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DjangoReinhardt

251 karma · joined June 23, 2013

One word: Freak.
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DjangoReinhardt··on “There were 17,000 YouTubes before YouTube”
Sure, there were 1700 YouTubes before YouTube and yeah, the YouTube we know and use today just happened to make it due to a serendipitous combination of "execution, focus, timing and luck."

I have an idea for Twitter that's better than Twitter. I have the focus, I have the execution plan - I just need the luck and the timing. I'm willing to join forces with an Irish co-founder for the former. I'm willing to keep probing and pushing until I achieve the latter. Now, is there anybody in the house willing to throw their multi-million dollars at me?

I was hoping to read the story of how Twitter managed to fill the niche that was being slowly created by long blogs and short attention spans. The timing part wasn't serendipitous, either. IIRC, Twitter spent a year in the shadows before it really took off. I'm sure someone can structure the YouTube story in a similar timeline.

In other words, rather than ambiguously stating these four (relatively) 'oft-quoted' factors for success, I was hoping the author would explain how the serendipitous combination actually came about. And if anyone feels inspired by the authors post, I have a bridge in San Fransisco I would like to sell to you. It's not all that new but it works great!

DjangoReinhardt··on Free network and domain tools
"This website (w3dt.net) is asking to store data on your compute for offline use."

Can someone explain to me why they would need that? My instinct tells me that they are trying to circumvent people who delete cookies when the browser is closed and that makes me uneasy...

DjangoReinhardt··on Ask HN: Which open-source OS do you use and why?
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (both and with and without VMs.)

I am a newbie dev who usually uses Heroku to deploy but I also want to know how to go about doing deployments using Chef/Puppet/Fabric and I want to know exactly how to go about doing them.

DjangoReinhardt··on Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool?
I am quite late to this thread, but what the heck, I'll give it the ol' college try. :)

HashPix: Search for images tagged with the same hashtag across Twitter, TwitPic, Instagram and Flickr. Create public/private albums of these pics and share the albums with anyone and everyone. Anonymous albums allowed but are made public by default.

Good for:

- Events, e.g. #MySuperAwesomeHalloweenParty

- Contests, #TweetLikeAGhostAndWin

- Festivals #HalloweenHaunts

...anything where you can use a hashtag, really!

Link: http://hashpix.herokuapp.com

2. @updt_me: (RSS/Atom) Feed updates via Twitter DM. Follow @updt_me and send a tweet @updt_me with the keyword START followed by a URL, e.g. "@updt_me START https://news.ycombinator.com/rss". You'll receive feed updates via Twitter DM (hence, the need to follow) when they happen. I'm currently using it to subscribe to xkcd, smbc and a few others.

Good for:

- Avoiding RSS inbox pile-ups due to procrastination/lethargy

- Ensuring authors get the page-views their blogs/sites deserve

- Following 'thoughts' rather than 'people', i.e. no more "I just ate broccoli. I #WIN." when you just want to read, "The 7 habits of highly-successful techpreneurs that you must cultivate before bedtime."

Coming soon:

- Ability to subscribe to feeds via DM - for those subscriptions that you'd rather not announce to the world. wink wink nudge nudge

- (Almost)instant PuSH updates using Superfeedr. (Still trying to figure this one out, actually.)

Links:

http://update-me.herokuapp.com

http://twitter.com/updt_me

Why do these make me happy?

Because a year ago, I wouldn't have dreamed of being able to make a comment like this. I was (and still am) an utter newbie with no knowledge of any kind of programming. Deep-dived into Python/Django and the results are up there for you to peruse. Granted they aren't awesome like most others in this thread but hey, it's a start. :)

DjangoReinhardt··on Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results
Not the first time, I must add.

When Orkut was all the rage, Google claimed that Orkut would never be merged with the Google core and would remain separate to Google.

The same seems tobe happening with YouTube. Sure, they still allow users to keep their YT & Google identities separate but IDK how long that will last.

Remember when they claimed their motto was 'Don't be evil'?

