juwo beta is released (at last!). Please use it and help improve it! - <AUTHOR> http://juwo.com <comment><USER3> To be brutally honest: color scheme + horizontal scrolling + too much text + general design = I ran off before learning too much about what Juwo does.

Please redesign!

Also try to condense what Juwo is trying to do into a short paragraph. So far, all I can gather by a quick 10 sec browse is that it has something to do with recording/playing back audio, table of contents for audio etc. Leave the demos, instructions, examples for other pages. Give me the story in nice big font and tell it to me like "I'm a 4 yr old." Hope that helps :)

I'll try to look around a bit more once I'm out of work.

<comment><USER4> I agree with veritas. Try to tell us in a few sentences what juwo is all about.

<comment><USER5> Based on a comment in another YC news post, I thought juwo was a tool for automatically transcribing audio to text (is that correct?).

If so, then why not just say that; the demos can be simplified to be the raw audio/video clip with the text, as transcribed by juwo next to/underneath the clips.

<comment><AUTHOR> no, that's not correct. It does not transcribe automatically. however the labels can have functionality attached. for example, to run the speech recognizer you have installed on your computer, on a voice note.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Too many words!_ This is my most common criticism for evaluating an interface. If you need so many words on the home page to describe how to do something or what it is, then it's not easy enough. Remember you only have about 20 seconds of somebody's attention before they decide to click away. I got lost pretty quick (and I'm actually pretty smart).

The crap about Jesus on the about page turned me off, too. You're welcome to your religious beliefs, but keep them on your blog or someplace more appropriate.

<comment><AUTHOR> why does Jesus make you and others so angry?

I will bet $10 that if instead, it were a short para on Hinduism or Buddhism (and I dare say, even Islam), no one would have been so hostile.

<comment><USER7> As an intellectual person, I find blind faith in Christianity outright offensive. It doesn't make any sense to base your world view on the mythology of a Bronze Age people.

Honestly, I'm glad that you have the right to spread the good word on your website. But it's so rare I get to interact with a real, live Christian that I delight in the opportunity. Maybe we can both gain something.

So let's talk. Why do you believe in the god of the Christians to the exclusion of all the others?

<comment><AUTHOR> why do you believe that 2+2=4 and not 2+2=5 ?

<comment><USER7> Because I count two things, and two more things and see that there are four objects. I can observe with my own eyes that mathematics works. You can't ever see God, you have to take on faith that a book written almost 2000 years ago is absolute fact.

So why do you believe in the god of the Christians to the exclusion of all the other gods?

<comment><AUTHOR> You obviously pride yourself on being an intellectual, yet you havent even scratched the surface. Think deeper.

The answer lies in the answer to my question.

<comment><USER7> Fine. Mathematics is generally based on so-called "non-logical axioms" -- non proven statements that we accept based on what a person such as yourself would call faith.

Still, I believe in mathematics because it works. Why do you believe in the god of the Christians to the exclusion of all others?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're getting the point - that we trust Mathematics even though it involves faith, because there is plenty of correlation to the 'real' world.

Similarly, Jesus is a real person, not an emotional crutch. An absolute truth, not a relative choice. Like 2+2=4 and not 2+2=5.

How do I prove it? Simple. Ask Jesus himself to show that he is real, to you. However when you ask, you cannot have an attitude - otherwise he will ignore you.

"you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart" [God] ([http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah%2029%20:%2013;&version;=31)](http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah%2029%20:%2013;&version=31\))

He himself, will checkmate you.

<comment><USER8> But you still never answered the question of why you have faith in the Christian god as opposed to the gods other religions.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did.

<comment><USER8> I don't understand how you answered it. Can you clarify?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I haven't downloaded it because the site doesn't inspire confidence that this is anything I want to install on my machine. Some suggestions:

1\. Messaging.

I am confused about what Juwo really is as well. It seems to be a way to tag audio or video by time? There is way too much text on the page. I know Juwo probably has a ton of features, but you need to nail down your core message and drill it in (and design your product around it). Can you describe what Juwo is in 5 words or less? Now what about 2 words? Anything longer than that and you've exceeded my attention span.

2\. Design

Horizontal scrolling plus web design circa 1995 plus religious proselytizing doesn't inspire confidence that this is something I want to use and would enjoy using. I strongly recommend looking at other websites featuring downloadable apps such as Skype.com or Trillian, etc to see how they are approaching this. This is compounded by the lack of a clear message as to what your product is.

From what I understood of the core idea, it seems useful, but I can't see myself downloading a standalone app for this functionality. Btw, Have you checked out <http://www.veotag.com?> Seems like a competitor.

<comment><AUTHOR> It goes much further than veotag IMHO. I have a comparison matrix with with competitors, including veotag.

<comment><USER9> I think the difference is that I can understand what Veotag is in about 2 seconds, and I am still trying to figure you what Juwo is after really reading about it and thinking about it, and I did that only because I was asked to check it out.

More features does not a better product make. More importantly, you can have 100x times Veotag's features, but it won't matter unless you can make people understand, _instantly_ what your product is.

Now I imagine I'm a random stranger on the internet stumbling across your site. You really have less than 5 seconds of time before I click off back to YouTube or something. I just don't have that much attention.

<comment><AUTHOR> so tell me, how should I explain it? _should I move the diagrams to the left, or just one column?_

<comment><USER9> I really don't know how you would explain it, because I don't understand what your product is. Whatever your explanation is, it needs to be clear and concise, e.g. "Juwo is the easiest way to organize and share your recordings."

The location of the diagrams on your website is the least of its problems - <USER2> is almost irrelevant. I would suggest first getting rid of about 90+% of the text on your frontpage.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have reorganized the page.

<comment><USER9> The new design is a huge improvement, but (and I know this is harsh) only because the old one was so poor. There are still a lot of problems with the page. Right now your homepage looks like (well, it IS) a manual. It needs to look like a brochure. Put your manual somewhere else.

Paul Graham's suggestion to take a look at wufoo.com is a great one. That's one of the best homepages you can find on the net. Simplify simplify simplify and reduce reduce reduce.

<comment><AUTHOR> my reply is here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=14590>

Thanks for continuing to engage!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I visit the site, I have these questions, in this order:

(1) What is Juwo?

(2) How do I get it? (Or get access)

(3) How do I use it?

(3) What can it do for me?

Here's what happens when I visit the site:

(1) What is Juwo? After scrolling up and down trying to make sense of the page, I gave up and just started reading from the top. After the first two sections I still am not quite sure what it actually is. I feel I have to try to piece it together from all the little clues in the text.

(2) How do I get it? As far as I can tell, there is nothing to get. I can't find a download area or login box anywhere. Halfway down the page I see some demos, but I can't tell if that's the actual software or what.

(3) How do I use it? This question is answered, although I had to scroll down to find it and I don't really understand the explanation because I don't know what Juwo is (1) and don't know how to get it (2).

(4) What can it do for me? This question isn't important for me, but it is for some people. A lot of the page is devoted to talking about how the product can help me, however because (1) and (2) haven't been answered, I feel like I'm wasting my time.

<comment><AUTHOR> "(2) How do I get it? (Or get access) "

Thanks for your feedback! I have added a line at the top.

Note: When you click on a demo, NP will automatically download and install. NP can be run both offline and also connected to the internet. (see Technical Requirements)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can't tell what it does.

Aim for this: <http://wufoo.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> It is hard to explain juwo in one sentence because it can be used for at least a dozen things. I dont want to leave anything out. IMHO, juwo is a new concept. IMHO it is very powerful - but I am getting carried away...

I have reorganized the page so that the simple explanation with the diagrams comes first.

I have to also say this. Your recommendation, wufoo.com; "Online HTML forms" means nothing to the layman. Similarly, I think the layman will not understand anything by _"juwo is...

A "Swiss Army knife" piece of software that gives more power to consumers to structure snippets of audio, video and text as a bullet list, to more easily index and annotate them, and to share the lists with others. Its benefits extend to multimedia as related to more enriching broadcasts, collaboration and organizing"._

Yes, it may look like I have put the Help manual there. That is intentional. _For a new concept, I believe that if people cannot get help easily with the details, then they will stop using it._ Help manuals tend to be secreted away in software like a squirrel hides nuts.

Of course, it can be argued successfully that I have already scared even the geeks away!

I am not justifying, but explaining my rationale. I hope everyone at news.YC will continue to engage with juwo.

Anil Philip juwo.com

<comment><USER12> You can either choose to emphasize how POWERFUL--as in scale--that Juwo is OR you can emphasize how EASY it can make my life.

Right now even though you have glimpses of trying to show how it can help me, the overall tone of your site(confirmed by your posts here) is on features rather than practical use.

Any tool can be used to do dozen things. Our site can be used to post music, lectures, pranks, cries of your first child and literally hundreds of other things. But it has its few primary uses and you have to pin them down and focus on those DEFINED audiences in the BEGINNING stages. Otherwise you end up confusing EVERYONE as you seem to have done here.

