Hacker News Reader

pwimon Why Startup Hubs Work

If you look at a list of US cities sorted by population, the number of successful startups per capita varies by orders of magnitude.

Silicon Valley has a larger concentration of startups per capita, as people from around the country go there to try a startup. As such, I'm sure it also has a higher number of failed startups per capita. Instead of looking at absolute numbers, the chance that a given startup will succeed is the key metric.

pwimon Force Multipliers and Japanese Programmers

But there is another thing, maybe Japanese see programming as Engineering. A respected craft, but you don't reuse much of electrical engineering output between projects, neither expect youe engineers to take care of the product side of the product.

Quite the opposite, programming is seen as a grunt work which anyone can do by many of companies.

pwimon Does open source exclude high context cultures?

So if you start a project and send email to a bunch of folks and ask them to just jump in and contribute, which group do you think will get going more quickly?

This article is predicated on the premise that most open source projects actively recruit strangers to work on them. This has not been the case for any open source projects that I have worked on. Instead, I normally address my own needs by contributing to open source. I assume most others first participate in a similar manner, so I think the article is built on a faulty premise.

pwimon Mieple An Awesome Way to Meet People

This service isn't even launched yet. Submitting it to HN a bit premature.

pwimon Ask PG: What has changed since you wrote Hackers and Painters in 2004?

Cooperation and equality don't necessarily go hand in hand. For instance, with your example of pack animals, often such group has a hierarchy, with an alpha at the top. Even though such animals may cooperate, their is a difference in status.

pwimon Bushido (YC S11): An App Store For The Web That Can Kickstart Your Side Projects

The current leaders are way overpriced IMO ($9 to $49 per month per agent–are you serious?)

I'm assuming these services are targeting companies with people working full time on support, where that $9 to $49 is a drop in a bucket compared to their salary.

pwimon Rails 3.0.10 Released

Ruby Forum is a web interface to the ruby-talk mailing list, and is not an official Ruby site.

pwimon Stypi (YC S11) Is Etherpad Reborn

The article notes they didn't use any of EtherPad code. Why not?

pwimon Korea’s Tesco reinvents grocery shopping with QR-code “stores”

Yes, there is signal on the subways in Korea.

pwimon Ruby Programming Language (alternative Ruby home page)

From the official site:

Content available in English, French, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Bahasa Indonesia, German, Italian, Czech, Bulgarian and Turkish.

Internationalization is one key thing the alternative version is missing.

pwimon Fukime - The Mobile Cloud Platform

Following Japanese pronunciation rules, it would be fu-key-may (though like Heroku, it isn't a real Japanese word).

pwimon Parse (YC S11): A Heroku For Mobile Apps

It seems more like Google App Engine than Heroku, in that by using this service, you are tied to Parse's infrastructure and can't easily change.

pwimon Chinese Wi-Fi monitoring requirement goes into effect at Internet cafes, etc.

Whenever I've gone to a net cafe in Japan, I've always been asked for id.

pwimon Show HN: Making time tracking for freelancers not suck - Paydirt

We've been using Harvest for years for this. What is your advantage over them?

pwimon U.S. Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors

The grant was $2M, not the individual "suitcases".

pwimon Flip creator gets into the grilled cheese business, Sequoia invests

I wonder if he was inspired by NYC's Underground Grilled Cheese: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1713815

pwimon Add recurring billing to your site. No coding, monthly fees, gateways. Code=HN

My business partner and I were talking about a service like this the other day. If PintPay was to act as an OAuth provider, it might resolve the password issue.

pwimon BMI: one person listening to his own music via the cloud is public performance

http://soundcloud.com/ is the most innovative platform in this area. The platform a great way for artists to share music with the world.

pwimon Working with the Chaos Monkey

When I first read about the Chaos Monkey, I had assumed it was used on their development/staging environment, but this article implies it is on their production system. Does anyone know which is correct?

pwimon Amazon’s $23,698,655.93 book about flies

Nice example of the Knapsack Problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem

pwimon Ask HN: Trying to innovate in online music. What do you think of it?

weezic.com/en/download-free-sheet-music,mp3-accompaniment/mozart,k-191-k6-186e,bassoon-concerto,1:allegro-:43156:-bassoon

Those are some crazy urls. Looks like the site is trying to stuff them full of keywords, but seems overboard to me.

pwimon Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part I

[Edit: Looks like it's right there in the center and I'm just blind. :)]

I couldn't find the pricing either, so I think it is hiding in plain sight.

pwimon It Takes Courage To Delete Code

A developer who needs courage to delete code is probably doing things wrong in the first place. With source control and good testing, you should be able to delete code without fear.

pwimon Ask HN: Favorite hacker movie

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=450702

pwimon Will QR Codes Gain Mass Adoption?

Keyword terms are most common on advertisements in trains, where it wouldn't be polite to use your phone to scan a QR code (and difficult to do to because of the position of the ads). QR Codes are used most often on things you are given personally, such as flyers or coupons.

pwimon Will QR Codes Gain Mass Adoption?

QR Codes are already common place in Japan. Every Japanese mobile comes with a QR code reader, and it is common to see them on print advertisements, coupons, and so on.

pwimon English as a second language: Test results on the most fluent countries

Japan doesn't normally dub movies, but it doesn't score well. On the other hand, it does have a strong domestic film industry, so perhaps that is part of the reason.

pwimon Why so little looting in Japan? It's not just about honesty.

Judges face bureaucratic pressure to maintain high conviction rates. According to the following paper, it can have negative effects on a Judge's career if he appears to be lenient:

http://www.rasmusen.org/published/Rasmusen-01.JLS.jpncon.pdf

pwimon Why so little looting in Japan? It's not just about honesty.

They're good at their jobs, too: The clearance rate for murder in 2010 was an unbelievable 98.2 percent, according to West—so unbelievable that some attribute it to underreporting.

High clearance rates don't mean police are good at their jobs. Police in Japan can hold a suspect for 23 days without charging him. During this period, they try to get a confession out, using techniques such as sleep deprivation. Furthermore, once you get to trial, it is usually with only a judge, not a jury. All levels are pushed to keep up this high conviction rate. So just because the rate is 98%, this doesn't mean justice was actually served at that rate.

pwimon Ask HN: Affordable and reliable hosting for static pages

If you're just going to host static files, just host them directly through Rack as described here: http://mwhuss.com/2009/12/13/static-sites-on-heroku-in-two-l...

Also, make sure you are using http caching - that way Heroku will use Varnish to cache them.