Hacker News Reader

aneeshon Ask HN: Can I write a recommendation engine for HN?

I like the thought of this, but you can't see who upvoted a particular article, so it'd be difficult to make any sort of recommendation.

aneeshon Google becomes world's first $100 billion brand

> How are they computing "brand value" ?

I found page 6 of this pdf: http://www.millwardbrown.com/Sites/Optimor/Media/Pdfs/en/Bra...

The summary is that it's the NPV of the brand's future earnings, multiplied by the fraction of that revenue due to the "brand" itself and not location/price/etc (this is estimated by market research experts), multiplied by an estimate of future growth (more market research hand-waving).

aneeshon Google Now Charts Unemployment And Other Public Data In Search Results

Since it's US-specific data, perhaps Google only made this available for US search queries.

aneeshon Write better Perl with Perl::Critic

Try it out at http://perlcritic.com/. The feedback is usable - when the tool finds something to complain about, it provides a link to documentation explaining what it didn't like, and the way it "should be".

aneeshon Google’s Schmidt and Microsoft’s Mundie Appointed as Obama Tech Advisors

A more informative list, straight from the source, is here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/President-Obama-A...

I'm pleased to see thinkers like David Shaw & Eric Lander included.

aneeshon Ask HN: Django Site Samples

http://www.djangosites.org/

aneeshon Ask HN: A User's First Post?

I never felt any barrier to posting on HN. Nearly everyone on this site is pretty welcoming. Just comment on something that interests you, or that you know something about.

By the way, for me, and I suspect many others, it's not really a free rider problem like you describe. I don't gain much by simply having a collection of interesting links, nor do I feel like I'm doing a service when I post a comment or article. I gain from the actual discussions around interesting articles, especially when people respond to my comments.

aneeshon Microsoft's Windows 7 Starter is a gift to Google

Most users have no idea how much of their PC purchase went towards a Windows license.

aneeshon Poll: Mac or PC

PC, with Windows & Linux dual-boot.

aneeshon Mathematical trick wiki Terrence Tao blogged about is now live - Tricki

There's no substitute for a good mathematical intuition, especially as you tackle the more difficult problems. But having a standard bag of tricks up your sleeve can be very helpful. Just use them as a tool, not as a crutch.

If you're interesting in this sort of thing, I highly recommend working your way through the Art of Problem Solving texts (www.artofproblemsolving.com).

aneeshon Guidelines for using email

These are good to keep in handy. In particular, this one: "The integrity of an email message cannot be guaranteed. If a received message seems out of character for the sender, double-check before taking it seriously."

I've come across too many people & organizations who blindly swear by the integrity of an email: "But look, it says right here it was sent by XYZ!"

aneeshon [dead]

Posted earlier today: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=563190

aneeshon [dead]

I found the process of coming up with the estimate just as interesting as the conclusion itself. It is described at http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/04/print-is-still-king-only-3-... (linked to by the original article)

aneeshon Literally Random Pricing on Thawte Certs Right Now?

A good A/B test is often "sticky" (usually using cookies); once you're in a certain bucket, you stay in that bucket. So a different browser could conceivably make a difference.

aneeshon How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates

> and Yes, he's not a great hacker (he's smart and knows enough about technology but the couple Gen 1 Microsoft employees I've met say he can't code worth a darn)

I disagree. I've met & talked with an early Microsoft employee who interacted directly with Gates. He was very impressed with Gates' technical ability, and more importantly, his ability to convert technical knowledge into business advantage.

aneeshon A 3700-year-old proof that the diagonal of a unit square has length √2

You'd first have to prove that the diagonals bisect each other (so that you can say b = 2h). I'm not sure whether that result was known at the time, but it's not too hard to prove.

aneeshon A 3700-year-old proof that the diagonal of a unit square has length √2

I don't think there is one. At least from what I can gather, this isn't quite a proof that the diagonal of a unit square has length √2. The tablet tells us that the Babylonians knew the length was √2, but it doesn't tell us how they knew, or how they could prove they were right.

aneeshon How to get a merchant account - a series of hoops

What's the best way if you're a non-profit? Are there any banks or credit card processors who would waive fees for non-profits?

aneeshon How to get a merchant account - a series of hoops

PayPal, Amazon's payments API, or Google Checkout. And possibly others I don't know about.

aneeshon Advice to Summer YC Applicants

PG made an interesting analogy to the college admissions process. How long until we see an "Common App" for seed firms, and a common decision timeline?

aneeshon What's the best way to stay in a conversation on Hacker News once you've commented?

Yep, that's pretty useful, but it only shows replies to your comments, and not other comments on the same article.

aneeshon Chaffing and Winnowing: Confidentiality without Encryption (Ron Rivest)

I'm not qualified to comment on how reasonable this is, but it's author has a good bit of credibility -- he's the "R" in the RSA algorithm for public-key cryptography). Note also that this piece is over 10 years old.

aneeshon YC Gets 11% of Sequoia's Frontpage

and a much-criticized, fairly annoying "viral" growth strategy.

aneeshon What's the best way to stay in a conversation on Hacker News once you've commented?

Is there a way to subscribe to a convo via email or RSS, or do you just constantly have to come back to check for replies?

There's not really a good way. You just check back every so often, and even then, there's not a good way to view the comments that have been newly added. This has been discussed here before, but HN deliberately tries to keep things simple, so I wouldn't bet on this feature being added anytime soon.

aneeshon [dead]

http://apple.com works for me. Check your hosts file.

aneeshon Seth's Blog: Advice on equity

> "Today, right now, your contribution is worth 5% of the company and my creation of the company is worth 5%. The other 90% is based on what each of us does over the next 18 months. Here's a list of what has to get done, and what we agree it's worth..."

Otherwise known as vesting (essentially).

aneeshon California the Worst State in Which to Start a Business

"In comparison, California is the worst. Unless of course, you’re in technology and/or looking to raise venture capital — when it comes to those two categories, the Golden State tops the charts."

aneeshon 6 months later, the Intel SSDs are still massively better

For proper reading width, check out http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

aneeshon The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security

> The cure for "Enumerating Badness" is, of course, "Enumerating Goodness." Amazingly, there is virtually no support in operating systems for such software-level controls

The closest an OS has come to "enumerating goodness" is the User Access Control (UAC) introduced in Vista that, among other things, blocks any executable from running as Administrator until you say "Yes, please run this" at least twice. While well-intentioned, that frustrated most users to no end. So it's not as simple as the author may think.

aneeshon Invite HN: The Algorithmic NCAA Bracket Challenge

The hardest part of that is actually finding all the relevant historical data & getting it into a good form. Anyway, I'm not about to spend hours on picking a bracket, so I'll leave that to someone else.