glimcat · HackerTrans

glimcat

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Let’s Bring Etiquette to User Testing

medium.com

1 pointsby glimcat12년 전0 comments

Tools for Ongoing Customer Development

grayj.net

2 pointsby glimcat13년 전0 comments

Intro to Effective Customer Development

grayj.net

3 pointsby glimcat13년 전0 comments

In search of a target audience

grayj.net

2 pointsby glimcat13년 전0 comments

Why I'm Building Yet Another CRM

grayj.net

1 pointsby glimcat13년 전0 comments

An index of publicly-available papers from CHI 2013

hackthing.com

1 pointsby glimcat13년 전0 comments

Starting your first product

hackthing.com

1 pointsby glimcat13년 전0 comments

The SOPA secret: why aren't major Internet companies doing more?

22 pointsby glimcat15년 전6 comments

Ubermind's mobile designers holding open house (Seattle, Aug 18)

ubermind.eventbrite.com

1 pointsby glimcat15년 전1 comments

comments

12년 전discuss

* Ever notice how people who make claims about why they got banned never provide links to the posts in question? That's because their claims are nearly always false. If users could look at the actual record, their perennial sob story of perfectly reasonable behavior struck down by bullying censors would evaporate. *

When that kind of response comes from the site's moderator, I really don't see the level of toxicity improving any time soon.

It's likely statistically factual, but in context it's just another of the "mean, stupid things" that Paul Graham called you out as being here to address. And you appear to have done nothing to investigate whether the previous user's post was factually correct before slinging personal accusations.

If this gets me hellbanned too, so be it. Conversation and community on this site is a toxic mess that leaves people afraid to post anything. The main good thing is following users like patio11 and tptacek.

http://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-hack...

12년 전discuss

At a minimum, one could start an American company, which could at some point start a Japanese office (with all the accordant overhead in terms of paperwork and politicking, including the usual risk of immigration taking a dim view or otherwise filing your paperwork in the "do not pass go" column).

How closely that approximates the desired scenario with regards to e.g. hiring and social signalling is another question. It would presumably be bounded by the status of e.g. Microsoft Japan, which is in turn bounded by Sony. Which is to say, not as good, but possibly good enough for most intents which don't involve hiring new grads shoulder-to-shoulder with Sony.

12년 전discuss

It's easyish to derive to good accuracy from the accelerometer signal alone (which I believe is always available).

12년 전discuss

Great example of issues I would probably never catch if I tried to implement all of this in-house. It just wouldn't get that level of attention once it was already working.

"Oh, that's easy, I could implement all that in a weekend" - One, no. And two, no. Problems are always deeper than they seem, and it's usually the extra 90% that determines how well it works.

12년 전discuss

Archive it and move on with my life.

The work is generally entangled per the terms of your contract. If you want to do anything particular with it, the contract needs to cover that.

Specific things you may be thinking of:

* Showing off "portfolio samples" based on incomplete work - this is apt to annoy clients if you're not careful with it, and any given portfolio sample is unlikely to make or break your ability to land clients. If you think it might, you need to take a hard look at your sales process.

* Code reuse - this should be something your contract already covers for all projects. This code is mine, I am licensing this particular configuration of it for you to use based on specific terms, and assuming that you complete your end of the contract (i.e. pay me).

12년 전discuss

Well here's the essential bits in Python. I leave turning this into an actual CLI as an exercise for the interested reader.

    from requests_oauthlib import OAuth1Session
    import json


    keys = json.loads(open(keyfile).read())
    #  {"TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY": "blah_blah_blah",
    #   "TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET": "blah_blah_blah",
    #   "TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN": "blah_blah_blah",
    #   "TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET": "blah_blah_blah",}


    def twitter():
        return OAuth1Session(keys['TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY'],
                             client_secret=keys['TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET'],
                             resource_owner_key=keys['TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN'],
                             resource_owner_secret=keys['TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET'])


    def tweet(status, reply_to=None):
        endpoint = 'https://api.twitter.com/1.1/statuses/update.json'
        data = {'status': status}
        r = twitter().post(endpoint, data=data)
        return r.status_code


    def tweet_with_image(status, imgfile, reply_to=None):
        endpoint = 'https://api.twitter.com/1.1/statuses/update_with_media.json'
        data = {'status': status}
        if reply_to is not None:
            data.update({'in_reply_to_status_id': reply_to})
        r = twitter().post(endpoint, data=data, files={'media[]': open(imgfile, 'rb').read()})
        return r.status_code

12년 전discuss

Optimizely takes minutes to sign up for - and they're always looking to make that easier, and to make more people aware of the value they provide. In contrast, the expertise to conduct tests that alter revenue outlook takes somewhat longer to develop.

Sure, people could go out and spend the time to learn just about anything. In practice, they won't, because that's competing with all the other anythings they could be doing.

Sell the thing that actually has significant barrier to entry.

You take care of the easy thing too, because making the client spend meaningful attention on something that would take you five minutes is just silly, and you're there so they don't have to worry about that stuff. But sell the hard thing.

