Turning the Arduino Uno into an Apple II - <AUTHOR> http://dpeckett.com/turning-the-arduino-uno-into-an-apple

<comment><USER2> Great project! I released my own Arduino based microcomputer today and it is interesting that we implemented similar things in a different way (eg, I implemented composite video and not VGA; how different would have been my project if I had gone the other way!).

I discarded early on emulating a complete machine, so I just emulated the 6502 CPU and focused on getting CC65 cross-compiler working with my machine. I'm impressed you managed to emulate the Apple II. Kudos!

<comment><USER3> Awesome work, your avr computer is really impressive! So similar and yet so different! Emulating the Apple II was relatively easy, not a lot of extra hardware.

Haven't tried cross compiling anything yet, sounds really cool. Nice work on the Mandelbrot demo!

<comment><USER2> You shouldn't have any problems with CC65 (specially if you're emulating the Apple II!). In my case it took a good amount of work just to get a "hello world" using printf ;)

And re:Mandelbrot... thanks! it took 2 hours and 13 minutes to render that Mandelbrot in ascii :) Because my design with external SRAM I have around 2.2464MHz free after dealing with the video generation (composite video timing is so expensive!), but the extra overhead of the compiler has to be added on top of that (plus fixed float point numbers in a 6502 emulated in an AVR...).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Author here, this is one post out of a series [http://dpeckett.com](http://dpeckett.com), if this stuff interests you, feel free to follow my twitter: [https://twitter.com/damianpeckett](https://twitter.com/damianpeckett).

<comment><USER4> Very neat project. Also, your vga tricks are really really cool. I havn't seen anything like it but I feel like it should be much more visible!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Emulating the 6502 is in itself is a significant undertaking so this phase took on the order of a week or two."

Don't know if the author was bragging or what, but it reminds me of the fact that Woz designed and created all of the hardware and software for the original Apple and Apple II. Nicely done for it's time. I wonder if anyone can create something would be equivalent to today's systems.

<comment><USER3> Author here. I meant that in earnest, getting the emulator 6502 compatible was a large part of the project. But it did come together in about ten days, on the order of 70 hours.

There's something about these old systems, you can fit the whole system into your mental working memory. Just can't do that with todays abstractions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now if only someone could get Arch running on a toaster... Seriously impressive work, and as ever a fascinating explanation!

</comment><comment><USER5> This is seriously nice. We keep hearing about how much more powerful today's processors are compared to yesterday's stuff. Here is a project that demonstrates that power.

</comment><comment><USER7> But can I play The Oregon Trail on it?

</comment><comment><USER8> This is great!</comment>


Make Google Search Real-Time With This URL Hack - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/make_google_search_real-time_with_this_url_hack.php <comment><USER2> A related article describes Google's plans with regard to realtime searches.

[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/larry_page_on_real_time...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/larry_page_on_real_time_google_we_have_to_do_it.php)

Everything is going realtime. It makes me wonder what the effects on quality will be.

<comment><USER3> Well, as long as there is an option... maybe it won't be _so_ bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We're approaching the point where the amount of time between one person knowing something and everyone knowing it is approaching zero. What do you think it'd be like to exist as part of a collective consciousness like that? When do I get my bio-port ??

<comment><USER3> So as soon as one person 'knows' that the moon-landing was faked we all do? I'll decline on that bio-port unless it's _just_ an interface to my computer (i.e. limited access to my nervous system), and not some borg collective device.</comment></comment>


Can anyone vouch for these ssl best practices? - <AUTHOR> https://cipherli.st/ <comment><AUTHOR> For the past year or so I have been using the following with NGINX:

ssl_session_timeout 1d;

ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:50m;

ssl_session_tickets off;

ssl_protocols TLSv1.2;

ssl_ciphers EECDH+AESGCM:EECDH+AES;

ssl_ecdh_curve secp384r1;

ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;

ssl_stapling on;

ssl_stapling_verify on;

add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15768000; includeSubdomains; preload";

add_header X-Frame-Options DENY;

add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff;</comment>


ACM ICPC 2010 World Finals - <AUTHOR> http://184.108.40.206/icpc2010/finals.html

<comment><USER2> From Petr Mitrichev, one of the best programming contest programmers in the world, if not the best.

<comment><USER3> Here's his TopCoder profile: [http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=10574...](http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=10574855)

More complete results here: [http://cm.baylor.edu/ICPCWiki/Wiki.jsp;jsessionid=DDAD0FF793...](http://cm.baylor.edu/ICPCWiki/Wiki.jsp;jsessionid=DDAD0FF7938BF90C73C0D917AF29F681?page=Results%20World%20Finals%202010)</comment></comment>


Vimium - the hacker's browser - <AUTHOR> http://vimium.github.com/ <comment><USER2> Vimperator for Firefox does the same. <http://vimperator.org/vimperator>

One hint: have an alternate browser for normal users to use when they borrow their laptop for a second. Because not having an address bar or any icons or tabs tends to confuse them :)

<comment><USER3> (You don't want to let anybody else use your browser profile. Especially with all those "smart" address bars. Rather set up a guest account and switch to it. It's also very useful for presentations. Recent Linux distros makes user switching very easy and reliable, so it's worth doing even for a very short sessions.)

<comment><USER4> (I agree, but why are we whispering?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been using this for a little while and have been really liking it.

I wish there was an option to make it so you would have to manually switch to insert mode, I hate having it automatically switch and find myself doing the wrong thing - either typing and find myself jumping around, or trying to jump around and having it not do that.

I wish ctrl+f didn't pop up the chrome search box though and actually scroll down a full page...

I also wish the searching was more fully featured like vims, for example the * key to search for the word would be great, and being able to :set noignorecase would be nice.

I also have in my mental model of vim that ctrl-t is backwards in the tagstack, so I often hit ctrl-t to go backwards in history and accidentally open a tab. Until they allow remapping of keys, theres not much to do about that one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good suggestions. Feel free to file these as feature requests on GitHub. Let us know what platform you're on because Ctrl+F shouldn't be bringing up the find interface.

We do allow remapping of keys. Check out the settings page.

<comment><USER6> "unmap all" would be nice so that you don't have write 30 lines blasting the defaults if you want to go custom :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Will do -- likely tonight. <http://github.com/philc/vimium/issues/issue/116>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lightweight alternatives (to heavyweight Chrome and Firefox):

xxxterm; <http://www.peereboom.us/xxxterm/html/>

uzbl; <http://uzbl.org/>

surf; <http://surf.suckless.org/>

vimprobable2; <http://www.vimprobable.org/>

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't exactly call Chrome heavyweight. It runs fine on my 10 year old thinkpad running an Lxde desktop (256 MB, 550Mhz machine).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Vimium brings me one step closer to never having to use a mouse. Hints mode and vim-style navigation keys are my favorite features. ? (shift-/) brings up a handy shortcut overlay. A must-have if you live in vim.

<comment><USER10> And brings _me_ one step farther from never having to use a keyboard. Well, actually no it doesn't affect me at all -- but I do hate keyboards.

<comment><USER11> It seems to me that people just don't like switching between input schemes.

If most of your interaction with the computer is done by typing - in a text editor or at the command line, for example - then being able to use the keyboard for those other actions like switching tabs, scrolling windows, opening files, etc. allows you to stay in the same "input mode" for longer chunks of time.

I'm not so familiar with vim, but it seems that it's so popular because of all of those keyboard shortcuts allow people to interact with the computer consistently without having to interrupt their "flow".

If switching from mouse to keyboard (or vice versa) involves a little bit of extra cognitive processing, that adds up over time and can make your experience just a little bit slower and more frustrating. I guess switching between different keyboard shortcut schemes can have the same sort of effect, so having those same mappings of keystroke(s) --> computer action(s) available across multiple programs must be satisfying to the people who have adopted them.

<comment><USER12> Damn, I typed a big long thing, then hit the wrong key combo and zapped it all. Is that irony?

Anyway, the gist of what I wanted to say is that when you use vim, you do a lot of thinking about how you're going to position the cursor or exactly how you're going to do a visual selection of some chunk of text. When you use something like Acme that's mouse oriented, you mostly use the keyboard to enter text, while the mouse is used to point and select text. Changing the cursor is a visual, spatial thing, as is selecting text; the mouse is ideal for this, being a two-DOF system, while the keyboard is a discrete/linear tool.

I'm a huge fan of Acme for most of my editing, but I like vi for quick stuff, plus there's a certain charm to firing up my old VT-220 or ADM-3 and hacking away. However, when I see somebody trying to do serious editing in vim, flailing away madly to move the cursor to the right place and do that funky funky visual selection thing, I get impatient and a bit ticked; he feels busy because he's slamming all these keys, but I just keep wondering what the hell is taking so long.