(NB: Before you come screaming at me for making vague accusations, please take that previous sentence with a pinch of '/s'. Thank you.)

DjangoReinhardt··on Aptronym
This thread along with the wiki article reads like a punster's/stand-up comic's wet dream.

Speaking of which, the next stand-up comic to adopt an aptronym (or an inaptronym) stands a great chance of being immortalized on a Wiki page, quicker than most others.I wonder if I should start trying for gigs using the stage-name Mei Q. Laffard...

DjangoReinhardt··on Show HN: News headline analysis of over 140,000 headlines over several years
Awesome job!

A few things immediately jumped out at me:

1. On an average, Fox, seems to be more positive than CNN. Hmm.

2. The headlines were more positive than most {sources/days} on CNN Politics in the second half of 2009. Obama's election is the only story I can think of that could have affected all the sources, but I may be wrong.

3. Around the same time, (shortly after the election results, in fact) HuffPost saw a sharp decline in the positivity of their headlines and dipped into negative. Hmm...

4. The overall trend of headlines is more positive than negative, leading me to wonder why is it that, as a people, we are so cynical.

I'd love to see a graph that plots the median instead of the average of the daily scores. Also, I dunno much about the Alchemy scoring, but quite a few of the headlines (~30-50% per day) seem to have scored 0.0 - is that bad detection or consistently neutral reporting? If so, I suspect the median graph will look a lot different.

I'd also love to see a similar analysis for non-mainstream media - especially, aggregators like reddit, HN and slashdot. Maybe, you could add the post ranking/comments/karma as other variables and attempt to refine the analysis further?

Just bouncing a few ideas, that all. All in all, good job. :)

DjangoReinhardt··on Why the last 20% of work takes the same amount of time as the first 80%
The metric given to the client is that of time, but the metric that ends up being measured is (for lack of a better term) "visible product completion", i.e. percentage of product that 'looks' completed. If I read OP right, the last 20% that is being talked about in the article is mostly a nip here and a tuck. The overall product, from this point onwards, almost always remains largely constant.

To bring in yet another analogy, think of the project as a car being refurbished. The last 20% of work may not change much in terms of external chassis, but it is all about fine-tuning the engine, and the drivetrain. The client still sees the same car that you showed him at "80% done," except now the engine runs much better and the car purrs like a sexy, sexy kitten.

The problem, IMHO, is you can't give an accurate metric no matter how much you try.

If you give a liberal estimate and end up doing 80% of the product in 50% of the time, the client will expect you to finish the 20% in 12.5% of the original time-frame - the very 20 % that almost always takes about 80% of time. On the other hand, if you take 80% of the estimated time-frame to deliver 80% of the product, the remaining 20% will always trip you up because it almost always needs another 80% of time.

I've found that the best way to keep everyone happy is to finish 80% of the product in 50% of the time but show the client 50% of the product and spend the remaining 50% of time, finishing the 20%. It's a win-win, IMHO.

DjangoReinhardt··on PG charts acceleration of YC applications since noon
TL;DR: I may or may not have contributed to a point on that curve and I am not sure how to feel about it.

I began filling out the form on the day the application window was announced. Halfway through, I realized the answers I had to some of the questions on the form, were either unconvincing or simply non-existent. As I progressed, I realized that me and my idea both sounded increasingly half-assed, so I promptly stopped, saved the form, quietly went back to the drawing board and started attempting to figure out the answers.

It has been roughly two months since that day, I guess. I still don't have all the answers but I can at least tell myself now that the idea is worth a shot...

DjangoReinhardt··on Y Combinator applicant advice
Respectfully disagree. The key phrase in your response is: "all else being equal"

When it comes to marketing what you've made, you do get the first-mover advantage but that's about all you get.

I've made many a useful, problem-solving prototype in my spare time (and even 'launched' a few of them among close friends and family) only to see the same thing going big a month later. Except, it is someone else who happens to have made the same thing a; they just manage to push it a lot better that I ever could. It also doesn't help that I'm really bad at the business side of things.

