amix

Thanks for recommending us! :-)

Our desktops apps are really useful to structuring coding projects and I use it all the time while coding (as Todoist supports shortcuts and outline like nested structures) - - and it's really fast to use. Here's one of my recent projects, for an idea: http://cl.ly/image/1C2p1j1b0r3B

This is great because you can assign due dates and priorities to sub-tasks - - and you can hide/show Todoist while you develop (via a global keyboard shortcut).

In the Scandinavian countries (or at least Denmark) it's possible to "retire" early (or at least cheat the system and do this), but I would not really wish anyone this. Working on what you love to do is important, especially in the modern society. And in Denmark your kids can still get into the best schools and you can get free healthcare without having a job. This said, being on welfare and "retiring" early is not something most Danish people dream about and I doubt most of these people that retire "early" are that happy about their life.

One of the biggest problems of switching to PyPy is to know which libraries are supported and what the best options are. For example, how should we connect to MySQL? Or use memcache? Or use Redis?

It would also be great with some stories of who runs PyPy in production and what their experience is (especially on large high-traffic sites/apps).

Being born in Bosnia this makes me proud. Go Emil! :-)

PyCon had 500 women out of 2500 attendance. Gave away over $100,000 in financial aid. Gave away 2500 Raspberry Pi's. Thought kids to code. Raised $10,000 for the PyLadies. Gave permission to publish amazing online videos etc.

And then you have these 3 idiots (and more online idiots) that steal the spotlight and everybody focuses on them. Sigh. Let's focus on the positive stuff!

I think this is a bad decision as the market has moved to other things. And others such as Feedly or NewsBlur already serve this niche well.

For the record I haven't used Google Reader for years (and I have over 500 feeds in it as I used it a lot at some point). Why? Because I find my news elsewhere (on Hacker News, Twitter, Google Plus, /r/python, reddit/r/programming etc.) - - And not to say the awesome mobile services such as Flipboard or Prismatic. I guess RSS usage is even worse for the mainstream and non-technical users.

Wilson score confidence interval is easy to implement and already proven to work greatly on Reddit, where it is the default sorting algorithm. Do note that Reddit also has down votes and Reddit also has threaded comments. While I agree, it's not the "perfect" solution, but for a perfect solution HN admins would need to invest a lot of time (and it would probably be a lot more buggy and in the end they probably won't come up with something that's better). Going with Wilson they can do a quick fix that would improve the sorting a lot.

I have actually done quite some research into HN's and Reddit's algorithms (i.e. http://amix.dk/blog/post/19574 and http://amix.dk/blog/post/19588 ) and I would say that using The Wilson score confidence interval would improve HN's comment sections a lot.

The real meat is here: http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating....

Even if it looks hairy it's fairly simple to implement in e.g. Python (from Reddit's code, rewritten from PyRex): https://gist.github.com/amix/5230165

Maybe pg could try this out for a few days and we could see what the results are!

With currently only 3400 paying users it's only 80K pr. year of revenues (and the profits are probably much lower). It's still far from a good business and this kind of money does not have any kind of guarantees.

Not being in SV and not following the SV way of building companies I really don't understand the rush, especially for something as important as picking the right investors. This would be like picking your wife on the first date and doing a handshake on it... Why not go for a more slow and more thoughtful route? As I see it great companies are not built in days, but years of hard, concentrated and thoughtful work and decisions.

There's an old saying that applies to this: Don't throw with stones when you live in a glasshouse. I can't really give much respect to people that don't follow their own advice and that rant with profanity at people that make a difference in the world to at least 1 billion people (Google and FB combined).

I am shocked that it's considered a smart idea to make it possible to execute code from XML files (and that this is the default setting)!?

The problem is that people could be insincere, non-rational or ignorant. I doubt they will know what their problems are, what they are willing to pay or what the solution could be. There's a great quote by Henry Ford: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

For Nathan his pain point could be something related to writing and publishing books. I think this would be a much better problem domain since he is a user and I am sure he has some problems regarding this process that could be improved.

I think a better approach is to solve your own problems. This way you don't have to waste time cold calling people and hoping they are sincere with you with their feedback. You are the user and the creator... It's a very powerful position to be in.

