Hacker News Reader

drxon AmazonLocal

>Am I the only one not seeing the point of these coupon sites?

http://www.evanmiller.org/golden-football.html

drxon Show HN: Watchlater it's Instapaper for Videos

Clickables:

http://itunes.apple.com/de/app/watchlaterapp/id423572879?mt=...

http://9elements.com/io/?p=580

http://watchlaterapp.com/welcome

drxon Filter Hacker News by tags (70K past URLs and hourly sync)

Thanks, fixed. Turns out memcached keys can't have spaces in them. At least using python-memcached:

            for char in key:
                if ord(char) < 33 or ord(char) == 127:
                    raise Client.MemcachedKeyCharacterError(
                            "Control characters not allowed") ...

drxon Filter Hacker News by tags (70K past URLs and hourly sync)

No. From brief testing I found such automatic systems to be unreliable.

However, perhaps I could add tagging suggestions based on content extraction / keywords.

drxon Filter Hacker News by tags (70K past URLs and hourly sync)

For now just HN. Plus users sometimes submit links themselves.

I plan to expand on that. Add other sources, perhaps add a way for people to add their own sources. RSS feeds filtered by topics would be cool.

drxon Filter Hacker News by tags (70K past URLs and hourly sync)

I'm glad to see it's useful for someone.

It's interesting how accurate the tags are and how much more information they give. I've been playing with them for a while and I can sit and browse for hours.

drxon Filter Hacker News by tags (70K past URLs and hourly sync)

Ok, I think I've done the feeds. I need to test them for a while to see if they work as they are supposed to before adding them to the site, but you can start using them if you'd like:

http://archfinch.com/rss/tags/programming/history/lisp - example tag rss

http://archfinch.com/rss/followed/drx - things followed by me

drxon Filter Hacker News by tags (70K past URLs and hourly sync)

I'll try to implement this as soon as I can, so check back later. Seems like a no-brainer but I forgot to do this :)

drxon Filter Hacker News by tags (70K past URLs and hourly sync)

Regarding the original submission, yes, I got a ton of very useful feedback. The site differs greatly from what it was then (I wish I had comparison screenshots handy right now), I implemented some of the feedback.

I did, however, ignore some feedback. Well not really ignore, I listen to every piece of advice I get, but I can't implement every feature request. Plus often advice is contradictory with other advice :)

For example, people tell me to get rid of 1-5 ratings and just do 'like/dislike'. I won't do that because there is a chasm between 'like' and 'love'.

I could write a detailed post on what exactly I took to heart and what I didn't do.

Regarding the repeat. The submission from 4 days ago didn't end up on the front page for some reason, even though from my observation it had the necessary upvotes (it had more upvotes than an older submission that was on the front page). I figured it won't hurt to resubmit, and it worked this time.

drxon Filter Hacker News by tags (70K past URLs and hourly sync)

Right now you have to click 'discuss this' and in the sidebar, a link named 'via HN' pops up. This needs some improvement, but I can't put too much information in the link boxes, so it's a tough one.

drxon Filter Hacker News by tags (70K past URLs and hourly sync)

Filter old and new Hacker News link by tags.

I've gone through old Hacker News links and tagged them. Also, every hour, new HN posts are synced to Archfinch.

Only posts with at least 10 points are shown, and automatic tagging uses the Delicious API (no autotagging involved). Users can also tag things manually (and they do).

You can follow and block specific tags, e.g. you can follow linux, python and math and block techcrunch, facebook and iphone.

Some highlights:

http://archfinch.com/tags/ycstartup - all YC company news

http://archfinch.com/tags/hn/videos - videos that appear on HN (automatically embedded)

http://archfinch.com/tags/hn/pics - same as above, except pics

http://archfinch.com/tags/programming/history/lisp - an example of how deep the tags go

Bonus: some stories have wiki-style summaries

drxon Filter Hacker News by tags

Filter old and new Hacker News link by tags.

I've gone through old Hacker News links and tagged them. Also, every hour, new HN posts are synced to Archfinch.

Only posts with at least 10 points are shown, and automatic tagging uses the Delicious API (no autotagging involved). Users can also tag things manually (and they do).

You can follow and block specific tags, e.g. you can follow linux, python and math and block techcrunch, facebook and iphone.

Some highlights:

http://archfinch.com/tags/ycstartup - all YC company news

http://archfinch.com/tags/hn/videos - videos that appear on HN (automatically embedded)

http://archfinch.com/tags/hn/pics - same as above, except pics

http://archfinch.com/tags/programming/history/lisp - an example of how deep the tags go

drxon Linode Fremont, CA servers down

This won't be apparent later on, so for everyone else: the story broke on twitter within ~2 minutes of the outage, several minutes before the Linode status blog.

Is anyone here using twitter to monitor outages and other similar spikes on twitter?

drxon Linode Fremont, CA servers down

This was just posted, can't edit the URL: http://status.linode.com/2011/05/outage-in-fremont-facility....

drxon How decompilers work

As I can't edit my post any more, and you don't have an email address in your profile, I will double post.

> Do you know of any other good resources?

The thesis has many references, I would start with that.

drxon How decompilers work

I've started writing a 68k ASM module a while ago but I never finished.