I really need to find someone who can do that for me and my ideas/prototypes... :(

DjangoReinhardt··on Ask HN: Inbox for everything?
A few years back, when web2.0 was the buzz word and RSS-based mashups were all the rage, I believe a few websites tried offering this service.

I don't remember the names of these services now but IIRC, input.io (or something like that) was one of them. The site is dead now - didn't get any traction or funding and shut down. A couple of desktop based clients also happened but fizzled out for the same reasons.

Looks like they were quite ahead of their time. :)

DjangoReinhardt··on Receive a push message once an HN post reaches 50, 100 or 250 upvotes
OT, but I've been seeing the "proud to be a co" thing on a lot of .co websites. I think I saw it on 500.co, last night. Seems like .co is trying to position itself as a premier, aspirational domain.
DjangoReinhardt··on Bad Indian Programmers
Allow me to explain the Physics/Chem part of his comment.

The education system in India offers a fork-in-the-road twice:

1. Grade 10 - at which point you get to choose the general direction you want to head in (primarily Arts, Science, or Commerce streams)

2. Grade 12 - at which point you get to choose a slightly more specific stream, pursuant to the stream you chose in grade 10.

Science students continue to study Physics, Chemistry and Maths until the end of grade 12 at which point they are presented with the above fork-in-the-road. To get into a college that offers an engineering degree (or any applied-sciences degree, for that matter,) you need to have a good score in PCM, i.e. Physics, Chemistry & Maths. It is in this context that your Physics & Chemistry scores are relevant.

Also, one of the basic requirements for getting into a engineering course is that you should have graduated from a Science stream. Someone who has completed grades 11 and 12 in the commerce stream can't get an applied sciences course.

DjangoReinhardt··on Bad Indian Programmers
Interesting process, especially the emphasis on the 10th class marks - I think I know where you are coming from.

However, I'd disagree with you about the top colleges criterion: top colleges don't necessarily produce the best programmers. There can still be mediocre programmers that graduate out of top colleges, right?

Also, please don't discount someone because they have bad English skills. I know a few really good programmers (educated in good English-medium schools) who still can't express themselves in grammatically-perfect English but their knowledge of programming can blow you away.

That said, in the current job market, any opportunity is welcome. The onus is certainly upon the job-seeker to make sure they make the most of the opportunity you give them and one of those is definitely about how they present themselves to you.

DjangoReinhardt··on Bad Indian Programmers
Allow me to disagree with you here.

Good people, who are starting out, often undercut their rates to ensure they stay competitive with the plethora of options available to the buyer in the market.

Suppose, I value my work at $30 an hour and I don't have too many projects to show for it but someone else is offering the same skills at $15 an hour but they have a whole portfolio of (somewhat-)shoddily done jobs, 99 times out of hundred, I will lose my contract to the $15-an-hour competitor.

My only option: Quote $15 or less an hour and build up my portfolio. Unfortunately, once you 'sell' yourself for $15 an hour, no one will want to pay you more than that for subsequent projects. Sadly, what no one understands is that $15 an hour only buys you my time; it doesn't buy you my motivation to apply myself to the job. :(

DjangoReinhardt··on Bad Indian Programmers
Yeah, I've been on the other side of this, working in the trenches. Granted, I wasn't a developer but the situation wasn't any different. The problem is no one asks us how much time it will take.

As an (exaggerated) example, the conversation usually goes like this:

Project Manager: Guys, we just landed a huge project from Acme Inc. Guess what, you guys are gonna be paid a bonus this month!! YAY!

Developer: Great!

PM: There's a tiny caveat though: The bonus was promised only if we had delivered it yesterday.

D: FML.

PM: But don't worry, we still have a week to finish it!

D: WTF? But this will take at least three weeks!

PM: Ah, don't worry. I know you can do it in one week. In fact, I am so sure, I promised them you would! Isn't that great?

D: Well, what if I can't?

PM: Oh well, we won't get paid and it will certainly reflect in your appraisal and you won't get that promotion that you have been due for the last three years. But I'm sure you won't let that happen, amirite?

D: FML.