I'll help you get started if you're interested. This should make for a good mini guide too for folks in your position Answer the following questions for me in LESS than 20 words each:

1\. What is the problem? 2\. Who is it a problem for?(note: everyone isn't an answer; think age groups, job profiles of people MOST likely facing the problem you describe in #1) 3\. How do you plan to solve this problem? (theoretically, not what Juwo is) 4\. How is Juwo solving this problem

Use these guidelines: \- Be as specific as you can be. \- Use as simple words as you can use.

<comment><AUTHOR> Zaid,

Thanks for replying.

1\. What is the problem? 2. Who is it a problem for?...

is a very basic exercise. In fact it is on the first slide of my investor presentation. I have thought through this in depth.

I will feel comfortable discussing one aspect of it on this board.

1) "I cant skip to the important parts when viewing AV" 2) Both publishers and consumers.

thanks, Anil

<comment><USER12> Too vague on #2.You're getting somewhere in #1 by defining specific user use-- just make sure it is ACTUALLY a sizable problem for the mass(not just you).

Best of luck with your presentation.

<comment><AUTHOR> I dont have any presentation scheduled - but you do! (best wishes with it at YC).

publisher: ABC, BBC, CNN, youtube etc...

consumer: you, me, joe, jane, hari, harry.

By "powerful", I am talking about how it can ease problems first, and scale second.

<comment><USER12> But you haven't convinced me I have a problem--let alone Juwo can solve it. It could be that I'm not the primary audience which is why I asked you to define it AS specific as you can. You're still swimming in vagueness friend...

<comment><AUTHOR> can you visualize IJigg using it?

<comment><USER12> I have to be honest I don't know what is Juwo. The exercise was not to tell ME about Juwo but to in general clarify for everyone here. I do hope you'll be able to answer those questions here at some point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Your web pages do not render correctly in firefox:

<http://abstractnonsense.com/juwo.png>

<comment><AUTHOR> that's weird - it is straight html, done in dreamweaver 8.

thank you for taking the trouble to get the screenshot. I shall run it from firefox on Linux

<comment><USER14> done in dreamweaver 8 Yeah, that'd be your problem.

<http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fjuwo.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, shall fix by hand

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Juwo, this is the most confusing thing I've ever looked at. I have a feeling the product is not very focused itself, and thus is hard to convey. If you can't convey it in a single page with a few terse sentences (ala skype.com), you might need to redesign and make it simpler.

I'm glad you're a Christian, but a company-about page is probably not the best place for pro/con links. It's distracting.

<comment><AUTHOR> my reply is here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=14590> Thanks for continuing to engage!

What is a pro-con link?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One big issue is that the demo I downloaded had some audio pre installed with it. Just a thought, but using audio from a speech given by a man with cerebral palsey is not the best choice for a demo. It was very unclear and hard to see what it was that your software was accomplishing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for being the first public to drive it!. Try the BBC demo. it is video - or pretty American Idol Katharine McPhee.

<comment><USER5> For the BBC demo page, how about isolating the clip you want to show, perhaps surrounded by whitespace, but with a juwo page header? (i.e., make it clear this page still belongs in the juwo site, and you've just sampled a small part of the BBC page)

People with ADD like me will start reading the news ticker or some of the other stories (seriously, I had to back up twice to figure out what I supposed to click on!).

Also, for people _not_ running XP and using Java plugins in their browser (I'm one of them!) can you prepare a version that will still convey what the demo does?

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you mean, show the media player in the browser?

Or should I draw the link for the demo in large font?

Actually, juwo is great for people with ADD. you can sit in a class and record lectures - and then review only the important parts.

I have some kind of ADD myself - and use juwo in important meetings.

<comment><USER5> Basically, lose everything from the BBC page _except_ the href to the clip you want to show and put it inside a "juwo" page, consistent with everything else on your site.

For a while there, I thought I was at bbcnews.com and I started reading all these extraneous links and photos.

<comment><AUTHOR> the point is that a visitor to the BBC page would click on the video link, and a juwo of the video would pop up.

<comment><USER5> Yes, I understand how that would work if juwo were installed and I'm browsing other sites, but copying the entire BBC page is unnecessary, esp. when the only relevant thing from the demo's perspective is that single clip.

<comment><AUTHOR> my website is updated. Please visit again. I have added screenshots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have _no_ idea what's going on on that page. Is it a blog? Is it a product?

</comment><comment><USER7> want... to... troll... about... religion...

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=14583>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My humble advice...

1\. Take this demo OFF now! People are going to develop a SUPER BAD bias of your product that will be hard to overcome even in the future should you improve the UI.

2\. Hire or partner with a UI designer who knows usability and design!

3\. I'll hypothesize that most people that visit your site will leave without any clear idea of what your product is.

<comment><AUTHOR> are you talking about the website? or the actual software, NP.

<comment><USER12> The website. I've no idea what the software is and thus I didn't download it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have reorganized the page.

<comment><USER12> What you really need to do is make a screencast demo explaining from the VERY beginning a) what is the problem b) how juwo solves it. In very plain language with in screen demo.

For a sample look at Mosoto: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpuU4l_4Nr0&eurl;=http%3A%2F%2Fmosoto%2Ecom%2F](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpuU4l_4Nr0&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fmosoto%2Ecom%2F)

You don't have to be anywhere near as crisp as these guys. If you can answer what's the problem and how juwo solves it in 2minutes you'll have fewer confused minds.

<comment><AUTHOR> Arent the pictures clear and simple? The problem with screencast is what juwo tries to solve.

However, as you suggest, I shall create a screencast and see which is better.

Also see: my reply is here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=14590> Thanks for continuing to engage!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I still have no idea what the hell this is

</comment><comment><USER18> <http://juwo.com/company.html>

"Juwo LLC was founded by Anil Philip in December 2004, and is based in Olathe, Kansas.

We are"

... 'we' ?

Also, the religious stuff probably belongs elsewhere, on your own home page, for instance.

<comment><USER19> It's not important, IMHO.

It could be single founder + employees (but unlikely given the site design) or just him.

But he could always say he's using the royal we.

<comment><USER18> You think? As someone potentially in the same situation as he is, I would feel uneasy about writing something that's not the truth.

<comment><AUTHOR> 'we' is the _truth_ because my wife does give me valuable advice and assessment on juwo, on people I interact with for juwo. Even though she has 0% equity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> You all gave me valuable advice here when I asked for help. <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=1890>

I followed it! Please help juwo improve.

Thank you! I am grateful to you guys, news.YC and PG for this forum.

</comment><comment><USER13> I tried the first demo and got this:

An error occurred while launching/running the application.

Title: Nodepad Vendor: juwo LLC Category: Unexpected Error

Unexpected exception: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException

<comment><AUTHOR> I assume you ran it on Windows? The download JDIC libraries are for Windows. If anyone is good with javascript, we can port it to run on other platforms.

<comment><USER13> Linux (ubuntu). I clicked on the first demo when I saw it, without reading the rest of the front page (which was pretty overwhelming). I didn't see anywhere that would suggest this was a Windows thing until later.

<comment><AUTHOR> I really apologize. I am not a Windows guy myself. (Read my rant on how Java harmed Unix and helped windows win).

It is my major priority to get it working on Linux and Mac.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In one sentence, what is Juwo?

<comment><AUTHOR> juwo is...

A "Swiss Army knife" piece of software that gives more power to consumers to structure snippets of audio, video and text as a bullet list, to more easily index and annotate them, and to share the lists with others. Its benefits extend to multimedia as related to more enriching broadcasts, collaboration and organizing.

<comment><USER21> is this for web or desktop?

<comment><AUTHOR> both. please click a demo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I agree with most people on this thread. There's an information overload. Plus I suggest you hire a web designer. The design is not doing your service justice.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have reorganized the page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hey! This is cool! But Crap Box is better.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Hey! This is cool! But Crap Box is better"

Did you actually use juwo before stating that your toilet is better?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Who funds juwo?

<comment><AUTHOR> me - or more accurately, my depleted savings did. why?</comment></comment>


TinyMCE joins Ephox - <AUTHOR> http://moxiecode.com/ We are thrilled to announce that Moxiecode is joining the Ephox team! Together we are set to build the world's best WYSIWYG editing solutions for the web and for mobile devices. <comment><USER2> This should result in some pretty interesting developments for rich text editing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really looking forward to seeing what comes out of this. Very exciting news!

</comment><comment><USER4> Very excited about this, future is looking extreamly interesting for TinyMCE!

</comment><comment><USER5> Congratulations and fantastic news for the future

</comment><comment><USER6> Can't wait to see what the new team does

</comment><comment><USER7> Congratulations!!!!

</comment><comment><USER8> Great work guys!

</comment><comment><USER9> Congrats!</comment>


Top programming languages from jobs advertised on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://jobstractor.com/monthly-stats

<comment><USER2> One thing to consider is that the number of job postings may correlate negatively with project size. The strong representation of Objective C and Android may reflect that the life cycle for mobile applications is a lot shorter than for many other kinds of applications.

