Hacker News Reader

breathesalton Our Week Without Slack

You can't mute your boss, and they're the only messages anyone pays attention to. You can only ignore support for 20 minutes max before your boss starts typing your handle.

breathesalton Uvloop: Fast Python networking

I'm working on a Python CLI that uses asyncio/aiohttp to make and process requests to a 3rd party API. Anyways, I ran into the 10,000 socket problem today and ended up using a semaphore, that actually boosted the overall performance. Why is that? Is it just because the CPU is overwhelmed otherwise?

breathesalton Ask HN: How do detect a crappy boss / toxic environment when interviewing?

Don't ask the interviewers what they hate about their jobs. That's easy, everyone hates their job. The best advice here is you should find someplace willing to give you a small token project to work on. Find out for yourself if you hate the place in that period of time.

breathesalton Ask HN: CSS The Right Way?

I highly recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Pro-CSS-HTML-Design-Patterns/dp/159059...

breathesalton Ask HN: How to find part-time developer work?

One trick is to start full-time and as soon as you become indispensable to the company ask to go part-time.

breathesalton Ask HN: Do you still wear a suit to an interview?

It definitely depends on the company. Irrespective of the company's dress code, you should look presentable for an interview. You don't have to dress formal to look presentable.

breathesalton How to Make a Full Auto Book Scanner

Having run a textbook scanning service (http://www.ptrfy.com/) for a while now, I can say assuredly that keeping master digital copies or the physical processed books is a substantial legal liability.

breathesalton Smashing Node.JS book is out.

Shameless plug: you can always buy the print version and have it digitized.

breathesalton Show HN: New music notifier and browser

Thanks for the extra effort, I signed up successfully.

breathesalton Ask HN: I want dead-simple Java web app hosting with built in email support

Google App Engine supports JavaMail.

breathesalton Show HN: New music notifier and browser

I would use this service if:

1) Only an email and password were required to use it (I don't use facebook).

2) It were robust, reliable, and fast; artists without a label or a consistent way of publishing songs shouldn't be a problem. In other words, if I can't rely on this service to track all the artists I listen to, its value significantly diminishes for me.

With that said, I realize you're in beta, and you're off to a great start by addressing a real problem.

breathesalton Show HN: Ptrfy, simple textbook digitization

Legally, we cannot keep files indefinitely. We do hold on to a file and its corresponding book material for two weeks after it has been processed for QA reasons, among others. This rules out file reuse for us.

breathesalton Show HN: Ptrfy, simple textbook digitization

First, thank you for the feedback; your comment about Amazon was very validating. The pricing model and payment mode (Gumroad) encapsulate and foreshadow a lot about what Ptrfy is focusing on. At $12, we're clearly not going to "Make Everything Digital For All Book Lovers" (1dollarscan's slogan), but we do want to make buying eTextbooks more simple, affordable, and social for those who need them the most, such as college students and technical professionals. We will be experimenting with different formats in the future, but I wouldn't hold my breath, especially if it meant we would have to compete against Amazon. I'll have to think more about how much of a priority offerring PDF-to-X conversions for past customers is, so good question. PDFs are well-suited for use on desktop OSes, which is where many if not most technical professionals and students do their eTextbook reading. Nonetheless, iPads and Android tablets handle PDFs well enough, but rarely do I read technical literature other than mathematics on my iPad, because tablets are much better suited for casual mathematics notes.

breathesalton Ask HN: What kind of authentication model do you use for your API service?

Read: http://codahale.com/how-to-safely-store-a-password/

Since you're running on GAE you're likely using either python or java:

Python bcrypt implementation: http://www.mindrot.org/projects/py-bcrypt/

Java bcrypt implementation: http://www.mindrot.org/projects/jBCrypt/

breathesalton Traction, how did you get it?

Make more friends :)

breathesalton “We’ve observed a new particle”: leaked video reveals Higgs confirmation

Here's the actual story containing the video: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/10016887...

According to the telegraph: "Cern say that this is one of several videos they have made, one for each of the possible outcomes...".

breathesalton Ask HN: Interested in a site for listing startup ideas you want done?

Be lean. Create a stack exchange proposal at http://area51.stackexchange.com/, make a new HN post linking to it, and we'll see where this goes. But anyone interested should try making the proposal, since it seems the OP has already lost interest.

breathesalton Ask HN: scheduling with work, side project, and self-learning?

