Ask HN: Why do social networks always move toward unusable UIs? - <AUTHOR> I remember back in the mid 2000s, Digg was all the rage.
Then they botched a redesign and became unusable.
A couple years ago, Reddit decided to do a complete redesign and became similarly unusable.
Recently, Facebook pushed a redesign that seems similarly hostile to users.
I ditched Digg for Reddit when they wrecked their UI.
I stopped using Reddit when they did their redesign.
I've been a pretty consistent Facebook user for nearly 15 years now. I really feel like this redesign might be it for me.
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> Feature overcrowding, used to be desktop, now everything must fit into mobile. I believe they all feel need to change with the times. Have you seen any fast food joint looking the same and thriving? For that matter, most retailers as well? Cars? I think you're insight into change is not with them but you.

Their goals is to entice new users and making it exciting for existing users.

You on the other hand like your comfort zone. We all do.

However, you may want to notice that you've changed too. you wear the same clothing fashion as you did 5yrs ago? If you're selling something and your product doesn't change with the times, you're antiquated and will die a slow death.

A bit of irony about needing to change is there is ONE company who haven't "changed" but yet they are now worth $2T... Apple. Their new shiny shiny looks the same every year but people buy sight unseen. They however are an anomaly.

One change I HATE: deprecated usable API's and changing functionality from version to version sucks.

</comment><comment><USER3> The usable UI is the one their customers use: for ordering and monitoring ad campaigns.

</comment><comment><USER4> It is the same reason most cars are automatic now, although car enthusiasts would prefer a manual. They are optimizing the UI for the broadest group of people, even if it alienates you specifically.

<comment><USER5> I think this is wrong. The UI is definitely getting dumber, but I don't think it's easier for more people. It's more confusing, as elements get larger and more equal in size, as details fade, the experience for everyone just becomes blurry.

<comment><AUTHOR> I get a strong feeling that the new Facebook UI was designed by people with large monitors and retina displays.

This is similar to the issue we run into with people developing software on top of the line hardware. Just because it works great on your souped up development environment doesn't mean it's going to work decently on budget hardware.

For something like a game, it's reasonable to expect people to have good hardware. Social networks should be targeting the bottom end of the market. But it becomes increasingly clear that they aren't.</comment></comment></comment>


YC Application - My 4th year, Can anyone with experience please review? - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zkWHtpgYdQBsjPuaW4fUI2Zl3QsPCHW2PepCV1pSJ0s/edit?usp=sharing <comment><USER2> Seems like your website is only a placeholder/not finished?

* When trying to click on either "LEARN MORE" or "View Pricing" (all six instances) nothing except the button animation is happening for me.

* The burger menu is opening an empty menu

I'm on iOS 11.3 and used Safari

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi - we are reworking the website, not fully finished, will do before the application submission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> On your website:

We streamline the whole process and help you every tools you need in one place.

should probably read: We streamline the whole process and help you with every tool you need in one place.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, correcting!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You might want to clarify what 25K is. Is that MRR.

or service/dev fees.

Is that total for the year etc?

Try not to "spin" things to investors as much as possible.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't get the site to work if I try to enter my name and email.

I tired with chrome on a desktop and IE.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi - we are reworking the website, not fully finished, will do before the application submission.</comment></comment>


Golang pathfinding - lessons learned - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hiresasha.net/go-pathfinding/

<comment><USER2> Recommendation Engines: I am integrating recommendation engines to google spreadsheets ,any pointers?

[http://www.quora.com/Recommendation-Engines/I-am- integrating...](http://www.quora.com/Recommendation-Engines/I-am-integrating- recommendation-engines-to-google-spreadsheets-any- pointers?q=Recommendation+Engines%3A+I+am+integrating+recommendation+engines++to+google+spreadsheets+%2Cany+pointers%3F)

       1. It ll have n+1 sheets ..
       2. Like a 3d periodic table for methods
       3. every step begins with a new row every block of which in a diff column will contain a symbol/operator/number etc.
       4. first n sheets will contain n methods to solve problem x,with n*m(i) error functions .[m(i) number of steps in ith)
       5. n sheets will be connected semantically and contextually optimized
       6. combinations of steps.
       7. on n+1 th sheet user feeds his problem ,
       8. If the context is matched,he is asked to feed his method steps to
          solve the problem on the RHS of the n+1 th sheet he gets validity/proof
          of his steps and recommended steps for optimized error in terms of
          contextual tolerance
       9. #example spreadsheet
          https://spreadsheets.google.com/...
          assume that recommender is added to this sheet's back-end
          Look at this sheet
          now if i want to make a new sheet to strategize  say my academics
          and start feeding parameters to this new  sheet
          [switch to listview of spreadsheet]
          when i click a drop down in list view i ll see the recommended data formula to feed with it's row*column location.
      10. I find it related to structured prediction
      11. #use case
      12. think of toy design or drug formulation companies.
          ##They have vast unorganized history{across past aand organization} of methododologies and results ##
          which can be converted to methodbase ,
          just as documents s are converted to knowledge base using machine learning semantics .
          this method-base is comparable to the old sheets on the example spreadsheet i messaged you earlier......
          The
          charles sheet on the spreadhseet was comparable to GUI of the product
          where the drug formulator /toy designer feeds his objective and blocks
          of procedure( steps of solution ,methods, images etc }
          this gets compared with what is recorded on old sheets[method-base]
          and
          on the RHS of Charles sheet recommended steps /methods appear such that
          noise/signal ,learning curve,resource stress ,risk and error count is
          mitgiated .

\--

email@example.com</comment>


Major legal victory for open source in US (Java Model Railroad Interface case) - <AUTHOR> http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Major-legal-victory-for-open-source-in-US-936089.html <comment><USER3> For people who don't know, the license in this case is the Artistic License. It is substantially weaker than the GPL. So if the Artistic License can be upheld, then the GPL is definitely OK.

Of course the important precedent isn't the final settlement. At this point that was a foregone conclusion. It is the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit a year and a half ago. See <http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions/08-1001.pdf> for the details of that settlement.

This precedent was doubly important given how horrible the first ruling in this case was.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's hard to tell if this validates the GPL. They were found guilty of DMCA violations for removing copyright and redistributing, but does that say anything about the validity of the license itself?

<comment><AUTHOR> At the very least it doesn't seem to have loosened the terms of the GPL - <USER2> the virality clause had been deemed invalid, Katzer would presumably have been able to use the code for his purposes. The GPL does however contain a defensive clause that effectively reverts to "all rights reserved" if the license is not accepted, so who knows.

<comment><USER5> It's worth pointing out that the "virality clause" doesn't actually exist; it's just spin from old internet flames.

The GPL says that derived works can only be distributed under the GPL. The restriction is on distribution, not license. If you accidentally (or whatever) write something like a gdb port to a new language and try to sell it under a proprietary license, the FSF can make you stop selling it under that license.

But that's it. Your new code doesn't "suddenly become GPL and public". It's your code, and you get to decide the license, even if you can't legally give it to anyone else. I guess if you want to pick a metaphor, it's been quarantined. It hasn't been "infected".

<comment><USER6> If you somehow got Windows source code into your program, you couldn't distribute it without getting sued. If you liked FUD, you could say the Microsoft license (do not distribute without MS permission) has spread to your code. That's just how all licenses work. If you don't agree to the terms, don't use the code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just took a look at the JMRI page and it's very a very cool little niche market ecosystem. Software and hardware both.

Yet another advanced peripheral system, Train CNC!

<comment><USER8> It's called DCC, actually: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Command_Control>

<comment><USER7> Metaphor: "It's train CNC!"

Simile: "It's like CNC for trains!"

Literal truth: "It's called DCC actually"

If your point was to add information, then there was a better way to do it.

<comment><USER8> At least I was trying to add information, where you were just making a dumb joke and then a dumb personal attack.

<comment><USER7> I was enthusiastically commenting on a healthy niche market and then I used a metaphor point out that it's not just a hobby or a toy that these people are working on. It's a sophisticated tool that interfaces with the outside world much like CNC, which happens to be my area of interest.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Study finds that guns automatically prime aggressive thoughts - <AUTHOR> https://www.psypost.org/2019/07/study-finds-guns-automatically-prime-aggressive-thoughts-even-when-wielded-by-a-good-guy-54106 <comment><USER2> wow, shocker. always when i see guns i think of love peace and unity :s

<comment><USER3> Funny, I think of marine line throwers, nails, flares, combustion, machining, mass production, freedom, hunting, equality, safety, unity (all parts working together), ballistics, material science, t-shirt cannons, maintenance...

The study itself has me thinking about oppression, helplessness, deception, controversy, fear, death, soft-targets, attempts at rhetorically facilitated disarmament, the inevitability of the breakdown of civility somewhere in the world eventually, and how much I hope any nearby would-be victims are at least armed to defend themselves against an attacker.

Funny how adding the human element to a tool is the scary part; not the tool itself. It's almost as if the people are the problem; not the tool.

On a more serious note, I really do wish people would take more time to understand what a "gun" really is. It's a projectile launcher, nothing more.</comment></comment>


Seeking technical cofounder for FashionTech startup, Europe - <AUTHOR>

	Hi! I'm looking for a technical cofounder for a FashionTech startup with an Ecommerce component currently based in Europe. The startup is operating in a specific niche between FashionTech, Fashion and Data.
The startup has gotten some good early traction and market response and certain technical prototypes have already been developed. There is already a database available that with further development becomes sellable data.
I'm looking for someone to take this further with me, preferably someone that has experience in building startups, design skills are a plus as well as some machine learning knowledge. You're comfortable in building producs for a mostly female market.
Looking forward to hear from you!
You can reach me at email@example.com <comment><USER2> Probably a bit too late notice for you, but this weekend there's a Fashion themed StartupWeekend event in London:

[http://london.startupweekend.org/events/london-fashion- start...](http://london.startupweekend.org/events/london-fashion-startup- weekend-september-2013/)

Seems like it would be an ideal place to find likeminded cofounders.