<comment><AUTHOR> very intersting point. It'll be interesting perhaps to try and test that by correlating freelance, contract, fulltime with certain skills. Something I'll add to the list for future investigations.

Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting...

Two Things:

1) I'm surprised by how low C# is. Actually, maybe this is more of a not- advertised-on-twitter thing rather than the popularity of the language, which makes the difference interesting.

2) Die flash Die!

<comment><AUTHOR> it'll be interesting to see the fate of flash over the coming months I think

<comment><USER4> I read that YouTube, one of Flash's last big supporters, is working hard on an HTML5 video viewer

<comment><USER5> I thought YouTube already supported HTML5 players? I remember trying something, but perhaps it is in beta.

<comment><USER6> You can join their HTML5 player trial here: <http://www.youtube.com/html5>

<comment><USER4> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A big part of me has to ask: Why do we care? Any software engineer worth his/her weight should be able to pick up _any_ language they need on they fly. A posting asking for a specific language is either catering to HR search terms or is indicative of the narrow mindedness of the managers writing it.

I personally care significantly more about the actual projects involved and in what part(s) of the project's life cycle the role encompasses. Even if it's a position coming into a well-established project (and is therefore firmly rooted in N language(s)), I don't care: I'll pick up whatever needs to be picked up when the job starts.

Sure, checking out today's most popular languages is fun and has it's own appeal, but aren't there better data sources?

</comment><comment><USER8> If you lump Android into the Java category it makes the top of the list. Unless Android is a new language I haven't heard of.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah... I figured it did represent something distinct in peoples hiring intentions so was worth splitting out. From a straight language POV you'd be right but I think it would miss some interesting subtelty in the stats. Also, from talking to people hiring android devs I know they'd rather they had adnroid development experience, not just any old java experience.

Maybe I should put a few different versions together to allow for a straight language shoot out and then also capture some of the other interesting comparrisons separately.

<comment><USER9> Object C is a language that isn't specific to iOS development, too.

<comment><USER10> I'd be curious what % of Obj-c work done these days is iOS vs straight mac development vs other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Have any idea why PHP is still the most widely used web app development language?

Interesting list, thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER12> PHP is one of the most accessible languages. If you are a web hosting service then you almost always support PHP - it's usually installed by a control panel, with loads of extras compiled into it. So, it's good if you're looking for a cheap hosting deal.

Magazines and tutorials teach the language by default. There's loads of competing free products to easily set up a development environment on most platforms. Which means lots of people who can build with it, and therefore, lower salaries.

<comment><USER11> Good point about lower salaries. More access does lead to lower skilled developers being able to do more with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would def have to say interesting because we are building off the same very concept. Not a jobs list, but what we call a social newspaper for the city. In fact, just submitted a thread myself, here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3295555>

I had seen you post earlier when it made the top of HN, you are def doing some interesting work here.

</comment><comment><USER14> Interesting to see both PHP continued dominance. It was also surprising to see how far down the list Python happened to be.Even though jobs aren't always determined by developers I expected the list to be a little more similar to this one:

<https://github.com/languages>

<comment><USER15> github is a closed bubble of developer's personal projects, not an accurate gauge of an industry looking for developers. apples/oranges imho.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Do the ruby and python categories account for postings that are just advertising for rails or django developers without the use of ruby or python in the tweet?

<comment><AUTHOR> yep, I map django to python and RoR or rails to ruby. With care taken not to double count in a single tweet of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Would like to see this graph intersected the the size of the project and or pay-scale/budget for the salary/project. Let's not forget, quantity != quality.

<comment><USER18> This would be a very nifty graph. If SQL = MSSQL/Oracle, then the payscale would probably ranking it higher than the 3 languages above it. (I'm just taking into account all the recuiter emails that Ive seen over the last year...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm curious: Most of the listings I see on JobsTractor are rather vague "This company is hiring a developer"-type things, and about 30% aren't actual job listings but links to tech-related articles. Are you actually following the links and tagging them based on their content? If so, that would probably be useful to incorporate into the UI.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not following links at the moment, just pulling data out of the tweets themselves. I've had some success filterring spam out but intend to imropve that further as soon as I get a chance. There are some more fairly simple things I can do, but there's probably a limit to how good I can make that. As for the vagueness, I think that's in part down to the 140 char restriction, people choose to put the tweet out and hope people will click through to find out more. Hopefully if I start scraping the additional data it'll not turn the results upside down but just level most of them up.

<comment><USER19> Oh, I didn't mean that as a criticism. I understand why they're vague and all that — I'm just surprised you were able to get this kind of information and curious how you went about it, and thought it might be worth integrating into the front-end if it was anything fancy.

<comment><AUTHOR> no problem, didn't assume it was criticism :)

I'm planing to start tagging each tweet with keywords, which in itself may help sift some spam out. But as you pointed out a number of them are very vague which is why I've held of allowing people to filter results for fear of them missing some which may be relevant to them. I'll probably just suggest a wider result set or search for them as appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So you can actually find out the trend of similar results from craigslist data here : [http://craigtrend.com/#!/php/java/objective/sql/ruby/android...](http://craigtrend.com/#!/php/java/objective/sql/ruby/android/javascript/python)

Just press enter on the search to see the results graphed.

<comment><AUTHOR> very intersting, thanks. That'll be good to compare against for future updates to the stats.

<comment><USER15> No problem. I built that in a day or two over the thanksgiving break. I'm glad people are finding it helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anybody know what this list would look like for Facebook? I know they still use PHP files but I've been told they use their own mutant version of PHP that compiles into other languages, or something to that effect.

<comment><USER20> OPs link is not jobs advertised by twitter but advertised on twitter.

I dont think facebook is used much for advertising jobs.

<comment><USER4> Ah, my misunderstanding :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm guessing that where you post has a lot to do with what gets posted, for example my guess would be that if you could do this on IRC you'd get C and Perl higher up.</comment>


Apple bows to China by censoring Taiwan flag emoji - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1723334/apple-removes-taiwan-flag-emoji-in-hong-kong-macau-in-ios-13-1-1/ <comment><USER2> What is happening? First, NBA then Blizzard and now Apple?

Fucking disgusting. Fuck all of these companies and organizations.</comment>


Elon Musk is blocking Tesla beat reporters on Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://www.twitter.com/danahull/status/1203348556905508864 <comment><AUTHOR> More blocked accounts here, includes reporters from CNBC, Bloomberg, LA Times, and Buzzfeed. [https://www.twitter.com/taylor_d_duran/status/12035163568151...](https://www.twitter.com/taylor_d_duran/status/1203516356815134720?s=21)</comment>


Asperger's gone, dyslexia stays – Change to psychiatric manual - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/aspergers-label-gone-psychiatrists-change-diagnosis-manual-first-time-in-almost-20-years/2012/12/01/bf2c6c7a-3bef-11e2-9258-ac7c78d5c680_story.html

<comment><USER2> >abnormally bad and frequent temper tantrums will be given a scientific- sounding diagnosis called DMDD

Wow, I would not have expected such anti-science nonsense from WaPo. Just because you read the symptoms and thought "everybody has some of these!", that does not make you a scientist with the experience necessary to judge its validity as a disorder.

It's not a "scientific-sounding diagnosis". It's a scientific diagnosis.

</comment><comment><USER3> Asperger is now autism. Let me guess: Treating autism pays more?</comment>


Tree First Aid After a Storm - <AUTHOR> https://www.arborday.org/media/stormrecovery/4_treefirstaid.cfm <comment><USER2> Very good generic advice

Some species of trees (willows) can be chopped down to the soil and regrow easily from roots. If needed the tree can be moved away some meters using a sucker well placed to rebuild the main trunk. Some trees must be pruned in special ways. Persimmons need an extra large stump in the pruned branches for example (Cut at point B in fig D1 and left the tree alone. It will autoprune). Often will be advisable to wait until winter before doing major tree surgery. Plums and Peaches will prefer having surgery in summer or spring instead.</comment>


Please review my site: Pinkdy.com (fertility calendar) - <AUTHOR> http://pinkdy.com

<comment><USER4> This is the classic example of a site that should not have any form of registration to try it out.

How about a big "try it" button, or better still a calendar on the homepage where you can click a single date and it will get you started. I mean that's all the input you need, right? Why force people to enter their email address twice just to see what one of these calendars would look like.

Once a user has had a chance to try it out and decide it's cool, offer a "save" button that prompts for an email and password in a lightbox.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps it's just me and feel free to disagree, but this is a classic example of a site that should have not existed in the first place. It solves a problem that doesn't exist and it does it in a way that is inherently more complex than it needs to be.

I cannot think of any woman I know that would even considered using this. It's like a fridge that orders a milk for you - cool, but useless.

Perhaps, _maybe_ , if it were a part of a specialized established women's site, then it would get some traction, but only as a smaller feature of comprehensive set of services catering to, say, women trying to get pregnant.