I would recommend reading Paul Graham excellent post on "startup ideas" (which could easily translate to "project ideas"):

"The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself." http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

I have been programming for the last 15 years and I still sometimes look things up, even in languages I use daily. I would not really change this, since if I use it often I will remember it - - and if not, it's just one search away. I think memorizing random facts is a really bad way to become a better programmer - - much better ways is to solve problems and read expert code (via ex. GitHub).

Regarding the memorization technique I am unsure if this is the most effective way of remembering things. The book "Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything" presents a lot of tricks on how to memorize things that could be more effective than the method described in this article.

Great tool! I also find the title funny (which referes to following quote by Jamie Zawinski: Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I'll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems.)

I am sure there will be people that make money on the advice that's given. And I am sure most of the advice is valid. The question is: is it really worth $1000? Maybe you could have saved that $1000 and done these optimizations yourself (they seem pretty straightforward and you can find thousands of articles about retainer fees and fixed bids if you just search Google). I.e. maybe he is not selling anything extraordinary or "secret", it's just common sense packaged at a ridiculous price?

Their business model isn't creating software - it's selling "get rich fast schemes" and other information for high margins. You are the target of their sales channel. You can just see it in the financial Brennan posts: 12% comes from selling software, 88% comes from selling to you -- and he earned most from selling a $1199! course on how to build your own multi-million dollar consultancy. It should ring bells as it's a very common theme in most other markets (where you have a lot of people selling "how to get rich quick" - - and the only people that get rich by these schemes are the people that are selling them).

You found my comment offensive? And you think it helps calling me an asshole? I don't think I need tips from you.

Being a founder of a todo-list featured in the article (Todoist) I find your comment quite ignorant. Modern task managers aren't just about managing text. For example, our app integrates with Gmail, Outlook and Thunderbird and makes it easy to manage your emails. We can also send you reminders and you can access your tasks on 9 different platforms, including iPhone and Android. We can manage your links via our plugins for Chrome and Firefox. We also take care of sync so you can have your tasks, emails and links anywhere you go. We also try to visualize your productivity. We include very powerful calendar features (for example, you can write "every mon, fri at 8pm" and our date parser will understand it - - and you can even do this in 10 different languages and we will still understand it). Plus a thousands other things that your text-file solution simply can't do.

I don't think you have failed. I think your strategy has failed. Maybe a better strategy would have been to still have your job (part-time?) and still have a visa and then use the rest of the time to create your product. You might use a lot more time, but the great thing is that you always have something to fall back to (the chance of failure is huge when doing startups so it's good to have some kind of safety net). When/if your product starts to take off then you can then quit your job and apply for a entrepreneurship visa. I think it's a much more sane strategy than risking everything.

I would recommend reading "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug. It will teach you the most important aspects of a usable design - - which are much more important than just doing a pretty design.

I don't think sketching is only useful for designers. Before I solve complex coding problems I usually have a block where I can scribbled and sketch solutions. This method makes it much easier to brainstorm and think than using something rigid like a text editor (at least for me).

Gizmodo has more details, especially regarding his meth activities and drug use (which could explain his paranoia and erraticness): http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2012/11/john-mcafee-wanted-for-murd...

Reading about John McAfee is similar to reading about Hans Reiser - - brilliant minds wasted doing stupid things.

I have used something similar since 2007 ( http://amix.dk/blog/post/19199 ), I only use it on client side to generate DOM elements and generally it's a nice approach (I like this much better than constructing HTML via innerHTML). The general idea for this is from MochiKit and I think they were inspired by stan (that ships with Nevow framework - - which seems to be dead now).

I think this kind of obsession (about things that don't matter) was best portrayed in American Psycho's business card scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoIvd3zzu4Y

Is it possible to get any work done on Curacao given how hot and humid it is? And does air conditioning cancel this issue? Also what about the Internet :-)?

Where would you stay in Thailand?

Thanks a lot for the feedback and would love to hear more. Don't have your email, but please contact me at amix _at_ amix.dk Thanks!

Basing this on the screencast I think this looks amazing and they seem to be very productive. This said, I am unsure if this would produce codebases that are easier to maintain, since there is not a clear separation of concerns and everything seems to be connected. I think doing client-side JavaScript is hard and messy (even with Backbone or Ember) I could not imagine this would be any easier if I had to handle the backend on the client-side as well (especially a backend that's updated in realtime).

This said, maybe the current struggle of the client side is because the data is on the backend and needs to be fetched, updated and handled using a client-server model. With Meteror the data seems to live on the client-side which maybe makes things easier.