</comment><comment><USER3> Usually the best way to get quality responses from posts like this is to include why they would want to be your cofounder. Programmers aren't short of offers from their uncle, old friends or co-workers to work on the next Facebook.

Let them know how/why you're going to make an awesome cofounder! :)

Best of luck!</comment>


Ask HN: Why was my 'Show HN' submission flagged? - <AUTHOR> Hi, I just submitted a tool I created that estimates COVID-19 risks based on best scientific data available, while providing the detailed sources and explanations for each calculation [1][2].
It got quite a few upvotes in the first few minutes and some constructive comments. However, it seems the someone decided that it should not be displayed and it is now marked as flagged.
Could you explain why?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22793171
[2] https://www.covidodds.com/ <comment><USER2> The designation "Flagged" says that readers have flagged it as inappropriate content. Looking through the comments on that page, I'd guess this. Lots of people have enough concerns about the page, its policies, and what it's actually showing, and on balance, given the number of COVID-19 posts around, and given how much there is that's misleading, misguided, or wrong, people have felt that your page _as when seen_ didn't add enough overall to the discussion.

Maybe you've fixed all the issues raised, maybe not, but that's my guess as to why HN readers flagged your post.

</comment><comment><USER3> Flagged means several readers pressed the "flag" link on the article.

If enough readers "flag" it, the article gets labeled "[flagged]" and removed from the front page.

More details here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173809](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173809)

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks like people might have been upset about you using a COVID page to send personal health information to FB. Even though you fixed it, still a mistake.

Also the other points brought up here and there.</comment>


Tablets Cannibalizing PC and Laptop Usage - <AUTHOR> http://internet2go.net/news/ad-networks/tablets-cannibalizing-pc-and-laptop-usage <comment><USER2> for me the tablets, particularly the iPad is no match for a Laptop. You know, the iOS is restrictive in many ways even after you jailbroke it. Maybe, we need a good OS product for the tablets, only then may I count tablets as a nice alternative to Laptops.</comment>


The Nook Color has been rooted - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/the-nook-color-has-been-rooted-2010121/

<comment><USER2> _allowing your device to be hacked just builds interest and therefore sales of the hardware_

I suspect that $250 price tag is the result of selling the hardware at a loss. If people buy them and don't use the locked-in book purchasing features enough, B&N loses money. They have an incentive to actively prevent rooting.

<comment><USER3> Nah, $250 is believable. Compared to the iPad, the specs are lower, which means cheaper chips, and the screen is about half the size, and not IPS.

<comment><USER4> Actually the screen is IPS. 1024x600 resolution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know if you'll be able to run Adobe Flash 10.1 without rooting the machine?

<comment><USER6> This[0] says that it is not currently possible.

0: [http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Barnes-and- Nobl...](http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Barnes-and-Nobles-Color- Nook-Is-Apple-iPad-Competitor-Analyst-411076/)

<comment><USER5> "Although Nook Color won't support Flash at launch"

I see, thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


Do you keep a work journal/diary? How? - <AUTHOR> I've observed over the years that people who I respected as "good at what they do" disproportionately often use a journal to keep track of their work.
I'm starting a job soon and want to try doing this for myself as I'd like to be able to reflect on what it is that I do. One obvious solution to this is a bound paper notebook and pen, which have nice properties of taking both text and images easily with pen or pencil, but suffer from not being searchable and are yet another thing to carry. Also, as a software engineer I find I can type much faster than I can write.
Another option I'm investigating is using emacs and org-mode, but I haven't found a way to nicely embed images into emacs besides ASCII art with artist-mode, which I find to be relatively crude for the sort of sketching I typically do.
How do you guys go about journaling for work? If you include images along with your text, how do you do it? Bonus points for lightweight or portable solutions. <comment><USER2> My email from 1982 was a pretty good journal of my high school life and work (I was a programmer).

Today my text messages are a good journal of my personal life, email a good journal of my work, and my Facebook timeline a good journal of my interests (I post news I find really interesting).

Those are all "implicit" journals but they work pretty well. I can "relive" the financial crisis by reading my facebook timeline.

If you want a pure, deliberate journal, today that would take the form of a blog. I wonder how many people still keep a private, deliberate journal along the lines of an old school diary. Interesting survey maybe.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use a dedicated gmail address. Here's why: (1) It's portable. I can send myself an email from my phone, laptop, ipad, etc. (2) It's searchable. I can go back and search for specific keywords or topics I wrote about. (3) It's easy to organize. I can label my posts as personal/work/etc and setup filters to apply these labels based on the subject line. (4) Short learning curve. I use my personal gmail account everyday. & (5) It's relatively secure.

Edit: (6) It's free.

<comment><USER4> You should check out <http://evernote.com/>.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> i currently use deft + org-mode 6.33 in cygwin emacs -nw trying to ween off 7 years of tiddlywiki (tw). currently i'm finding friction with search having been spoiled on the excellent YourSearch UI <http://tiddlywiki.abego- software.de/> tw will support imgs inline but with org-mode i just use links and view from the host OS. After years of trying everything the only bit of wisdom that has worked consistently is ISO date stamp everything in any system (client or cloud) so you can extract a log later for archiving and analysis. no xml, json just one log record prefixed with iso date for sorting ([0-9]{4}(\\.|\\-)?[0-9]{2}(\\.|\\-)?[0-9]{2}(\s|T)?[0-9]{2}\:.+) KISS actually is slick

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been using Evernote. And recently, I started using Trello as a PM tool to help me organize my tasks. They're both free and have decent iphone apps, which I often use when I'm at events and meetups and don't want to use my laptop. Another huge plus: both are free.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've recently (and finally) turned to Evernote. They've got it figured out quite well.

</comment><comment><USER8> I use Day One as a professional journal and Path for personal stuff.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best laptop on the market for programming right now? - <AUTHOR>

Ultrabooks are a given in my opinion. I'm curious to hear yours though. <comment><USER2> Macbook Air 13". I love it. It's my first Mac and I realized I will never buy a non-mac laptop again. Yes, it's more slightly more expensive, but the quality is so much higher it's unreal.

Your $1200 buys you more than your $1000 for an "Ultrabook"

<comment><USER3> Our X-mas bonus this year at work was a MacBook Air. I've got a 15" Pro at work; and at home, a 24" iMac, a TabletPC, a Chromebook, a Galaxy Tab, and four smartphones (thank you, Google I/O). The Air felt a little bit like overload at first ("yay - another gadget"), but it quickly became my favorite of the lot.

13" is a great size (I don't miss the extra 2" from my Pro), and it's unbelievably svelte. If I take the bus, I just throw it under my arm - no bag, no charger - just my MacBook Air. It's plenty fast. The screen has great color, and will go as bright or as dim as you need.

Heed this man's advice - get an Air.

<comment><USER3> I just realized that working outside on a gusty day is a challenge with the Air. I'm a little afraid it's going to blow off the roof.

<comment><USER2> I can't work outside with it really at all, it's hard to read the screen even in minor light.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's my progress:

17" Dell <\- beginning of college

13" Lenovo T61 <\- end of college

13" Macbook <\- post-college

11" Macbook Air <\- latest

These have all gotten better, faster, and more powerful. They've gotten smaller. I feel like I've done a lot of different types of work: I ran gentoo on the T61 for a few months, did some photoshop work on the 13" macbook, and everything in between. The Macbook Air's CPU has a lower clock speed, but it literally hasn't been a problem. The combination of long battery life, being incredibly light, and the speed of the SSD makes me 100% recommend a macbook air of whatever size you like.

Thinkpads are definitely popular for a reason, but it's been a few years since I've used one. I'm sure there is a similar offering that has all the same sorts of benefits -- I'd wonder about battery life, though.

<comment><USER5> i have a thinkpad x200s, with 9 cell battery, get about 8 hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Since I have bought a Macbook Air I can't think of switching to another machine.

Light, durable, great keyboard, fantastic display, support for the biggest three OSs.

If Apple really releases the next Macbook Pros with the Air form factor and retina display, it will really be a no brainer.

As an alternative, I have been always fond of Lenovo laptops (T41/T61), although I honestly haven't tried their ultrabooks.

<comment><USER7> Are the new Macbooks being released in the summer?

<comment><USER8> All the evidences point to newer 13- and 15-inch MBPs.

Looke here: <http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/>

<comment><USER7> Awesome. This is what I was expecting. Hopefully they are released in the next month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I love my Macbook Pro 13". I really like the form factor: it's not too big and not too small. I would really like to have a Macbook Air, but unfortunately the small HD space and lack of an optical drive and firewire port are dealbreakers to me.

<comment><USER10> The dealbreaker for me with the MacBook Pro 13" is that you don't have the option of upgrading the display for a higher density display. The MacBook Airs come with this standard, and the larger MacBook Pros have an upgrade option available. Between having one of these displays on my MacBook Pro 15" and using a retina display on my iPhone and my iPad, I can't even stand to look at the display on the MacBook Pro 13" or the older iPads anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think either a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air is still the best option for most everything. I love my display and keyboard and OS X is truly the best for both usability and flexibility. At risk of sounding like a fangirl, I think that Mac laptops are the best on the market. It will be exciting to see what happens in June if Apple unifies their two laptop lines.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've had a 15" MacBook Pro for about three years and I absoloutely love it. Its trackpad is far, far better than any other laptop's, its keyboard is very easy to type on, its display is gorgeous, its pretty, runs OS X and Linux (and on OS X, you can run most unix tools and a huge number of great development tools and editors that run only on OS X - like TextMate).

