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decadentcactuson Interviews Can Be a Terrible Way to Identify Good Programmers

Sorry if it wasn't clear, I meant that's the impression I get from a lot of these interview posts.

decadentcactuson Interviews Can Be a Terrible Way to Identify Good Programmers

It seems to me that regardless, you need to still have a CS degree and understand (and be able to implement) algorithms of increasing complexity, even if you're making a CRUD app.

But I agree, these interview posts altogether don't seem to say anything consistent.

decadentcactuson I have no idea what I'm doing

I definitely agree with the end of this. There's been many times where I've come up against something I need to learn - a new technology, technique, library integration, and wondered how I could figure it out.

Then I remember, years ago, thinking the same thing about the things I'm doing now. How I thought Python looked fancy and confusing, how configuring servers was arcane, and how I took hours to make a page POST a value to another page. And update a database (with no range checking, so that went into negatives, but it _worked_).

Now I can reasonably assume that given enough effort, I can figure almost anything out.

decadentcactuson Diablo III open beta this weekend

I can't see that happening. Blizzard will still sell over 5 million copies of Diablo 3 at full price. Plus they don't seem as up on the F2P trend, what with even SC2 costing full price.

Also, I'd be annoyed that I just preordered it for $80 AU :(

decadentcactuson CloudFlare Is In Talks to Raise Funding At Near A $1 Billion Valuation

I've also had issues with CF. Saying the site is down while I'm logged into the server. Does anybody have any solid alternatives to the bot blacklist? It gets hard to keep up with htaccess ip blocks, and it's more or less all I'm using it for now (apart from DNS which can be changed anyway).

decadentcactuson Mozilla: Are We Slim Yet?

Same here, with eating. Simply writing down and calculating what I was eating ended up with me eating more (which I'm aiming for).

Now measure all the things?

decadentcactuson Building a Product: One month later, $119.50 in the bank

What did you mean by "converting"?

As in they signed up when you announced it was open, or paid? 100 signups on launch is still extremely useful for starting out.

decadentcactuson Nobody Understands REST or HTTP

What I've come to realise is that if you try to make an API of any sort, somebody, somewhere, will write a post about how you're defiling the HTTP protocol.

decadentcactuson Nevada approves regulations for self-driving cars

As well as being linked to the person before you (for fines or something), I imagine you'd be able to send for another car, saying this one is too dirty etc. At which point it would be routed back to a facility of some sort.

decadentcactuson Why YouTube's HTML5 Player Sucks

I'm not having these particular issues except for the timing one, but I'm definitely not a fan of the HTML5 player (yet). I'd also like to use it but it's just nowhere near as good.

Videos open and pause at 0, and no matter what I do I can't get them to play unless I reload until I get the flash player. Seeking is pretty wonky. As well a couple of weeks ago it used a different sound output than flash (Flash would use what my music did, the headset, but the HTML5 player would try to use my speakers, which were off. Seems to have improved now).

Just hoping it improves significantly in the future.

decadentcactuson Neil Young is right — piracy is the new radio

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tfk/tfkthe-end-is-where-...

Thousand Foot Krutch made this project which was easily funded it seems. Although they are an established band already, and I'm not sure if 100k is "good" for them or not. But then again, that's only really pre-orders.

decadentcactuson Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

Thank you very much, this helped a lot. I'm at least glad that it sounds "normal" enough, and I do believe that what I've presented is compelling to Minecraft players.

decadentcactuson Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

Hey Mike

Could you (or anyone) take a quick read of this intro post? It's simply designed to collect some emails so when I launch, there's people to email etc. I'm wondering, well, if it sounds weird, or if it is convincing enough to get people to sign up. First "sales" letter I've really written.

Password is "a"

http://blog.minecraftsaver.com/2011/11/introducing-minecraft...

Thanks!

decadentcactuson The real reason you can't hire developers....