Vimperator and this new Chrome extension have a good idea in providing keyboard shortcuts that are both extremely brief (one keystroke, no need for Ctrl combos) and pretty familiar to people who use vi. However, people should be mindful of the best uses of _all_ their input devices, not merely the keyboard (which is certainly more 1337, but not always the best choice).

<comment><USER13> I actually take the opposite view. When I'm selecting text or placing a cursor, there's a discrete location between two letters I want to hit, and it can be annoying having to aim at it with a mouse and possibly miss. It also seems that vim is somewhat faster for me, though I've never measured it. Vim is definitely better for micro-scale cursor positioning--down a line or over a word or two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've missed Vimperator <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4891> since moving primarily to Chrome. It's so nice to not have to go back and forth to the mouse when coding and testing, and my brain doesn't have to shift gears as much.

<comment><USER15> same! really liked vimperator but not enough to switch to firefox.

<comment><USER16> I really like Chrome, but not enough to switch from vimperator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The home-row hints are much better than the number hints that conkeror and vimperator give you. Although I did get really good at typing numbers, thanks to conkeror.

<comment><USER18> In my opinion, Vimperator's hints are better. Vimperator only uses numbers for hints because letters are used to narrow down the results. If you are on a page with a lot of hints, just start typing a few letters contained in the link. All of the hints that don't match will disappear, greatly reducing the clutter on the screen and often only a single digit is needed.

<comment><USER19> Also, as I mentioned in my (redundant) comment further up, if your choices are narrowed down to one link, it's auto selected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How long until emaxium (to keep the same pronunciation) comes out?

<comment><USER21> Emacs users already have emacs-w3m, but it _would_ be nice to have something better.

<http://emacs-w3m.namazu.org/>

<comment><USER22> What about Conkeror?

Edit: As an emacs user, my ideal browser would be ezbl[1], but development seems to have stalled.

[1]: <http://github.com/haxney/ezbl>

<comment><USER21> > What about Conkeror?

Never heard of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Author is either blissfully unaware of, or is not giving due credit to, Vimperator, which is incredible and was the first real Vim-enabling plugin AFAIK.

Great to see someone bringing this to another browser, though.

<comment><USER17> Since the link hints are exactly like vimperator's, I'm sure he's seen vimperator before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm using Vimium as a key tool in my efforts to become completely mouseless.

[http://luigimontanez.com/2010/mouseless-monday-1-vimium- goog...](http://luigimontanez.com/2010/mouseless-monday-1-vimium-google- chrome/)

<comment><USER25> I like your website and the concept behind it, but let me just say that the moving star background is really distracting. You should do something about that.

<comment><USER26> <http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>

<comment><USER27> Thanks! I did several times use manually "Inspect Element" and then delete stuff and add margins..

edit: well, hum, strangely, it does not work so well on some pages, skipping section's titles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Okay, I've made the jump. Now I feel the pain of those using audible or other non-mouse driven browsers when I stumble across a site (e.g. our very own Hacker News) that has multiple identical link texts that go to very different places.

It's slightly better in Vimium, with Vimperitor I try to type the unique number of comments on a story as a shortcut and end up following some random link.

Also, the default setting in Vimperitor to follow the link as soon as you type a key that uniquely identifies it crazy. It means you have to be paying attention to every link text on the page or else the remainder of your typing gets given to the next page as commands. You can :set fh=1 in order to force it to wait for enter.

<comment><USER29> Protip: In Vimperator, when using hints to follow an "x comments" link, hit backslash prior to typing the number of comments. Escaped, Vimperator will interpret the numbers as text to be searched rather than link identifiers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Call me oblivious, but having never used emacs, vi or vim I love my GUI I'm sold. This is incredibly helpful since I use a USB keyboard with my laptop and frequently don't feel like reaching across my desk to get to the mouse.

Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER16> The things I'm really feeling are missing are being able to open a new tab with a URL by only typing one key more than the URL itself. In Vimperator this is "t", but with all the chrome-based vim-ish plugins so far I have to open up a new tab, focus the location bar, then type what I want. Sometimes that covers the tab I was looking at so I can't reliably see the spelling of what I wanted to type. This one is huge for me, and is one of my most used commands after "d".

<comment><USER31> You can do almost the same thing in chrome without any plugins. Just replace t with Ctrl-L and when you hit enter after the URL hold down ALT (to get a new tab). Same number of keystrokes, slightly more acrobatic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Opera also has it's vim bindings. Works quit OK, although not as good as vimperator. <http://my.opera.com/Blazeix/blog/vimperator-for-opera> (Note: this is not an extension, just a set of bindings, still the behaviour is pretty close to vimperator)

</comment><comment><USER33> What I really miss is the '?' shortcut in Firefox for searching on the page only in links. (There might be a different key combination for US keyboards)

If chrome would implement that, my life would improve at least 5%

it makes navigating though links very easy and much more intuitive than the link search that's demoed in the video.

<comment><USER34> It's ' in my (en-US) version of Firefox. And agreed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Alright... I said I didn't like it, but with this, I'll give Chrome another try.

</comment><comment><USER36> See also: Vrome. <http://github.com/jinzhu/vrome>

I'd love to switch completely but neither of these seem as polished as Vimperator.

</comment><comment><USER37> Is there a way to hide the chrome address bar and toolbar?

</comment><comment><USER38> Fwiw, you can have basic vim shortcuts binded to google search results:

<http://www.google.com/experimental/>

</comment><comment><USER8> I like and I'm using it, now, but the extension or possibly the extension hooks have some shortcomings. For example, J and K move forward and backward between tabs, except that it fails on certain pages, like gmail (likely JavaScript interference), so you get stuck unless you use Chrome's built-in Ctrl-PageUp or Ctrl-PageDown commands which still work to switch between tabs.

<comment><USER39> Their settings page allows you to disable this plugin on GMail.

<comment><USER8> How exactly does that help?

<comment><USER40> It explains why the shortcuts don't work on Gmail, they are disabled by default on google domains, see the preferences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Doesn't work with international keyboards...

</comment><comment><USER42> Any way to start embedded youtube? f doesn't seem to include it.

Also ^fbud don't work for me (ubuntu), maybe not overridable?

</comment><comment><USER39> Wow. This is awesome. The shortcuts don't work in GMail but that's expected.

EDIT: You can disable the plugin for GMail by going to Settings and entering mail.google.com in 'Excluded URLs' box.

BTW, has anyone figured out how to focus on a textbox area on the page? Also, what does the 'insert' mode do?

<comment><USER5> Insert basically passes keystrokes through directly without having them perform their special function - for example when you are typing into a text area. Its basically like switching from normal mode to insert mode in vi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just installed Chrome to try this. I use a lot of keyboard shortcuts in Safari already so the one thing that stands out as awesome in this is the keyboard link picker (i.e. f or F). Please tell me there's something similar out there for Safari.

<comment><USER43> Unfortunately Safari doesn't really have a well-developed extensions system. Until they add one, extensions like this will only be available for chrome and firefox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Is there a way in chrome just to get textarea to shunt to external editor (in my case vim)? Firefox has something for this and it's simple and unobtrusive, but all the Chome solutions seem heavyweight. Any tips?

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm loving it, but I have a silly question: Is it possible to close the help menu _without_ mousing over to click the [x]? I can't seem to find a key-combo for this.

<comment><USER43> In addition to escape, link hints (type "f") also work on that [x] button.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Thank you so much for posting this. It is amazing how you can spend years doing something and realize it doesn't make sense anymore :-)

</comment><comment><USER47> Wow, this is amazing and I'm now using Chrome fulltime. Anything to not have to use the Dell mini 10v's trackpad with OS X. ;)

</comment><comment><USER48> vimium.com is available.

</comment><comment><USER49> How does this detect if there are already key-events set for a web-application such as gMail?

</comment><comment><USER50> Does it interfere with Gmail's vi-inspired keyboard shortcuts?

<comment><USER51> It seems to be automatically disabled for any Google domains like Gmail or Google search.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> The shortcuts don't seem to work in GMAIL

<comment><USER53> Check the option; you can disable some site. If I remember well, disabling gmail is given in example. And, Gmail already has some kind of vim shortcut.. you might want to disable them if you like the chrome version better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Awesome! Just switched away from Safari.

<comment><USER6> Do the same and my bookmarks will no longer get synced with my iPhone. This is cool enough that I'm swaying that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> having been using Vimperator for a long time now. How is this comparing to Vimperator?

</comment><comment><USER52> what's the shortcut to play the video on the page?