MacBook Pro is the dream machine for a developer. But if you're not in a hurry, I suggest waiting for a while. Rumors say a 15" Air-ish MacBook Pro is on its way (with fast, quad core processors and 4-8 GB ram).

<comment><USER12> >MacBook Pro is the dream machine for a developer. But if you're not in a hurry, I suggest waiting for a while. Rumors say a 15" Air-ish MacBook Pro is on its way (with fast, quad core processors and 4-8 GB ram).

I have to oppose this. OS X's Mission Control is not at all good for a developer. Not at all as efficient as using some window manager with dedicated and numbered desktops, e.g. Xmonad.

The other thing which annoyed me when I worked with OS X machine was the absence of a good package manager for every application. I had to use my Macbook for work when I was working from home. I had to install GCC and MySQL, which took almost an hour of my precious time. Never had that kind of problems with Arch or Ubuntu.

<comment><USER8> You can download GCC and LLVM from apple's website (requires a free registration though) - a 140MB file. After that, you can use homebrew[1] to install MySQL, or hundreds of other development tools - For example, I have redis, MongoDB, Node.js, MySQL, ffmpeg, wget, ocaml, lynx, mit-scheme, gsed, cmake, ack, clock, coffee-script and about 200 other packages installed.

You're quite right that it wasn't as easy as ubuntu, but things have got infinitely better in the past year. `brew` is now comparable to `apt-get` (for everything I've tried at least).

And I'm positive things will improve still. About 70% on this topic recommended MacBooks. Last year, it'd been 50%.

[1] <https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew>

<comment><USER12> I know Homebrew. I've been using Apple computers for the last 10 years. The first time I couldn't do my stuff with a Mac was when I started programming professionally.

There is still important stuff missing. I'd like to have rc.d for daemons and the ability to change the awful desktop to more powerful window manager.

I still like macs, but not as my work computer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Macbook Air 13". Absolutely love this laptop. Weighs less than three pounds so it's extremely portable, only .68" thick at the widest point. It's got an SSD, so disk operations, shutdown, and startup are super fast, plus 4GB of RAM. Been using it for programming for eight months now, couldn't recommend it more.

</comment><comment><USER14> My vote goes to the MacBook Air 13". Best laptop I've used ever (coming from a Windows and Linux world and Dell/Asus laptops)

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm jumping on with the MacBook bandwagon... I have used exclusively a laptop with Linux on it for years, went to Mac and haven't looked back.

</comment><comment><USER5> [http://www.laptopreviews.com/macbook-air-vs- thinkpad-x220-co...](http://www.laptopreviews.com/macbook-air-vs- thinkpad-x220-comparison-the-gloves-are-off-2011-12)

i've been trying to weigh this up for a while Macbook Air vs Thinkpad x220, seems close.. this reviewer is pretty expansive and (just) gives it to the x220...

not sure tho, ppl here seem to LOVE MBA's.

</comment><comment><USER16> I can recommend Lenovo Thinkpad X and T series if you are using GNU/Linux.

</comment><comment><USER17> 11" Macbook Air with a "base-station" where you can go to plug it in for times when you just have to have more screen real-estate.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've had MacBook Pro's for about 3 years and I've been running a MacBook Air for about 9 months.

I love my Air, it's easily a very solid machine. But the small screen size can be a little constraining, and the machine does noticeably lack power. Not having a dedicated graphics card also limits you from trying out things like WebGL. And anytime you hit a Flash-based website, your MBA will sound like a jet engine.

I think if you're very mobile (i.e. travel a lot) go with the Air. If you're at home most of the time, get an iMac and an 11" air for the few times that you are mobile. If you need the best of both worlds, go with a MacBook Pro.

My next machine will be a 15" next gen MacBook Pro. Those should incorporate design elements from the Air in a more powerful package.

</comment><comment><USER19> there's nothing but a solid (aluminium), fast (SSD), brilliant (display) and coding-ready (dev. environment) like a Macbook Pro.

Thinkpads clearly are a second choice as long as price does not matter.

And yes - I've used most available hardware and OSes for several years.

</comment><comment><USER20> Most companies i think provide like Lenovo / HP . My company gives out Lenovo T520. Personally i think its too bulky but sure does pack the power .

But i own a Macbook pro 13" and i'm loving it . The track pad and the keys are unmatchable IMO.

</comment><comment><USER21> I recently went for a Dell XPS 17" with the monitor resolution upgrade (1920*1080). I bought an SSD separately. I wanted something to code on and screen resolution seemed like the most important thing for that.

I've been pretty happy with it, but I've never had another laptop, so I can't really compare.

It's reasonably weighty: I've walked half hour journeys with it, which makes my arm ache. You'll likely want a shoulder strap if you're going to be carrying it around a lot.

I also usually take a mouse along with me. While it's mainly for gaming, it's very helpful for coding as well. If you're a VIM or Emacs expert maybe you'll disagree.

</comment><comment><USER22> I use a Lenovo X220 with an SSD and a 15" MBP (also with an SSD). They're both fantastic machines. The Lenovo lets me use Linux with pretty much perfect compatibility and has the best keyboard I've ever used. The MPB similarly has the best trackpad I've encountered. The main unexpected advantage of using OS X has been the presence of readline-style keyboard shortcuts at an OS mediated level (in any text field). Once you get used to that, using any other OS for incidental typing (in search fields or forms) feels slow.

<comment><USER23> "the presence of readline-style keyboard shortcuts at an OS mediated level"

What does that mean? Do you have an example comparing it to non-'readline- style' shortcuts?

<comment><USER24> I'm assuming it refers to the fact that most simple Emacs-flavored shortcuts work in any textfield. C-A for <Home>, C-E for <End>, C-K to kill to the end of the line, etc. Certain tookits do this on Linux (Qt for one, I think), and I agree that it's hugely helpful.

So I believe non-readline-style shortcuts would refer to, for example, C-A to select all text.

<comment><USER22> Exactly. I should probably have referred to them as emacs-style as readline can be configured to have vi-bindings as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What qualities would make a laptop particularly suitable for programming? I guess you want speed and build quality, but you probably want those whatever it's for. My T410 does me fine.

</comment><comment><USER26> A friend of mine has just told me yesterday he had seen in a shop the new ultrabook Asus Zenbook and he's thinkin about buying it: <http://zenbook.asus.com/zenbook/?c=original> The 13" model he has seen should be 1.1kg, 7hours battery and 1000euro (even thought the normal price should be 1200), so it's cheaper and lighter than a MBA 13". Has anybody experience with this ultrabook? especially with linux?

<comment><USER27> While I can't speak for the zenbook, I can speak for Asus every laptop I had so far is Asus, never had any problems with them. My current one is an old V1S (about 5years old) and still works pretty well, I had it with linux and windows, no problems at all with linux drivers. Call me a fanboy if you want, but I try to buy asus when possible and have no regrets so far. About macbooks, for me its just overpriced hardware, I buy something because it works not because of its design, and comparing my laptop with a friends macbook I have seen no diference except the OS, nearly the same specs with his monitor being smaller. (maybe thats just me, I was never a fan of apple stuff)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Macbook Air 11" if you want a great laptop in a really small package. Thinkpad T420 If you're willing to accept something slightly larger in exchange for a larger screen with higher resolution, support for up to 16GB of RAM, better battery life (with the 9 cell battery) and a proper nvidia graphics card.

Also I find the keyboard on the Thinkpad (slightly) better, but the trackpad is worse. Then again it does have trackpoint which some people really like.

</comment><comment><USER29> I see a LOT of people mentioning the MacAir. I'm an Electrical Engineer and need an absolute powerhouse to do signal processing simulations, or other involved tasks. MacBookAir would never cut it for me. I prefer Ubuntu on a 13" quadcore processor + 8GB RAM. The HP Pavilion dm4t Beats Edition has all of the above, and weighs a mere 4.5 lbs.

</comment><comment><USER30> I've got a ThinkPad T410 running Arch Linux with Xmonad. I've been running Arch on the T410, and a T400 before it, for the last 2.5 years without a hitch. I think I've finally found a setup I can stick to indefinitely - when I tried to switch to Xfce, I found the hit using a non-tiling window manager had on my productivity to be unbearable.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've got a cheap Asus K50, and it's been my friend for a long time. Good keyboard, audio, and brightness settings, and enough processing speed for my needs. The best part about it is that if I drop it in the bathtub I'm only out ~600 for a new one (I do my best programming in the bathroom, it seems).

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm running on an excessively expensive 15" Dell Precision Windows 7 quad core, ssd, nvidia quaddro laptop. It's not that great on its own (but one screen is inadequate for real productivity anyway). Plug in a monitor (or three!) and a keyboard/mouse and this thing hums.

</comment><comment><USER33> I've been very satisfied w/ the portability of the 11" MacBook Air.

</comment><comment><USER34> You're not going to get much here other than Macbook. :) Check out Dell's XPS series. I own the quad core XPS 15 and absolutely love the performance and battery life.

</comment><comment><USER35> Love the Macbook Air, I have the 13". I particularly love that I never have to shut it down. With OS X and SSD, the wake up time is great.

</comment><comment><USER36> Macbook Pro/Air FTW. I have a 15in Pro w/ SSD. It's awesome but kind of heavy to be carried around. So pick Air if you travel a lot

</comment><comment><USER37> Dell quad core with SSD's, 8gb ram. I haven't had to format it yet, which is good for a laptop 9 month on!