Hand-coded assembly code is better in that it's less optimized and mangled. But worse in that it has much less structure -- I can't convert ASM code into C. Each programmer has its own way of implementing certain programming patterns, etc.

IDA Pro is actually quite good at flow analysis of ASM code.

drxon How decompilers work

The compiler isn't part of the input. You could get code that was compiled by a compiler not available to you.

When the compiler is part of the input, then yes, the problem is decidable.

drxon How decompilers work

> The cynical part of me wants to respond with one word: badly!

You are right.

Decompiling seems hopeless when you look at the problem. Which is one of the reasons why I wrote my decompiler -- to see what can be done.

That also depends on what problem you think decompilers are to solve. Decompilers are somewhat good at telling you additional information about the original structure of the program. They suck at recovering the original source code (which, with enough optimization and mangling, is impossible).

drxon [dead]

I'm a non-designer, so I had a friend do my app's design. She's not usually a web designer though, so I would appreciate any feedback, as we might have missed something obvious, etc.

About Archfinch (http://archfinch.com): it's a HN-like aggregator for non-startup articles, pics and videos, filtered by personalized recommendations and tags.

Before you say "reddit", I don't like reddit's average quality (as I'm writing this the front page is filled with Osama bin Laden jokes and quotes). Reddit is great for the community, but I would like something that has the very high quality of yesteryear's HN and the topic diversity of reddit.

Thanks for your time.

drxon [dead]

I'm a non-designer, so I had a friend do my app's design. She's not usually a web designer though, so I would appreciate any feedback, as we might have missed something obvious, etc.

About Archfinch (http://archfinch.com): it's a HN-like aggregator for non-startup articles, pics and videos, filtered by personalized recommendations and tags.

Thanks for your time.

drxon Python for Android | Linux Journal

You are being downvoted because your comment adds nothing to the conversation.

drxon Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice?

I am (...) running a YC company and whiteyboard

How is this relevant?

drxon Annyong, a small web server that serves static files from the current directory

Or in python3:

python -m http.server

drxon 10,000 hours to greatness

See also: http://norvig.com/21-days.html (Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years by Peter Norvig)

drxon Cluster SSH (OSX)

Cluster SSH is a terrific tool. When I learned of it I coded up a quick python script to play selected tracks of MIDI files and used CSSH to play Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor polyphonically on ~20 computers' PC speakers.

It was also fun to terrify first year students with 20 cd trays ejecting at the same time...

drxon Tell HN: How I pivoted or: please review my startup redux.

Thanks for the feedback!

>I think a good start would be a phrase explaining what service Archfinch provides. I felt like you should greet me with a phrase about your service. "Archfinch 'find what you like'" seems to sum up the site in four words. The service you provide to me are the recommendations, I pay the system with my ratings for those recommendations.

Right, I had something like this, removed it along the way forgetting not everyone knows Archfinch like I do. Definitely a mistake that needs to be corrected.

As for the rest, all great points, thanks.

drxon Tell HN: How I pivoted or: please review my startup redux.

Thanks for the feedback, it's indeed useful and not really harsh.

The one-liner used to be there, but I removed it, forgetting that not everyone knows what it is. See, this is why getting feedback from strangers rocks.

I need to definitely do something for touch devices somewhere along the way. I like the way they hide right now because it makes the site much less cluttered. I might experiment with this though.

One thing I will fight until the bitter end is the Like/Dislike thing. I'm using the site personally as a catalog of things I've seen in my life, having just Like/Dislike would feel wrong (Pulp Fiction and Valkyrie hardly deserve the same rating). I might make the scale optional (for "power users") or something.

In any case, thanks!

drxon Tell HN: How I pivoted or: please review my startup redux.

First of all thanks for checking it out.

> The site needs some character. The logo has some, but isn't enough; It's REALLY neutral to me, and I'm a pretty big fan of minimalism.

I have a finch-like character (it's a kind of bird) in mind that I plan to put in a few places to add some character, but I wanted to get the site out first before that.

> There's no "I haven't seen it" option, or "Let me rate this later". Which means that when I got to the end of the list of things I could rate, I was at a loss as to what to do next. Also, it bugged me that I couldn't make 'Cloverfield' go away, even though I've never seen it.

There's a lists feature that lets you add to 'ignored', but perhaps it should be more pronounced than that.

> What do I get out of it as I rate them? I certainly don't mind rating these things to help evaluate, but ... is there ANY reason I might come back and do this again later?

Ah right, there used to be a landing page with an explanation ("the more you rate, the better the recommendations") but I lazyfied the signup process so I forgot to stress that. Noted, thanks.

> The lack of registration option is a little confusing. I hit the home page, rated a few things, I see a log OUT option at the top, which is a little quirky, and I see a log IN -- oh, never mind, it was in the middle. If that's the call to action, it should be more pronounced, I feel like.

I'll figure something out regarding that.

Once again thanks for the feedback.

drxon Tell HN: How I pivoted or: please review my startup redux.

Clickables:

[1] - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1601930

[2] - http://archfinch.com/

drxon My Life of Starcraft - Day[9] Daily #100 [video]

It's the story of Day[9]'s Starcraft career, as told by himself. Quite inspiring and especially interesting if you are into Starcraft.

Warning: it's almost two hours long.