</comment><comment><USER56> Breaks Google Wave

</comment><comment><USER57> ctrl+u and ctrl+d seems quite inconvenient given that they're miles apart on the keyboard. two handed page-up scrolling? I guess you need to be a vim user for it to make sense. Presumably the page-up and page-down buttons work too.

</comment><comment><USER58> Vim can be used to write things other than code, so the "hacker" thing is needless...I think that if vim were recognized as simply a powerful editor, not specialized for code, it could save many everyday people a lot of time.

I say that this is a vim user's browser.

<comment><USER59> yes dude, but how many technical writer uses vim as their editor?

<comment><USER60> I do.</comment></comment></comment>


Scrutiny of Security Startups May Signal Shift in Venture Funding - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/03/technology/scrutiny-of-security-start-ups-may-signal-shift-in-venture-funding.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting quote in the article: _"I've never seen a company go out of business from dilution, but I have seen companies go out of business because they didn't raise enough money," he said._

I've seen companies go out of business because they raised too much money. In those cases the extra money dulled their cost controls and made a subsequent raise "too rich" and nobody who was already invested would take the down round hit. Result everyone lost.</comment>


Why organizations move towards Hybrid and multi clouds - <AUTHOR> https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2019/02/28/why-multi-matters-in-your-hybrid-and-multi-cloud-strategy/ <comment><USER2> Great points on why hybrid and multi cloud is here to stay!

The important distinction is that all of us are going to have the "multi" experience within Hybrid boundaries. Running such an environment seamlessly would require extensive coordination across infrastructure, network and application layers. This is where vendors have the opportunity to innovate simplified and beautiful experience.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some more reasons why hybrid and multi cloud is here to stay..

\- If you acquire a company – they could be using a different cloud – so you are now forced to use multiple clouds.

\- Migration from physical DC to cloud could take time, so you end up using multiple clouds

\- One cloud vendor could give you an irresistibly sweet deal to start adopting it

\- Some clouds are better in certain aspects (ML,BigQuery good in GCP; Bandwidth costs low in AWS etc)

\- Avoid vendor lock in so that one vendor cannot raise costs too high

\- You build your infra to be one vendor agnostic, so you start using 'Infra as a code' tools like Terraform

</comment><comment><USER3> Different teams in the same organization move to different type of clouds based on their needs. This is one of the reason for the increase in the average number of clouds in a organization</comment>


Plate IQ (YC S15) Turns Paper Invoices into Predictive Insights - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/08/plate-iq/ <comment><USER2> My company currently does this using enterprise-grade software, and I'm deeply familiar with the problem area. The article quotes the guy as hearing the problem and saying:

\--"My instant solution was, ok we have these big devices nowadays… why can't we use them to capture these invoices, use technology to convert that image into text and extract information out of these invoices," he adds. "It was pretty much a bottoms up approach."--

Yeah... no. I'm afraid it is much, much more challenging than he realizes. Here's a quick, non-exhaustive summary:

1\. Most paper invoices are printed and then either mailed or faxed. Sometimes the vendor's accounting staff manually annotate (e.g. hand-writing) the printed paper with additional information that didn't exist on their accounting system (e.g. purchase order number). By the time the invoice arrives at the AP department, the quality of writing on it can be atrocious, which greatly affects the accuracy of OCR. So you need to use complex image processing on the invoice first, and then OCR it. You may also need ICR to read hand-written information.

2\. A lot of vendors change their invoice formats on a regular basis (e.g. by changing to a different template on QuickBooks). This means that whatever machine-learning you use to process a vendor's invoices will be invalidated when the format changes.

3\. Smaller vendors, such as mom-and-pop shops that restaurants sometimes deal with, are very undisciplined about their invoicing, and can forget to put key pieces of information on the invoice, or make typos.

Over the years, I've come to realize that the only way to efficiently deal with invoices is to make sure they never become paper-based. We have been pushing our customers and their vendors to use EDI instead, which is a LOT easier to control and standardize.

<comment><USER3> I think that's just marketing speak. They'll be manually checking those invoices. But OCR greatly reduces the work compared to data entry.

Also, with scale, you have the option of getting the suppliers to move over to EDI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There are loads of companies that do that. I designed and implemented a system around 2009/2010 which did exactly the same thing for the energy market.

Certain subsets of the medical market have embedded players offering similar services.

To make real money from this you need marketshare; with that you can look for points ripe for arbitrage..

</comment><comment><USER4> Why not just eliminate the paper to begin with? It's obviously a bit tougher as you need to tackle both sides of the market at once, but not having to mail invoices means the benefit of faster payments for suppliers (maybe not a benefit to the restaurant however) and could enable just-in-time ordering from the restaurant.

It might even flip the invoicing on its head. When the restaurant orders, it creates a transaction. The supplier delivers and the restaurant completes the transaction, generating a payment. Now the restaurant can order only what it needs, faster, and the supplier receives its payment faster.

</comment><comment><USER5> Could this be applied to consumer billing, e.g. in industries with a history of complex charges, e.g. telecom and healthcare?

<comment><USER6> Yes. Absolutely.

This solution works best for industries where multiple raw materials are used and are transformed to something completely different. Manufacturing, healthcare and hotels is something can leverage a solution like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> cool idea! i actually had this idea a few years ago and went around to a few restaurants asking if they would use it - most of the chefs i approached seemed luke warm to the idea so i never went forward - glad to see they are finally coming around!</comment>


SSD Prices in Free-Fall: The Next DRAM? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techpowerup.com/168069/SSD-Prices-in-Free-Fall-The-Next-DRAM-.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I found this interesting: "Hard drive prices refuse to budge after last year's floods that struck manufacturing facilities in Thailand, _even as manufacturers turn record profit._ "

<comment><USER2> If I were a hard drive manufacturer, and I saw the inevitable swooping-in of SSDs to replace my mainstream market, I would enter a strategy of taking profit now, because there won't be much profit to take on these devices in the future.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best Cheap web hosting - <AUTHOR>

I'm just getting into building my first website, and possibly a web app is in the works too.  What out there are some user recommended hosting services, something cheap where I can learn some basics of web hosting, and just get a site or two up with a little database.  Thanks. <comment><USER2> Dreamhost <http://dreamhost.com/>

Amazon AWS Free Tier <http://aws.amazon.com/free/>

Heroku Single/Free Web Dyno <http://www.heroku.com/>

AppEngine [http://www.labnol.org/internet/host-website-on-google-app- en...](http://www.labnol.org/internet/host-website-on-google-app- engine/18801/)

Lots of free to very inexpensive solutions that let you build on modern infrastructure.

<comment><USER3> Second dreamhost. I like them a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure about the database part, but for static hosting we use NearlyFreeSpeech.net (<https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/>), its a pay as you go service. Pretty perfect for when you don't know for sure what you'll need. You might want to check them out and read about what else they offer to see if it fits your need. I've been really happy so far.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've had a great experience so far with WebFaction: <http://webfaction.com>

<comment><USER6> I second webfaction too. I have been using them for more than 5 years now and am happy with their pricing & most importantly support. They see to it that the tickets are resolved quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As long as you're looking for PHP/MySQL I've been very happy with Hostgaor for small stuff. Pretty cheap, pretty good tech support.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have worked with Inmotion a lot, they have great customer service. And reasonable prices for shared hosting @ About $6 a month. (I also have one of my dedicated servers with them.)

I brought down their some of their servers once and yet they were still very cool about the whole thing. < sarcasm >Who knew 10,000 concurrent connections could bring down a server </sarcasm> (Yes it was intentional, but no I was not doing anything "really bad")</comment>


IndexTank replace companies with Compatible API - <AUTHOR>

On April 10th 2012 IndexTank will shut down their servers.
I suggest to build a list of IndexTank compatible API companies.
Open Source Version: https://github.com/linkedin/indextank-engine
Searchify: http://www.searchify.com/ (Running the full open sourced IndexTank Search as a Service API)
IndexDen: http://indexden.com/ (IndexTank Compatible API - builded on top of Sphinx Search)
HoundSleuth: http://www.houndsleuth.com/ (IndexTank Compatible API)
IndexTanktoGO: http://launch.indextanktogo.com/ (IndexTank Compatible API)
Probably some more companies should be mentioned here. <comment><USER2> I've been using Searchify since early beta and it's been rock solid. All I needed to do for our indexes was change the URL and key and it just worked. If you were happy with IndexTank you should be just as happy with Searchify.</comment>


Why Android-phones will never be at par with the iPhone (but still win) - <AUTHOR> http://viktorpetersson.com/2010/11/06/why-android-phones-will-never-be-at-par-with-the-iphone-but-still-win/ <comment><USER2> Odd. He claims that almost no phones are running 2.2, when it was 28% back in September:

[http://www.androidcentral.com/android-22-froyo- already-28-pe...](http://www.androidcentral.com/android-22-froyo- already-28-percent-android-phones)

<comment><USER3> My Phone(HTC Tattoo) still has 1.6, and it may never get an official update.</comment></comment>


How to find new startup ideas? The answer is in the question. - <AUTHOR> http://killall.dashnine.org/2009/06/how-to-find-new-startup-ideas/

<comment><USER2> There's an interesting story hiding between the lines in the post.