Very fast

</comment><comment><USER38> ASUS Zenbook UX31 or Toshiba Portégé Z835 or 13″ Macbook Air.

</comment><comment><USER39> x220 with i5,IPS screen and 16Gb ram (SSD is good too but not mandatory). MB air/Pro can go fly a kite.

</comment><comment><USER40> ThinkPad T400</comment>


Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (December 2011) - <AUTHOR>

Please lead with either SEEKING WORK or SEEKING FREELANCER, your location and whether remote work is a possibility. <comment><USER9> SEEKING WORK - London or remote.

I'm interested in distributed systems and big data. Some of the things I've been doing recently: testing multiple currency support at a betting exchange, building analytics widgets backed by a disco cluster for a large online publisher, working on an implementation of the telehash protocol.

I've also worked in search [1,2], distributed systems [3], testing [4,5] and p2p systems [6,7,8]. I have a strong background in math (real analysis, probability, discrete maths) and computer science (randomized algorithms, AI / epistemic logic, machine learning).

I've worked professionally with python, ocaml and erlang. I would also like to pick up clojure.

Resume - <http://scattered-thoughts.net/all?tag=about>

Blog - <http://scattered-thoughts.net/>

Github - <https://github.com/jamii>

References - [http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=65525388#recommendat...](http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=65525388#recommendations)

[1] <http://scattered-thoughts.net/one/1291/799313/731344>

[2] <https://github.com/jamii/texsearch>

[3] <http://scattered-thoughts.net/one/1300/292121/72985>

[4] <http://scattered-thoughts.net/one/1280/511009/453845>

[5] <https://github.com/jamii/ocamlcheck>

[6] <https://github.com/jamii/dissertation>

[7] [http://scattered- thoughts.net/all?order=asc&tag=telehash...](http://scattered- thoughts.net/all?order=asc&tag=telehash&abridge=true)

[8] <https://github.com/jamii/erl-telehash>

</comment><comment><USER10> SEEKING WORK - <USER8>

I can do two things!

\- Front end: HTML 5, CSS, JS/Jquery.

\- PHP development. I'd like to do more 5.3 but I'm more weathered in 5.2 due to client demands. Also Codeigniter. But I can pick up most things.

If you're really desperate, I can hit things with Perl too.

I use Mercurial for source control but I'm comfortable with git also. I'm familiar with most modern day practices & processes. I won't say I've been overly-exposed to something like Agile or TDD for instance because I haven't. But I get these things and I learn quick :)

I have worked on pretty much every kind of site imaginable now and would estimate I've built an area of internet roughly the size of Ireland.

My own site is usually at <http://pitbot.net> and it was rather nice, if I do say so myself. Alas no one has paid me for many, many weeks and I had to choose food over renewing the hosting bill. I can show you many wondrous URL's of work I've done though.

I'm UK based.

</comment><comment><USER11> SEEKING WORK (Freelance only) – San Francisco, Remote

1\. I specialize in Ruby on Rails, and by this I mean I'm competent in Ruby, Rails 3.1, JavaScript, coffeescript, CSS, Html, Linux, deployment with multi- server architectures, asynchronous requests, regular expressions, TDD, VIM, jQuery, refactoring, design patterns, git, and sql.

2\. I'm writing a book on Ruby on Rails best practices.

3\. I know the Facebook platform inside out. I'm equally familiar with Spree, an open source e-commerce platform allowing you to create stores that sell online – be that digital goods or otherwise.

4\. I'm fast. I built and deployed one app per week for my previous client. I stay fast by keeping a deck of 6000 programming flashcards which I keep in constant rotation.

5\. I'm practical. I'm not the kind of engineer who will waste your time and money perfecting architecture till the end of your budget. I'm the guy you want to hire to rapidly prototype something at a reasonable cost so that you can go and raise money right now.

6\. I studied at and graduated from Oxford University.

7\. I know a lot about marketing, having built viral Facebook apps, having managed Facebook and Google advertising campaigns for over 2 years, and having done heavy SEO work. I will imbue your app with sensible optimizations that will make marketing your app, and ultimately making money, much simpler.

8\. I take pride in my work. I'm ashamed of bugs and I won't let them creep into projects with my name on them.

9\. I can build your web app alone, although I prefer to work with a graphic designer since your end results will be better for the same cost.

10\. I'm aware of my own cost, and my goal as a consultant is to offer you the most value per dollar, not to bill the maximum number of hours. I will suggest technical compromises to your spec where we swap ideal functionality for cheaply implemented functionality. You can always add the ideal case when you raise your first million.

Sample site: www.oxbridgenotes.co.uk [100% me]

Github: <https://github.com/jackkinsella>

Further samples: www.jackkinsella.ie

Tel: + 415 568 7164

Email: jack.kinsellaHATgmail.com [replace HAT with @]

</comment><comment><USER12> SEEKING FREELANCER - Chicago or Remote

GroupTweet.com is looking for a PHP developer to help take our product to the next level. Opportunities exist to really drive the direction of our product and make an exciting impact. Twitter API experience is a plus. We are experience user growth and engagement and are adding new features on a weekly basis.

We think adding group functionality to Twitter will open up the platform to a variety of exciting new use-cases. From a Yammer type experience for non- enterprise users to an entirely new way of leveraging the Twitter platform through crowdsourced Twitter accounts.

See a little more of our vision at GroupTweet.com/examples

Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER13> SEEKING FREELANCER - Remote - GaggleAMP.com

GaggleAMP is hiring part-time software developers and UX designers to help us extend our social amplification platform. On the frontend, we use jQuery and HTML5/CSS3 via HAML templates. Our web application's backend stack is Ruby on Rails 3 with MySQL and Redis.

We'll consider hackers with any experience level, intern and up. If interested, send an email with a brief bio and one or more links to past work to jason AT gaggleamp DOT com.

<comment><USER14> Are you looking for front-end developers or back-end developers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> SEEKING WORK - Remote, possible on-site for limited periods

Professional software engineer, python developer, manager of one. Currently focused on web applications, business and scientific applications.

What I like to do:

\- System architecture, software engineering, data modelling

\- Python development (web applications, APIs, backends, desktop applications, Cython/C extensions)

\- Full-stack, scalable web applications with Django, Flask, Tipfy, Google App Engine

\- Relational and non-relational databases (PostgreSQL & PostGIS, MySQL, MSSQL, Redis, MongoDB, Riak, ..)

\- Server-side and browser-side JavaScript, jQuery, HTML5, CSS/SCSS, media queries, etc.

\- Google Apps Marketplace (contextual gmail gadgets, apps script, seamless integration)

\- Love to learn, currently starting with Android and Chrome Extensions

Find out more on <http://en.ig.ma/> and <http://en.ig.ma/projects>.

Contact: email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER16> SEEKING WORK - Remote (St. Petersburg, Russia)

Python, GAE. Relatively new to these, though I worked on a few client projects, so I know from experience I don't require mentoring to get things done with Python.

Also did several small personal projects, including one for HN [1].

Have prior experience with C# and embedded (C, asm for MCUs); also have some knowledge of maths and physics.

You can reach me at egor.ryabkov(at)gmail.com

GitHub page: <https://github.com/egor83>

Some more details, CV, more links:

<http://egor83.wikidot.com/py-dev-looking-for-a-job>

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

[1] My HN tool - poll visualizer:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2977909>

</comment><comment><USER17> SEEKING FREELANCER - Remote (UK)

Design & development of 2 site pages. Looking for an all-rounder to expand our MVP beyond our Unbounce/Launchrock signup page.

Detailed specs already mapped out. Strong understanding of what is required. Looking to get a branded landing & pricing page created. It's important that it can be completed before the New Year.

Detailed info -

Landing page with simple signup form signup linked to MailChimp list.

Pricing Page linking through to full payment gateway process. No preference which is used - PayPal, Stripe, Recurly etc.

I'm looking to keep the process as simple as possible. I'm looking for a talented individual who can take the project and run with it and keep me updated.

Please contact with cost & links to work examples if interested.

I'm my username @ gmail.com - Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER18> SEEKING WORK -- Remote / Mid-west

Does Customer Discovery Scare You and Still Looking for Your First Users? Not sure about your SEO strategy? Wondering how you can take advantage of Micro- opportunities presented in your Industry?

I will do customer discovery, get your product in the hands of real customers and process their feedback in a way that keeps you doing what you do best: coding and visioning.

I can put you on the right path to identify how to dominate google rankings and then execute on that plan making your startup more visible for folks looking for the solution your startup provides.

Lastly, I'll keep my eyes open for micro-opportunities in your industry that will let you get quick marketing wins and bring attention to your startup.

If this sounds like something you're interested in shoot me an e-mail firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment><comment><USER19> SEEKING WORK - remote or Orlando FL

<http://www.linkedin.com/in/kentonsmeltzer> You name it I have worked with it. I am very strong in JavaScript (jQuery, Dojo, etc.), Java, and Objective-C. I have 16 years experience and have three exits under my belt. I am looking for more interesting work than can be found in my local market. I am the primary care taker for my grandparents so I am bound to FL geographically, but I can travel to be on location for a month at a time. My most recent apps can be found in the portfolio section of my Linked-In profile and I can be contacted at: email@example.com

Also I am not particular about work arrangements, I can do W2 or corp-corp, just looking for something interesting, everything else is details.

</comment><comment><USER20> SEEKING FREELANCER - Washington DC (ideal) or Remote

Pre-launch startup in the news-media space looking for developer to finish MVP and possibly come on board with stake if interested. (Recently lost co-founder & technical backbone to an amazing opportunity with an established tech company in the area.)