Man, I'm struggling with this at the moment. Either the places I've contacted are finding other people better than me (significantly), or I just suck. Auto-reply emails (if that) don't really tell me much unfortunately.

decadentcactuson Why Google+ will become Google's only product

Same here. It started with Youtube attempting to merge their accounts and Google accounts. A fine idea, but for me, the execution was lacking, not knowing which account to sign into, not being able to use multiple Google accounts on different sites, etc.

Another thing is that Google doesn't always make the best products. By far.

> As Blogger becomes an easily customizable face for a Google+ public stream, Tumblr will have more trouble succeeding with its blogging product.

I'm not sure if the author has used much of Blogger, but it is horrendous, and terrible if you want to do anything slightly more powerful than a simple blog. Wordpress completely outclasses it.

decadentcactuson Lamest bug we ever encountered

The worst bugs are when things work as intended, but you still think it's a bug, such as your example.

decadentcactuson Why we ditched PayPal for Stripe

I'm starting to think though, that it's a good opportunity for others in other countries. Stripe, Twilio, Google Voice, probably a bunch of others.

decadentcactuson Why we ditched PayPal for Stripe

Doubleplusupvote on this one. Although I'm wondering if I can still use it if incorporated in the US.

decadentcactuson Tell HN: Recruiters and Bizarre Skillsets

Is (assuming it's what it stands for) Object Oriented Programming really considered a "skill"?

decadentcactuson Ask HN: What lessons you learned in 2011

I'm sure others learned this before me, but it seems to be something you have to experience: Things take so much more work than you expect, and will take a lot longer than you planned (eg post-release building up to good traffic levels).

Also agree with delwin

decadentcactuson Show HN: Rate My Startup - Launched Today

Agreed on the white space, could probably be moved left a bit. This was on Chrome on WinXP.

On the product pages (http://www.grosper.com/deal/view/id/19) grey on white text is pretty hard to read. Perhaps also don't change the header colour (I've seen green and blue) between pages. And "Deals you missed" and "How it works" link in the main nav are difficult to read.

Otherwise, nice and clean :)

decadentcactuson Is there anything you'd like to know about Australian Startups?

Features for the most part.

My issue is (looking for work in Aus) that a lot of US startups are very public, blog posts, small bits of code (eg Github with its bot), and the people seem much more public. It's a lot easier to see inside of the places and see which would be great to work for.

It seems I can't find much on any places in Aus except for passing mentions in articles.

decadentcactuson Ask HN: Can we end the "anyone who can code has a job waiting for them" meme?

This is what I'm starting to realise. I live in Australia, and, well, it doesn't seem that way.

Either that, or I suck, and aren't a "good developer who can get a job on the basis of having a github account"

decadentcactuson Norway: an Eden with wifi

Also DICE is based there (Battlefield)

decadentcactuson Ask HN:Beautiful Web UIs - how?

I implemented this yesterday into a project I had been working on. Admittedly, only one page and a pretty simple layout so far, but it's very quick to get benefits from it (especially grid layouts).

decadentcactuson "No matter what price we choose, we always make the same revenue"

This seems to disagree with what I've heard of Valve and Steam sales. That the bigger the discount, the more (total) revenue is made, almost across the board.

$50 game -> 50% off, 100 sales $50 game -> 75% off, 500 sales etc

decadentcactuson Skyim breaking Steam record -- a singleplayer game has 240,000 users online

The two games also combined today for more players than MW3 Multiplayer (likely the long term predominant portion of it), and since I'm assuming Skyrim numbers will eventually die down, it's often still the most played game on Steam.

decadentcactuson NYTimes November 11, 1911

I get it too. I'm in Australia if that's why it hates me

decadentcactuson Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (November 2011)

SEEKING WORK - Perth, Australia, remote ok

$50/hr, list of work and buzzwords at paimoe.com. I'll discuss what you want, then get access to a git repo and get started.

Mainly PHP, MYSQL, jQuery, HTML/CSS, Django/Python (less so). Built both large sites and side projects.

Contact hi @ above domain.

decadentcactuson Ask HN: What web hosting service do you use? (2011 edition)

Agreed, I use them as a general host and test area, although I'm hoping to try out some other "PaaS" inc. Heroku soon. Still, a good place for anyone who just wants something simple.