jbr

http://squirrelmail.org/ is out there. Can't personally recommend, since I've used gmail exclusively since I got an invite, and desktop mail apps (plus hotmail) before that. My college used squirrelmail before they switched to http://www.horde.org/webmail/.

Here's a link to the actual paper (free): http://psp.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/35/12/1602.pdf

Similar look to hoptoadapp, which I've always been impressed by. Really clean "application-ey" look.

Instead of ranting in response to this mostly-dead HN thread, I posted a blog entry: http://www.jacobrothstein.com/cloud-mapreduce-vs-hadoop

In short, the 60x speed gain in comparison to Hadoop isn't fair, and in more reasonable tests the speed gain was moderate (<2x).

I recommend Braintree http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/, having build payment systems on top of paypal payflow pro, paypal express checkout, and Braintree. Their API is far more sane, and their vault system is convenient. Plus they'll let you get your data back out if you ever need to switch. Make sure to ask anyone who would be storing CCNs for you if they have a portability policy. Otherwise, you only get to choose once for the life of your company.

Note: I haven't checked out spreedly yet, but I've heard similarly good things.

Can someone with more experience with these formats compare Avro to BERT/BERT-RPC? Is that an inappropriate comparison?

I'm particularly interested in the idea of distribution/statistical-test driven software testing. Instead of concrete assertions (truth assertions, equality assertions), we would make assertions about descriptive statistics or other tests. Or just assert that if we do something stochastic N times, we should expect some truth/equality test to pass at least M times.

I'm not sure what to do with that idea, but that's actually the core of why I posted this. Any other hackers out there excited by this idea?

In the spirit of brainstorming:

  o Suggest users who upvote similar items.
  o Highlight items that have been upvoted by
    other users who upvote things that I upvote.

I'd love to write something like this, but would need the data. What are the impediments to publishing or sharing upvote data?

My take: What I extracted from the talk regarding agile software development is his point about keeping specifics out of the code. If the operational specifics of your application are kept in "data form" instead of precise a priori knowledge, it is easier to be "agile" (adaptive). Agile is an incredibly loaded word, but I think he was referring to lightweight, working software that is easily adaptable.

As far as how it's software development: It's an architectural choice whether you're going to a) hardcode domain specifics into your code, b) keep some of the domain specifics out of the code, but neatly organized and structured, or c) leave the data messy but extract meaning from a large corpus statistically.

My favorite: http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymous.html (free)

Installing anonymous is one of the first things I do when I get a new mac.

Just curious, does anyone actually like when employers get cute with job postings? It seems like a move of desperation to me, most of the time. Does it actually say "developer friendly" to others?

I've been playing go on and off for over ten years now and _heartily_ recommend anyone remotely interested in learning to sign up for kgs (http://www.gokgs.com/) and download the java client. There is a fantastic community there, including a few beginner rooms. Often, people will stay after and review the game with you, which is basically a free lesson. People are consistently polite and respectful on kgs, which I can't say of other go networks (igs, for example). Additionally, it's really easy to get a quick match whenever you want with someone appropriately ranked, and it figures out your rank as you play people.

If you're going to play in person, try to play smaller boards, like 9x9, so you can get a sense of tactics and local patterns. Mark_h said it already in this thread, but I'll repeat: lose your first fifty (or more) games as quickly as possible. When you're first getting started, the goal is just to get a handle on how play progresses, not to win. Getting comfortable losing makes it easier to learn.

Web resources I can recommend: http://playgo.to/iwtg/en/ and http://senseis.xmp.net/

Please feel free to find me on kgs, username jrothstein. I'd love to help share my love of the game with other hackers. Also feel free to contact me (info in profile) with any questions about the game or for a review (I'll try my best).

Agreed wholeheartedly on LaTeX. It also is a great entry point for a warm-up conversation at an interview if you format it professionally. I've been asked a number of times "how'd you do this?" and I'm not doing anything fancier than a two-column layout.

I think we hackers tend to underestimate the influence presentation has on perception. A LaTeX-formatted résumé adds a nice touch of professional style and a little boost of geek cred to academic résumé readers.

Or so I'd like to think…

Probably has to do with typekit (http://typekit.com/). I'm using the beta of typekit because it seemed like a neat way of using @font-face, but I guess it's more beta than I expected. What browser are you using?

