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covation A New Way to Tell Your Airline You Hate It

It's not public for one - that's kind of a big one.

covation Ask HN: I don't like my new job, now what?

That manager advice sound horrible. That is the point of a manager. If you can't trust them with something as basic and important as team interactions, then there is a bigger problem.

covation Undocumented Twitter APIs [pdf]

I'd say this is a nice little cheatsheet. Which is useful at times, but I agree - this title is misleading.

Edit: The far right has a key, and just below is a box that has a few undocumented items.

covation NHL partners with GoPro to deliver fans unique perspectives of the game

This is great for NHL viewers, but even better for GoPro - good to keep getting their name out there as the go to for amazing action footage wherever you are.

covation NPR One

well, now that swell is shutting down it might make sense. But I'll miss the variety that I get from swell :(

http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/28/apple-to-buy-swell-for-30-m...

covation Mailgun Down – SSL cert is expired

They use statuspage.io, a great service, but most people use to manually set the times that the service was out - but I believe they have an API for that as well.

So I think MailGun just didn't indicate the service was unavailable when they put the outage details in.

covation Startup Sales For Founders

I haven't played with segment before, does anyone else have any experience with it? However, I am a huge believer in using one library/system to track events and use one system to ingest them.

One quick note, I've found that it's helpful to build a simple wrapper in my own system for the call to the external library - this means that I have just one place to go if I change who I use to send events to.

I do think this oversimplifies lead scoring a bit, that's an area for a whole blog post to or two - and this seems like a good starting point. This is just to say that being too quick to settle on a lead scoring method can cause a lot of incorrect assumptions later.

covation Show HN: How to access my personal API

I've thought about doing something like this for a while, but on a more dynamic level. More along the lines of capturing check-ins from Facebook and Foursquare as well as other life events and making them available (with permission) via an API.

Someone brought up to me that it would be pretty much like Google Now - which isn't completely correct, but it gets to what the value could be.

covation StatusPage (YC S13) Lets Anyone Communicate With Customers About Outages

Well done guys! Having played with it early on, I can see that you've done a lot to make it even easier to use. I love the custom metrics too, we'll be looking at how we can incorporate some of our info into our page soon.

covation Show HN: StatusPage.io - Hosted, white label status pages

I disagree, it's about core competency. I have the resources to build and host a number of things. But I pay for quite a bit of software. Things like bug tracking, ticketing, billing, etc. - all because I want to focus on what I do best and let some one else handle the details of this stuff.

This kind of comment is a gross simplification of a market, and just shows that you haven't really thought about it much at all.

-1

covation Show HN: StatusPage.io - Hosted, white label status pages

I've been playing around with this for a little while now and it seems like a great service for the status page itch. One that we weren't scratching very well in the past.

I haven't even begun to dig into the API yet, but I've been happy with the ease of setup and how simple it is to create, update, and complete an outage or disruption report.

Thanks for the solving this problem, guys!

covation Bit.ly was down

As a general idea of routing all traffic through one point, yes. However, as a marketing tool to track traffic, they are quite valuable. Sadly, optimal network routes and other considerations take a bake seat to making money.

covation Ask HN: How are you dealing with scraping hits from EC2 machines?

We've blocked a few of the worst, but mostly just added servers to deal with the load.

We actually found out who one of the worst ones was and contact them. It turns out it was a major legit proxy, but they had a bug in their proxy code that caused refetching of one of our urls over and over. They were very easy to work with and they fixed the bug.

covation On sexism in the tech industry - rebuttal

I only skimmed the original article, and I think this woman makes some great point about how absurd his article is.

She has some good points about her experience, however, as she has only had 6 months in this field, and that is working in one company, I'd say she's not the right person to write a rebuttal to anything about the current state of it's culture.

Someone who has worked in multiple companies, in different regions, and at varying levels of organizations would be much more fit.

