning, and improving our craft over short-term productivity.
We value creating wealth over capturing wealth. | If you're writing a manifesto, you should be able to test future decisions by running them past the criteria in the manifesto. The first four statements are great in that regard, but the next six are a little fuzzy.It might help if the manifesto is clearer on what you don't value. Mission and vision statements are often meaningless because you can stretch a positive statement to include almost anything. The Agile Manifesto is great because it uses contrast to clarify what it values most.In some of the statements, the contrast seems to be implicit and that's fine. ("I value an environment conducive to all levels of experience." I assume that means we don't want an environment for only beginners or only experts.)Other statements, though, are harder to figure out. ("I value software development as a craft." Does HDD cater to "craftsmen" as opposed to hobbyists? Or is this in opposition to "professionals"? Or are we talking about relationships and apprenticeship?)I think this concept has a ton of potential. Can't wait to see where it goes next.EDIT: It appears tmorton was thinking the same things and used far fewer words to say it. |
Where does Ruby go from here? | If you're writing a manifesto, you should be able to test future decisions by running them past the criteria in the manifesto. The first four statements are great in that regard, but the next six are a little fuzzy.It might help if the manifesto is clearer on what you don't value. Mission and vision statements are often meaningless because you can stretch a positive statement to include almost anything. The Agile Manifesto is great because it uses contrast to clarify what it values most.In some of the statements, the contrast seems to be implicit and that's fine. ("I value an environment conducive to all levels of experience." I assume that means we don't want an environment for only beginners or only experts.)Other statements, though, are harder to figure out. ("I value software development as a craft." Does HDD cater to "craftsmen" as opposed to hobbyists? Or is this in opposition to "professionals"? Or are we talking about relationships and apprenticeship?)I think this concept has a ton of potential. Can't wait to see where it goes next.EDIT: It appears tmorton was thinking the same things and used far fewer words to say it. | I don't want to leave ruby, but at the end of the day, it's slow. Jruby is pretty decent, but the clunkiness of the JVM takes the fun out of it.Maybe it's just the lack of a corporation pouring billions into it like google did with V8, but I suspect that ruby can never be fast, due to ObjectSpace and the like. That awesome/insane object model we all like so much is just impossible to optimise. All the other weird shit ruby can do doesn't help.http://blog.headius.com/2012/10/so-you-want-to-optimize-ruby...Still, for stuff that doesn't need to be fast, ruby is still a joy to use, and always will be. The enumerable API feels so fluid, it's only really surpassed by languages like clojure in my experience.As you might be able to guess, I'm looking forward very much to swift becoming a general purpose language. If apple are all funny about it and try and neuter the ecosystem for some reason, I will be a sad panda. |
Where does Ruby go from here? | I don't want to leave ruby, but at the end of the day, it's slow. Jruby is pretty decent, but the clunkiness of the JVM takes the fun out of it.Maybe it's just the lack of a corporation pouring billions into it like google did with V8, but I suspect that ruby can never be fast, due to ObjectSpace and the like. That awesome/insane object model we all like so much is just impossible to optimise. All the other weird shit ruby can do doesn't help.http://blog.headius.com/2012/10/so-you-want-to-optimize-ruby...Still, for stuff that doesn't need to be fast, ruby is still a joy to use, and always will be. The enumerable API feels so fluid, it's only really surpassed by languages like clojure in my experience.As you might be able to guess, I'm looking forward very much to swift becoming a general purpose language. If apple are all funny about it and try and neuter the ecosystem for some reason, I will be a sad panda. | >- I value respect and tolerance to all in my communityWhat does that even mean? If a Time Cube guy shows up, does it mean I'm just supposed to politely ignore/shadowban him?Does it mean I can't use "master-slave" replication?I think what that line is supposed to mean is "I value not being needlessly abrasive to people" and "I value ignoring unrelated-to-my-project aspects of people".That is, even if you have some belief or participate in an activity that I find abhorrent, if it's not relevant to the project we're working on, I value avoiding talking about such things so we can focus on the project. |