DjangoReinhardt··on Bad Indian Programmers
> So you want to hire somebody for less than ~ $20 per hour.

> And you expect the quality of $200 per hour experienced developer.

> Stop having crazy expectations.

Replace the word developer with its equivalent in any 'talent'-related job and it still applies, e.g. Radio, Voiceovers, Writing, Editing, to mention a few.

If you can't value my time, I won't find enough motivation to value yours. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys. :/

DjangoReinhardt··on HN Pizza Index: Cost of living by city
Well, there's also the fact that Indians associate a slightly different (slightly class-ist) experiential value with chain-outlet foods, for a variety of reasons.

While most fast food outlets in America are seen as quick and (relatively) inexpensive food sources, they have been identified as upper- to upper-middle class brands since they first arrived in India. (IIRC, that was mid- to late-90s.)

IMHO, when they arrived the prices quoted on their rate-cards seemed to be directly converted from their parent locations, e.g. the daily-special dollar-sub was priced at INR 50 (roughly equivalent to a dollar) and standard subs were about INR 110 - or about $2. The standard chicken burger was priced at INR 60-ish and a happy meal combo was approx. INR 150 (roughly USD 3-ish back then).

(There isn't an Indian equivalent for the Pizza, so I can't make an adequate comparison here. :( )

Compare this with the ubiquitous "Wada-Pav" - the Indian street-food that is considered to be the equivalent of the burger - which was priced at about INR 5 back then. The Indian equivalent of the sub, i.e. the street-sandwich, would cost about INR 10.

As a kid who grew up in a very middle-class family when I was attending graduate (that's undergrad for you Americans, BTW) college, my weekly allowance/lunch-money was INR 100. With that kind of money, visiting a McDonald's or a Subway was not something we could do on a lark, you see.

Thus, by association and by virtue of their exaggerated price-points, these fast-food chains automatically became elevated to 'elite' levels, i.e. if you could afford to spend ten times the money for something a normal man considered regular fast-food, you had better be earning ten times as much as the normal guy. (I remember feeling quite nervous and kinda intimidated when I walked into a McDonald's outlet for the first time! :D)

Things have changed since then, however.

Some time in the last decade, McDonalds' and KFC realized that with the kind of prices they started out with, they were missing out the largest chunk of their target Indian market - the college-kids. Ever since, they have initiated reduced price menus (smaller burgers for INR 20, daily specials, etc.) for them.

Just for reference, the "Wada-Pav" I spoke about earlier, costs about INR 10 these days while the smaller-burger costs about INR 25. The street-sandwiches are at least INR 25, while a daily-special dollar-sub is about INR 50-ish. Not to forget, the allowances kids get these days have increased significantly, too!

Of course, my perspective in this matter is quite restricted. Do take it with a pinch of salt, please. :)

DjangoReinhardt··on Appmaker
I liked what I saw.

Sure, it's a bit rough around the edges, but it is a brilliant thing for non-devs to play around with. With a little tinkering sround, I managed to create a simple chatroom app: http://truthful-week-478.appalot.me/install.html

Here're my first impressions:

1. The color flow as a broadcast-reception link is an interesting idea but not immediately intuitive. Once I figure out what it was for, I managed to blaze through it fairly quickly.

2. Broadcast trigger actions need to be clearer. For instance, I know there a trigger for the randomcat but the fact that clicking the random cat is the trigger isn't all that intuitive.

3. Make chaining triggers a thing? I know it's not as easy as it seems but some combinations do lend themselves to chained triggers. For instance, I wanted to emit the random cat to the chat room with each text (as a test) but there was no way to chain triggers.

4. Publishing the app seems to lose the custom name assigned to form buttons. The app I posted above should say "Clear Chat" where it says submit.

5. Allow me to save my apps under a custom name? And publish the changes to the same app after Edit? Not sure about the latter - haven't tried it yet.

Overall, it is a brilliant achievement for something that is pre-alpha or pre-pre-alpha! I'd like to see where this leads!

