Hacker News Reader

jvvlimmeon Poll: What's Your Favorite IDE for JavaScript?

I can only second this. Webstorm hands down.

jvvlimmeon Ask HN: Does anybody actually use MongoDB anymore?

In the past I used to but have since moved on the ElasticSearch.

I found the scaling not to be as easy as they led to believe. I also constantly bounced against the 10mb limit of the aggregation framework.

My biggest gripe, however, was data storage. It uses way more data then it should and it doesn't free up disk space if you delete data. For my use case (web analytics) it was a dud.

Supposedly TokuMX fixes many of the problems but I had already migrated to ES when I found out about it.

jvvlimmeon Digital Ocean Is Down Again This Week

Seems to me they have serious issues in their NY location. Most of my droplets are in the european datacenters and they've been pretty solid, I have one or two in NY and they've seen regular outages.

jvvlimmeon Ask HN: What are alternatives to Bootstrap?

You can find loads on http://www.themeforest.com

jvvlimmeon Ask HN: Advice for dealing with a client and bad SEO advice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y-m_jiayLQ

Matt Cutts on keyword stuffing. No bigger authority than that.

jvvlimmeon Ask HN: Hitting a wall with Twitter

Have you considered using services like Gnip or Datashift who resell Twitter's firehose?

It would mean rewriting your service but it would offer long term viability.

jvvlimmeon Ask HN: Why is the tallest manmade structure only 2,722 feet?

The main problem with elevators today is that you can only have on cage per shaft. You could solve this if you could have multiple cages per shaft. A bit like how trains operate with switches and passing points. I imagine that would take some serious technical development but doesn't seem entirely out of this world. It would be easier if you have cableless lifts like the maglev lift Toshiba developed (http://www.toshiba-elevator.co.jp/elv/infoeng/technology/tec...).

jvvlimmeon Turkey blocks use of Twitter after prime minister attacks social media site

I wonder how long it's going to take for the military to step in.

jvvlimmeon Ask HN: How to be a "Homo Universalis" by 2020?

The answer is no different for a 25 year old than it is for a 50 year old or 5 year old:

Be inquisitive. Question everything. Find out how things work.

“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” ― Albert Einstein

jvvlimmeon Tim Cook Rejects Politics of the NCPPR

Lynn Stout, a Cornell Corporate Law Professor, seems to disagree with you: http://www.amazon.com/Shareholder-Value-Myth-Shareholders-Co...

jvvlimmeon Tim Cook Rejects Politics of the NCPPR

It's actually a myth that a company has to maximize shareholdervalue. There is no corporate law even remotely suggesting it and it is generally a horrible idea.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-the-m...

jvvlimmeon Tell HN: jQuery is way slower than plain Javascript

That's how jQuery works internally. It checks if function is available in the current browser, if not it will apply a workaround.

jvvlimmeon Tell HN: jQuery is way slower than plain Javascript

Yep. Nobody ever claimed it wasn't.

jQuery adds padding for browsers that don't support certain features or have certain quirks (yes, IE, we're mainly looking at you). This is overhead that will slow things down.

That being said, if you can afford to develop for modern browsers only, then by all means, use plain JS.

jvvlimmeon “MongoDB is dead. Long live Postgresql”

If you want to use MongoDB in a project and you don't intend to rely heavily on the aggregation framework, the consider TokuMX (http://www.tokutek.com/products/tokumx-for-mongodb/) as it alleviates many of the shortcomings of MongoDB (data compression, document level locking for writes, ...) + it adds transactions.

It's a drop in replacement so it will work with current drivers. (if you have a running mongo cluster however expect quite some work if you want to migrate)

(I have no affiliation with TokuTek whatsoever except that I use their product)

jvvlimmeon Ask HN: Who are the 100 people who most changed the world?

- Nicola Tesla, no matter how much he is praised, it's always way too little.

http://www.activistpost.com/2012/01/10-inventions-of-nikola-...

- Henry Ford: Giving the world mass production and giving his workers (comparatively) high wages for the time.

jvvlimmeon Ask HN: Can a freelancer 'work' in US without a visa?

I've been researching similar options myself:

You might look into E-1 or E-2 type of visa (in your case I guess it would be E-2) which is by far the easiest way to work in the US but also the most restrictive as it is a non-imigration type of visa.

It requires a substantial investment (always check with an immigration lawyer for advice) to start a business. It is restrictive in the sense that if you go out of business or stop the business you'll have to leave the country. Your spouse can get a work permit, but your children can't.

