LazerBear

I think this is fantastic, but I couldn't find API docs / tutorial anywhere on your site. Demonstrating use cases is important, but I don't think it's enough to get developers to download / register.

Design could use some more work, but I like the idea. Consider using social plugins for users. Also I love how you chose to show it off with YC's lecture. I guess you had to wait a while for the video to be online but it was probably worth it. That's thinking out of the box.

I always think it's admirable when a CEO offers his help in forums.

I tested it for a tiny project and was very surprised. It's very easy to use, though I wouldn't use it in production because of the price / lack of customizability.

If you accidentally forget to use 'new' when you're supposed to, the "constructor" method will change the global object instead of a new object, it can cause strange behavior that is very hard to trace.

Ah that's fantastic, i've been using them for a while and never noticed.

Douglas Crockford, is that you? Oh the lengths people will go to avoid using 'new'...

I wonder if any linters out there warn when they see something like:

  something = SomeCapitalizedFunction()

Because forgetting to use 'new' is really the only thing I could think of that makes this pattern dangerous.

That's a cool trick, though 'instanceof' won't work in this case.

Looks great. Does the name come from Hebrew? It means small coins, like pennies.

This made me wonder if it's possible to automatically reverse engineer a small binary file into human readable (and understandable) source code. Assuming you know the language and compiler used (and all of its quirks and optimizations), and considering that human written programs aren't so random and their patterns are most likely predictable, I think it should be possible though not at all trivial. Are there any projects attempting this?

Not really the same, but Passport offers easy account authentication.

This is hilarious and spot on. Still love HN though.

GEB is an amazing book, recommended to anyone into CS and logic.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see the problem. If your users submit their proofs one line at a time, then validating each line is O(1) if they give you the assumptions they used and the steps they took.

Edit: In case I wasn't clear, I didn't mean anything like natural language processing (though that would be awesome). I meant very strict formal math where everything is explicit.

GitHub for mathematicians.

For every theory, define its axioms and valid logical steps. Let anyone build theorems based on these (validate them automatically), and allow people to fork others theorems to create their own.

It's probably possible to get a lot of proofs from projects like Mizar and Metamath to start with, then let the community build on top of it.

Maybe even a crowd sourced bounty program for unproven theorems, like P=NP. Let people pledge and automatically pay to whoever proves or disproves it.

I think this can really change how mathematical research is done.

I don't understand how they can make something as simple as Twitter so cluttered. Though this is an improvement.

Great reply, thank you for clarifying!

I sometimes like to think about the ethical consequences of having that type of data and computation power. For example it's very likely for it to be used to perform experiments in biology.

But who's to say that an organism simulated in that low level is any different from the real thing? If there even such a thing as "the real thing".

And it gets even weirder when simulating human beings. Is a simulated person any different from us? Is he really conscious or does he merely "behave" conscious? Is it ethical to use it for experiments? What about entertainment? And also, it raises the possibility that we ourselves might be simulated in one level or another.

I think that in some point humanity will have to face these questions. Though from what I understand from you, we still have a few centuries to get there... Man, that's something I'd love to see.

Believe it or not they still teach MIPS architecture and assembly in some universities (Technion, Israel for example).

It would be much more exciting if they could get a SINGLE cell (of whichever organism) simulated with virtual subatomic particles. Has anything like that been attempted? Do we even have the data?

Man, this is really weird. Just a few hours ago I came up with what I think is an awesome for a tax-related service. I was reading HN, as I do daily, before I decided to start Googling for possible competitors. Imagine my surprise when Google brought me back to HN, to a post from just a few hours ago that I somehow managed to miss.

For someone who is just finishing CS this is great for recap. I printed the pdf and will go over everything I've learned in the past years.

Would've been nice if there was some "Theoretical CS Bottom-Up" too. From what I see this book doesn't have anything about computability, complexity, automata, algorithms, data structures, etc. Those abstract math-ish parts of CS are often overlooked by hackers, and are quite beautiful IMO.

Their front page looks nice, but the dashboard and everything else looks the same.

So which registrar does HN recommend?

I've used Namecheap before and they were decent, though the dashboard looks like it was built in the 90's.

I checked out Hover but they seem to charge a lot for email.

This is very relevant to something I'm trying to build right now, thank you for sharing!

This seems promising, however you might want to provide some interactive demo if you want more signups. And make it clearer that there's a free trial. But again, looks very good and I might use it.

Just wanted to say that this thread has made me want to read and participate in HN more often. Best of luck, OP.

Well, this is a problem many businesses have and I assume they will pay for a solution.

However, to me it seems like an itch that is very hard to scratch. It all really depends on your execution. Can you really build a product that doesn't annoy the costumers? If so, then it's an idea worth pursuing.

One good way to validate your idea is to look at competitors. Are there any players in this field? Are they making money? Can you provide something better?

Another way might be to perform some sort of "smoke test". Build only the software component that calls and talks to people. Then start calling people you know (without them knowing it's you), and have the service ask them simple questions. Do they hang up instinctively? Do they provide any info? You might even want to call them in person afterwards and ask about the experience, though they might not want to speak to you ever again...

By the way the site has way too much text.

I love the design, may I ask who did it?

Also, would have been great if you could drag & drop destinations on the map (I also assume some of your costumers would prefer it that way, rather than an API).