<comment><USER6> In general you are correct, but some women need/want to monitor their cycles.

Consider a woman with a noisy cycle (28 days +/- 5) or with a mean different from 28 days (29 days +/- 2). Such a woman may become nervous about pregnancy on a regular basis: _"I'm 2 days late, and my flawed human memory doesn't tell me that this occurs 30% of the time for me. Oh shit, am I pregnant?!?"_ The service can remind her that this is normal.

It's also useful for women with regularity problems (a detailed timeseries would be useful to show to the doctor), or women trying to get pregnant (not always as easy as condom ads suggest).

Also, consider that you may know women who need this service, but they may not discuss the need with you.

<comment><USER5> Women with irregular cycle will _not_ rely on statistical analysis to try and get pregnant. They will go and buy a basal thermometer or an ovulation test kit instead.

The "oh, shit, I am pregnant" use case is laughable. Again, the pregnancy testing kit is far more accurate than the statistical analysis and it can be used few days _before_ the first day of the period. No service can do that.

The only case where stat analysis of the cycle is applicable is for people who do not or cannot use contraceptives and do not want to end up being pregnant. This is a negligibly small group as is, and I suspect that its subset of Web 2.0 aficionados is going to be close to zero.

<comment><USER6> The "oh shit, am I pregnant" case saves women the trouble/worry/expense of using a pregnancy test. Similarly, basal thermometers/ovulation test kits are expensive and annoying. This service occupies the space between "just hope for the best" and "go to the drug store and start worrying."

Incidentally, while a pregnancy test will tell a woman if she is pregnant before the period, _she has no reason to worry_ until a day after it should have arrived (ignoring condom failure).

Why would any woman use a simple and easy cycle tracking service when better methods are available at the drug store? For the same reason you might google someone rather than paying $50 for a background check.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are three things I would look at first and foremost 1\. Name - <USER2> really isn't that memorable and has little to do with getting pregnant. With competitors like fertilityfriend and knowmycycle and mymonthlycycles you probably need something that is a little more descriptive 2\. Landing Page 3\. SEO

When I first read this I thought you were going into a market that was way too crowded for you ever to succeed (in English at least). But actually the top search results for "track menstrual cycle" and "track period" and several other searches are not that strong and with the right SEO you should be able to break into the top results. The landing pages of your competitors are awful. Too much text and too much of it in light pink which is hard to read. A simple high impact landing page could help you beat a lot of your competitors - but that isn't going to help if you cannot drive people to your site with the right SEO.

Two other ideas for you to think about. 1. what is the market like for other languages? Maybe there is a lack of Spanish language competitors etc - <USER3> might be easier to get going with them first. 2. I don't know if you can create a widget that can be included on forums, but there are a lot of womens forums around where they discuss all sorts of things. A lot of these women are trying to get pregnant and if you can tap into them on those forums it could be a good marketing opportunity.

Obviously as everyone else has said here, do get the English right, and it could be worth checking if someone in a foreign country uses the site and for some reason feels they want to sue you that you are safe.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a very good analysis. Thank you! About the other markets, indeed in Italy there wasn't a single player and actually we are doing well here. I suspect other bigger European markets are a bit harder to enter, and if we should do the effort of good quality translation I want to play big trying entering the US market.

The SEO and landing page efforts are really worth to try, and of course we'll sort out the "Try It Now" thing :)

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Generally, I would recommend that for a customer-facing site you either:

1) Have a copywriter who is fluent in the target language write the copy

2) Have any translated copy checked by either a native speaker or someone who is very, very, very, very good at the target language AND the problem domain.

I am _not_ an expert in your problem domain but I am a fairly good hand at copywriting for software sites, and was tired of just doing native checking of Big Freaking Enterprise Apps, so take a look at this for some inspiration:

<http://pastie.org/522774>

You'll note that I made copious use of HTML markup. If you're writing on the web, you REALLY want to do that. It will make a world of difference in your conversion rates. Also, talk less about features and more about benefits to the user.

Also, in the US at least, PINKDY IS ALMOST CERTAINLY A MEDICAL DEVICE. I am SHOUTING because you NEED TO KNOW THIS. I wrote you a disclaimer in there but I am NOT a lawyer and offering your service in America exposes you to SIGNIFICANT legal and regulatory risk.

<comment><USER9> One can tell just from reading the headings that the page was not written by a first-language English speaker.

This gives a low expectation of quality in the technical aspects of the site. All that text to read, then I have to log-in (no doubt waiting for an email) just to see visually what it does ... next!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A few months ago we created dinamicherosa.com, a fertility calendar targeting the Italian web. Since we started to got users and even if there are already big players in the international market, we are going to launch this English version of the site, with separated accounts and forums.

The point is, we want to do more. The good point about our system is that's very easy to use, but we could love to ear what are in your opinion the killer features of this kind of services that no one implemented already (it's ok if it is very hard to implement it).

Thanks for any feedback.

p.s. I understand HN is not exactly a place were there are a lot of possible users for our service so it's very hard to do feedbacks about it.

</comment><comment><USER10> You need to get someone to go over the English (record != remind, rapports != sex). (E purtroppo, io non ho tempo)

Also, requiring a login is kind of annoying for those who just want to test it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello David,

indeed this of a good quality translation is an issue we must fix! It's particularly hard given that the field is very specific and there are a lot of medical terms.

About the login, do you mean we should create one-click disposable account where the user can later insert a username to create a real account? This can be a nice idea indeed. On the other side the registration is very simple so possibly even a fixed demo/demo account with one-click auto login can be enough.

Thanks!

<comment><USER10> I would make the front page contain the form to get started. Later, if you want, you can register.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you want to see how it works "inside" I just created this demo account:

username demo pass demo1234

</comment><comment><USER11> It seems like you should whitelabel this and try to sell it as a service to an existing womens or health care site.

Also, for the US, this site may need to comply with HIPPA privacy and security standards.

[http://localtechwire.com/business/local_tech_wire/opinion/st...](http://localtechwire.com/business/local_tech_wire/opinion/story/2159946/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed if we'll find it's too hard to bootstrap it in a market that is a bit hard for us to enter, to whitelabel/sell it can be a good exit strategy.

Also many thanks for the pointer to the HIPPA thing, it's a good idea to conform even the Italian side to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I know that logo from somewhere: <http://www.ampelmann.de/> Ah ja, Berlin!

</comment><comment><USER13> I would suggest doing a design contest on 99designs.com, or geniusrocket.com (expensive but they do creative videos etc. too) - and see what newer designs you get.

1\. The pink needs to go, its not a good association (someone else said this)

2\. Need a 30 second video tutorial

3\. Show a sample calendar (that no one can change)

Check out this UI dos/don't list that might help: [http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/06/23/10-ui-design- patt...](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/06/23/10-ui-design-patterns-you- should-be-paying-attention-to/)

</comment><comment><USER14> 1\. cool idea - especially for people planning kids this can point out the best days for...

2\. the site is not so appealing visually. Take a look at www.23andme.com

3\. mobile access will prove superb for this site - access anywhere and also privacy.

<comment><USER5> _> 1\. cool idea - especially for people planning kids this can point out the best days for..._

As someone who was actually involved in "planning kids" I can assure you that this site solves a problem that does not exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> antirez: You need to add more timezones. For example, you forgot India (GMT +0530).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much to everybody commented here, it was a very informative thread and we'll be able to improve the service thanks to your advices.

</comment><comment><USER16> you might add the ability to export the calendar in ical format for inclusion in google calendar or any other calendar application.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Your error message about unsupported browser (I assume that's what it is) displays in Italian but the rest of the site is English!

</comment><comment><USER18> _You just have to insert your first and last manstrual days._

That's a spelling mistake right on your frontpage.

</comment><comment><USER19> cycle : desktop alternative (GNU/Linux).

</comment><comment><USER20> The copy on the home page is good, thumbs up for that!

I am not so sure about the color-sheme. Do you think redish is the way to go with that topic? I am not sure myself but somehow I have never seen a packaging for baby-pills or so using that color. I think it provokes un-good associations. (Yeah, while beeing the perfect fit, but there are moments in where not stating the obvious is the prefered way).

<comment><USER21> Agreed. Red or pink might be the wrong color considering the obvious association.</comment></comment>


Ask HN:  What do you use for persistent chat? - <AUTHOR>

We are trying to improve intergroup communication at my job.  One of the ideas we have come up with is to create a persistant chat room (or channel) for the groups to chat on.  Then when an issue comes up the groups all have a history of the conversation.  Currently we use GTalk for chat and most of us use Adium for a chat client.  The only requirement is that the chat room log has to be visible to all parties with at least 48 hours of history.<p>So the question is, what do you guys use for persistent chatrooms? <comment><USER2> If you use GTalk already, maybe migrating to XMPP MUC (which is the same protocol) served by, say, ejabberd could be the most straightforward way. It has log configuration (just as IRC does), but it it slightly easier to set up to push logs to clients on entering a room.