Another route is possible if you have a business in your own country that has been operating for a few years. You can open a subsidiary in the US and apply for an L-1A visa (for managers and executives) and from there petition for an EB-1C Green Card.

Whatever you try, consult an immigration lawyer and have them assist you and let them file paperwork. It will cost some money but this is something too complex and tricky to do yourself.

jvvlimmeon Ask HN: Receiving Payments Outside of USA for SaaS

https://www.braintreepayments.com/

Haven't used them myself but seen some positive reviews for them.

jvvlimmeon Ask HN: Incentive-based task manager for parents & children

I think what is meant if there will be something to reward the kids when they do something by themselves and not only by doing the requested chores.

Example: Kid cleans up his room without it being asked. Will there be an ability to award points even without a task being created.

jvvlimmeon The economic return of Iceland has proved that the joke was on Ireland

It is true. John B. Clarck and Edwin Seligman (two leading figures in the development of the Neo Classical Economy) sold out in the late 1800's to the wealthiest of the day and transformed the science of economics into something that is as reliable in predicting the economy and offering solutions as your average fortune teller.

The rich industrialists of the 19th century made sure that the universities (on whos board they sat) taught only the flawed neo-classical economy so entire generations of young minds were corrupted.

It's thanks to Seligman by the way that we are all paying taxes on the labor we perform while the act of speculation (which destablizes the economy) remains largely un(der)taxed.

Economists should go back to basics: Smith, Ricardo, Mill, George, ... and rebuild their field as a true science.

I invite everyone to read "The Corruption of Economics" by Mason Gaffney for the full story.

jvvlimmeon Biologist argues human intelligence was highest 3000+ years ago

I'm not buying that:

Genetics are only part of the story. Environmental factors contribute to intelligence too. If you had to be working an a factory 12hrs a day as a child in the 1800's, you could've been genetically "intelligent", the environment would never have nourished that.

It is through abolisment of child labour, institutionalised education and dedicated parental support that the average joe got the ability to develop himself and become more intelligent than his parents.

jvvlimmeon Ask HN: What are the real chances of Startup Act 2.0 to pass?

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/s3217

Chances aren't looking too good.

jvvlimmeon Ask HN: Self hosted web analytics packages

I know of 2 options:

Webtrends offers an onpremises solution but I have no idea of the pricing.

http://webtrends.com/products/analytics/website/

IBM's Unica Netinsight

http://www-142.ibm.com/software/products/us/en/on-premise-we...

Both are quite complete solutions but they are aimed for the enterprise customer so do expect a significant cost.

jvvlimmeon Ask HN: do you support IE6? IE7?

I work for the leading newspaper websites in my country.

IE6 is around 0.4% of traffic so no, we no longer support it. Even IE7 is barely being tested (3%), only if users complain will we take a closer look at fixing things for it.

jvvlimmeon Dear ICO, Sue Us

If instead of using cookies we would swap to using the browsers storage, wouldn't we circumvent this entire rubbish law (+ the other advantages it already provides)?

http://www.jstorage.info

jvvlimmeon Where should I host my app: amazon ec2/softlayer/Google compute engine

I'm a fan of rackspace cloud. I find their performance to be better than EC2.

jvvlimmeon Ask HN: Anyone ever use Fiverr for SEO?

Traffic is worth sh*t.

You need targeted traffic which converst (buys your product, clicks the ads, whatever your conversion is) and that's something these guys can never give you.

If you want to spend money on traffic, you're better off learning how to do PPC advertising. At least that way you get traffic from people who have some interest in your site. You can easily find a voucher from Google for 50$ free PPC advertising to get you started.

jvvlimmeon How YC S12 Companies Make Money

I find it really strange that you build a service without an idea of how to monetize it. Surely "being bought" isn't a valid business model.

jvvlimmeon This Website Only Open During Business Hours

Might be there is some civil servant who's computer doubles as a webserver. When he leaves at 5pm, down goes the server.

jvvlimmeon Ask HN: Why not Java?

Java is suited and even powers some powerful crawlers like Heritrix (archive.org) and Nutch (Apache foundation).

That being said, it doesn't really matter what language you write your crawler in: its performance will much sooner be influenced by other aspects (network latency, storage, etc) than the language you choose.

So pick the language you're most comfortable with for crawling and offload the data processing to a lower level language that is better sooted for that task.