Heavy lifting on design, development & customer discovery is already done. Application is ~90% functional, although it's missing quite a bit of polish. HTML/CSS is complete, but not yet integrated into the application. Validated product concept & market. Highly influential individuals from industry ready and waiting to use.

General skill set: Ruby (1.9.2), Rails (3.1), Git and MySQL (+1 if you love the news//digital media).

Email: marc AT pressfolios DOT com

</comment><comment><USER21> SEEKING FREELANCER - <USER8>

Looking for someone to write a TCP stack for BareMetal OS. This needs to be written in x86-64 Assembly. See the posting here: [http://forum.osdev.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=24471](http://forum.osdev.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=24471)

</comment><comment><USER22> SEEKING WORK - Austin, TX or Remote

I'm trying to start freelancing by doing some side work. I've recently graduated college but landed an IT job because my internship experience was IT based.

My skills are in systems administration - Linux primarily (including HPC), some Windows. I also manage NetApp and EMC fileservers.

Programming - Perl, PHP, Ruby

I'm also interested in web based projects. I'm familiar with HTML, CSS, and PHP, but am trying to get some more experience with Rails. The things I've done are primarily internal tools or team based school projects, but I'll show you what I can.

cody {at} codywilbourn [dot] com <http://www.linkedin.com/in/codywilbourn>

</comment><comment><USER23> SEEKING WORK - Washington DC - Remote is great

I am a web developer (both frontend and backend). I am most proficient with Django, a Python-based web framework, although I also have worked in the past with a variety of other frameworks and languages (WordPress, PHP, Perl, C, etc.). I can do everything you need to get a web application up and running, from handwriting HTML and CSS, to configuring MySQL and PostgreSQL databases. I have spent more time with Facebook's Graph API that is probably healthy.

I know both Git and Mercurial, am proactive about communicating, and have no issues working with non-technical clients.

Contact me at <http://www.marteydodoo.com/contact/>

</comment><comment><USER24> SEEKING WORK - Remote or Los Angeles

Most of my experience revolves around game engineering. I have worked on MMO's as well as Facebook games. In regards to specific technologies, I am comfortable working with Actionscript, PHP, Python, javascript/coffeescript, and HTML/css.

Projects I have worked on:

<http://www.pixiehollow.com> <http://www.facebook.com/serfwars>

My Github and LinkedIn:

<http://github.com/pvwoods> <http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=120678969>

</comment><comment><USER25> SEEKING WORK - <USER8>

Most recent work: <http://kimble.co/web>

I am a design generalist with a undergraduate degree in mathematics and physics and graduate design degree in architecture.

My ability to design and program -- and perhaps more importantly, to communicate in both languages -- provides significant value.

I work mostly in Ruby and implement design in code -- Haml, Erb, Mustache, Sass, Less, CoffeeScript are used frequently.

I recently released my first open source programming project: <http://github.com/tedkimble/bruter>.

Email is in profile.

</comment><comment><USER26> SEEKING WORK. Belgium. Remote, but have no problem with travelling.

Mobile development; iOS (Objective-C) and Android (Java) development. Past experience also includes C/C++ and desktop development (Windows & Mac).

Specialities: Low level programming in C/C++, multi platform software (desktop, mobile), porting of libraries, 2D/3D renderers for games, back end systems.

Portfolio work is up at <http://pandaris.com>. Just finished two personal iOS projects that'll be up in the store soon -- a password manager and a voip client for gamers.

Market rate contract work only; email and skype are on my profile.

</comment><comment><USER27> SEEKING WORK - Remote, Short-Term

I build realtime web apps in a full js stack ie. Node.js, Backbone.js.

I prefer starting from scratch and working alone or with a designer but I am traveling right now so any smaller projects might work.

<http://joshontheweb.com> \- Homepage

<http://eightbitbeats.com> \- NodeKnockout 2011 submission

<http://twitter.com/joshontheweb>

<http://linkedin.com/in/joshnielsen>

</comment><comment><USER28> SEEKING WORK - San Francisco Bay Area or Remote

My background has been working for scientists and system administrators, so I tell people my strongest programming skills are Matlab and Perl. I also have experience in building GUI applications with Java (Swing) and C++ (Borland). I also have done embedded programming, but my software experience is much better than my hardware experience (I can do bit twiddling but do you really want to trust me with a soldering iron?). I'd like to stay in the sciences (sorry sysadmins) but I am open to anything that is interesting.

Contact in profile.

</comment><comment><USER29> SEEKING FREELANCER - London / Remote in UK

User interfaces in web browsers using jQuery.

I have some interesting bits of user interface that need creating. If you're up for a bit of a challenge, send me an email with links to your work.

I suspect it's in the order of a few weeks work, pretty much self-contained, and doesn't have to be done in one go. You'll need to come to one or two meetings in London, but apart from that, can work anywhere in the UK (geographic restriction due to nature of information being processed).

My contact details are in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER30> SEEKING WORK - NYC or Remote

I'm an independent web and UI designer. I recently switched to working freelance full-time and I'm looking to develop relationships with startups and smaller companies. I always offer fair/flexible rates.

I'm great with: UI/UX Design Visual Design Wordpress Development Copywriting

Take a look at my work: <http://www.ryanglover.net> LinkedIn: <http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryangglover>

Contact: email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER31> SEEKING WORK - NYC or Remote

I'm primarily a Python/Django developer. I do backend & frontend work, HTML/CSS/jQuery, linux admin, etc. I take a pragmatic, get-things-done approach. I've got iOS, PHP and Adobe Flex/Flash/ActionScript experience as well.

I can take on full projects, soup to nuts, or work with your existing team if you just need a little extra help.

My portfolio and more info (including contact details) are at <http://brooklynsoftworks.com>. I'd love to talk with you.

</comment><comment><USER32> SEEKING FREELANCER - Remote - Scribie.com

The immediate thing we need done is developing a JavaScript based text editor which is tightly integrated with a HTML5 audio player. Contact for more details.

</comment><comment><USER33> SEEKING WORK - <USER8>

(Venezuela)

Hacker, Javascript expert.

My web (currently being redesigned):

<http://www.ozkeebo.com> (greetings to our customers)

Main skills: (expert) Javascript, php, mysql, html5, css3, node.js, jquery

Graphic designer and various other general skills.

<http://www.ozkeebo.com>

<https://github.com/nzonbi>

Work samples available on request.

</comment><comment><USER34> SEEKING WORK - Nagoya, Japan or remote

Several years web development experience - I can build a web app from the ground up or work on existing apps.

My strong suits are with PHP, Zend Framework, J2EE but have also worked with django a little.

Would be interested in transitioning into Ruby on Rails or Android development so I could give a discount on the rate if you are willing to take a chance.

<http://mattmccormick.ca/portfolio> email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER35> SEEKING WORK - Remote/Freelance

Python/Django/jQuery, with extensive experience building e-commerce marketplaces. I have a research background, data analysis, playing around with NLP right now.

I run a django dev shop, currently taking gigs. Here's my portfolio:

* <http://www.sidmitra.com/portfolio.html>

* <http://www.cloudshuffle.com/>

Contact details in my profile or the link above.

</comment><comment><USER36> SEEKING WORK - Remote (Oslo, US Citizen)

-Back-end Python/C/C++ work

-Android mobile applications

-django + javascript web apps

-Graphics programming / scientific dev.

linkedin: <http://www.linkedin.com/pub/trevor-lovett/2/13a/555>

blog: <http://codeartisan.tumblr.com/>

github: <https://github.com/trevlovett>

</comment><comment><USER37> SEEKING WORK - <USER8>

Php/MySQL developer with 2 years experience in web development and it's associated technologies (JavaScript, HTML, CSS, etc).

iPhone developer with a little over 1 year experience.

Looking to work from home, spend more time with the family.

Rate: $40/hour freelance, $50k as a full time employee with benefits

Contact: joe[at]joecortopassi[dot]com

<http://www.linkedin.com/pub/joe-cortopassi/24/76b/5b9>

</comment><comment><USER38> SEEKING WORK - NYC or remote.

I am a passionate Android developer. I have worked on several large applications and some smaller ones as well. My portfolio and Github are listed below:

<http://www.bricolsoftconsulting.com/category/portfolio/>

<https://github.com/bricolsoftconsulting/>

Depending on the project I can also do C/C++, PHP and Access/VBA.

</comment><comment><USER39> SEEKING FREELANCER - REMOTE (San Francisco)

PlayCoMO - <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pet-fair/id429367771?mt=8>

We're a fast growing mobile gaming company looking for talented people to join our team.

UI Engineer (C++)

User Acquisition Analyst

C++ Game Engineer

Data Analyst/Scientist

Server Engineer

Interns (all positions)

To apply, email: jobs [at] playcomo [dot] com

</comment><comment><USER40> SEEKING WORK - <USER8>

I'm a freelance web developer using Ruby (on Rails 3, Sinatra) and Javascript (Backbone, jQuery, Raphael) and also frontend (HTML 5 and CSS 3)

While I prefer the stack above I also have experience doing PHP development using Wordpress and Magento.

Would love to talk so please do get in touch! email: email@example.com <http://github.com/filipeamoreira.com>

Filipe Moreira

</comment><comment><USER41> SEEKING WORK – Remote

\- iOS development

\- Rails backend

\- code review

github: <http://github.com/evsukov89>

blog: <http://igor-on-software.posterous.com>

resume: <http://careers.stackoverflow.com/evsukov>

email: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER42> SEEKING FREELANCER, San Francisco. Prefer local, remote possible

Variable task load, supporting live mobile game product. PHP/mySQL backend, running on Symfony framework on Amazon EC2. Will involve bug fixing as well as implementing support for new features and mobile platforms. First task would be to make existing tech support Android players. (game is currently iOS only).

email email@example.com

thanks

</comment><comment><USER43> SEEKING WORK - New Zealand/Remote

Rails/JS/Coffeescript/Titanium & some Obj-C developer/designer with a bunch of experience in frontend and backend work. Latest thing I've built: <http://ontheroadapp.com> iPad app + backend/frontend (still WIP)

Can also do PHP - wordpress/joomla.