The first two ventures, polishmywriting and kindling, seems to me to be great ideas - yet the author failed even though he had a working product. The third product made it because of good press. It seems like talent and hard work has gone into making these products, and the first two shouldn't have failed outright. What went wrong?

In one word: Sales. This is an often overlooked component of doing a tech- startup. founders spend their time making a great product and rely on the techcrunch effect (or the slashdot effect, word of mouth, call it what you want) to sell the product. Unless you're really lucky, or have an extraordinarily good product this approach won't make you money. The article is a great example of someone making a product, and then giving up when noone comes to the website to buy it. Selling it is at least as much work as creating it. Pick up the phone and call potential customers, go to tradeshows, stop people in the street, sell to all the people you meet in your local bar. It works.

Note - I'm not in anyway trying to degrade the author (or anyone else). It's an easy mistake to make, especially if selling isn't really your thing. I've made this mistake myself.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're dead on. One day I'll write about how I kept hitting my head against the wall, figured it out, and made $$$ then I'll write an innovators guide to selling. You'll know about it because I'll be that good by then. I'm not there yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I remember seeing the service and asking you why one wouldn't just go to Mechanical Turk.

Another hidden lesson : Making something very simple to use (and adding a polished UI) can be a winning formula.

Smart idea, I say.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been meaning to do a post like this, listing all of the dozens of things I've tried. What I've found success with is similar, try to find environments where ideas are already being proven and take the best parts. I adapted an HTML widget that was making the rounds on layout/generator sites to become a Facebook widget, and that reached 9 millions users.

What upset me though was the difficulty of monetizing some small fun widget. So next I looked at what is working on Facebook and that could also make money, and found some widgets where you can collect points to rank higher among your friends. Sort of like social games, just without the game part. I implemented a similar app, but simplified it even further. It is doing very well and is now in the top 20 apps on MySpace.

I had no success at all with ideas that were purely my own, and had to look for elements elsewhere. It's like taking ideas from nature, except in this case nature is the app ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great post. I think you highlight the real value of the HN community. High quality discussion makes listening for ideas easier as there is more signal with less noise to wade through.

There are few other places on the web where you can listen for quality ideas, discuss problems, and get feedback at a really fast (and efficient) rate.

</comment><comment><USER6> The best way to find a startup idea is to solve a problem, find problems or try to simplify or automate a task.

</comment><comment><USER7> Good post. I find it really interesting that you'd have a bunch of ideas that you did actually follow through, though I am left with the following questions:

1\. What was the timeline between the projects, how much time did you spend with them ?

2\. Whats the aftermath of PolishMyWriting and Kindling ? What did you learn, etc ? Where did it take you ?

Looking forward to a follow up post

<comment><AUTHOR> There is more to the story but I tried to stick to the main point I was making. In the future I'll cover what happened to PolishMyWriting. It's a problem I am passionate about. Eventually PMY found an audience and I used their feedback to turn it into a software service to check grammar, spelling, and style in web applications. I "launched" two weeks ago but that is a story still being written.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Peter Drucker's "Innovation and Entrepreneurship" ( [http://www.amazon.com/Innovation-Entrepreneurship-Peter-F- Dr...](http://www.amazon.com/Innovation-Entrepreneurship-Peter-F- Drucker/dp/0887306187) ) provides more in depth discussion on the topic and should serve as great food for thought.

</comment><comment><USER9> heh, polish. I was so naive back then. :)

I love your service btw. I need to use it more often, but can never find it when I need it - won't happen again.</comment>


The Disruptor In The Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/1108/best-small-companies-10-y-combinator-paul-graham-disruptor.html <comment><USER2> "Graham met Morris, an authority on the _Unix computer language_ "

Sigh...

Great article though. And a wonderful portrait of pg!

<comment><USER3> Another one: "Y Combinator--a computer term for a program that runs other programs."

Heh, sure.

<comment><USER4> On the other hand, the explanation of convertible notes and valuation caps was clear and helpful.

Great article overall.

<comment><USER5> A bit off topic, but where can I learn more about convertibles, valuation caps, FF stock, and all the legal stuff we don't learn in our engineering classes?

<comment><USER6> <http://venturehacks.com/archives>

<comment><USER7> I did not know that Naval had a site like this. Thanks!

<comment><USER6> And it functions as more or less everything you need to know about this stuff. I was able to read it as it was posted but if I was just starting the now the ebook for $20 is well worth it over clicking "previous" a whole bunch of times in the blog layout.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Graham concedes that individual YC partners have invested in a few startups that hadn't been able to attract much outside funding."

Interesting that Paul, Trevor, Robert, and Jessica (maybe Harj and Alexis now?) will backstop companies that can't raise outside money after YC. It's like the exact opposite of the signaling problem.

<comment><USER9> The first couple years I used to participate in a lot of the startups' angel rounds. Now I hardly ever do. I didn't invest in any of the startups from the most recent batch, for example.

<comment><USER2> Why the change?

<comment><USER9> Partly because I don't have as much spare money (because I bought an expensive house in Palo Alto and haven't sold my Cambridge house yet) and partly because I don't need to as much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> He is not only the Valley Disruptor, he will change how smart kids pursue their education, career ,,,,

</comment><comment><USER11> Hacker news is part of my daily diet and i have to admit that PG is Rock star. Though the amount of money he funds to YC startups is minuscule, the end result is unbelievable. I have been in the startup industry for more than a decade and to me it seems like the YC funding is more like paid mentoring.

<comment><USER12> I imagine that a great number of people who hang out on HN feel the same way, myself included.

It is great to see PG giving back to the community in such a sustainable, profitable way. He has created a product that entrepreneurs want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Never knew Paul Graham began as an artist. I'm not that surprised though. Art and programming are both forms of creative expression.

<comment><USER14> Paul mentions these origins in his essay on Taste:

<http://paulgraham.com/taste.html>

After "Why Nerds Are Unpopular", it's one of my favorite things he's written.

 _"At an art school where I once studied, the students wanted most of all to develop a personal style. But if you just try to make good things, you'll inevitably do it in a distinctive way, just as each person walks in a distinctive way. Michelangelo was not trying to paint like Michelangelo. He was just trying to paint well; he couldn't help painting like Michelangelo."_

<comment><USER15> 'why nerds are unpopular' was the first paul graham essay i read in high school (as a sophomore who moved to a new high school). got me hooked =]

<comment><USER14> I read it as a senior, when the bulk of my school related angst was behind me. It was still awesome, though. I felt less alone – less like I was nuts or something for seeing school the way I had.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> of course the birkenstocks would be featured prominently...

<comment><USER17> I'm surprised they got Paul in pants -- must have been a cold day to get him to not wear shorts.

<comment><USER9> They said I had to. They also supplied the shirt.

<comment><USER18> It's a nice shirt. Did you get to keep it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Great article tho I worry that it makes raising seed $$ sound easy.

<comment><USER20> It is easy. Y Combinator's application process is designed to take only an hour or two, though it can take much longer if you have to figure out what your company is going to make at the same time. But you have to figure that out anyway -- it's not really a difficulty of raising seed money.

Y Combinator is very selective, but there are many other incubator / tech accelerator programs where the bar is not so high.

<comment><USER21> But even failing the YC application would be a valuable learning experience - if YC won't invest in you, you'd do well to consider why.

<comment><USER2> Then again, as pg himself says, the better you are, the less of a "real" reason that you didn't get in. If you're one of the top 100 startups in this cycle, all of which have potential, you might not make it just cause there are another 35 great companies they decide to go with.

<comment><USER19> How many YC companies failed to get in first time but got in on later applications - any knowledge on this?

<comment><USER22> see this thread <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1745802>

<comment><USER19> Thank you

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _Justin.tv, now the Web's biggest portal for live video_

umm, what? Is Justin.tv bigger than Ustream and Livestream? I seriously doubt that.

