news.ycombinator.com
Ask HN: Does explaining your program's complete design reduce sales?https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3674312I'm working on my very first Android application; and, I've been considering talking through the different parts of my design; and how and where my code is growing organically to support the different ideas that I have.Since I'd basically be explaining every feature and design decision I make from here on out, this leads me to a question. Would I lose sales from my application? I'm very interested in selling it.It's an active wallpaper that plays the Game of Life. I know the market already has one, but I was going to be adding more features to it that would make it more interesting and perhaps a good wallpaper.Mar 7, 2012 4:49 AM
boids.quuux.org
Show HN: The Open Source Boids Live Wallpaper for Android I've been working onhttp://boids.quuux.org/I've been working on an OpenGL Boids live wallpaper for Android for a bit now. I've finally gotten it to a point where I am happy with it and published it to the Android Market. I've got a lot of ideas and things I'm working on but feedback is always appreciated.Thanks!Dec 12, 2011 6:07 PM
news.ycombinator.com
New documentary #killswitch exposes media consolidation and government collusionhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2656444#killswitch The Battle over the Internet Educator and Writer Chris Dollar is teaming with filmmakers Ali Akbarzadeh and Jeff Horn of Akorn Entertainment to create the full-length documentary #killswitch. They are raising funds on KickStarter.com to produce the documentary so they can educate the Western world about the fact that big corporations will continue to have more and more control over our news and Internet… unless we do something now. Check out the trailer and learn how to become involved in this project here: (#killswitch trailer) (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/akorn/killswitch-a-documentary-film?ref=live) ____________________________________________Everyone who is a regular to Hacker News knows we have a culture of corruption in Washington and are in desperate need of media reform and legislation protecting Net Neutrality. So, why does mainstream media ignore the massive amounts of corruption and collusion between large corporations and big government, while also ignorJun 15, 2011 9:08 AM
bing.com
The Importance of Soft Skills in the Workplacehttp://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=6a898043dda14ff8a5e4c1cd22ba4305&url=https%3A%2F%2Fsmallbusiness.chron.com%2Fimportance-soft-skills-workplace-10111.html&c=17172126469652181780&mkt=en-usWhen it comes to skills in employment, the first line of emphasis is typically towards abilities, training and knowledge of specific skill sets. These are referred to as hard skills. Soft skills are ...Jun 7, 2011 12:00 AM
news.ycombinator.com
Online Computer Science BS Degree?https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2599618Does anyone know of a good online undergraduate Computer Science program? My girlfriend is almost done her Masters of Science in Nursing online at Vanderbilt. All her courses are online, she does clinicals at local hospitals and private practices, and flies to Nashville for a long weekend every couple of months. I've been looking for something similar for Computer Science, but can only seem to find programs at scam schools. If it's possible to get the credentials which will give you the ability to suture and prescribe narcotics online, shouldn't computer science be handled similarly?Yes, I am aware of the social implications (e.g. college is a great place to meet people, develop as a person, etc...). I did attend a traditional college, and have about 85 credits. The difficulty is, my business started making money, so I'm too busy to attend scheduled courses. The university wouldn't work with me, at all, so I stopped going. I see value in having a degree, and would like to finish, but iMay 30, 2011 3:28 PM
news.ycombinator.com
I've got a Facebook fan page, How do I get more people to join it?https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2427998Hi all,I've created a fan page for a small family business my family and I run (we have a small music studio). As the relatively 'technical' person in the family (I know just enough html to color the background of page) I got the job of running our facebook fan page.I started reading all those "10 tips for the best…" tutorials out there on the web, but from some reason I am pretty skeptic. I keep feeling people are trying to sell me their services.What I'd like to hear is some good advice from people who perhaps succeeded themselves in building a good facebook fan page. Also, I would like to unfold the mystery behind the real figures. I understand that everyone these days must have a faceook fan page, but how much money \ how many customers can I really expect to gain from this?Thank you,Apr 9, 2011 8:20 PM
news.ycombinator.com
Ask HN: Is that important for a developer to have an impressive personal page?https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2407157I am a Python developer with good design background. I am willing to expand my freelance activity in Python web development area now. I have seen tons of visually appealing impressive personal pages of web designers. Those that are more web graphic designers working with HTML/CSS/JS than hardcore programmers. I bet you saw much of them too on the web. They have professional look and feel giving you an image of the person. I tried to find something similar for the programmers to inspire myself for creating my personal page. I searched for 'web developer portfolio', 'web developer personal page' and some other keywords on Google. I didn't find anything as impressive as web designers' pages. All I could see were some boring CVs or something like CVs, sometimes with a small photo of a person and more or less average look. Obviously everyone is the best at what he is the best and programmers sell their technical/analytical skills. They can show perfectly structured code to impress a potentiApr 4, 2011 4:15 PM
news.ycombinator.com