Where does Ruby go from here? | >- I value respect and tolerance to all in my communityWhat does that even mean? If a Time Cube guy shows up, does it mean I'm just supposed to politely ignore/shadowban him?Does it mean I can't use "master-slave" replication?I think what that line is supposed to mean is "I value not being needlessly abrasive to people" and "I value ignoring unrelated-to-my-project aspects of people".That is, even if you have some belief or participate in an activity that I find abhorrent, if it's not relevant to the project we're working on, I value avoiding talking about such things so we can focus on the project. | No doubt promoting happiness in the development community is a worthy goal, but there is a lot of variety in what makes different software developers happy, and inevitably their priorities will sometimes conflict.For example, the principle that a programming language should be optimised for the programmer and not the computer seems reasonable. However, what if a programmer works on projects where performance matters, and we haven’t figured out how to implement certain language features in an efficient way yet? It may be true that under some conditions saving a programmer time is more valuable than shaving a few seconds off at run-time, but there are many situations where this is not the case.More subtly, programming languages that are easy to parse, that represent their source code in a well-structured way, and that have clean semantics are friendly to tool developers. I imagine many programmers are happier with a language that has good refactoring, debugging, profiling and testing tools available, and which plays nicely with their favourite editor, diff and version control systems, and code review tools. Again, there might be a trade-off between adding a new language feature, which in itself might be useful for the programmer, and keeping the language simpler or more cleanly structured, which might encourage effective automation and tooling. |
Great Men Keep Journals | I used to journal for years and stopped. Then I messed with OhLife (a YC startup) and kept going with it. I'm not connected with them other than being a user, but if you're online anyway, it's a pretty handy tool to keep a journal. http://ohlife.com/It's also a good example of a clean design and user experience. | This is obvious selection bias, on several axes. Here are two of them:- There is more/richer information available on people who keep journals, so it's easier to make the case for their greatness.- If someone does great things but no record is kept, they are not acknowledged.I enjoyed the stories of his grandfather, but the flawed reasoning in the argument annoyed me. |
Great Men Keep Journals | This is obvious selection bias, on several axes. Here are two of them:- There is more/richer information available on people who keep journals, so it's easier to make the case for their greatness.- If someone does great things but no record is kept, they are not acknowledged.I enjoyed the stories of his grandfather, but the flawed reasoning in the argument annoyed me. | I have written a journal almost constantly since I was perhaps 15.I love it. I can express on it all of my emotions, but still secrets are kept. I can write on it all of my thoughts.It is, I must say, because of the journals I have kept that I have overcome so much adversity and it is journals which help me to push myslef further, and become better, every singl day. More often I do not know it, but the simple act of sitting in front of my computer and writing my thoughts down helps tremendously towards taking me further to what I want.The problem I think is that, all the journals I have written, perhaps five or six, are now forever gone and deleted.The strange thing is that in every entry, though I primarely write about myself and for myself, I aboslutley feel like there is an audience out there. Yet the more stranger thing is that, regardless of the imaginary glory of the moment, a diary to me is a personal thing, for my eyes only. It is something which maks sense to me only, and sometimes, to the moment that I wrote it alone.Diaries can be dangerous. They are a perfect tool for narrowing your thinking. What you want is repeated over and ver, to the point that you do not feel that you want it anymore but are just saying so.But I love writing journal entires. Despite the many journals that were deleted by whim and others that were deleted not by choice, I love writing them.A journal makes me mak sense of what is was ad could be, and tthat, abouve my childrens fascination, is why I write them, despite the fact that they end up deleted and disapeared forever. |
Great Men Keep Journals | I have written a journal almost constantly since I was perhaps 15.I love it. I can express on it all of my emotions, but still secrets are kept. I can write on it all of my thoughts.It is, I must say, because of the journals I have kept that I have overcome so much adversity and it is journals which help me to push myslef further, and become better, every singl day. More often I do not know it, but the simple act of sitting in front of my computer and writing my thoughts down helps tremendously towards taking me further to what I want.The problem I think is that, all the journals I have written, perhaps five or six, are now forever gone and deleted.The strange thing is that in every entry, though I primarely write about myself and for myself, I aboslutley feel like there is an audience out there. Yet the more stranger thing is that, regardless of the imaginary glory of the moment, a diary to me is a personal thing, for my eyes only. It is something which maks sense to me only, and sometimes, to the moment that I wrote it alone.Diaries can be dangerous. They are a perfect tool for narrowing your thinking. What you want is repeated over and ver, to the point that you do not feel that you want it anymore but are just saying so.But I love writing journal entires. Despite the many journals that were deleted by whim and others that were deleted not by choice, I love writing them.A journal makes me mak sense of what is was ad could be, and tthat, abouve my childrens fascination, is why I write them, despite the fact that they end up deleted and disapeared forever. | I love blank books. I feel like there's so much potential to fill it with random thoughts, ideas, doodles. Most of all, I have a greater appreciation for just being able to exercise my handwriting. I feel like that is the one skill I have taken for granted since school. Granted it's much faster to type down my thoughts, but I take greater pleasure in trying to decipher--if not improve--my handwriting. |