<comment><USER24> Ustream is often higher in unique views (but not always, and not currently), but Justin.tv has people stay on site almost twice as long, and has almost half the bounce rate. It certainly pumps far more video in and out (at one point at least more than even youtube, but I don't think we've measured that in a while). Livestream is a distant third. Ustream spends a lot of money projecting their image, while we just keep making sure that our product is several times better.

<comment><USER23> Thanks for info, I really had no idea. Ustream just, well, seemed like they are BIG (good marketing then). I have posted this ~17 days ago, but I had no response: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1755458>

I even emailed you guys, but got no response whatsoever. Ustream and Livestream both responded.

<comment><USER24> Just posted a comment to it (: Email may have fallen into a black hole or something. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wondering if the painting behind PG on the picture could have been one he painted himself?

</comment><comment><USER26> PG looks very Roger Sterling in that photo there.</comment>


Is this the start of the second dotcom bubble?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/feb/20/is-this-the-start-of-the-second-dotcom-bubble#

<comment><USER2> _"Is this the start of the second dotcom bubble?"_

Almost certainly. Nothing fuels a bubble like the smell of money.</comment>


Lecture 12: Building for the Enterprise - <AUTHOR> http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec12 <comment><USER2> One of the required reading is his own praising profile? And then he starts the video with a theme song??

Am I supposed to learn from him or worship his personality?

EDIT: I finished the video. Here is a too long; didn't watch as asked.

The first 18 minutes he is telling Box' history and justifying its existence. The first advice come at 7:40 - pay attention of the technological changes that are happening in the world.

He try to sell you the idea that is better to do business with enterprise because there is more money on it. Kind of the opposite as advised before about why to start a startup. And even the numbers he shows are shady. He says there are only two ways to make money on consumer tech. Consumers paying you or advertising. That sums up to a total 170 billion dollars market. Note that he leaves Apple and all sort of consumer tech that is not ads or mobile apps purchases. And then he compares that with corporate IT market of 4.7 trillion dollars. But here he includes servers and all infrastructure. Very shady sales technique comparig apples to oranges.

Then at minute 21 he finally cuts the bullshit and start to deliver content. Great content by the way. Worth watching after minute 21. If only he wasn't so Stan S. Stanman at the beginning.

<comment><USER3> There was useful high-level content in this video, but anyone who is serious about building for the enterprise should definitely study other enterprise SaaS companies. Box's financials, on the surface, are comparatively unimpressive and some of them even raise questions about the company's long- term viability[1][2]. Some folks argue that Box is in better shape than it might appear to be in[3], but this is based on assumptions which may or may not prove to be valid[4].

[1] [http://kellblog.com/2014/03/27/burn-baby-burn-a-look-at- the-...](http://kellblog.com/2014/03/27/burn-baby-burn-a-look-at-the-box-s-1/)

[2] [http://tomtunguz.com/box-ipo/](http://tomtunguz.com/box-ipo/)

[3] [http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-boxs-aaron-levie- is...](http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-boxs-aaron-levie-is-a- genius-2014-4)

[4] [http://kellblog.com/2014/05/15/the-box-s-1-delayed-ipo- and-t...](http://kellblog.com/2014/05/15/the-box-s-1-delayed-ipo-and-the- genius-of-tien-zuo/)

<comment><USER4> re: "but anyone who is serious about building for the enterprise should definitely study other enterprise SaaS companies"

Can recommend [http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas- metrics-2/](http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-metrics-2/) as a good starting point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hate content like this on HN[1].

Please, let all the Stanford kids building startups go after the consumer space... the world _needs_ more solomo-dailydeal-catpicture-ridesharing- airbnbForX apps. What it doesn't need is any more vendors selling software to businesses, who, you know, actually pay, like, money, for software.

No, really, I mean it. There is absolutely _NOTHING_ interesting about selling enterprise software. It's boring, dull, unexciting, unprofitable, gives you bad breath, causes cancer, kills puppies, and is bad for the environment. If you are thinking about an enterprise software startup, forget it. No joke. Really. Just. Don't. Do. It.

[1]: _Because I 'm greedy and don't want more competition!_

</comment><comment><USER6> My trouble with the enterprise has always been that they tend to lag when it comes to adopting new ways of doing things. As a result, if you listen slavishly to what enterprise customers tell you to build you'll be building solutions to yesterday's problems or technology for yesterday's ecosystem.

I've found more recently that this isn't always true, and it really depends on what sort of enterprise you're dealing with. Bottom line is you can't listen mindlessly to what customers say-- you have to think about the plan/vision and the where the overall market is going.

<comment><USER7> This isn't quite true.

Enterprise knows what their problems are, and you should listen to them slavishly. The issue comes in when you listen to them for what solutions to build for their problems.

They don't know what the right solution is, but they do know what the right problem is. If they knew what the right solution was, you wouldn't have a (good) business.

In finding the solution, you will sometimes address a problem enterprise wasn't even thinking about, but is much larger and solves their initial problem as well.

We ([https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com](https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com)) started as a website security scanner - we're now a developer-focused website security scanner that focuses on DevOps integrations and automating the testing process earlier, rather than later. Nobody would have asked us to build that (nobody did), but that is what sets us apart and why we're beating our competitors.

<comment><USER8> "Enterprise knows what their problems are, and you should listen to them slavishly. The issue comes in when you listen to them for what solutions to build for their problems."

So very much true. In the company I work for this principle applies to inhouse development as well. I.e the problems are obvious but the solutions not so much. We are an independent software vendor, but ownership of code is so scattered that essentially a huge portion of development is handled as if it would be done by external service providers - i.e. the driving force in development is business who know exactly what the pain points are but would want only quick hacks.

Except, those pain points are so acute that if there are ready solutions available they will authorize purchases of ridiculous amounts of cash to have them solved. I imagine this is the situation in most businesses.

Now, out of those problems some are really hard to crack, while others are just an artifact of lack of inhouse knowledge of the particular technical field. Those consultants that manage to offer viable solutions for these well known problem domains probably can earn their bread quite nicely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of my favourite points about big business is in here, and it applies equally well if you're a startup selling into a company or if you already work there.

These people are not looking for the lowest cost option, they're looking for maximum upside. Don't get stuck in a situation of selling incremental improvements with reduced costs, but work out how to spend the same you do today (or more) and get more back for it.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm fairly new to enterprise software development, but I do know that I really like working with customers that are almost always smart and/or know what they want.

The more companies that move to an agile work flow the better enterprise software development will become.

IMHO, I don't get the same enjoyment from consumer-facing projects.

</comment><comment><USER11> According to Levie, Box has 99% of the Fortune 500. Does it really count if 75 people in Toyota's marketing department uses Box to share a few hundred gigabytes of files?

The numbers don't lie: "Box's average customer value (ACV) is $3,653, much lower than the median of 59,600." [1]

They're selling "enterprise" software at SMB price points.

Setting aside security concerns, getting a big enterprise to move a substantial part of their IT infrastructure to the cloud is a logistical nightmare. Perhaps they underestimated this.

[1] [http://tomtunguz.com/box-ipo/](http://tomtunguz.com/box-ipo/)

<comment><USER12> Is this supposed to be feedback on his talk? If you watched, Levie is implementing his own suggested wedge strategy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would've hoped for less about Box's story and more focus about building an enterprise software company, but he did touch on some areas towards the latter half of the lecture. I summarized about 32 quotes (primarily for the latter half of the lecture) here: [https://medium.com/how-to-start-a- startup/32-quotes-from-aar...](https://medium.com/how-to-start-a- startup/32-quotes-from-aaron-levie-on-building-for-the- enterprise-c4b90b82bd0d)

</comment><comment><USER14> What's interesting about Box is that they've succeeded to charge enterprise clients with a service that should be a commodity by now. They've also taken the route of graduating consumer interest into enterprise use. Their quick advance into mobile was good thinking.

</comment><comment><USER15> Can someone write tl;dr of the video?

</comment><comment><USER16> As a freelancer, how do you find a customer to build a solution for?</comment>


4 myths about UX, and how to bust them - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2013/10/30/ux-myths/

<comment><USER2> It's amusing that you could replace "UX" with "Marketing" in that article, and it would make sense!

(except for the 4th myth, which may need a little bit of rewriting)</comment>


Government to Allow Companies to Disclose More Data on Surveillance Requests - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/business/government-to-allow-technology-companies-to-disclose-more-data-on-surveillance-requests.html

<comment><USER2> They can now declare how many National Security Letters and FISA requests they get in increments of 250.

That's absolutely ridiculous. It's no better than not stating at all. They also still can't state if the request is relating to terrorism, or industrial espionage under the guise of alleged crimes. For now foreign companies have to assume the worst.