Contact: cameron [at] neuzee [dot] com

</comment><comment><USER44> SEEKING WORK - Remote, possible on-site (NYC)

Software engineer focused on Python.I develop web applications.

I can do end-to-end full stack development. My preference is to use tools such as Flask, MongoDB, nginx, HTML5, and JavaScript.

GitHub: <https://github.com/maxcountryman> Email: email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER45> SEEKING WORK - Remote or on-site

We're a offering consulting/contract work around Nokia's Qt framework. We're also interested in doing more general work in the world of open source, desktop, mobile.

If you're interested contact us via <http://woboq.com/> We're based in Berlin but look for remote work everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER46> SEEKING WORK - Portland/Remote

I do web development with Python (Django and Flask), PHP, ColdFusion (and CFWheels), SQL, JavaScript (and jQuery), HTML, CSS, some Flex and AS3, etc.

I'm open to part-time, full-time, and freelance.

email: riley at rileywatkins dot com

<http://github.com/rwatkins>

</comment><comment><USER47> SEEKING WORK - Boston/Remote

Web dev. Wrote the PragProg book on CoffeeScript. Proficient in jQuery and Node.js.

I also enjoy random networking, so if you're in the Harvard/MIT vicinity and you want to talk tech, let's grab coffee. One person got into Y Combinator after asking me for interview tips, so I may be a good luck charm. ;)

</comment><comment> rush-tea SEEKING FREELANCER - Remote or Southern California

I am looking for someone who is good in developing mobile app (iPhone, Android, and Blackberry). Also, prefer if you are also good in building web backend as well (MySQL).

You can take small projects first, and if we click, maybe you can be the technical co founder.

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER48> SEEKING FREELANCER - REMOTE (Chicago) UI Engineer Game Engineer Graphic designer Experience in iOS/Android apps preferred

Product is education games for young kids. Please reply if interested and we will discuss further details

</comment><comment><USER36> SEEKING FREELANCER - remote (profit split)

Please contact me if you have design/marketing skills and are interested in disrupting the low-fare flight-search space. gmail: budgetflightsearch

</comment><comment><USER49> SEEKING WORK - Remote (Vancouver and China)

Full-stack Web developer. I like challenges, algorithms, UI/UX design, and building tools for developers.

Contact: email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER50> SEEKING WORK - Remote or Brazil.

C#, C++, Python, Java - mostly back-end or non-web programming. ACM ICPC world finalist. Contact info in profile.

</comment><comment><USER51> SEEKING WORK - <USER8>

Golang with a strong python and google app engine background, plus the full web stack.

Details in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER52> SEEKING WORK - Remote (Tokyo)

Interface designer from California. I work with companies around the world on application design, usability, and branding.

HTML5 / CSS3 (Sass, Stylus) / JS / Photoshop / iOS

<http://nylira.com>

</comment><comment><USER53> SEEKING WORK [HTML5/JavaScript/PHP-WordPress]

No Node.js for the moment.</comment>


Employers 'having to pay more to recruit new staff' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40475702 <comment><USER2> Best way to get a raise is to get a new job.</comment>


How FarmVille Designs for Engagement - <AUTHOR> http://www.philmichaelson.com/user-generated-content/8-design-tactics-farmville/

<comment><AUTHOR> If HackerNew wanted to become more like FarmVille (not that it should), the system could:

* give you karma just for stopping by each day

* give you karma for upvoting other's posts

* give you profiles you could customize by trading in karma

* show you what your friends were upvoting and their Karma

* show you how close you were to attaining moderator status

* allow you to give one virtual gift per day to your favorite contributors

* have your karma decline if you don't stop by in a week

<comment><USER2> Ha, the sad part is if they did this, I would likely use HN even more.

<comment><USER3> It would be more appropriate for Digg.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes, but this method could also be applied to building better slot machines. The game itself requires very little skill or creative engagement on the part of the player. Farmville is evil game design; it takes advantage of human cognitive hooks and limitations for the purpose of profit.

Video games should expand upon what we are capable of. Reward structures and timed events are fine to a degree, but Zynga goes too far. This kind of manipulation needs to be addressed, especially as games become more and more thoroughly integrated with our society.

</comment><comment><USER5> The problem with this kind of advice although interesting is that is takes something hugely popular and present it as the reason why farmville is working.

I am not so sure it's that simple. The real challenge imho is to show how to get critical mass. Not to talk about how you optimize once you have it.

Does anyone know exactly the reason why farmville became popular, cause somehow I think it's not about those 8 principles?

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't mean to imply this article was about how FarmVille started or grew.

This history of FarmVille implies it was better game mechanics than Farm Town, and Zynga's installed base, that lead to FarmVille's success: <http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/01/farmville-history/>.

I'd also hypothesize that Zynga grew because they:

* Had a working revenue model, so they could pay for advertising without burning cash. And being able to advertise in the place where someone plays is helpful for conversions.

* Built on a growing platform (i.e., Facebook)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This was an awesome article. Can anyone point to more articles like this? I'm looking for ways make my web-app (a social discussion forum) more engaging.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

I've been collecting some links to presentations and posts on designing for engagement. See the list here: <http://www.kartme.com/phil/web-design>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This one is also good:

[http://www.gamesbrief.com/2009/09/six-secrets-of- farmvilles-...](http://www.gamesbrief.com/2009/09/six-secrets-of-farmvilles- success-and-33-million-people-agree/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't use Facebook or Farmville, but it sounds like the strategy is to just give you little scraps of gameplay at well-spaced intervals so that you are never fully satisfied. That makes you keep coming back for more.

(HN and SO are similar in this way. You randomly get karma points, which mean people like you, and so you keep checking your threads page to see how much karma you've gotten since you've last looked. Same goes for replies. If there was no karma or no threads page, I bet HN wouldn't have any users.)

<comment><AUTHOR> one smart aspect of FarmVille is that you can gain points without other people giving you Karma. In fact, you get points for helping others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've never played FarmVille, but one of the things I loved about Kingdom of Loathing (other than the general awesomeness) was that I could only do so much at a time - I didn't feel like I had to commit to it if I just had a few minutes. And the fact that each day you got more adventures, it really encouraged me to keep coming back.

Oddly, it was at the point where I had more adventures in a day than I had time to use (and therefore started loosing them) was the point that I started to loose interest.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If anyone has other thoughts on lessons to learn from FarmVille, let me know!

<comment><USER10> I've had a chat with someone who used to work for Zynga, and he said it was a great place to work. He said they knew full well the psychology of what they were doing, and were quite proud of how well they do.

<comment><USER11> I wonder if they hired psychologists for this?

<comment><USER12> Who needs psychologists when you have game designers? Psychological literature doesn't have the level of interest or experience in the practical applications that expert game designers have.

<comment><USER4> And these games are just getting started. As they grow, these tricks will get worse. This is a MUCH bigger problem than people realize. If you could have prevented the introduction of Opium to China, would you have?

[http://www.vizworld.com/2010/02/jesse-schells- dice-2010-pres...](http://www.vizworld.com/2010/02/jesse-schells- dice-2010-presentation-games-psychology/)

<comment><USER12> Having worked at Blizzard until recently, I think my response to this rhetorical question is predictable.

But help me understand a little better. I don't see designing more compelling gameplay as being a markedly different goal than more compelling musicianship, more compelling novel-writing or more compelling filmmaking. What's your perspective?

<comment><USER13> I was talking about this just yesterday with a game developer friend. I was trying to explain to him how I viewed your former employer as being _too_ successful.

I said Blizzard was Too Successful in that WoW achieves profitability to the detriment of fiendish players, many of whom waste untold hours of what would otherwise be productive time. He, being an almost pure libertarian, disagreed with all too familiar logic: "it's not _my_ fault they get addicted", etc.

I then asked him if he would sell drugs, and he responded that he already had. So, regardless of perspective, it is pretty easy to see where these arguments lead; that is, down the slippery slope and out to the extremes as one tries to justify their position.

<comment><USER12> These arguments tend to go down two roads -- one that I disagree with and one that I actually agree with.

The Too Successful argument is really a difficult one to draw out moral content from. There have existed people who lose themselves in games (among other things) to the detriment of their "real life" from way back. Forgive me for dredging this up:

[http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=YswmAAAAIBAJ&sjid=K...](http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=YswmAAAAIBAJ&sjid=KAIGAAAAIBAJ&pg=6894,3927015&hl=en)

So that's the question that has to be answered -- if there have been 500 billion hours of WoW played (just my random guess) in the last five years and 500 million hours of Rubik's Cube played in the 80's, is Ernö Rubik also equivalent to a drug dealer, just in smaller proportions? Finally, maybe WoW is keeping guys from even less productive internet addictions, like, say, editing TV Tropes.

So I think I need to understand the moral line drawn in the too-successful argument. Because otherwise I just see WoW as the current bête noire analogous to any other popular diversion, like video arcades were 20 or 30 years ago. Is there a substantive difference, or is it merely quantitative?

Now the argument that does resound with me, as well as most game designers I know, is that designers are making gameplay that basically abuses the player without enhancing their experience of the game.