I'm in an uncannily similar situation as yours but with a part-time job. Find a job that is aligned with your ulterior goals and that provides you the time to complete them. Let's say you want to finish a machine learning textbook, then find a job that gives you enough freedom to apply that at work. Applying what you learn, at work, not only reinforces your learning but pushes you to reach your long-term learning goals. As for the prototype, the problems it's designed to solve ought to be compelling enough.

breathesalton My Biggest Temptation

Who sits around reflecting on (and measuring) their happiness, as if it's some numerical, achievable end-goal?

Jeremy Bentham, that's who.

breathesalton Ask HN: What's the difference between a programmer in the top 10% vs top 1%?

I agree mostly except about your semantics. I would stick with the term "developer", not programmer. Being a good programmer is certainly correlated with being a good developer, but probably not by 1.

breathesalton Ask HN - Startup founders, what keeps you motivated?

Everyone has different predilections, however, frequent/consistent physical exercise and learning might be applicable to most.

breathesalton Ask HN: How to deal with lazy cofounder?

It could be a motivation issue if it was a decline in work quality. If you're like most startups, and you're not profitable right now, it's important to quickly become profitable. Having a constant stream of real validation of your business's value is very important--make sure you're making the right product. Otherwise, there's no shame in pivoting or dropping the dead weight--but in my opinion that's like firing a canary because it stopped chirping.

breathesalton Ask HN: Who are your most influential failures?

I agree on: have charisma, don't take out loans, work on what truly motivates you, and long idea incubation.

breathesalton Ask HN: How do you come up with a name for a product?

I usually go with a simple metaphor so I have more to lean on for the design and theme of the product.

breathesalton Ask HN: When you launch a startup how do you get beta testers?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=109220

breathesalton GWT alternatives??

GWT has quite a learning curve. I'm 5 months into GWT/GAE, not counting preliminary research/learning, and am only now starting to see a return on my time investment. Looking back, I'm glad I decided to roll my own small framework for GWT/GAE; everything else just seemed inflexible, overkill, and too proprietary. I recommend taking a look at http://www.gwtapps.com/ which has been very helpful through my journey, even if it's somewhat dated.

There's practically zero support for Maven in the GWT documentation, and it's a shame because it seems much more elegant than just Ant. Ant is probably what I hate most about GWT, but beyond the initial setup, I haven't dealt with it much other than simply running "ant build" and "ant devmode".

My honest advice is unless you really like working with Java or are already past the learning curve, just go the HTML5, Backbone.js, Bootstrap/LESS, and Coffeescript route. GWT's worth the investment but the web standards it's built on will still leak through on sufficiently complex projects. Also, I couldn't see myself doing GWT if I wasn't also doing Java GAE, because GWT-RPC makes AJAX so painless.

breathesalton YCx San Diego

Yes.

breathesalton Ask HN: Bookmarks, still an unsolved problem?

Also, checkout http://www.readability.com/.

breathesalton Ask HN: Bookmarks, still an unsolved problem?

I've been using Session Buddy (www.sessionbuddy.com) for a few months now. It (optionally) automatically indexes your open tabs during a browsing session under their respective windows. You can go back later and label or augment these sessions with further browsing. This isn't exactly what you're asking for obviously, but you may find it useful anyways.

breathesalton Ask HN: What are other "Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas"?

Obtainable but challenging products I would pay for:

Transportation:

1. A two-seat, 80+ mi/charge, <= $5,000, autonomous EV. Should be simple and modular enough for self-assembly (basically Ikea for EVs). Insurance for this would be next to nothing.

The following should be franchises in every city that matters:

2. Co-working space, learning space, and living space franchises for <= $5/day each per customer.

3. A vertical, autonomous farm franchise for <= $5/day per customer.

4. An autonomous, scalable manufacturer-as-a-service with a simple API (like Heroku for manufacturing).

Web services, Hardware, and Software:

5. Email will change, but not on a deep technical level. The winning service will just let its users do everything they wish they could with email now but can't. If such an email service were created, it would replace most social apps/services and affect the rest profoundly.

6. I don't think we need another Steve Jobs--but a few more PGs wouldn't hurt.

7. A way to prevent talent acquisitions and to encourage entrepreneurship in a broader population outside of tech. The economy could definitely be more distributed and diversified than it is today.

8. An inexpensive OS and accompanying tablet tested and proven to work for old people. If any demographic needs the power and grace of the internet, it's old people. The interface and functionality should adapt automagically as you get older.

9. A subscription based service for the EV I mentioned earlier.

10. A web service that creates DRM/copyright free songs based on songs you like.

11. Every time I say this I get down-voted but I would like a search engine as good as Google, but lets you explore a realtime graph of anonymous or aliased queries passively or actively; collaborative searching would definitely be a feature. This solves "A New Search Engine" and "Internet Drama" at the same time.

12. Replace the FDA.