I am now heading back to construct a simple clicker game. Wish me luck! :D

EDIT: Both Chrome & Firefox seem to throw errors about a few js files (primarily ceci.js & designer.js) in the console while loading the page for the first time. CTRL+F5 solves it. JS caching issue, I'm guessing? :)

DjangoReinhardt··on HN Notify
Well, to be honest with you, I poll feeds with an hourly cronjob. So you may not get the DMs the second they happen, but you'll get them within the hour for sure... :-)

Good luck and tell me what you think. Also, any feedback would be truly really appreciated.

DjangoReinhardt··on HN Notify
Do SO questions come with their own RSS feeds?

If yes, then try using http://twitter.com/updt_me to 'follow' the questions - you'll get a DM whenever there are new answers in the RSS/Atom feed! :)

It's a self-learning project I built over a weekend, so it's kinda rough around the edges, apologies in advance! Do let me know what you think.

DjangoReinhardt··on HN Notify
This is truly super!

I did something similar for RSS feeds and twitter: http://update-me.herokuapp.com - it is an RSS reader via Twitter. It DMs you post updates to feeds you subscribe to.

Could I request access to your API? I'm thinking of adding a HN subscription feature to @updt_me, something along the following lines:

1. User sends a tweet subscribing to thread ID, e.g. @updt_me START HN 6499036

2. @updt_me pings hnnotify with a callback to setup a subscription for the thread.

3. hnnotify pings @updt_me with thread-updates via the callback. POST payload, I think?

4. @updt_me DMs update to the user's twitter inbox! YAY!

I'm sure there's a simpler process than the one I outlined above. If you have any ideas, I'll be glad to hear them! :)

DjangoReinhardt··on Argh There’s an asshole on my internet
Firstly, thank you for taking the time to read the whole thing. Secondly, thank you for not getting offended. Thirdly, thank you for being an awesome-enough human being for making this comment. You deserve everything good that life has to offer and I wish you get it all!

Thank you for pointing out the title. While I am guilty of sensationalizing the title, I have not referred to HN users specifically - neither in the title, nor in the post. Nowhere have I made the correlation between the two, nor do I intend to. I still believe the title fits the post and does not slander HN users specifically but please correct me if I am wrong.

I would like to stand by all my points in the post. I just seem to have expressed some of them a little inadequately. But you are right. I should have done better in the first place, no excuses.

There's just one part I will definitely be changing, and that's the part where I talk about the punchcards. Somehow, I seem to have missed the extra 'since' at the beginning of the line and it has changed the entire paragragh to something horrible. I am ashamed and I apologize to you personally for this mistake.

I'll be writing an errata/update based on some of the comments I have received in this discussion thread.

DjangoReinhardt··on Argh There’s an asshole on my internet
I am not exactly a student of philosophy so I may have a hard time understanding the argument, so please bear with me and my attempts to explain myself. If I misunderstand something, I apologise in advance for my inadequacies.

> ...attempts to invent a caricature of those you disagree with based upon age, despite that having literally nothing to do with the discussion in question...

By classifying my concerns as an 'attempt to invent a caricature' are you trying to claim that the issue I am trying to raise does not exist?

Also, you seem to be reducing my entire opinion to just the age-ist point. So I went and re-read my post. Turns out there is an additional 'since' in the line that changes the entire meaning of the paragraph:

> The ones that believe that ~~since~~ they have been writing software since the time that programs had to be punched on to cards and fed to a machine that was usually the size of three rooms, they believe that it gives them the right to look down upon any and all attempts by those who haven’t done the same.

This is clearly my fault and I should have been more careful. Age-ism isn't the divide I am talking about in the post and not even remotely the point I am trying to make! Therefore, I propose the following changes to the offending paragraph:

> Their asshole-ry (can't think of another word) comes from a self-belief so strong that you wonder if they have been writing software since the time it was fed to computers via punch-cards. Worse, their sense of entitlement is so strong that it leads them to believe that they have the divine right to look down upon any and all attempts by those who haven’t done the same.

> Your jeering criticism was nonsense, however, manufacturing a strawman that didn't exist.

What strawman did I manufacture?