Some people have pointed at the simplicity of the gameplay in WoW (i.e. questing is too easy) and said that it's abusive to make simple gameplay compelling. I personally find this bizarre. Abusive gameplay is an area where I hold Valve, Blizzard, PopCap and others fairly blameless. That's not entirely surprising for one reason: their customers pay for the game. A fine player experience is what they hope will create more customers.

With many social gaming experiences, players have come to expect abuse, which is a crying shame. That they will be tantalized, guilted, used to spam their friends, inconvenienced and annoyed. Is any of that core to the game itself? No, the proof being that in most cases if you pay, it goes away. It's beyond just breaching the editorial wall -- the lame way that marketing is integrated into gameplay is what makes pro game designers howl with disgust.

P.S. Anyone interested in investing in a startup that breaks social gaming out of these shackles, please email.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kaspersky: Stuxnet is a new weapon that will lead to a cyber arms race. - <AUTHOR> http://www.kaspersky.com/news?id=207576183

<comment><AUTHOR> The software it targets:

SIMATIC WinCC SCADA

[http://www.automation.siemens.com/mcms/human-machine- interfa...](http://www.automation.siemens.com/mcms/human-machine- interface/en/visualization-software/scada/Pages/Default.aspx)</comment>


Unifying Functional and Object-Oriented Programming with Scala - <AUTHOR> http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/4/173220-unifying-functional-and-object-oriented-programming-with-scala/fulltext#.UzlsmtFLxCI.reddit

<comment><AUTHOR> If you know Scala it's a good refresher & run-through of the motivations. If you don't, it's a nice summary if you need to know something about it (to make an educated decision, fake your way through an interview, whatever).</comment>


Show HN: Yak.to, my weekends project - invite code "hackernews" - <AUTHOR>

I'd love some feedback on Yak (http://yak.to). Trying to figure out positioning and differentiation, and how to solve the chicken-and-egg problem. <comment><USER2> Pay money to get an username?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> clickable link: <http://yak.to></comment>


Setting up Sublime Text 2 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.alexmaccaw.com/sublime-text <comment><USER2> "The default website, icon, and theme are ugly to say the least" I can't be the only one who completely, utterly disagrees with this? I absolutely love the default theme and I think the icon looks great (much better than the alternative provided). That being said, I don't want to start a whole pointless discussion about taste here, it just kind of bothered me to read something like that in a blog post that talks about setting up a text editor.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I didn't understand this either. "Sublime's initial look leaves a lot to be desired." Really? I think it looks great.

Here's another post that calls Sublime's default theme "pretty ugly" and "god- awful": [http://floatleft.com/notebook/making-sublime- text-2-beautifu...](http://floatleft.com/notebook/making-sublime- text-2-beautiful)

<comment><USER4> I love the icon. I don't have an opinion about the default theme except to say that part of the whole point of Sublime (to me) is to find a custom color theme for your code. It's like css for your workspace!

I use a modified Cobalt that has much more green in it. Honestly I love that Sublime allows you to fulfill that urge to express yourself while you're expressing yourself (yo dawg etc.).

<comment><USER5> It's a bit like a teenies version of Emacs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I tried to like Sublime, I really did. Bought a license and used it for four months, before going back to Emacs.

Sublime is nice, and easy to extend, but it only extends so far, while Emacs is infinitely extensible.

You can practically live in Emacs[1]; some things I wanted to do in Emacs were hard to pull off, but I'm yet to find something it can't do. And it does so for years.

Fashionable editors come and go, but Emacs forever stands; and if there is one thing I don't think I'll be able to ever do again, is learn another set of editor shortcuts. Those I used were drilled there ~10 years ago, and I don't think they'll ever come out.

Also, author seems to take great deal about changing the editor theme and icon. Why should you ever care about that, outside a screenshot contest?

Editor should look good by rendering a nice font at a size you find comfortable, highlighted in colors you find easy on the eyes. If you look at the chrome, well, you're not spending enough effort editing.

[1] I'm not the one to start wars. vi might be just as good, but I'm not going to learn it this side of the river Styx.

<comment><USER7> I love Emasc but it can't even do proper full screen. I really wish ST3 has more APIs in the Emacs spirit, but keeping it modern.

<comment><USER6>
      (defun full-screen ()
        "Indicate to the window manager that this frame should be full screen"
        (interactive)
        (x-send-client-message nil 0 nil "_NET_WM_STATE" 32 '(2 "_NET_WM_STATE_FULLSCREEN" 0)))

<comment><USER7> That removes the borders? Any way, Unix only...

<comment><USER6> <http://tomayko.com/writings/that-dilbert-cartoon>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One setting I find invaluable is to use Paste and Indent for ⌘V instead of the standard Paste. This adjusts your indentation to automatically match the context it's pasted in.

To do this, put the following in your Key Bindings - User file:

      [
        { "keys": ["super+v"], "command": "paste_and_indent" },
        { "keys": ["super+shift+v"], "command": "paste" }
      ]

<comment><USER9> You just (minimally) changed my world. Thank you sir.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A few more Sublime Text plugins worth checking out:

AdvancedNewFile -- easy file/directory creation

Alignment -- shortcut for instant alignment

Emmet -- essential for HTML/CSS

GitGutter -- see diff marks in gutter

Origami -- additional shortcuts for split panes

VintageEx -- emulation of Vim's Ex-mode

The Vim emulation isn't one-to-one, but it's pretty good with Vintage mode enabled and the VintageEx plugin installed.

</comment><comment><USER11> This helped me a lot when I got started with Sublime [http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/news/perfect-workflow-in- su...](http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/news/perfect-workflow-in-sublime-text- free-course) Good intro to basic configuration, shortcuts & vintage mode

<comment><USER12> It's also free, and written by someone who actually used ST2 for more than a month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> You shouldn't set "trim_trailing_white_space_on_save": true unless you work alone, otherwise you're going to have random whitespace changes polluting your diffs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our coding guidelines at Stripe specify that whitespace is to be stripped. It works if everyone does it.

On the occasion where whitespace does pollute the diff, GitHub has a convenient feature where you can append '?w=1' to any diff URL and whitespace changes will be omitted.

<comment><USER14> The number of pull requests I get where the diffs are completely unreadable because someone has this feature enabled is insane. On certain whitespace dependent languages (I'm looking at you Python) simply supressing the whitespace in the diff is not an option.

What are the arguments for having whitespace removal as a coding standard?

<comment><USER15> Trimming at the end of line has no effect on python.

<comment><USER16> But other whitespace does, so globally disabling whitespace in a diff isn't very helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I find it odd that Sublime is so widely loved. It seems like a way-station between Notepad and Vim/Emacs. The extensions are nice, and the GUI is easy on the eyes, but it seems that most of my peers outgrew their Sublime Text/Notepad++/Textmate stage by the time they completed their first year of undergrad. I would hate to be stuck in the slow world of Sublime Text limbo as a result of being too lazy to learn and customize Vim/Emacs.

<comment><USER18> You find it odd that Sublime Text is so widely loved? Seriously? It combines the greatness of some of the best editors out there into a single one that is approachable and sexy and you can't see how it appeals to the masses?

Let's list out some of my favorite features of Sublime Text (please keep in mind I switched FROM vim to Sublime):

1.) VIntage mode that allows for 99% of day-to-day vim stuff 2.) A plugin system that uses Python and offers a full-featured API (vimscript anyone? pfft) 3.) Full mouse/windows support (i.e. it's not ghetto mouse support thrown over a terminal window from the '70s) 4.) Textmate-style themes that even allows tweaking to the UI 5.) Native Linux, MacOS, and Windows versions

The only negative is that it isn't open-source, which I hate, but the licensing is very reasonable (it's per person, not machine, so you can install it on as many devices as you use)

I'd really like to see you give a real-world example of how it's slow compared to vim/emacs, because maybe I'm missing something. I've been using Sublime Text for over a year and have only had to break out vim a couple of times for some crazy vim-style search/replacing or to quickly open some super-large text files (I think better large-file handling is in the works for sublime though...).

Oh, and one of Sublime Text's best feature? It doesn't come with the elitist attitude that a lot of vim and emacs users seem to get... :)

<comment><USER19> How is the buy-the-beta-then-there-is-a-new-version-immediately-you-need-to- pay-for-again reasonable licensing?

<comment><USER20> As someone who purchased Sublime Text 2 over a year ago, I'll have to pay a $30 upgrade fee. Someone who purchases v2 _now_ (or any time after the announcement of v3) will get the upgrade free. Anyone who purchased v2 in the 90-day period before v3 was announced will be able to upgrade for only $11.

This doesn't strike me as wildly unreasonable.

<comment><USER19> To me this is unreasonable when there is no progress on a bought version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I actually like that the preferences are stored in JSON. This is one of the features that pulled me in to Sublime Text.

<comment><USER22> I wish it was yaml. Even the slightly relaxed json (comments!) is still too picky for my taste.

<comment><USER23> I think TOML [1] would be even more suitable.

[1] <https://github.com/mojombo/toml>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If you use ST2 for working on Django projects, try <https://github.com/dobarkod/DjangoNoseTestRunner> (installable also via Package Control) for running only the test under cursor. It's probably saved us hours of (cumulative) time already.

</comment><comment><USER25> Another awesome plugin in ST2 is WebInspector <https://github.com/sokolovstas/SublimeWebInspector> for Web Devs

</comment><comment><USER26> The TrailingSpaces plugin isn't necessary. ST2 has an option in the default preferences to trim whitespace at the end of the line - just enable it. Not to come down too hard on the article or anything, but there are many other, far better resources for setting up and learning how to be productive in ST2. This book is good <https://leanpub.com/sublime-productivity> (I have no affiliation with the book.)