Just in case: XMPP and Jabber are the same protocol. Ejabberd is a popular XMPP server (written in Erlang, if you care about compiling from source; not hard to deploy). Google Chat uses XMPP and supports both GMail users chatting on external MUC servers and non-GMail users from another XMPP server joining GMail-hosted chats. XMPP servers usually host Multi-user conference service (aka MUC aka group chat), but it is separate enough that you could just configure MUC-only XMPP server with proper logging settings without allowing any user accounts on the server and connect via existing GMail accounts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Depending on the monthly cost of outsourcing I have thought about running a jabber server. Can you setup your jabber server to pass through authentication over to gtalk?

<comment><USER2> In that case maybe you want to setup conference-only jabber server that doesn't allow logging in to it but hosts MUCs and manages logs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://hipchat.com> is pretty quick to set up - it has web, desktop, and mobile clients - they also seem to have experimental support for XMPP/Jabber ([http://blog.hipchat.com/2011/04/25/experimental-support- for-...](http://blog.hipchat.com/2011/04/25/experimental-support-for- xmppjabber/)), which would let you use Adium to connect.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was looking at hipchat and I do have some past experience with it. Thanks for the comment

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is the simple criteria I am using: 1\. Must use gtalk 2\. Must have persistant history for at least 48 hours (searchable is a bonus) 3\. Must be accessible from adium or other chat clients 4\. Must be private for our org.

So far I have identified, Jaconda, hipchat and campfire (although I think it is out due to the lake of gtalk integration)

(Sorry for not posting this right up front)

</comment><comment><USER4> We use IRC and a custom bot that logs chat history and does some other cool stuff. It works surprisingly well and it's really easy and fun to add new functionality to the bot.

<comment><AUTHOR> good thought.. thanks for the comment

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That sounds like an excellent use case for IRC.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not off the table just yet. But I was looking for a hosted 3rd party solution.

<comment> saiko-chriskun <http://grove.io> ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Jumpino</comment>


Search commit messages - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/2299-search-commit-messages <comment><USER2> Should be an interesting research tool to see how often we use shitty commit messages when trying to get something fixed...

[https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=fix&type=Commits&...](https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=fix&type=Commits&ref=searchresults)

<comment><USER3> "Actually fixed" [https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=%22actually+fixed...](https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=%22actually+fixed%22&type=Commits&ref=searchresults)

<comment><USER4> "fixed this time": [https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=%22fixed+this+tim...](https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=%22fixed+this+time%22&type=Commits&ref=searchresults)

Just the first page is pretty funny.

<comment><USER5> "really really fixed this time for real"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious how long it took to build their search index, and how they do it/what technologies/algorithms they are using. That's a lot of data!

<comment><USER7> based on the how Github Enterprise works, they probably use the same technology, meaning ElasticSearch.

I wonder how often they rebuild the indexes, and scan for new commits. That's an interesting problem to solve actually

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Google put all GitHub data in BigQuery a while back [1]. What took them so long?

[1] [https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/public- data/github](https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/public-data/github)

<comment><USER9> Well this is an apple and orange thing. With BigQuery, they deal with data dumps, while GitHub deals with constant streams of new data. However I do agree with the "What took so long?" sediment.

This is something that should have been in place 3 years ago. I guess it's a good that GitLab is lighting the fire under them, as we all benefit. Given the resources they have, it really is puzzling, they couldn't understand what was important for increasing software development productivity.

I'm guessing they heard enough of "what do you mean we can't search for commits?" from potential/existing Enterprise customers, that they realized this was actually important.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Self-Driving Pi Car - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/felipessalvatore/self_driving_pi_car <comment><USER2> Cool project! Last year I built self driving robot for my bachelor's thesis. Instead of building end-to-end deep learning pipeline I used two neural nets: one trained with genetic algorithm to drive a robot based on ultrasonic sensors, another for object recognition and detection. Based on detected items (like road signs) robot took different actions.

Video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUXh7iP3hoQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUXh7iP3hoQ) Code: [https://github.com/kazepilot](https://github.com/kazepilot)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice project and cool video! (our video is not so well produced :P). Our project was a summer project, we did it in this January. The evolution of the project will be something like yours, we didn't apply any object detection technique.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice work. I worked on a similar project where I created an adaptive cruise control prototype. I used a camera and a CNN to determine the distance from the car ahead of my car. From there you can adjust your cruise control speed and hopefully maintain a set distance away.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECbU_EvyUqM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECbU_EvyUqM)

[https://github.com/iinc/acc](https://github.com/iinc/acc)

There are clearly some ethical/safety issues with testing the entire thing at once while driving on the road. Some better applications would be an alert for following too close or drifting out of lane. Anyways, I find self driving cars exceptionally interesting and I liked reading your write up.

<comment><USER4> > Some better applications would be an alert for following too close or > drifting out of lane.

One problem I have with 'adaptive cruise control' in car is that it has no situational awareness. It constantly speeds up and slows down in heavy traffic highway situations, its quite jarring. What i want instead is integration with traffic situation and adapt the speed to that automatically os it doesn't zoom upto 75 mph and come to a stop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Awesome! have y'all seen donkeycar? [http://www.donkeycar.com/](http://www.donkeycar.com/) great for meetups/hackathons!

<comment><USER6> There's also [https://diyrobocars.com/](https://diyrobocars.com/) and [https://diyrobocars.com.au](https://diyrobocars.com.au) in Australia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I built something similar for my senior design project. We made a game of Pacman using two little rovers running FreeRTOS with RN-131C wifi modules on a PIC board and an overhead PixyCam connected to a raspberry pi. The rovers had a color sensor on the front and back that would allow it to track a black line on white paper. The overhead camera would feed pacman and ghost positions to the identical rovers. The rovers were commanded by just telling it what to do at the next intersection and what speed to move at. We did most of the heavy lifting on the raspberry pi simply because it's quicker to write A* in python than FreeRTOS C. Once pacman was seen driving over a colored dot on the map, the ghost would be commanded to run from pacman. If the camera saw the two rovers touch, the game was over.

Modularity was pretty key on reducing the work for that project. The rovers ran identical code and had no knowledge whether they were a ghost or pacman. The command router didn't care if the instructions it received came from a AI or a user GUI.

The platform was limited by what the professor provided us. We only bought color sensor arrays. Other teams went with simpler "games" but much more complex sensor processing on the rover. Those teams had much more trouble getting their designs to work, essentially needing two separate code bases.

Half of us were taking a class on AI and the other half were taking network application design so the idea for the game seemed like an easy way to just reuse code from those classes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great! Our project had the same idea of combining different skills: I was working with ML and my colleague was the TA from a robotics class.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Always nice to see Brazilians in tech, orgulho!

<comment><AUTHOR> Valeu, é nois

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> FormulaPi is a robot car racing series along similar lines. Submit your own code and race against teams from around the world. I've participated in the last couple of seasons and it's been great fun.

[https://www.formulapi.com](https://www.formulapi.com)

</comment><comment><USER10> Does it "look" into a single frame or does it take previous steps into account as well?

<comment><AUTHOR> Only a single frame

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cool experiment! Tiny nit, can you resize the image in the README so it isn't 12MB?

<comment><USER12> [https://github.com/apps/imgbot](https://github.com/apps/imgbot) can open image compression pull requests automatically in repositories

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very interesting project. It reminds me of a paper I read recently about a similar Pi car: [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S231472881...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2314728818300084)

</comment><comment><USER14> I made a self driving car for a competition called the International Autonomous Robot Racing Challenge, held in Waterloo, Canada. I used my robot to beat Georgia Tech on my own.

Great to see so many others doing similar things.

I used a CNN/LSTM network and you can read more here: blog.suryad.com/iarrc2018

</comment><comment><USER15> Awesome project, but why Python 2? :(

Pre-compiled Python wheels are available for Python 3 on Raspberry Pi at piwheels.org (default for pip in Raspbian)

<comment><USER16> I'm tired of seeing this comment over and over on HN. Does _everyone_ who writes a Python 2-based project on HN have to explain themselves and provide a valid excuse? Why can't people just be deciding they like Python 2 more than 3, or finding that it's more suitable for their project?

<comment><USER17> It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to ask why someone would use a version language that is going to be deprecated in just over a year, when newer versions are readily available.

<comment><USER16> Is it that hard to assume they either like it more or they couldn't use a later version because of a dependency? The only scenario this question would be useful in is if they had no idea the later version exists, which is a boat I have yet to see anyone fall into. Unless, I guess, it's one of those "questions" that isn't looking for an answer, but simply looking for an opportunity to chastise...

<comment><USER18> No, but the project will be dead in a year (or rather bitrot will set in), so if there are old dependencies then perhaps effort should be put into porting or working out the kinks in Python3 dependencies doing a similar thing. I understand for a hobby project that's a big ask but it's not unreasonable to question, I think

[https://pythonclock.org/](https://pythonclock.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Looking at the video, the toy car is turning in-place when it gets to the boundary. There is no realistic turning radius proportional to its size.