It's pretty depressing knowing that the United States has one of the best, and most clear constitutions ever written. You can't misinterpret the First Amendment, and yet it's now completely void.

<comment><USER3> > It's no better than not stating at all.

I mean, it's at least _slightly_ better, right?

<comment><USER4> Of course it is, as it allows us to at least determine if "mass" surveillance is going on, as opposed to the "good old-fashioned police work" that everyone here claims to want.

<comment><USER5> No, actually. We only know the number of documents, not the number of users affected. The numbers we get to see are nearly meaningless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Analysis by Marcy Wheeler here: [http://www.emptywheel.net/2014/01/27/the-new- transparency-gu...](http://www.emptywheel.net/2014/01/27/the-new-transparency- guidelines/)

Quoting the nub of it (please note, this is all her, not me):

First, you can sort of see what the government really wants to hide with these schemes. They don't want you to know if they submit a single NSL or 215 order affecting 1000 customers, which it's possible might appear without the bands.They don't want you to see if there's a provider getting almost no requests (which would be hidden by the initial bands).

And obviously, they don't want you to know when they bring new capabilities online, in the way they didn't want users to know they had broken Skype. Though at this point, what kind of half-ased terrorist wouldn't just assume the NSA has everything?

I think the biggest shell game might arise from the distinction between account (say, my entire Google identity) and selector (my various GMail email addresses, Blogger ID, etc). By permitting reporting on selectors, not users, this could obscure whether a report affects 30 identities of one customer or the accounts of 30 customers. Further, there's a lot we still don't know about what FISC might consider a selector (they have, in the past, considered entire telecom switches to be).

</comment><comment><USER7> This is tiered justice aka not justice.

"New" companies can be less open with their users?! Is company defined by it's specific name? If Google snaps up the service, does that make it less new? If my LLC moves to another corporate form, is it "new"?

What can make the six-month delay more delayed? How indefinitely can an investigation that lasts longer than six-months take?

I'm also confused about the and/or status for NSLs, "selectors", and FISA orders. "Selectors" seems the most specific but the use of "will also be allowed" makes me question whether it's subject to the 250/1000 increment requirements at all.

</comment><comment><USER8> How kind of them to allow freedom of speech!

<comment><USER9> Define _speech_ ;)

As it is, people have been circumventing fundamental rights by calling them other names. E.G. "Disclosure" or "Leak" or "Disturbance". I understand the need to prevent certain pieces of information falling into the wrong hands, however a blanket sweep of all activities with the implicit understanding that it's _potentially_ unconstitutional, is a bit much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Makes perfect sense!

I mean, thank god. I was really worried that they weren't disclosing nearly enough of my ostensibly confidential information.

God bless America.

</comment><comment><USER11> >The Justice Department had endorsed the new rules months ago but intelligence officials argued they still revealed too much information. The breakthrough came in recent weeks with a rule requiring new companies to wait two years before publishing data.

> That provision means nobody will know whether the government is > eavesdropping on a new email platform or chat service. And itpersuaded > intelligence officials to endorse the rules, a U.S. official familiar with > the discussions said. The Justice Department proposed the changes to the > companies late last week and, by the end of the weekend, they agreed to drop > their case before the FISA court.

Does this imply that the two year waiting period (as opposed to 1-year, six month delay) is a new restriction specifically added in for new companies in order to get Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and Facebook to drop their case?

I don't expect that too many new companies would be eager to report that data, but I'm curious if this is ultimately a win for intelligence officials.

<comment><USER4> I got the impression the requirement on _new_ companies was to satisfy the Intelligence Community, not the existing tech companies.

The presumable idea being that if a new email/social provider pops up and has, say, a 2,000 subscribers after the end of the first year, saying that there have been <500 NSLs is more individually-specific than saying there were 500-1000 (or whatever) for a site like GMail or Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> More gems from the most transparent administration in US history. How stupid does he think the average American is?

<comment><USER13> Stupid enough to trust him:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/16/us/obamas-path-from- critic...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/16/us/obamas-path-from-critic-to- defender-of-spying.html)

 _He was surprised at the uproar that ensued, advisers said, particularly that so many Americans did not trust him..._</comment></comment>


Github Pull Request Triage tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.peterbe.com/plog/github-pr-triage

<comment><USER2> Neat, this should be a default feature on github.com/owner/repo/pulls page (especially showing at a glance the state of the PR)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmm.. Might just be me, but isn't that half of the job of the reviewer, to decline a PR if it isn't fixed? The one making the PR should get a notification that it is declined. Their ball.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but as noted in the post, if the pull request author misses that email notification the request goes into a purgatory. And the pull request page has not way to glance down a list and note who's on what.

This isn't an individual notification system, it's an easily-scanned list of PR states, which has quite a bit of value for many projects.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Stoplight – Visual API Tooling - <AUTHOR> http://www.stoplight.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! Stoplight is launching today. It's the worlds first visual API designer. That means anyone can use it, even Jane in customer support.

This means businesses can develop their best API by making it accessible to everyone. Ultimately this saves large companies a lot of time and money, and improves the user experience.

We're also launching API Docs today, it's hosted API documentation for every OAI (Swagger) and RAML spec out there.

I'd love to get your feedback on Stoplight, and answer any questions you might have!

</comment><comment><USER2> First impression: after looking over the homepage, the 9 "Get Started - It's FREE" buttons made me hunt in the footer for "Pricing" or more information before signing up, because usually that tactic says "free trial, but then you want my money" to me.

Second impression is that it seems like a Swagger Editor tool combined with a REST Explorer (like Postman or Advanced REST Client). Testing now and will update with some more thoughts :)

<comment><USER3> It really is free, for individual use, forever :). Pricing starts at the team level - at $8/month/member. We're also introducing cheaper, annual pricing soon.

The hosted documentation integration is completely free - we have a paid option coming soon, that adds custom domains, theming, analytics, etc.

Eager to hear what you think - let us know!

<comment><USER2> Yeah, the copy kind of indicated to me that there was some pricing scheme coming, but there is no indication (or info) about that on your site. Just something to remember if you're going to take a little time to add the Pricing details :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice tool, the Prism integration looks really nice.

Some feedback:

\- The left hand menu for API, versions, documentation (or something) totally confuses me. Even after thinking about it for multiple minutes I don't really get it. I think there are multiple things being represented by the same interface type, but I'm not sure.

\- Sometimes action buttons on top, action buttons on the bottom.

\- Prism... where is it? Why does the main interface change when I switch from "hosted" to "local"? What does "local" actually mean?

You have a really nice tool, but for now it was too complicated for me :/ Some UI and usability love would probably help quite a lot.

<comment><USER3> Really great feedback, thanks! We've heard that the main navigation is confusing, and are working on improving it as I type this. Could you send me an email marc @ stoplight.io? I would love to bounce some of our ideas off of you, and hear what you think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow this is really great. Interested in how the prism proxy thing can work for reversing existing (un-specced) APIs. Can you shed some light on that?

<comment><USER3> Hey! Marc MacLeod here - founder. Basically, you put Prism between your API consumer (mobile app, website, integration tests, library, curl request, whatever) and the API itself.

Prism processes the traffic that passes through it, and generates your spec code from that. It can identify dynamic parameters in the url, build json schemas, etc.

Here's a little post + video we put together: [https://medium.com/oh-what-a- wonderful-web/how-to-generate-2...](https://medium.com/oh-what-a-wonderful- web/how-to-generate-2-000-lines-of-specification-code- in-60-seconds-478a7a916dd0#.da7j34ejk)

And another, demonstrating a slightly different process of generating spec code from the Peach mobile app API traffic:

[http://peach.api-docs.io/1.0/welcome](http://peach.api-docs.io/1.0/welcome)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just something I've noticed - Looks like generating schema from an example doesn't support multiple value types. Eg. when the first object's value is string and the next one's is null, it saves it as a string field in the schema and throws an error for the example.

<comment><USER3> Astute catch! We're actually tracking this issue internally already. We'll be beefing up that generator to aggregate multiple values for the same property, when it's an array of objects. Look for that in an update in the next 2 weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks really cool, nice work!

Any thoughts on import from Apiary/Blueprint?

<comment><USER3> Great question! We are considering adding first class support for Blueprint. In the meantime, we recommend converting first to OAI/Swagger with the awesome tool over at [https://apitransformer.com](https://apitransformer.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks awesome! I'm excited to try the API documentation tool.

FYI if you haven't clicked on the animation on homepage, do it...it's addicting

</comment><comment><USER6> Is there a way to make my documentation private? Secret URL or just for people in the team?

<comment><USER3> You can invite team members to your workspace in the API Designer, and only they will have access (read or read/write) to the APIs in that workspace.