Again, I'm not saying her article is crap, the bulk of it is a good counterpoint, I'd just like to see someone with a bit of a broader view way in from a woman's perspective.

covation Student drinks liquid nitrogen...and survives

This is an old story (see the date of 1999?), as a WPI guy ive heard this one a few times

The guy was attempting to use a cute little physics trick. I'm no physics major, but the idea is similar to walking on coals. You can have the liquid nitrogen in your mouth briefly and it doesn't burn you. Swallowing it, however is a totally different story.

covation Show HN: Dashku - a real-time dashboard app, built with SocketStream

So this is free for now, what are you thinking of charging?

covation The new emberjs.com

We just started playing with this, it seems like a great alternative to backbone for those who want a bit more of the common stuff done for you (esp data binding).

Backbone is a great starting point if you have strong opinions and want to own it from the ground up.

Just my $0.01

covation Help, Linux ate my RAM

I don't think that is necessarily true. Most modern programming languages, as well as the relative cheap nature of RAM, have rendered a true understanding of the inner workings of RAM less important.

Would they be better at their job if they did? Probably. But do they have to? I'm not so sure anymore.

covation Why Coders Shouldn’t Join a Start-up When They Graduate

My comment that I posted on the site:

I don't disagree that having a big name on resume can be helpful. But I do think there are other things that should come into consideration.

I worked at several no name startups right out of college. And yes they failed, but I was also given huge opportunities and responsibilities that I never would have had at a larger firm.

And as a hiring manager I don't let names on resumes be my only driver. Just because you worked at Amazon straight out of college doesn't mean you are amazing. It just means they gave you a chance. And it doesn't mean you've done much, you may have just been stuck fixing bugs on one very small aspect of one system. That isn't very valuable in my eyes.

So I think it's worthwhile noting that there is a risk at startups and the name recognition is definitely useful in a crowded market. But name recognition will only get your foot in the door. You'll need some real experience to go the rest of the way, and I have nothing but my years at failed startup to thank for that.

covation Winning Features vs Keeping Features

Hey all, Winning vs. Keeping is how I'm starting to look at features that we develop. It's something might help to balance expectations and demands from other groups within the company.

I'd love to hear your thoughts, would this be helpful to you, or do you think this would just complicate your life...

covation 3.5 Inches

This is probably also based on user study data. I actually took part in a user study where we had to play with about 10 different phone and tablet sized lucite rectangles. They all had numbered grids and you had to hold it different ways and say how far up/down/over you could reach.

You also had to note your thoughts on holding, storing in pockets, etc.

Afterwards we had an open discussion period and most people seemed to agree that the iphone size was close to best, but that perhaps the screen should take up more of the real-estate, like how it does on the droid.

covation How to “see” your automated cron jobs

Exactly, this is what I do. His solutions seems like a bit too much duct tape and not enough RTFM ;)

covation Ask HN: Who is Hiring? (August 2011)

Durham, NC United States

Currently seeking PHP & Javascript developers who are looking to rock out in the triangle.

A very quick note about us: at Argyle Social we have built a Social Media Marketing Software platform that helps marketers to Manage, Measure and Analyze their social media marketing efforts. We are building the best tool out there for marketers looking to prove the value of social media.

Do you like waking up in the morning excited about the code you are going to write today? How about being amazed at how awesome the features and products you build look when you're done? Have you always wanted to play with new big data technologies like Hadoop and NoSQL DBs?

This isn't just HR BS, we work pretty damn hard to ensure that the dev team is doing interesting stuff and getting to push the envelope with new and interesting technologies. We know that when you are challenged with something fun, you write better code - so that's what we do.

We use an Agile development that has evolved over time (and continues to grow with us) to work well with our small, limber team. It has allowed us to build an impressive amount of robust product with very few resources.

On the front end we have a very slick, intuitive, and clean UI (check us out at ar.gy). You'll be working with our designer on anything that requires front end work - you'll be in awe of what he can do. On the backend we are building up a pretty huge dataset that we get to rip into. Learn more about our infrastructure at taws.me/2011/05/meeting-1.html

Argyle is a Venture backed company that has been operating in the triangle since December of 2009. We have 10 full time employees and an office in downtown durham where the Coke Zero flows like a babbling brook and the gummy bears and Fiber One brownies are plentiful.