<comment><USER20> The toy car used differential steering with 2-wheels and a castor wheel. One of our ideas of future work was to change the current steering method for an Ackerman model, giving our toy car a more realistic dynamic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Any company doing this to solve the scooter littering issue? Like a Self Driving Scooter that drives itself back home?

<comment> 5874-4b22-a4e0 Are there any guides on extracting the electronics, or batteries out for personal uses?

<comment><USER22> I hear there is a whole black market for electric scooter batteries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Cool stuff! Do you have plans to expand this further? Would you accept pull requests? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I did this project together with my colleague Paula (pksm here, @pksmoraes on Twitter). I am doing research on NLP, this was just one summer project for me. She will work on that project further. So yes, it is not dead! Submit a pull request if you like :)

<comment><USER20> Yeah like he said I'll be working on employing transfer learning for self- driving cars. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So all of the training was done without a GPU?

<comment><USER24> Elaborating on my question.

In your read me it says - "In the computer that you will perform the training -- protip: don't train the model in the Raspberry Pi! -- install all the requirements by runnig:"

Could you give some specs on the computer? I currently don't own a GPU based PC so was wondering if I need to get one or use cloud based GPU instance.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, you don't need a GPU at all. It helps, of course, but it not necessary. I don't remember the specs of the computer we used, but to give you an idea we give all the training data to undergrad students in the machine learning class ([https://www.kaggle.com/c/mac0460-self- driving](https://www.kaggle.com/c/mac0460-self-driving)) they achieved good results with their personal laptop.

<comment><USER24> Thanks a lot :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Authenticate on Django using XMPP (and no password) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.agayon.be/xmpp_auth_django.html <comment><USER2> Great with the XMPP protocol. Waiting for the next post.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you know a public API with high troughput? - <AUTHOR>

Hello fellow HNers,
I am currently working on a key-value database in a side project (for fun and pedagogical purpose, if you want to know) and we are going to need some data provider to do some scaling validation and benchmarking. Any type is fine, we'll do the adapters for our storage format.
Do you know where we can pump this data ? Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> You can use the twitter sample data stream. [https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1.1/get/statuses/sample](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1.1/get/statuses/sample)</comment>


The Internet on Redox - <AUTHOR> http://www.redox-os.org/news/the-internet-on-redox/ <comment><USER2> BDFL here!

Redox OS is a Operating system written in Rust.

\- You can find more information at our website: [https://www.redox- os.org](https://www.redox-os.org)

\- See the code at our github repository: [https://github.com/redox- os/redox](https://github.com/redox-os/redox)

\- See all of our repositories at our github organization: [https://github.com/redox-os](https://github.com/redox-os)

Cross post from /r/rust: [https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/4v3r0a/the_internet_o...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/4v3r0a/the_internet_on_redox_a_rust_operating_system/)

<comment><USER3> Key features on the homepage match my recommendations to Rust/seL4 project head. The amount of commit activity and features outmatched anything I'd have expected from that or this project. That you all started with strong architecture, strong language, and strong _effort_ in something that might end up practical is very impressive. I rarely see that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow. Haven't looked at Redox in about a year. The progress, that's amazing! Great work!

<comment><USER2> Thanks! We have gone from a hobby unikernel to a real Unix-like OS in one year.

<comment><USER5> It's extremely cool! Congrats!</comment></comment></comment>


A Low Poly – CSS Only – Beating Heart Animation - <AUTHOR> http://codepen.io/morkett/full/VjByYj/ <comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/4vc69x/a_low_po...](https://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/4vc69x/a_low_poly_css_only_beating_heart_animation/)</comment>


A Comparison of Four Algorithms Textbooks (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://porgionesanke.wordpress.com/2016/07/11/a-comparison-of-four-algorithms-textbooks/ <comment><USER2> The criticism of Knuth's use of MIX seems a bit off because:

\+ Assembly language level instruction execution is a good way of talking about the running time of algorithms at a finer level of detail than Big O notation. Finer grain than Big O is helpful when analyzing and optimizing programs.

\+ MIX is a good abstraction of the Von Neumann architecture and that's where the analysis of actual programs occurs.

\+ MIX programs are still accessible to a general auidence 50 years after they were written. No actual programming language available in 1967 is still similarly accessible to such a degree.

\+ MMIX is the successor of MIX...but in so far as learning MIX is an issue, it's more complex child probably is not an improvement.

The art of MIX is that it keeps the reader's focus on the fact that computer programs ultimately load registers, read memory, execute mathematical primatives, and branch no matter what object-oriented, functional, or type safe abstractions a high level language might offer.

<comment><USER3> This seems to be a point where reasonable people may differ. I generally go to Knuth when I'm really stuck--not just how to do something but sometimes how to frame the problem so it can be solved. In that sense MIX does not make much difference since it's the discussion and backing mathematics that are most interesting.

On the other hand outside of OS and embedded systems people very few people regularly look at assembler, so for many people it's no longer an effective lingua franca for sample implementations. It's a bit like reading Principia Mathematica in the original Latin--sure, some people can do it but it's not the best way to transfer information to a broad audience. Personally I would be happy with some variant of C--the syntax is very broadly understood and the language is close enough to the hardware that implementation concepts come across clearly.

<comment><USER2> I've got nothing against C. C was not around when Knuth published the first (1968), second (1969), and third (1973) volumes. [1] By inventing a programming language, Knuth was able to avoid syntactic changes between versions (e.g. K&R C looks odd for someone who started with one of the ANSI C's).

At the time, 'best practice' might have been Algol 60 or maybe Algol 68 because they were what it meant to be a standard language in those days even though implementations varied widely.

[1]: Whether C would have been a reasonable choice the time of the fourth (2011) volume is another matter.

<comment><USER4> Neither Algol 60 nor Algol 68 were very good choices, but it was basically them or FORTRAN which were used back then in published algorithms.

Algol 60 was the forbearer of most modern programming languages. However, implementations of Algol 60 were all a bit different and even after the the revised report came out a few years later there remained serious ambiguities in the meaning of common Algol 60 constructs, see for example [1]. Other aspects of Algol 60, for example the use of call-by-name argument passing semantics, made it not entirely suitable as a means of communicating algorithms.

Algol 68, had, for many years, essentially no conforming implementations. The language was remarkably orthogonal, every aspect seemed to be fully generalized and usable everywhere in the language, but it was too complicated. At least, it had a concept of I/O, which Algol 60 lacked. Some algorithms were published in Algol 68, but I didn't see many of them.

In this environment, Knuth's books were quite valuable. The algorithms, while not structured or written as we see them now were clear and unambiguous and were written for a time when compilers didn't perform advanced code- optimizations; Knuth's careful designs included optimizations that we would leave to compilers today when talking about algorithms.

Eventually, Pascal came along and it became possible to publish algorithms in an easy to read and unambiguous way. (It was still uncommon to see code formatted in any consistent way. See Wirth's own books!) Pascal wasn't perfect, but it was easy to understand and implementations were portable and widely available.

[1] Knuth, The remaining trouble spots in Algol 60*, [https://atlas.cs.virginia.edu/~asb/teaching/cs415-fall05/doc...](https://atlas.cs.virginia.edu/~asb/teaching/cs415-fall05/docs/algol-3.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm surprised, but I like this (I typically don't like or agree with textbook comparisons, but I think this tour is mostly right). The Sedgewick text, _Algorithms_ should be in there too but the author apparently didn't read that.

My own experience basically agrees: I've read and enjoy Skiena, it's written in clear style and it's the "cover to cover" text for a working developer or for interview practice. But I also have TAOCP and CLRS on my shelf, and I haven't read either of them. I've certainly _used_ both of them a lot, but I simply haven't read all of them because I use them more as reference texts.

Personally I find it bothersome that these textbooks are written with idiosyncratic pseudocode. In my opinion, many of these authors lose their grasp of common implementation difficulties if they don't provide students with working code that will compile and run. It's easy to throw down the theory and some okay-ish pseudocode while in effect saying, "...and the rest is just a minor implementation detail, which I leave as an exercise to the reader..."

<comment><USER6> The Sedgewick text is quite good but even better are his classes on Coursera! Very accessible and built around practical exercises.

<comment><USER7> I found the assignments to his class to be really weird and challenging. The first one had you fill in a few functions of a half-complete percolation simulation, but without having written the other part of it, it felt like having to reverse engineer and guess at the solution. There was no real way to measure your progress. Either it runs or it doesn't, and there's no incremental progression towards a solution.

