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HowardRoarkon Share your weekend/part-time startup (December 2012)

I tried Hittail a year ago, and didn't quite work for me. I ended up writing a few scripts myself. But I heard in Rob's latest podcast that Hittail is growing 30% per month.

HowardRoarkon Miso pays disputed $10k referral bonus to ex-engineer, apologizes

"Everything stupid in life has a legal or accounting reason behind it." -Unknown

HowardRoarkon Ask HN: How does one gain expertise in scalability?

There are different levels of scaling, and for different kinds of apps, the trade offs that you can make are different. Unless you are making a really huge leap, most of the time it will be a gradual process. So unless you are talking Google or Twitter Scale in a matter of months, it may not be as bad as it sounds.

Monitor, optimize your current configurations, cache, load balance, cluster, use messaging, use existing industry knowledge on distributed systems, read academic papers and innovate... For advanced distributed systems, checkout Prof. Indranil Gupta's lectures amont many others: http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/class/fa10/cs425/lectures.html

HowardRoarkon Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

I have been brainstorming something similar for a different country and vertical, and I am seeking for some ideas. Do do have an email?

HowardRoarkon Ask HN: Localized HN-like Websites?

May I ask what you are using for the site?

HowardRoarkon Introducing NodeBalancer, load-balancer-as-a-service

I wonder what they use on the backend to power this. Anyone knows?

HowardRoarkon Poll: Which Language is your preferred JVM Language?

Groovy doesn't get enough press in HN but I would think Groovy is practically the most widely used of them all just because of Grails. I prefer Scala when I am doing backend stuffs but use Groovy/Grails for web stuffs.

HowardRoarkon Ask HN: Who's using Google App Engine?

I built http://www.onesong.me in appengine using the java playframework, and I quite like what I get for free.

HowardRoarkon Ask HN: What do you think of Portlets?

I used JSR-168 (JBoss Portal) back in 2006/2007 and was my worst programming experience ever.

Web development has only gotten better since 2006, so there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to do the same using any of the modern frameworks.

HowardRoarkon My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/tool/tool_06....

Can programmers even apply under the skilled category anymore? I thought Canada only wanted computer managers since 2009(?).

HowardRoarkon Ask HN: what still sucks about web development?

HTML, CSS, Javascript, browsers, database, IDE, at least one server side language, and hosting for a simple web app. Web development sucks. We are just used to it.

HowardRoarkon Ask HN: What do i need to learn to build this?

Don't get into the Rails vs Django war. Just pick up any one of them and start coding. Both frameworks are highly productive and very easy to pick up.

If you go with Rails, you can use Heroku for hosting which is free to start with. If you go with Python, you can use Google Appengine, which is free as well for starters.

HowardRoarkon Ask HN: Foreign Student as Cofounder in the US

You can own or start a company, but you cannot work for it until you have proper authorization, ie. CPT, OPT, H1b, Green Card, etc. If you are found to be working for any company including your own, you could be out of status and hence deported. Thats my understanding.

HowardRoarkon Ask HN: What are you working on?

Working on http://OneSong.me - an app that lets you describe your friends in one song, just like ThreeWords.me.

HowardRoarkon [dead]

I cannot bring the page up. Looks down to be.

HowardRoarkon Show HN: OneSong.me - Describe me in one song

I agree on the design. I am not a designer myself but I will see what I can do without spending absurd amount of time. Thanks.

HowardRoarkon Show HN: OneSong.me - Describe me in one song

Clickable: http://OneSong.me

HowardRoarkon How to damage your brand in one smooth shot - Way to GoDaddy

Oh Google!

HowardRoarkon How to damage your brand in one smooth shot - Way to GoDaddy

There can be no explanation for this. I think we should all boycott GoDaddy.

HowardRoarkon Google +1 And The Rise of Social SEO

Yet another Search Engine Optimization technique?

HowardRoarkon AppEngine 1.4.3 released: new file API, concurrent requests & more

GAE Java only handled one request at a time till now?

HowardRoarkon When it comes to hiring, I'll take a Github commit log over a resume any day.

I agree its better than having nothing to show or talk about, but I wish hiring the right person was that easy. There is a lot of junk in Github and there are lots of smart developers outside the Github community.

HowardRoarkon +1’s: the right recommendations right when you want them—in your search results

Thank you Google for trying out. But it doesn't look like something I am going to use because most of my social contacts don't have a clue about my professional life - which is what I am searching for mostly.

HowardRoarkon Ask HN: Best+cheapest Linux VPS?

hazenet.co.uk - $8.40 for 1GB

intovps.com - $10 for 1GB

prgmr.com - $20 for 1GB

vpsfarm.com - $21.6 for 1GB

chunkhost.com - $37 for 1GB

linode.com - $39.95 for 1GB

slicehost.com - $70 for 1GB

Whats your bandwidth requirement?

HowardRoarkon Ask: Is there a "Machine Learning for Dummies"?

To get started, try Mining the Social Web, followed by Programming Collective Intelligence.

HowardRoarkon What do you think is the most beautiful algorithm?