From the API Designer (which is private), you can optionally publish any of your API versions out to api-docs.io, for public consumption. You don't even need to publish your entire API definition out - you can mark which endpoints/models are private versus public. Only the parts of your internal docs marked as public will be published out :).

<comment><USER6> Makes sense. Great tool, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like a real solution instead of just a text editor like others out there.

</comment><comment><USER10> I checked this out last night, going to get a POC running for sure.

<comment><USER3> Awesome, let us know if you run into any issues, or have suggestions - we're here to help. You can reach me directly at email@example.com.

<comment><USER10> How complete should the published documentation be? I see the headers I defined, but not the query params.

Also, I define the OAuth2 security in the version, but it shows up nowhere else except for the exports. It would be nice if you define which resources are secured by what. For instance all of my resources require apikey as well as an OAuth2 token.

<comment><USER3> Interesting, query params should be published - could you send me the link to the docs you published?

In the "settings" tab for each endpoint, you can mark which security schemes apply to the endpoint. It's kind of hidden, we're moving it to the general definition tab. Also, that info will be exposed in api-docs (which security schemes an endpoint requires/supports) in an update later this week!

<comment><USER10> Oh! There it is. Email incoming!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are you related to SendGrid?

<comment><USER3> Hey there, nope! They are one of our beta customers though.

They blogged about their experience so far with our tools here: [https://sendgrid.com/blog/using-a-prototype-as-an-api- produc...](https://sendgrid.com/blog/using-a-prototype-as-an-api-product- specification)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Introvert freelancers, how do you find the willpower to network? - <AUTHOR> Clients don't come knocking to my door in troves (yet), so I have to go and meet people to fill my pipeline.
I understand that when networking, you don't want to be in sales mode/handing out business cards because no-one wants to talk to somebody like this. Instead, you should listen to people, inquire about their business, find out what their problems are, and offer useful advice. If they need your services, they'll have you in mind when the time is right, but not if you were pushy when you met.
My biggest hurdle though is that I am an introvert and would much rather stay at home than going to an event with dozens or hundred of people and introduce myself. I dread it, and it sucks the energy away from me. But I'll never get enough business if I don't.
How do you fellow introvert freelancers deal with this?
How do you motivate yourself to get out of the house and talk to strangers for hours on end early in the morning or after work?
Are there any tips you're using?
Does it get easier? <comment><USER2> "It doesn't get easier, you get stronger".

I assume you are from a tech background? Break networking down to baby steps. I was always told to go "three deep" on a question.

Ex.

Me: Hey, how are you? What projects are you working on now? Person: Hey, I'm alright. I'm working on this widget Me: Cool. Why did you chose to work on this widget? Person: Because I want to learn more about squelch Me: I don't know much about squelch; what have you learned? ...

This helps avoid shallow talk, and establishes that you are a functional person who is interested in them. (Most). People love to talk about themselves.

Now that you've established yourself, you can start talking about what you want, whether it be you're looking for clients, looking for a second opinion on xyz, etc.

<comment><USER3> Haha, that convo gave me anxiety. Mainly because I am often on the receiving end of that. I assume people mean well, but I just don't like talking about myself to people I have no connection with _(namely, common ground on things I 'm interested in)_.

This is not a counterpoint, I'm just venting in an introvert post I guess. /shrug

<comment><USER2> Additionally, are you familiar with toastmasters groups? They are Meetups/clubs for people who look to practice public speaking. Maybe there is one in your area?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I moonlighted / freelanced between 2005-2008, then have freelanced / had a small team from 2012-present. I'm not convinced it ever gets easier. I've been a long-time face at various networking events, I've sponsored conferences, I've cold-called - you name it, I've probably tried it. I've seen some very large companies grow on the back of a single large client, with all of the risk that entails. Nearly every long-term freelancer I've seen has had some scenario that would be very difficult for someone else to reproduce.

Assuming you are going to stay a freelancer, the best advice I can give is to find a niche and sell the heck out of that niche. The best overall advice I can give is to get the heck out of freelancing and move as quickly as possible to building a product, where you can use and hire traditional marketing channels.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not all networking happens in person. Send emails to former colleagues and let them know you're looking for business. Ask around in online communities. Reply to strangers' tweets. Just keep talking to people.

I made a little app to help HN users network with each other. I can't promise you'll find what you're looking for, but it's free: [https://findkismet.com](https://findkismet.com)

<comment><USER6> Isn't it tacky to reach out to old contacts looking for business?

<comment><USER5> How else will they know you're looking? Most people want to help if they can, and if they can't they'll politely say no or simply not respond.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have a family I need to support, and new technologies I want to learn. Despite my introversion, this provides all the 'motivation' I could ever need.

Realistically, I set up habits that make networking as easy as possible. Meetups, connections through friends, working in shared offices from time to time, mentoring, involving yourself in the local community and so on are all ways to easily build low pressure network connections. Focusing on the tech problems that you find challenging and let that be your motivation when talking to people.

It gets easier with practice. I had to start from scratch as well and found that I wasn't 'pushy' enough and definitely had to sell myself more. Hopefully you find people you like working with.

<comment><USER4> +1 for this - hungry mouths at home make a great motivator.

If you are going to freelance or start a business, you have to be willing to fight your own worst self, which might mean finding coping techniques to overcome shyness or introversion. I'm very introverted and find networking events, etc very overwhelming, but I've spent years fighting through that to gain comfort in doing it. If you are going to be self-employed, you gotta be able to do things that hurt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have the same problem. I'm lucky enough that my network of former colleagues and existing clients has provided steady work. One example - a high level person at a startup I still work with, left for another position. I made sure to stay in touch with him, if only by connecting on LinkedIn. He gave me some project work when he started his new role. There is a lot of turnover in tech (assuming that's what you are doing) so staying in touch is essential.

Search out colleagues who you have worked with, even if you didn't work directly for them. If they know you they should be in your network. I have gotten referrals from colleagues I worked with 8-10 years ago, because I stay in touch and periodically say hi or comment on their posts. You can do all of this from your couch.

I'm a LinkedIn pro, which I don't think has any additional value other than being able to cold message people. Look for companies hiring for your niche segment and then see if you have any 2nd degree connections. If not use one of your 15 InMail credits. Try to connect and let them know that you are available in case they ever need freelancers/contractors. Most of the time this will yield nothing but it's worth trying if you have nothing else to do.

</comment><comment> a-saleh One thing I found out as I get older, that I no longer like large gatherings of people, as I imagine most networking events would be. I much prefer one-on- one interactions.

I found out that lunches are quite good for this. It is in middle of the day, most people do go lunch somewhere, and sending a message along the lines "Hey, could I join you for a lunch sometime this week?" usually doesn't require too much effort from the other party :-)

On the other hand, I mostly use this to meet former colleagues and classmates, so it is much lower stakes than the I-need-to-network-to-get-clients.

Getting the way to message the people is probably the hard part, if I ever needed to meet people I don't really know yet, I would defer to a networking guide by Stephanie Hurlburt of Binomial [1] and just send out cold e-mails.

[1] [https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/networking#making-direct- ask...](https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/networking#making-direct-asks)

</comment><comment><USER9> I've freelanced successfully for a few years and never really had to explicitly network to get clients. They all came from my existing professional network (built up over a 10+ year career in traditional employment). I know that's not possible for everyone and I didn't come here to say just that.

Lately I've been focusing more on bootstrapping a startup and using freelancing as a part-time way to pay the bills, so time to go out and find jobs has been less. Fortunately, I was able to connect with another freelancer who is _great_ at networking and often lands more jobs than he can handle. He then sends work my way. I charge my usual hourly rate and I suspect he's quoting these clients with project-based billing and in some cases making a tidy profit. I'm absolutely fine with this - he takes the risk, communication overhead, blame if stuff hits the fan, and I get some steady side-income where I essentially report to another developer who is an understanding person.

Perhaps if you're an introvert, seek out an extrovert freelancer that could use some extra bandwidth.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm also an introvert. For my first startup I used to go to meetups etc to try to network and get business. It got me nowhere and it was draining.

I don't want to discourage you but there may be more efficient ways to get in touch with potential clients. Take a look at "Never Eat Alone" (Keith Ferrazzi). Written by a guy whose whole life is built around connecting with people and is very skeptical about networking events.

In any case, yes it does get easier. These days I do a lot of cold emailing and video calls and even that used to be difficult for me.

</comment><comment><USER11> This was always tough for me. Pick a couple of industry meetups in your area and suck it up and go every week. I found that just showing up was enough, once I was there I'd naturally make enough contacts to eventually get some work flowing.