More details here: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/12851/love-code-you-wr...

covation Show HN: Two-faced URLs

I'm biased, since I have run more than one shortener/tracker myself. This isn't meant to be a rant, more of a defense for the uninformed.

It's a bit naive to think that most websites are referenced by a simple link to static content. The web has become so complex and urls now reflect that. Short urls are useful for many people for many different purposes.

For an example of how complex urls are, take a look at SEO'd blog post or newspaper urls. They have become a string on keyword rich terms that help to increase SEO. The content that is served is brought up dynamically and may in fact change over time. Ads, sidebars, and comments are brought in after the fact, often based on content or origin of the user or if they have a cookie. It's complicated - url redirection (which already may be happening in this flow) doesn't add much to it.

Advocating for "proper link formatting or better content presentation" reflects the fact that you've never had to dig deep into the complex SEO, user, customization, and other general business requirements that arise when running a CMS.

Short urls are valuable because they allow people an ability to simplify the increasingly long urls for use in many different mediums without the worry of breaking or losing portions of the url.

Yes, they often do allow the creator to change them, but that's no different than what any website operator can do natively on their website.

There are problematic situations that can arise, such as when a url shortener goes down. And this has happened, and it hasn't caused any catastrophic problems. It's inconvenient, but it often only affects old content on twitter or facebook. I'm not saying it's ideal, it definitely doesn't add value to the internet. But it's not that bad.

Regarding the 'arcane' input requirements for twitter or facebook. Somehow I think you missed the point of these networks. Twitters 140 characters is part of what defines them. There will always be short message mediums, they are there because people have a desire for short bursts of information. They aren't going away.

I hope that helps to explain why shorteners arose because there was a need, not just to add complexity or more evil to the internet.

covation Ask HN: Who is Hiring? (July 2011)

Durham, NC - Senior Software Eng @ Argyle Social

We are looking for another A-player to help us continue to grow out our Social Media publishing, management, and engagement solution.

Are you interested in: • Deep integrations with twitter, facebook, google+, wordpress, etc. • Working with lots of social, click, and conversion data • Going from idea, to mockup, to production in a few weeks • Taking the lead on projects that excite you • Flexible work schedule, free snacks & drinks • Web apps, built in php that provide users easy-to-use and effective marketing tools

If that sounds good, then check us out. We are small and efficient team, using agile 2.5 week sprints. We also have an amazing designer who will make everything you build look hot ;)

More details at: http://argylesocial.com/jobs/durham-nc-software-engineering-...

covation The benefits of working underground in Durham, NC

I hear you man, snow building is where it's at.

covation Ask HN: I hate the code in my popular open source app; do I put it on my resume?

I definitely agree with the comments here. I don't know one good developer who doesn't want to rewrite 50% of what they previously written. That rate always goes up to about %100 if it's written when they were anywhere near new to a language.

The fact that you belted something out that was useful and stable enough to still be active is a testament to your intelligence - and that is what a good potential hire employer is looking for.

BTW, you looking for a job in Durham? http://argylesocial.com/jobs/durham-nc-software-engineering-...

/adam

covation Who else is hacking a project instead of watching the Super Bowl?

For sure, I'm hacking away on some utilities ArgyleSocial.com, while the wife watches a Masterpiece Theatre movie.

The Super...what is on tonight? :)

covation Ask HN: What to do if a domain registrant is uncontactable

All domain owners are required to maintain current and working contact details. Not doing so is grounds for the registrar to cancel their registration. Contact the registrar to inform them that the email address bounces.

I think they will probably inquire about the postal address, so I would try mailing a letter as well.

covation RTP Hackers & Founders Meetup

Thanks for pulling this together, I'll forward it on to my friends around town. There are a lot of smart & motivated people around here.

I was just thinking about trying to pull together people who are doing social media development in the triangle, but this might cover my bases well enough.

Thanks again!