I'm curious if anyone else experienced this or could point out where I went wrong. I really wanted to do the class and I liked the lectures, but i started it after finishing Gardner's Stanford algorithms Coursera class which had some of my favorite exercises ever. They had you write an algorithm in it's entirety, gave you sample data sets to check against, and let you write it in any language. Compared with that, Sedgwick's assignments were like coding with one hand tied behind my back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Honestly, I'm blown away that someone has actually read cover to cover Knuth, CLRS, Dasgupta and Skiena. Is this a common thing? Has anyone here done something similar? For years I've had the textbooks of CLRS and Skiena at home (and a pdf of Dasgupta) but they are used only in the event I need to drill down to understand a particular algorithm to solve a particular problem. I feel that the most effective use of my time is to have a birds view of the landscape (i.e understand the categories of algorithms and the problems they solve) and dive down only when I actually need to know the nitty gritty to implement a solution for a real problem. I can understand the joy of learning them all just for fun, but who has the time? I wonder if he did all the exercises too... :-)

<comment><USER9> Where does it say that he has read all these books cover to cover?

<comment><USER10> Generally when someone writes a review this in-depth, this is assumed. Not always accurate, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Many grad level algorithm courses still use Dexter C. Kozen's book The Design and Analysis of Algorithms, Springer-Verlag, 1992. It's a timeless book with clear analysis.

There's also this excellent free draft on analysis of common undergrad algorithms for parallelism [http://www.parallel-algorithms- book.com/](http://www.parallel-algorithms-book.com/)

TAOCP is more than an algorithms book, Knuth even have strategies for writing lengthy programs from scratch, how to build test libraries, how to optimize a program to make it cache memory friendly ect.

</comment><comment><USER12> I became curious about quantum computing a few years ago. Googling around, I came across the QC chapter in Dasgupta. I found their description of the topic to be excellent, exactly what I was searching for. They provide a substantive presentation of QC, as contrasted with many "pop sci" hand-wavy impressionistic descriptions of QC. They tactfully avoid a few of the extremely difficult proofs, but they do give a solid mathematical underpinning for the subject. And, they convey in prose what the point of the whole thing is. Also, they forthrightly express the mysterious nature of what seems to be going on here. (If you have an N-qubit quantum computer, the universe seems to somehow maintain and manipulate a vector of 2^N complex elements as a quantum computation proceeds.)

They give a brilliant presentation of Shor's factorization algorithm, and how quantum computers offer an amazingly natural way to do FFT's (a key aspect of the Shor algorithm).

I would not contest the OP's questioning of the choice of a chapter on QC in an undergrad algorithms textbook. I would, however, offer the standard "your mileage may vary" caveat to the OP's very negative characterization. I had no idea what QC was about, and this chapter provided me with a great "on-ramp" to understanding what QC is all about.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's odd to me that the author describes CLRS as graduate-level. It (back when it was CLR and in its first edition) was the text in my undergrad Introduction to Algorithms class (taught by L!).

I agree that Sedgewick belongs in this comparison, but I can't fault the author for not having read it. I think it's the book I would most easily recommend to others; it's quite clear and has lots of very nice visualizations. I do think that Skiena deserves a special mention for explicitly being about how to come up with your own fundamental algorithms and data structures rather than just plug an existing one into your program.

<comment><USER14> CLRS was also the undergraduate textbook at my school, RIT. I didn't think it did a very good job of explaining algorithms if you didn't already have a good grasp of them.

Skiena on the other hand does a nice job of both describing the algorithm in a straightforward manner and also getting you into the algorithm headspace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Kleinberg/Tardos book that I am reading right now needs trimming for brevity. A good math text editor could, probably, easily lop off 1/3 of it without affecting its content. Otherwise I prefer it to most other algo books because its proofs are closest to how mathematicians approach their proofs. By contrast, I am confused as to why CLRS contains proofs at all. At the beginning of the book, the authors say something to the effect of actual proofs being too messy/hard so they simply wave their hands through them. But if most any intro discrete math books can do these proofs, why can't CLRS? To me it's a turn-off.

</comment><comment><USER16> Which book/website has the best exercises for developing algorithmic problem- solving skill? I've started working through Skiena's exercises, but haven't really looked at much else.

<comment><USER5> If you're actually interested in drilling algorithm exercises - in which you map a problem statement to a particular algorithm and time/space complexity, then implement the solution - competitive programming websites are the best way to practice. There's a good number of them now, including TopCoder, LeetCode, CodeForces, SPOJ, HackerRank, etc. You can typically sort the problems by difficulty or solution acceptance rate. Working through these problems requires:

1\. Breaking down a problem statement into a heuristic pattern,

2\. Analyzing the best, average and worst case complexities of possible solutions,

3\. Mapping the heuristic(s) to the data structures and algorithms with the most optimal complexity,

4\. Implementing the code and having it successfully run, with runtime performance feedback.

I think the aforementioned competition websites are better than things like Project Euler because solving the problem requires running actual code instead of just giving a correct answer. That makes them much more interactive (and harder, in my opinion), because you might have to obey particular performance or complexity constraints, and you can receive feedback about how efficient your solution is.

I wouldn't say that practicing these problems will make you a better software _developer_ , in the sense that you can develop maintainable software to solve business problems in a team setting with a large codebase, and I make no comment on whether these sorts of problems are optimal filters for tech interviews (that's a dead horse). But much like mathematics, programming (and specifically algorithm analysis) is not a _spectator sport._ You can't efficiently learn the material just by reading it, you have to do it, just as mathematical maturity comes about by solving many mathematical problems in different domains. To that particular end, I would say that competitive programming is about as perfect a formulation of practice as you can get for improving algorithmic problem-solving skills.

<comment><USER16> > I wouldn't say that practicing these problems will make you a better > software developer

I know. Apart from it being fun, I'm mostly interested for the social-proof value in interviews. I don't want to beat the dead horse either, but it's definitely a socially useful skill.

Thanks for the suggestions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Skiena is very good - Algorithms are lucidly explained - Actual code is provided - Its relatively newer but highly recommended

Have read only parts of Knuth / CLRS - They are good, but for real problems analysis , would prefer Sienna

</comment><comment><USER18> I'd actually add one thing: coding style.

Shame on me for admitting this! In fact, despite having personal CS favors like everyone, the painfully obvious subjectivity of the whole matter has always striked me as entirely futile to be taken into account for basically everything. I even worked for years of uninterrupted peace with people who would, for example, prototype pointer arguments of c/c++ functions gluing the wildcard to the type, then space then boom variable name. I've always been cool with this, even reading things like glibc's code.

This liberalism however has two exceptions: my own code obviously, a dictatorship where merciless enforcement of inflexible and rigorous coding style is accepted. But unfortunately, in algorithm books too! I know it is completely idiotic but I'd be in denial not to admit how much of a total turn off the coding style of code in algorithm books can be to me. Segdewick for example, such a wonderful book, the prose is excellent, the content really is outstanding (probably one of the most comprehensive I own), the editions I have even has a superb typeface and paper quality, unfortunately the C coding style of this book has this effect on me which makes me want to close the book immediately. I feel the same deep pain every time I have to look at it (which does happen a lot since it _is_ a great book really!). I'm actually jealous of those more advanced human beings who are able to make an abstraction of that when reading a coding book!

</comment><comment><USER19> I've used dasgupta in my ug algorithms class at Berkeley, which was actually taught by papaD one of the coauthors. I love the text because it is so concise. A great book to get started on algorithms. A good exercise is to implement them in the language of your choice.

</comment><comment><USER20> As a self-taught developer, I prefer the Skiena book. The topics are ordered in a way that make sense to me, and the examples are practical.

However, the other books are probably a better match for a standard university algorithm course curriculum.

</comment><comment><USER21> Can we get a comparison of Algorithms undergrad courses? :)

</comment><comment><USER22> I have Knuth's series on my bookshelf. It looks great!... especially since I haven't broken the bindings by actually reading any of it...

</comment><comment><USER23> This is an interesting read because Dasgupta is what the current OMSCS algorithms class is using.

</comment><comment><USER24> I didn't realize there were that many textbooks that just covered four algorithms.</comment>


Ask HN: Review my App - Freeciv.net - <AUTHOR> http://freeciv.net/

<comment><USER2> Why require an account? Just let me click a "Play Now" button. If you want to be fancy, you could make it like EtherPad so if I want to play a game, I could just go to freeciv.net/jeffsgame

I would not be surprised if by reducing the barrier to entry, you get three times as many players. Your bounce rate must be staggering right now.

Please implement this and then post another YC article with the stats on your bounce rate. :) I'd be very curious how big of a barrier requiring an email, etc. really is on a site like yours.

<comment><USER3> I was in the mood for playing when I checked it out. But not enough to bother with email addresses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I only have one real complaint, and that is this:

        The email or password contains invalid invalid characters.
        Only letters (A-Z) and numbers (0-9) are allowed.

What's the point in not allowing special characters in a password (serious question)?

<comment><USER3> Good question. Some banks (and other large companies) also seem to dislike them in passwords.

<comment><USER5> Some stupid rule thought up by someone that is trying to force users to make passwords that they can remember. Like some sort of Web/IT version Clippy saying, "I see you're trying to enter a password with a '+' in it. Are you sure that isn't a typo?"