</comment><comment><USER12> I am an introvert who freelanced for a while and now I have a permanent gig which includes biz dev. Former colleagues helped me by either letting me practise on them, or giving me helpful and motivating feedback, or by introducing me to possible leads. When I go out looking for leads I set myself goals for numbers e.g. 30 leads at such-and-such event. I find it helps to stop me from giving up and sneaking out early. I also took to heart the advice that it's better to get to an event early and be warmed up before the numbers get too daunting. I still suck at it, but I get by.

<comment><USER13> Does it change based on the scale of an event? E.g. a meetup vs a convention?

What events were the most useful in finding leads?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Little talk, a lot of writing, up to date portfolios, a few references, a lot of web scraping for opportunities, a lot of tailored e-mails, active participation in industrial forums and local guilds activities, attending fairs and conferences and exhibitions, funnelling interactions into proposals to which you can answer with a written quote and terms of contract. No need to be an extrovert for many of these?

</comment><comment><USER15> I've found success in trying to provide value in every interaction. I stopped spending so much energy focusing on how I interact, and instead shifted my focus to better understand someone else and empathize more. It leads to better conversations and people reach out to me, no networking drudgery needed.

</comment><comment><USER16> Try finding long-term engagements or find a well-paid remote job and become an employee instead of a freelancer.

</comment><comment><USER17> Does UpWork help you with this?

<comment><AUTHOR> UpWork is a race to the bottom, I'd rather do anything else than find work through this platform.</comment></comment>


What's the Importance of Building a Private Mailing List? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/product-disrupt-blog/whats-the-importance-of-building-a-private-mailing-list-f4dc628ad094#.7e3lzi69q <comment><AUTHOR> Experts like Paul Jarvis, Eric Karjaluoto, Jason Zook and more provide their insight on growing your audience via a private mailing list.</comment>


Ask HN: Free books database - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for a (free) book database with name, author, publication year and maybe a small description for every book contained. I need it for a school project. Can anyone help me find one? <comment><USER2> Try [http://openmetadata.lib.harvard.edu/bibdata](http://openmetadata.lib.harvard.edu/bibdata)

It's free, downloadable, and has records on almost 13 million items. Just going by the API ([http://dp.la/dev/wiki/Item_API](http://dp.la/dev/wiki/Item_API)), it looks like it has the information that you need.

</comment><comment><USER3> Project Gutenberg is my personal favorite:

[http://www.gutenberg.org/](http://www.gutenberg.org/)

</comment><comment><USER4> check out [http://isbndb.com](http://isbndb.com)

[http://isbndb.com/book/the_wind_up_bird_chronicles](http://isbndb.com/book/the_wind_up_bird_chronicles)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's nice (and with the information I want), but I need something that I can download (an .sql, json, xml or even csv)...

<comment><USER5> They have an API: [http://isbndb.com/api/v1/docs/intro](http://isbndb.com/api/v1/docs/intro)

According to that API intro page, their databases contain over 1.8 million entries for books alone, so the download would be rather big I think.</comment></comment></comment>


How to survive ?  - <AUTHOR>

I have a small problem ahead. Here is the very brief problem explanation. I am living in Turkey and just finished CS and accepted for the grad study and also I am accepted from one international company which offers a good salary and international team experience. But I am not sure any of these paths since I want to try my own way with a start-up. But things are harder then US or Europa I guess. For the last 12 months a friend and I have been developing a Web 2.0 (with Rife and GWT) application for a field in Turkey which is big in terms of vast number of possible users(and possible income for us :). We are about to make a relatively healthy release.. anyway the thing is (which is also the problem) we have absolutely no money! To get some investment from organizations like Tekmer(semi-official seeding organization in Turkey) or investors, there is always the problem of either the bureaucracy or the very clever investors who asked for %50 percent share of everything. To start our company we need some income, but to have some income, we need to sell sth. any comment or suggestion will be appreciated..thanks <comment><USER2> <http://paulgraham.com/fundraising.html>

Control-F and find Consulting in this essay

On the other hand, it might be worth giving away 50% to get the money you need. Once this venture is successful you won't have to give away 50% in future ventures. Make sure for that 50% you get enough money to go all the way with your project, which will mean taking money in stages.

<comment><USER3> ... And be thorough when selecting the people you sell to. You may be able to leverage them for more than money, eg. use them as board members and have them use their network to help you get needed contacts to develop your business.

This was an incredibly successful strategy at my previous company. The investors had contacts at some very interesting clients, which allowed the salesmen to get in at a different level than if they had to start from scratch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I suggest you use kiva.org, zopa.com, or lendingclub.com

Also, where is the cost coming from? Is it the kind of thing you could handle for a few months if you borrowed a few thousand dollars? If so, you'll be in a much better position to bargain with investors once you have more traction.

</comment><comment><USER5> Find a way to do it yourself.

If you don't need that much extra cash get a job on the evenings or weekends. If you require a lot of money at least get a prototype out the door.</comment>


Milton Friedman Puts A Young Michael Moore In His Place - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD0dmRJ0oWg <comment><AUTHOR> I somewhat doubt it's really Michael Moore but the video is interesting regardless.</comment>


Slo Mo Guys created a great video of the Apple Watch water-ejection system - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2020/06/19/apple-watch-water-ejection-system/ <comment><USER2> Every once in a while something like this comes up that reminds me how incredible Apple can be at engineering, and how much attention they can give to the details, when they really try. It's so strange to contrast this with, say, the egregious regressions that so commonly happen in their OSes.

<comment><USER3> Credit goes to the Engineers, not the company.

Engineers are told what to do, they execute.

Regressions in the OS is something you can blame the company for. Management decisions are not done by Engineers, they are executed by Engineers.

<comment><USER4> I'm not really sure where you're drawing a distinction here.

<comment><USER2> There's a trope that management always prioritizes new features over mitigating tech debt. I'm sure that happens on some teams, but without inside information it's a bit of a leap to assume that's what's responsible for this specific set of problems at this specific company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder why my Samsung Gear S3 has nothing like this. Its water proof and has speakers as well but there is no "you cant use your watch because its wet". Until now, I didnt even think about this might be an issue. The watch just... works. No matter if wet or not.

<comment><USER6> Must be a similar reason to why you can't use an iPhone/iPad/Macbook for about 10 minutes after the battery runs out. When you plug it in to power, it will refuse to boot until the battery is at least slightly charged. This is unlike, say, an Android or Windows machine which will allow you to use it immediately as soon as you plug it in.

I think Apple just simply does not care about user convenience.

<comment><USER7> The two android phones and one tablet I've had all do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This also works with AirPods, there are YouTube videos that will play the frequency sweeps for you.

<comment><USER4> AirPods are not really intended to get wet like Apple Watch is.

<comment><USER9> True, but I ran my right bud through the washer & dryer. Still working perfect a year and a half later. Pretty impressed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if the audio are actual slowed-down recordings or re-creations? They sounded awfully sloshy for how little amounts of water there are.

<comment><USER11> All of the slow mo sounds are recreations. In fact I'm pretty sure they use that same sloshy sound clip in about half their videos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm the most impressed that he didn't horrible injure himself with that jump into the bathtub.

</comment><comment><USER13> I can't quite cope with the missing w from "The Slow Mo Guys".

<comment><USER14> But you don't mind the missing "tion"?

<comment><USER15> They are literally called "The Slow Mo Guys" and not "The Slo Mo Guys"

Post title and 9to5mac article has their name wrong.</comment></comment></comment>


Highest Paying US Cities for Programmers & Developers - <AUTHOR> http://wajeez.com/2012/03/14/top-10-highest-paying-us-cities-for-technology-jobs/ CyberCoders released their survey results of the US cities which pay the highest average salary for technology jobs. Established tech hubs such as San Jose (yahoo), San Francisco (Apple) and New York's silicon alley rank highest in pay versus smaller cities such as Phoenix, St. Louis and Tampa. <comment><USER2> Now adjust for cost of living. The list won't look anything like this I imagine.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm surprised Austin or Seattle isn't on there.</comment>


Process of Elimination - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/crispr-eradicate-invasive-species/ <comment><USER2> It's shocking this article doesn't take a more concerned stance on this incredibly dangerous technology. If one can without too much difficulty infect a population of rats with an infertility inducing gene, one can probably do the same for humans (or just an "undesirable" population of humans…)

<comment><USER3> More realistically, a terrorist group or rogue regime could threaten to "infect" wild populations of ... bees, wild fish, birds etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't get it. You can either make a gene drive spread to 100% of the population or make the offspring infertile. How do you do both?</comment>