Hacker News Reader

I love this sort of thing, but like many heatmaps, I wish it had a color blind toggle.

davidbrenton FBI File for Russell Tyrone Jones (Ol' Dirty Bastard)

I have to wonder if this is on the front page as part of a marketing campaign for the new Showtime Docuseries.

davidbrenton Google's AutoML: Cutting Through the Hype

But when you’re in advertising all that matters are the results.

davidbrenton Giving meaning to 100B analytics events a day with Kafka, Dataflow and BigQuery

Very interesting read, but as more of an analyst, I kept waiting for the ‘meaning.’ Maybe I missed it, but for anyone else who may be considering reading this, it is more about ‘giving business structure’ to analytic events.

Good article none the less.

davidbrenton Waze for Android Auto

I bought my Toyota for the motor, so I didn't pay a lot of attention at the time of purchase. I wish I had though. Entune is absolutely terrible. I'm still mind boggled that a quality manufacturer like Toyota would allow such a terrible piece of engineering in their vehicles.

davidbrenton The Holder Report on Uber

Unfortunate as it may be, sometimes in large corporations, it takes paying an outsider to identify and document something, before anything will be done about it.

davidbrenton The baby MRI: shrinking tech to help save newborn lives

What an interesting take away. This is why I like online forums, because I would have never expected such a response.

For better or worse, I read the headline and hoped someone had made some progress that would make those dealing with ill babies, lives just a little easier.

davidbrenton Proposed server purchase for GitLab.com

Think much harder about power and cooling. A few points:

I've only ever built desktop machines, and this top comment drew a surprising parallel to most help me with my desktop build type posts. Granted, I'm sure as you dig deeper, the reasoning may be much different, but myself being ignorant about a proper server build, it was somehow reassuring to see power and cooling at the top!

davidbrenton $1M VotePlz Sweepstakes

This list of known browsers(cookies) would be worth well over $1mil to US advertisers right? I can only assume they're selling it, according to the privacy policy.

davidbrenton How we use Slack in our family

Someone at work was recently giving me the slack pitch, and mentioned the cool bot that be configured to announce people, answer questions etc...

It made me very nostalgic for my old IRC friends, both people and eggdrop bots alike.

davidbrenton HTT Breaks Ground to Make Hyperloop a Reality

As a Carolinian I can't help feeling left out when I look at their proposed map. Even if this is just fiction at this point, I would be interested in hearing their reason for completely bypassing both Carolinas.

davidbrenton Zenefits asks court to drop ADP lawsuit

How else would she show her appreciation for all of these emails between the two parties?

davidbrenton Stuff in Space

This is just beautiful. Definitely put all of those things in a new perspective for me. Well done.

davidbrenton Logitech K480 – Bluetooth Multi-Device Keyboard

Very cool and useful product. I can't help but feel like I'm in some kind of cycle though, because I felt the same way about a KVM Switch 20 years ago.

davidbrenton [dead]

"...almost certainly safe" Is that similar to "definitely maybe"?

davidbrenton Dash – Beautiful instant offline docs for almost everything

This is awesome. Although an excellent resource, there are many times I get very distracted using Google to get this kind of information. This could help me stay on task.

davidbrenton How the Recession Reshaped the Economy, in 255 Charts

If you can make it to the bottom, I found those simple charts, segmented by Industry, the most interesting and easiest to digest.

davidbrenton Odoo: The new OpenERP

OpenERP could've really benefited from some usability expertise, and if this site is any indication, Odoo may suffer the same fate. If you're going to put this much time/money into a new brand, how could you miss so badly?

In my experience with OpenERP, the end users always took a back seat to the developers. Granted, ERP software is inherently complicated, but with each new version you could tell they made an attempt at a simplified interface and never hit the mark.

davidbrenton Regex Golf

I have the most trouble with regex, and something about seeing my matches as I type made this incredibly useful for me!

davidbrenton Ask HN: Hacker side of Insurance Exchanges going live today?

Unfortunately, the only exchange I've tried to access, out of pure curiosity, times out.

http://www.healthsourceri.com/

Looks like they're using Amazon AWS

davidbrenton Prism Break

I still prefer IRC over all of those Instant Messaging options.

davidbrenton IRS: The words "open source software" suggest a for-profit business

These organizations are requesting either 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(6) exemption in order to collaboratively develop new software. The members of these organizations are usually the for-profit business or for-profit support technicians of the software.[1]

[1]http://democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/sites/democrats.ways...

davidbrenton Ask HN: Favorite mailing lists, IRC channels

#slicehost on freenode. I know the company doesn't exist anymore, but I learned so much about setting up my first debain box from these guys/gals. It is still going strong 6 years later.

davidbrenton Fitbit for Dogs

I can't put my finger on it, but this app makes me very sad.

davidbrenton Parse Launches Web Apps with the Express Web Framework

Can someone translate this for me? I'm not sure what it would mean to have 'Parse Hosting', 'Cloud Code', etc... I've only recently started to learn nodejs and didn't have any trouble pushing my tutorial made app to Heroku. Is this just an alternative to Heroku that hosts your app?

davidbrenton Live: ISS Spacewalk

I never realized how time consuming it was to deal with all your cables. I'd love to know the purpose of the color coding scheme on their different cables, but couldn't find anything with a quick search. I'm assuming different weights?

davidbrenton Fired SendGrid Developer Evangelist Adria Richards Speaks Out

Title should read: Fired SendGrid Developer Evangelist Adria Richard's Lawyer Speaks Out

davidbrenton The Making Of OpenERP

1. Financial reports (General Ledger, Cash Flow, Profit and Loss, etc...) that US businesses rely on, leave a lot to be desired and/or need a lot of custom modifications to work. These things need to work perfectly in an ERP system, and sometimes the response from OpenERP SA seemed lackadaisical as if partially correct reports for the US companies would be OK.[1]

2. Things like reconciling bank accounts and taxes are geared towards a European system that seems much different than ours, and as a result cause a lot of problems in a US implementations. Again, OpenERP doesn't have a localized US package that addresses these issues in a concrete way. Searching for help, you'll probably be referred to half finished module, with 0 documentation that still requires a lot of work to be ready for production.

3. On the stock and manufacturing side of things the system works much better in my opinion. And with the right amount of work done up front, the they both offer flexibility while following a strict business logic[2] set in place at the time of implementation, that they can do some amazing things for a sales / fulfillment side of the organization. The reporting and automation that OpenERP can provide on this side is really awesome.

[1]. I am not an accountant. [2]. It is a ton of work defining a business's process in the terms of an ERP. Sometimes I felt like OpenERP got blamed for a company poorly defining their process (if they even had one) So be wary of that when looking at forums and things...

davidbrenton The Making Of OpenERP

Having worked with OpenERP for a few years, I can say it is an amazing piece of software that does great things, but for a USA based company to be considering it against SAP is laughable.

I would strongly recommend anyone considering using OpenERP in the US to find a company currently running any version and ask them about their experience.

davidbrenton Show HN: Survey Builder with Drag/Drop Logic Branching

I find it awesome that your survey tool functions very well, but also that it is performing so well under the load of HN #1 thread. Nice work!