I was also surprised, but explained it to myself like this: Autism (and Asperger's, which is something like high-functioning autism) have a certain natural affinity with hackers. If there's something that works for autism, we might collectively be curious if it translates to asperger's as well.

Here's an old wired article on the asperger's/hacker affinity: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html

As far as I remember from an undergraduate degree in psychology, autistic parents are some of the most willing to try experimental approaches. Autism is incredibly difficult for everyone involved and parents are often desperate to find something that works.

As far as having to happen in a state w/ medical marijuana, I also don't think that's necessarily true. Human research on controlled substances is pretty common, but requires the researcher to get past a lot of DEA & institutional HSRC paperwork. That's how the research that supports medical marijuana was performed in the first place.

Amazingly, a google scholar search for marijuana (or thc) and autism turns up nothing relevant. Really? It's amazing how little we know.

Wow, I've been thinking of building something like this lately fairly seriously. Why did you stop?

I wasn't able to find anything at mentorapp.org; has the hosting expired?

I'd love to talk about possibly collaborating on this (although I think it would be tough to monetize, so I see it as more of a "pro-bono side project"). My contact info is in my profile.

Here we are in a fairly lively field with technical skills and a million ideas but (generally) not all that much life experience. The demographic that this article talks about are older, more experienced, but either weary or lost due to unexpected circumstances. What if we built a marketplace for startups (and founders-to-be) and young engineers to connect with older unemployed folks? Kinda like an age-reversed mentorship program, maybe. Or a "young hackers teaching older folks how to hack" program?

--

I was a bit surprised to find this article on HN, but since we're discussing it: Anyone else have ideas on how we, as a fairly narrowly-defined demographic, could help "generation B?" I personally feel like we have a responsibility to do so, if we can figure out how.

I just ran into http://diagrammr.com/ tonight. Pretty sweet little mini-app that looks like it's built on graphviz/dot.

It's actually really exciting that neighborgoods exists. Do you have any idea how they're planning on monetizing? I did this as a weekend project and am considering open sourcing because it doesn't really seem like there's a demographic that's clamoring to pay. I guess maybe small brick-and-mortar businesses might want hyperlocal targeting, maybe.

As far as reputation system, instead of pulling eBay's reputation data, I was hoping to build a sharing-borrowing reputation system. I don't have any reason to think that being a good eBay seller/buyer would make someone a timely and careful borrower/lender.

"Stuff lending" seems like the sort of thing us internet folks could help with, though, which is why I built ShareLocally.

Do you know where the beta of NeighborGoods is starting?

Hey, really nice job on pocketsapp. How did you do the phone interface? Is there a good resource for learning that tech?

Thanks!

I built http://www.sharelocally.org/ for RailsRumble (solo), which I plan to open-source. Anyone interested in the concept? I've got a lot more planned I didn't fit in. This was my first rumble and learned a whole lot about exactly how much fits in 48 hours. Can't wait until next year's.

UserVoice [1] and GetSatisfaction [2] are the big guys in customer feedback.

[1] http://www.uservoice.com/

[2] http://www.getsatisfaction.com/

Truth be told, we thought it looked weird, too. We don't use "webBeacons" or anything weird; just cookies. Google drops a few cookies for analytics, too, but that's it.

I'm going to go over the privacy policy today and make it reflect the reality that privacy, security, and ethical business practices are at our essence.

Since you read privacy policies closer than we do, could you recommend a good examplar of a friendly, non-legalese privacy policy?

Thanks for the feedback!

[Edit] I removed the weird WebBeacons reference, simplified the language, and added an additional message at the top. Does it feel less shady?

Some things I've learned in the last month of promoting my app:

HN gave me a wide variety of feedback, some of it really excellent. Try posting a "Ask HN: Please review my startup vivekjishtu.com" or whatever.

Launchly is awesome but doesn't have a lot of eyes yet. Do post there, though, you'll get some great feedback.

Usefultools gave me a tiny little bit of a review, but mostly just regurgitated my copy. They yielded a good bit of traffic, though.

My best review thus far was from a random blogger who had reviewed a competitor. I sent him a personal email saying "Hi, I'm impressed with your candor and feedback, would you please review my site? Here's a promotional premium account."