<comment><USER27> That's all fine and good until you're using JADE:

        h1
          | We build
          span.colored-text scalable
          | web sites & engineer
          span.colored-text powerful
          | platforms

If you delete trailing spaces, you'll have no spaces between any word at the end of the line and the word in the next section.

Point being: trailing spaces can be significant.

<comment><USER26> So throw a nbsp; in front of the text in your span.colored-text Jade?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I was looking at Sublime Text for Go, and apparently the autocomplete box cannot be expanded so it is unable to display function arguments.

<https://github.com/DisposaBoy/GoSublime/issues/212>

Probably an issue for other languages as well.

</comment><comment><USER29> What's the easiest way to keep my Sublime configuration synchronized between machines? I've found that I sometimes have some plugins on one machine, and not another. It would be nice to be able to pull some file/files from GIT or something to keep configuration synced.

<comment><USER30> I recommend this approach to sync config files over Dropbox to get exactly the same editing environment from Win, Mac, and Linux:

1) move the /User folder under "Sublime Text 2/Packages" over to Dropbox/ST2/User

2) in Win goto CMD and from the %APPDATA%\Sublime Text 2\Packages folder enter: mklink /D "User" "path to\My Dropbox\ST2\User"

3) in Mac OSX/Linux goto the Packages folder (you can find the location under >Preferences>Browse Preferences) and enter: ln -s pathto/Dropbox/Sublime\ Text\ 2/User ./User

The fantastic thing with this setup is that in any new machines, Package Control will automatically take care of installing any missing plugins.

<comment><USER29> Thanks for this. Going to give it a try. Also appreciate that you've got some solution working across multiple OSes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> For you python Sublime users: [http://dechols.com/post/40402860395/sublime- text-2-python-de...](http://dechols.com/post/40402860395/sublime- text-2-python-development-environment-in)

</comment><comment><USER32> > The default website, icon, and theme are ugly to say the least

I find the default icon better looking than the one the author is using, so I guess this is just a matter of taste. Same goes with the color scheme.

</comment><comment><USER33> I do most of my editing on remote machines (both at work and at home) and haven't really been able to find a setup that works smoothly for this.

Is everyone else developing _everything_ on their local machines?

<comment><USER34> You could try the SFTP package. With it, you can mirror a remote directory locally and the package will automatically upload the change in the background. It has some other useful features for working on remote files.

<http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/sftp>

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I tried switching to the Soda theme as directed, didn't like it. And I'm dumb, and forgot to back up the original prefs file. Could someone remind me what the default theme is called?

<comment><USER36> Just delete the line. It should revert back to the default theme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Also for anyone that uses both Alfred (2.0) and sublime check out <https://github.com/Humanoidism/SublimeIt>

</comment><comment><USER38> Sublime 2 rules! Simple, great shortcuts and just plain nice to look at. They even let you use it for free. I bought it shortly after trying it out.

</comment><comment><USER39> More icon replacements: <http://dribbble.com/search?q=sublime>

</comment><comment><USER40> Am I the only one to find Python syntax highlighting pretty poor? Is there any tip, color schemes or plugins to improve this?

</comment><comment><USER41> Get me block level (vit, cit ...) commands in ST2 and I will switch. They are done very well in Vim.

<comment><USER42> Vintage mode (which comes with ST) supports most common vim commands and either way there's plugins for most things and you can write your own for pretty much anything at all.

<comment><USER43> This is still a very small subset. If you are a moderately advanced Vim user, neither Vintage nor VintageEX are enough, I'm afraid.

<comment><USER42> Anything that isn't built in you can add yourself...

<comment><USER43> Versus having it built-in in my current editor?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> what plugin do people use for highlighting brackets and parentheses? the default underline mode is faint and not very helpful. i have heard of one or two, but i'm curious to hear what people on HN use. thanks!

<comment><USER45> I'm using BracketHighlighter.

<comment><USER44> cool, thanks. that's one i saw before, but some people complained about performance degradation. have you seen any performance hit after installing the plug-in?

<comment><USER45> You know, a few months ago I think so, but I could never find the culprit. I've had no issues recently, so maybe they updated it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I can't believe this many people care about how the icon looks.</comment>


Hypertable vs. HBase Performance Evaluation - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hypertable.com/?p=14

<comment><USER2> _These results demonstrate that implementation language matters, and that C++ delivers a significant performance advantage._

What a strange thing to say, given that it's probably very likely that the implementations probably work pretty differently internally. You'd probably see similar differences with such a different implementation no matter the language, assuming it isn't something ridiculous like Ruby (I'm a Ruby programmer, don't bite).

Secondly, isn't the overhead for a database mostly disk IO? I realize a finely tuned DB/server is probably CPU-bound instead, but that's generally assuming that the working set fits snugly into RAM and gets cached. Which may not quite be the case when you operate the scale at which you'd resort to HBase/HyperTable.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's starts off fairly passive agressive, but then things get a little cranky right here:

"Hey Doug: Please undo your purchase of the hbase adword. There are plenty of open forums for disseminating your message and on which hbasers can respond should they wish but your purchase of the hbase adword leaves us only one response and thats to outbid you. The only winner in that game will be google."

I really don't understand why some people persist in engaging in language/platform wars; particularly professionals operating at this level.

Who really cares if one product is running on top of a JVM and the other is compiled machine code - isn't the real issue the performance, reliability and features?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm quite surprised that he even bothered to say something to Doug about that, let alone publicly as HBase is not for profit and there is no trademark on HBase (please correct me if I'm wrong). Seems a little childish to me. I will say this though, Doug comes off as having HBase envy and now that he created Hypertable, Inc. I don't want to lend as much trust to his analysis of HBase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This was from a LONG time ago. There have been a LOT of changes in the hbase code. See the release of 0.9.0

<comment><USER5> Do you know of any recent comparison of hbase vs. hypertable?</comment></comment>


The Real Problem With Alexa (a rant from the founder of Slashdot) - <AUTHOR> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/23/152243

<comment><USER2> "It uses a broken methodology to measure the internet and is, for reasons unclear to anyone, regarded as somehow definitive simply because it allows you to compare two sites with a single simple number."

As opposed to IQ, GPA, SATs, LOC, Meyers-Briggs, Megapixels, Megahertz, Merit Badges, Horsepower, US News Rank, Karma points, etc.?

Someone should really write down some theory on what can be measured and what can't be measured. You'd think we'd have some idea after 2,500+ years of philosophy, but it doesn't much seem that way.

</comment><comment><USER3> He is absolutely right: confounding is explained in the first chapter of any book on statistics. Alexa's stats do not fall into "randomized controlled" category of studies, therefore they are pretty much guaranteed to be wrong.

</comment><comment><USER4> Probably Alexa is only useful in watching the trend of a single site, rather than comparing sites, or looking at the absolute numbers.

<comment><USER5> It's only useful for watching the trend of a single site within the Alexa demographic. It might not reflect the site's overall trend.</comment></comment>


Why EU regions are redrawing their borders - <AUTHOR> https://pudding.cool/2019/04/eu-regions/ <comment><USER2> While the subject on this is very interesting, the presentation of this article is very well done!

The transition of the regions as you progress through the article greatly enhances the cohesion (no pun intended).

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting how in Spain it can be observed that, besides Madrid, the more developed areas are Catalonia and the provinces of the basque country, those preciselly that claim they give too much and receive too little.

Another thing that should be also taken into account (At least in the case of Spain) is area population, as not even 30% of the population live in those areas, being Catalonia the more populated.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is it me or is this a terrible abuse of a regulation which itself is well intended?

<comment><USER5> Hmm. On the fundamentals, do you think it makes sense for poor rural regions to be governed under the same administration as wealthy cities? I hear a lot about how almost all of New York (state) suffers under the rules New York City puts into place.

From the other direction, does it make sense for New York City to be technically located in four different states?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> TIL: Ireland is more «economically developed» than UK, France and Italy.

Also, French region have been redesigned in 2015, and they have actually been _merged_ instead of split.

<comment><USER7> Yo all that tax dodging by multinationals help !

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe they could use a function that takes median/mean into account, not just mean. If the mean is way above median, well, maybe they still qualify.

</comment><comment><USER9> It wasn't all that long ago that EU regions redrew their borders with Panzers/Rifles/Muskets/Swords/Sticks/Etc. All with the general goal being to increase their own resources at the expense of their neighbors.

This is actually an interesting article, I just felt like waxing a bit philosophical. The more things change the more they stay the same, although I'm not trying to draw a direct comparison between military conquest and political rule bending.</comment>


Gitlab discloses confidential information to former employees - <AUTHOR> https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/people-group/employment/-/merge_requests/1102<p>After I left GitLab, my account was transferred over to my personal email address. I notified GitLab that I was still able to access confidential issues which were assigned to me, even though it was no longer associated with my former GitLab email address. Since they cannot figure out how to disassociate my personal account with the confidential issues, they have decided to just indefinitely block me out of my personal GitLab account until they figure out how to resolve the issue. <comment><USER2> It seems like they need to work on their termination processes to do everything in backoffice systems all at once. As a quick fix, they could edit the permissions DB. A better fix would be to have separate internal and external users in different tables and a different login system to prevent access commingling, and termination would be much easier. Then, it wouldn't affect the public-side. If they wanted to, add an employee decoration boolean to their public user which wouldn't cause security problems.</comment>


MS Research creates 'instant backing band' for singers - <AUTHOR> http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/dn13601-microsoft-creates-instant-backing-band-for-singers.html?feedId=online-news_rss20 <comment><USER2> Once it can overcorrect the pitch, add extreme compression/limiting, and a harmonizer, then I'll be really scared.

Still, I'd love to play with this thing.</comment>