Either that or their backend software is incompetent (as well as the people that made it) and can't handle pattern-matching outside of [:alnum:] or can't store character values outside of [:alnum:]. It's the same reason that there are many sites that you can't use the 'md5 a single password against the site's domain name' trick because they limit password length to 8 or 16 characters (as if they are some sort of 'accepted industry standard').

<comment><USER6> I like that idea of using some sort of standard hash and password pairing along with the domain to come up with a password that's site-unique. Is that original, or taken from somewhere?

Have you considered using base64 or some other encoding to shorten the string?

<comment><USER5> Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but the string will already be Base64 if it's human readable (I'm not trying to use character 254 as part of my password) and base64 encoding actually _grows_ the data you are encoding (since you are breaking some bytes down into two bytes to make them both human readable).

The problem being length. Human-readable (ascii-armored/whatever) hashes (md5/sha-1/sha-256) have standard lengths which are usually longer than the maximum size of the password fields.

<comment><USER6> I was assuming he was using the hex digest of the hash. You have to use some kind of ascii armoring, and base64 seemed like one that'd be reasonably safe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Internet Explorer not supported_

Awesome!

<comment><USER8> What's an IE?

btw, it would be neat if i could play on opera mini.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I see ads on the side, I may be completely misreading your intentions for having them of course (as it could just be why not?) but I am not seeing freeciv on web as being very high in traffic. Main reason is that the barrier to entry is extremely high. Without tutorials, and the way the ui is setup, it requires you to be a former civ player, and a former civ player likely has civ on their computer (or at one point). So with the free advantage gone for a lot of them (eg i have civ4 installed right now), how is this better than multiplayer civ4? my hope is that u have some cool plans for it that takes it beyond the commercial civ titles.

<comment><USER10> There is definitely an opportunity for browser-based Civilization game, though it's going to be tough to compete with Sid himself:

<http://www.facebook.com/civnetwork>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some notes:

1) I typed "G" to have a settler unit wander out into the wilderness and it founded a city on its own. That was unexpected. I'm almost certain I didn't have it in any kind of automatic mode.

2) It would be good if we had a stronger indication of which tile will be the target of an action, and possibly a preview of the path taken there.

3) More animated indicators in general of where we should be looking at any given moment would be helpful.

4) Try to test the game on a large display (I'm testing on 2560x1600). It looks fantastic, but some of the UI could be better-delineated and tightened up. It seems to be a little spread out right now.

Overall, this is awesome. Thank you for creating it! Civ is very high on a lot of people's top-10-of-all-time lists, so this should become very popular very quickly. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER12> Thanks mate, you have just destroyed my marriage.

<comment><USER13> and my finals week

<comment><USER14> and my startup

<comment><USER3> I hope you guys don't discover Nethack or Dwarf Fortress.

<comment><USER15> WebDF would be the end of all things productive for me.

<comment><USER16> WebDF could be the end of humanity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Server appears to be overloaded, just forever loading for me :(

<comment><USER18> Same here :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I signed up but the game never finished loading, so I had a play with the UI for a few minutes.

<http://i.imgur.com/fzB6i.jpg>

<comment><USER20> Is there a tutorial you could point me to that'll teach me how to make buttons with a style similar to that 'Play Now' button?

<comment><USER19> It's something that I always saw and one afternoon decided to try and replicate. You can search for "MetaLab" style buttons, but it's as simple as fine-tuning the settings for inner shadow (normal mode, white) a darker stroke, a gradient overlay and a subtle drop shadow.

That's probably not my best ever example of that button style either.

EDIT: A pretty poor substitute [http://blog.creativityden.com/design-a-pixel- perfect-menu-me...](http://blog.creativityden.com/design-a-pixel-perfect-menu- metalab-style/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Edit: nevermind what I wrote below. I just figured out I didn't understand the controls. Would it be impossible to create "drag and drop" for units?

I tried a single-player game in Firefox (3.5), but it hardly reacts to my input (even though top tells me it's barely consuming any cycles). I thought I'd give it a try with the Chromium Beta (but couldn't login anymore, so I created a second account) too - same thing there though.

In any case: love the idea!!!

<comment><USER22> Cool! Works for me on a firefox 3.6b4, but I found the interface a bit clumsy and lacking visual feedback, and also some may not notice the commands area in the lower-right corner. Otherwise, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> You've done a good job.

I've been looking through the sources and found the "patches" directory. It would be cool if you had comments on top of every patch why it is needed.

</comment><comment><USER24> Chrome says "Waiting for freeciv.net..." but nothing loads.

</comment><comment><USER25> In the chat console, the blue text on black/dark grey background is totally unreadable.

So far I'm very impressed.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reviews from everyone. I'll use this to improve the game soon.

</comment><comment><USER26> That was one of tasks on my list of "Projects to do before I die"!

checked out, love when people are making things real, thanks man

Ah, then next one is tough, "have threesome with japanese twins".

</comment><comment><USER27> It hangs. (2 minutes pass) No! But still slooow</comment>


Teenager sells kidney for iPad 2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8552195/Chinese-teen-sells-his-kidney-for-an-iPad-2.html

<comment><USER2> He's going to have a hell of a time thinking of what to sell to buy apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let's hope he does something amazing with his new gear. I don't think it would make up for the kidney, but maybe he can be the next whoever and make this merely a footnote in his personal success story. Hopefully. Otherwise it would just be a tragic waste.</comment></comment>


Experience: my zip wire failed at 500ft - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jun/22/experience-my-zip-wire-failed-at-500ft <comment><USER2> Since the cable slipped past her husband on the platform, I'm guessing the anchor failed.

Zip lines _can_ have a ton of tension on them, that's terrifically scary.</comment>


Only three metrics matter for your online business - <AUTHOR> http://www.wingify.com/conversion-blog/only-three-metrics-matter-for-your-online-business/

<comment><USER2> Fine, but if you really want to test some of these you need further data. If you're not getting monthly growth in paid users it could be 1) because your conversion rate has tanked, 2) the number of free users has tanked, 3) the number of first time visitors has tanked, and / or 4) your adwords account ran out of money six weeks ago and you weren't measuring it.

Without that data you can try to "get alarmed and act accordingly" all you want, but you won't have any idea where to start.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agreed that data is needed if you want to act. But the metrics should serve as top-level benchmark which tell if things are going well or aren't. If they aren't, investigating why is the case so can only be done using the data.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who's Looking for a Co-founder? (February 2011 Edition) - <AUTHOR>

Anyone looking for a co-founder, either to join their project, or to join someone else, reply with your idea or what you're looking to join, and contact info.
I'll go first:
[Cupertino, CA] I'm working on a dashboard/inbox-like web app for all your stuff online. It indexes and allows you to organize your photos, videos, posts, and other media and access them from anywhere. Unlike pure personal search, like Greplin, this app organizes related media and presents it more like a graphical lifestream than a list of search results.
I've been building the backend (node.js, MongoDB, ElasticSearch) for a couple of months now, and I'm looking for a frontend developer who's interested in design/UX, excited about building an interactive web app (HTML5, CSS3) and tackling some interesting visual organization problems.
Interested? a [at] unoc [dot] net <comment><USER2> [RTP (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill) NC]

I am. I'm working on an open-source Enterprise 2.0 project; elements include social-networking (eg, a Facebook'ish piece, but intended for organizational use), knowledge management / discovery (using tagging, collaborative filtering, automatic text classification, semantic-web tech, etc.) and social- search.

The technology stack is primarily Groovy (Grails for the front-end bits); but there is some Java code. As some functionality spins off into standalone services, I'm considering either Scala or Clojure, but no firm decision has been made yet.

More details on the current state of things can be found at <http://code.google.com/p/screwpile>, and there's a demo of a very early prototype of one of the components, at

<http://spdemo.fogbeam.org:8080/neddick1/>

I'm looking for one or possibly two co-founders.

For one, I'd like to work with someone who is a top-notch UI/UX person with strong skills in terms of design, HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc. and who can handle making the UI a strength.

For the other, I'm looking for somebody with a background in the sales / marketing / business development world... preferably somebody with actual experience doing B2B software sales, and actually closing sales. Any technical background would be a huge plus as well.

I'm in North Carolina and would prefer a co-founder to be local, but I won't categorically rule out working with someone remote, depending on the details.

I'm at a point where I feel like it's time to get into Customer Development seriously, and do the "get out of the building" thing and start getting feedback from potential customers; so that's a goal for the short-term, just to give you an idea of where this is at. Also, this is completely self-funded at the moment, but seeking outside investment is absolutely in the cards when this starts to look like it has some legs.

Finally... the (existing) code is out there, and Apache licensed... if anybody is interested on hacking on this stuff, but not interested in being a co- founder, feel free to jump in.

Interested? fogbeam [at] gmail [dot] com

</comment><comment><USER3> I am. Here's a hackernewers profile: <http://www.hackernewsers.com/users/emrahyalaz.html>

</comment><comment><USER4> Free, open commerce database. The aim is to help people learn more about products, manufacturers, retailers. My mail is: am at octopus dot org.</comment>