Also, hang around Launchly or HN for a while (I see you just signed up for HN) and give other people feedback. Both have reputation systems. You might even have luck giving other people serious feedback and tacking onto the bottom "if you have a moment to spare, could you give me some feedback on three-year-project.com"

However, in terms of long-term recurring members, I can't say any of those paths have yielded much. This might be more a reflection of my service than the nature of the promotional channels, however.

To respond to the general idea of the RFS, not RFS1 specifically: I think this sort of feedback to the startup community is incredibly valuable. I take it as an statement of "what they think the world needs/wants/would-pay-for right now." Having a sense for markets seems a bit like being able to predict the weather based on the way an old injury aches, and young entrepreneurs with a whole lot of energy don't usually have that sense. As one of them, I have to say it's nice to see suggestions of unsaturated/needy markets. It's icing that the advice is coming from someone who also can help bring proposed solutions to market.

As a side note, I'd really love if someone similarly informed did this with a philanthropic eye. Think "things the world could really use right about now," since those who feel the pains rarely are the ones with the ability to fix them on a replicable scale. Like a giant to-do list for humanity, maintained by people with a great degree of perspective. But I also have a hankering for a philanthropic equivalent of YC that funds and supports non-loss startups.

Ideas are cheap and I'm already committed to a project, so here's my take on the RFS. Imagine a site with the following attributes:

- Anyone can submit content in any language.

- Anyone can translate any content.

- Editors (initially the founders) select content that meets topic and language standards.

- Editors independently vote on content priority; site layout adjusts automatically based on editor consensus.

- Content authors (and translators, if any) get points proportionally to the editorial vote.

- A certain (large) number of points grants editorial access (having proven that they are invested in the site and get the standards).

- Points can be exchanged for world currency in either direction (bought/sold).

- People pay in points to access content (per article or per month).

- People start with enough points to give them access for a month or so.

- Eventually there would be editorial boards in different languages and ideally with different topics.

--

I know newsvine is kinda like this, but without the monetization. Newsvine also seems far more editorial than factual, and doesn't have the same "gotta earn editorial access" feel. Graduated karma-based community systems like stackoverflow (and HN) keep quality high longer. What do you think, would something like this offer a viable alternative to the journalistic status quo?

My company makes a product for exactly this purpose [1]. It's better for this sort of task than UserVoice because it works with an ordered list of preferences, not just plus/minus points, which yields far more granular voting. It allows realtime interaction and chat, too. I built it specifically because UserVoice wasn't meeting my needs for internal brainstorming/idea discussion at my previous startup. Let me know what you think if you try it out (jacob@stormweight.com).

[1] http://www.stormweight.com/

If you've got a group of people you trust (a team), let the group prioritize the list together. The result will be higher quality and more people will feel ownership of the ultimate selection.

Shameless plug, but on topic: My company makes a tool for exactly this problem, http://www.stormweight.com/

I did this alone for my winter break of freshman year of college. To the best of my recollection, my itinerary was Portland -> Vancouver (BC) -> Toronto -> New York -> New Orleans -> Ft Worth -> Joshua Tree -> LA -> SF -> Portland. One month. I arranged to either sleep on the train or crash with friends (knew someone in most of those places). The diner car was pretty expensive, so I generally carried a little food and ate heavy when I hit stopping cities. A significant portion of the 30 days was spent in a train, from what I recall.

Traveling by train has a special extra something; you're with the people you travel with for long enough to actually develop a conversation, but you're with them just short enough that you don't have to worry too much if you don't hit it off. This was great for an introvert like me to practice chatting up strangers with little risk in a safe setting. And you meet a really interesting mix of folks, different from the people I normally find myself talking to. It's particularly fun to feel the gradient of humanity / culture shift as you travel.

I traveled light; just a backpack, a camera, and a laptop (well, and climbing shoes for J-Tree). I was super careful about keeping the tech gear hidden and slept wrapped around my bag when I slept in public spaces (train stations / trains).

One thing about traveling by train: Amtrak is always late, and often by half a day. Make sure people who might be meeting you at connections know this and don't expect it to work like air travel.

Anyway, my thirty days of independent travel was a fantastic experience, and I'd really recommend it to anyone, young or old. You can even comfortably get work done in the passenger cars. Tether to your 3G phone or whatever and you're riding the Rails in style.