Show HN: Edit Text, See Relevant Images. ~200 Lines Of JavaSripthttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2112230I was experimenting with different term-extraction API's and I came up with this simple HTML5/CSS3/JS thing that shows you relevant images as you enter text. http://bupad.agen.si Basic scenario- User enters text- Terms are instantly extracted from content via Alchemy API- Google Image search is used to find relevant images on Flickr- Images are shown in the backgroundThere are some minor perks like the fact that the image searches are rotating around the color wheel (Google let's you specify a desired color of the image), and content is also stored in LocalStorage.The prototype has a "bug" (HTML5 ContentEditable isn't a good enough replacement for a WYSIWYG, only works in Chrome in Safari) and a few "missing features" (Enlarging images and so on).Right now it's pretty much client-side, everything happens in JS (OOP Prototype and jQ for Cross-site JSON-P requests): http://bupad.agen.si/javascripts/application.js Reasons for posting:I want to gauge the potential and get some feedback. I Jan 17, 2011 2:33 PM
bing.com
Kanye West's Online Aesthetic Invasionhttp://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=6a8a070bccbf4e569d68f6a53fb29f40&url=https%3A%2F%2Fhyperallergic.com%2Fkanye-west-online%2F&c=11264781105648271957&mkt=en-usYeah, so everyone knows Kanye West has invaded the internet since he got on Twitter, and he has been dropping songs every (GOOD) Friday. But the pop star’s presence online has done some funky things ...Oct 5, 2010 12:19 PM
bing.com
Kanye West's Online Aesthetic Invasionhttp://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=6a89e513210c4e71a890e201c858dd3c&url=https%3A%2F%2Fhyperallergic.com%2Fkanye-west-online%2F&c=11264781105648271957&mkt=en-usYeah, so everyone knows Kanye West has invaded the internet since he got on Twitter, and he has been dropping songs every (GOOD) Friday. But the pop star’s presence online has done some funky things ...Oct 5, 2010 12:19 PM
news.ycombinator.com
Ask HN: What is Gravity?https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1629794While watching a documentary that mentioned gravity (forgive me the particulars escape me at the moment) my 8yo son reached across my lap and tapped the space-bar pausing the video. He then turned toward me and asked, ‘what is gravity?’Now, in our house we require explanations for actions because we are becoming, sadly too late in life, convinced that being on purpose is paramount. Because it is our opinion that if you do not understand, even at the most base level (epistemological questions aside), why you are doing something then you will never have any power over what you do. When any of us does something that results in negative consequences we try to be in the habit of either tracing down the root of our reasoning or admitting that we had none.To this end we have made much of the distinction between description and explanation. Briefly; all explanations include description but not the reverse. When we ask one another for an explanation and instead receive only description it has bAug 24, 2010 2:04 PM
news.ycombinator.com
Ask HN: What is your favorite hand-rolled malloc?https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=741895In a similar vein to http://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html, I'm curious to hear the people's choice for memory pool/slab allocators. My question is a three-parter:1) Allocation size function: Do you allocate fixed size chunks of N objects at a time? Exponential increase in chunk size (I believe valgrind does this for its memchecker)? If exponential, do you also back off exponentially, or linearly? Something else?2) Used/free record keeping: Bitfield? Linked-list? Other?3) New allocations: realloc or array/linked list of pointers (I bet I know the answer to this one)?Some justification would be nice, if you've got the time.Aug 4, 2009 7:21 PM
torrentspy.com
Torrentspy shutdownhttp://www.torrentspy.com/Friends of TorrentSpy,We have decided on our own, not due to any court order or agreement, to bring the Torrentspy.com search engine to an end and thus we permanently closed down worldwide on March 24, 2008.The legal climate in the USA for copyright, privacy of search requests, and links to torrent files in search results is simply too hostile. We spent the last two years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, defending the rights of our users and ourselves.Ultimately the Court demanded actions that in our view were inconsistent with our privacy policy, traditional court rules, and International law; therefore, we now feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of privacy protection for our users - permanent shutdown.It was a wild ride,The TorrentSpy Team"Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order [...] and the lMar 29, 2008 11:35 PM
bing.com
For Skybus, High Load Factor Doesn't Mean Successhttp://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=6a8974bd3c44472498d6b18535888b61&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbsnews.com%2Fnews%2Ffor-skybus-high-load-factor-doesnt-mean-success%2F&c=12739700572773140322&mkt=en-usThe December DOT data is now in, and though I haven't had a lot of time to poke through the data yet, I have found a couple interesting things. For today, let's focus on Columbus-based Skybus. Even ...Mar 18, 2008 3:04 PM
bing.com
Copthorne's gone but not forgottenhttp://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=6a8a53f0d38b4347b715972af1ee20e8&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.coventrytelegraph.net%2Flifestyle%2Fnostalgia%2Fcopthornes-gone-but-not-forgotten-3101667&c=12394211851712656123&mkt=en-usPAUL BUTTLE is so fond of his old school that he has created a web-site to preserve the memories. Paul, who now lives in the Lake District, was a pupil at Copthorne School between 1958 and 1963. The ...Feb 19, 2008 4:12 AM
bing.com
Troubleshooting An Undercharge of Refrigeranthttp://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=6a89f12417584366b60035a5e7be2551&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.achrnews.com%2Farticles%2F88937-troubleshooting-an-undercharge-of-refrigerant&c=3358899424239190307&mkt=en-usTroubleshooting modern refrigeration and/or air conditioning systems requires a thorough knowledge of the refrigeration system and its functions. However, to be a good troubleshooter, a technician ...May 4, 2002 9:00 PM