> People expressing frustration with the discussed submission, however, were making a very cogent point.

When did I reject the notion that the people expressing frustration weren't making a cogent point? My entire opinion was based around the thought that they needed to be a little more positive/constructive with their criticism.

It seems we have differing opinions on what counts as positive/constructive and even on what counts as criticism itself, in which case, let's just agree to disagree?

DjangoReinhardt··on Argh There’s an asshole on my internet
I wish I could meet more people like you and I wish that you meet better people than me. Thank you so much for taking the time to write this. You are truly awesome.
DjangoReinhardt··on Argh There’s an asshole on my internet
The impostor syndrome is not for my experiences as a developer. It's for a different part of my life. :)

Also, I thought it had nothing to do with experience and was strictly about 'internalizing accomplishments' - at least that's what Wikipedia said.

Maybe I am over-assuming. Maybe you are right and I just suffer from low self-esteem. :(

DjangoReinhardt··on Argh There’s an asshole on my internet
I am not much of a TV-person but I like some of the characters and some parts/episodes/scenes of the show. And yeah, while it was a fitting reference, I should have known that I had it coming. :(
DjangoReinhardt··on Argh There’s an asshole on my internet
You bet, I will! And thanks to this post, I'll be better equipped to handle all kinds of comments/criticism/jeering as well! :D
DjangoReinhardt··on Argh There’s an asshole on my internet
Hi, I am OP and nope, I am not the author of the bookmark thing nor am I related to him in anyway.

I am, however, someone who unintentionally empathized with the author of the bookmark thing and posted my anguish. I am now learning a lot from this discussion.

I thanks you for your detailed comment and I particularly liked two statements you made:

1. To the author of the Bookmark, I didn't exist, or in a way more relevant to a developer, the disgruntled user whose opinion is valuable in improving the product never reached the developer.

2. A criticism is better than negligence. Almost always.

I'll keep these in mind forever when evaluating something for someone else from now on. No matter how small, a single line of feedback can lead to some powerful changes, sometimes. Personally, I'll ensure that I'll always craft this constructively but if I'm on the receiving end I won't take it personally if someone chooses not to. :)

As for the original author of the bookmark thing, he is a far better man than I. He has responded very calmly and respectfully to all the jeering/criticism and I continue to remain in awe of him.

I still have a lot to learn, I guess.

DjangoReinhardt··on Argh There’s an asshole on my internet
I agree with some of your points and would like to defend myself in regards to a few others, if you don;t mind.

The ageism bit wasn't a non-sequitur in any way but it was definitely under-explained and I am at fault on that one. I have been at the receiving end a few times ("Why do you want to know that? That's how it has always been done!" and "What would you know? You have barely written your first fizzbuzz!" are just a few examples) and the anguish just happened to pour out. Apologies for not explaining that better in the post but it does not invalidate the existence of the point in any way.

Ply my own bigotry? I am sorry if my post seemed to raise those questions/sentiments but I'd genuinely believe that I was trying to point out something that has troubled me. You, OTOH, without any knowledge of me or my intentions accused me of bigotry. Should I take that as an example of an ad hominem?

As for alan_cx's comment, yes, I am guilty of cherry-picking a part of it. I believe I made that clear in the lead-up but that's no excuse. I'll make amends and edit in the rest of the comment right away. It doesn't make the original comment any better in terms of its jeering nature, IMHO.

Personal attacks? Misrepresentations? Strawmen? I sincerely and unreservedly apologise for for any personal attacks or misrepresentations. I think I just chose to put in some (rather badly) cherry-picked but nonetheless valid examples. However, I know I am not perfect and am definitely prone to mistakes and the occasional exaggeration. If you could please point them out, I will make the necessary corrections immediately.

I repeat, I am not attacking the people of HN at any point in the post. I am ranting against the jeering disguised as criticism. Since all dark clouds have a silver lining, all jeering must have an inherent critical point, too. Should I take it to mean that jeering is now acceptable since it is criticism?

In that case, may I request you to please consider my jeering of HN's snobbish behavior as honest criticism?

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