Great Men Keep Journals | I love blank books. I feel like there's so much potential to fill it with random thoughts, ideas, doodles. Most of all, I have a greater appreciation for just being able to exercise my handwriting. I feel like that is the one skill I have taken for granted since school. Granted it's much faster to type down my thoughts, but I take greater pleasure in trying to decipher--if not improve--my handwriting. | Always remember that diaries are admissible in both the courts of law and public opinion. Contrary to actions, diaries can unequivocally prove state of mind. Furthermore diaries will not speak in the voice of those that wrote it, but will speak in the words of those that read it. So when deciding to keep a journal, ask yourself "what would Bob Packwood do?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Packwood
Knowing what he knows now, he would decide not to. |
Ask HN: Why is VC better than taking out a loan for my startup? | The downside of a loan is that it will require a personal guarantee, which means you're personally liable to pay it back. If the business fails (or more specifically the business is unable to make the loan payments and defaults on the loan), it will negatively affect your credit. Ruining your credit isn't as bad as most people make it out to be, especially if you're young and can endure 7 years with only paying cash for everything (it's a good lesson to learn young).Assuming your venture is successful, the huge upside to a loan is that it's the cheapest money you can possibly get. Even at something like a crazy 16% interest rate on hard money leg-breaker type loans, it's way cheaper than giving away 10-40% of your company to get VC money.The other upside to a loan is that you have WAY more flexibility in the direction of your company, especially in terms of exit timelines. Everybody (i.e. those in the VC bubble) bashes 'lifestyle' businesses, but it's hard to turn your nose up at $10-50K per month in passive income. With VC money, you are forced into pursuing very fast and hard growth which generally sucks (from a founder perspective). With a loan, you can grow nice and slow and comfortably or you can go balls to the wall...it's your choice.With that said, the absolute best investors are customers. Leave yourself a 35-50% financial buffer, but only borrow enough to get to profitability through revenue. If you can hit that magical moment, it's as close to nirvana as most of us will ever get. :) | I think the biggest advantage of getting VC backing is having an advisor that has a vested interest in seeing you succeed. Additionally, if this is your first startup, it can give you a lot of much-needed credibility when approaching potential clients/customers/employees. |
Ask HN: Why is VC better than taking out a loan for my startup? | I think the biggest advantage of getting VC backing is having an advisor that has a vested interest in seeing you succeed. Additionally, if this is your first startup, it can give you a lot of much-needed credibility when approaching potential clients/customers/employees. | You have to pay a loan back if you fail.You don't have to pay VC's back if you fail.Assuming your company makes 150% return the second year and it stays profitable, there's no reason at all to take VC, it's better to take a loan. But you don't know that. |
Ask HN: Why is VC better than taking out a loan for my startup? | You have to pay a loan back if you fail.You don't have to pay VC's back if you fail.Assuming your company makes 150% return the second year and it stays profitable, there's no reason at all to take VC, it's better to take a loan. But you don't know that. | Most startups fail, and depending on the state of your startup banks might laugh at you. |
Ask HN: Why is VC better than taking out a loan for my startup? | Most startups fail, and depending on the state of your startup banks might laugh at you. | I think you'll find it extremely difficult to get a loan for a startup without putting up an equal amount of cash as collateral. |
Creating slick intro videos for startups | You should have a look at this topic on Quora.com for a list of companies/freelancers doing that kind of videos.http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-good-examples-of-startup-...We also do a lot of startup videos at http://thinkmojo.net | Many startups use Epipheo http://www.epipheostudios.com/ |
Creating slick intro videos for startups | Many startups use Epipheo http://www.epipheostudios.com/ | Check out Demo Duck (http://www.demoduck.com) or Brad Chmielewski (http://www.digitalhitchhiker.com/blog/?page_id=2). |
Creating slick intro videos for startups | Check out Demo Duck (http://www.demoduck.com) or Brad Chmielewski (http://www.digitalhitchhiker.com/blog/?page_id=2). | I don't know if this is what you are looking for, but they've made some great promo videos for some YC companies.http://grumomedia.com/get-a-video/ |
Creating slick intro videos for startups | I don't know if this is what you are looking for, but they've made some great promo videos for some YC companies.http://grumomedia.com/get-a-video/ | http://explainabl.es/ |