12년 전discuss

The fundamental error with trying to fix such marketplaces via another marketplace is that contractors are typically far better off relying on repeat business and some elementary lead prospecting, while project owners are better off relying on networking and repeat business.

Your target market is thus (more or less) restricted to people who don't yet meet that level of experience and professionalism. You get the contractors that have no existing clients and no clue how to approach companies, and you get the project owners who are out to get bargain-basement labor and firmly believe they'll be the one poster who gets lucky and finds a contractor who works on the internet yet is too inexperienced to realize what that means for their billable rates.

This is still a potential market, but you've lost the more desirable end of the pool before you even leave the gate. And even if that is the end of the pool you want to provide value to - you can provide far more value by helping them move upstream, rather than trying to stamp out another marketplace which is a bad solution from its conception.

12년 전discuss

Exactly. Server-side vs. client-side rendering of HTML is just another optimization choice.

Is it more important to shorten the time to display the current request, or to shorten the time for new pages to be rendered? Single-page apps marginally increase the current request's time-to-render in exchange for improving navigation between pages. For some purposes that provides a significant benefit, other times it doesn't.

12년 전discuss

I do programming like I do algebra. It's a tool I use to solve problems.

Mind you, it's a tool I'm very good with, and that I get intrinsic enjoyment from when using it. But I don't do it 24/7, and I also get intrinsic enjoyment from woodworking, soldering, cooking...

Some people are invested in getting you to believe a narrative where coders code, all the time, 80 hours a week even if you don't pay them, like they're one-dimensional widgets instead of people. If anyone tries to feed you that line, I'd take a good hard think about why.

12년 전discuss

I routinely do machine learning and computer vision, and have used a number of languages for them.

The main issue, irrespective of language, is that the implementation of your final model is often a distinct step from the last output of your experimental tools. If you just take what it gives you and try to deploy that, it will often provide extremely suboptimal performance.

The methods for implementing your final model could involve raw Python, NumPy, the Python wrapper for an external library, writing and consuming custom C libs...it depends on the complexity of the hyperplanes.

But e.g. scikit-learn already wraps libsvm and liblinear. If your SVM (etc.) is slow, it's very unlikely to be because you used Python.

If you're e.g. trying to do Facebook-level heavy lifting, your experiences may vary. But again, that would be a challenge for any tools. The solution is to use sampling, parallelism, etc. - and to implement and optimize your final model as a separate step from designing it.

12년 전discuss

The only reason Python should ever be problematically slow is if you're writing bad Python. (Well, almost ever.)

What you have to understand is that pythonic Python is largely a matter of invoking C libraries, and that Python only really runs at "interpreted" speed the first time you invoke the code.

It's no more slow than a shell script which serves to invoke grep and sed would be, because you're relying on the underlying optimized tools to execute the bits that would actually benefit from optimization. The microseconds it takes to switch from one to the other are almost never going to be a meaningful slice of the total execution time.

Instead of picking over the mostly insignificant delays that are left, Python has said "hey, let's optimize for readability & developer sanity instead — things that actually affect project outcomes." And then you go knock off 10 different issues you wouldn't have had time for, and you don't stab yourself in the eye with a fork while trying to make sense of the old code.

12년 전discuss

Python is the best at quite a few things these days, particularly if you need to accommodate projects (or developers) that require top-caliber tools for getting work done in several different problem areas.

The whole 2 vs. 3 is, if anything, an embarrassing interlude in getting to the fact that it's currently both amazing for beginners and one of the most versatile professional languages. Where it's not the best, it's often fighting "mainly good for this one problem area" tools and languages to a draw...while still being great for dozens of other problem areas.

Cracks about "really easy to use orbital death cannons being handed out to anyone who asks" aside - your best comparison is probably a trench knife. Simple, elegant, gets the job done whatever that job happens to be.

12년 전discuss

"Why an “Unlimited” Plan is Toxic for Your SaaS" -- Josh Pigford, Baremetrics

https://baremetrics.io/blog/never-offer-unlimited

12년 전discuss

"Okay, how do you determine what portion of revenues are profit?" (crickets)

Seriously, I've heard this one waaaay too many times. It's right up there with "you'll work for equity right, and maybe we can throw in a bit of cash if you put in enough hours?"

12년 전discuss

Not implicitly, although people are free to use that as a negotiation tactic.

If people try to negotiate you down, you negotiate them right back.

12년 전discuss

You are probably drastically underestimating the marketability of "can write production-ready JavaScript given sufficient time browsing docs & without copying it directly from StackOverflow."

And I only say "probably" because it sounds like you're looking for a local W-2 gig, and there are some places (e.g. rural Idaho) where there's likely to be a shortage of potential employers.

Elsewhere, consider "any company with senior programmers to report to" as a location which is probably hiring, or at least entertaining applicants - regardless of what any public listings may say about what openings exist, or how much experience or what madcap assortment of skills any job postings say that they'd like (yes, like).

12년 전discuss

People with networks of fake accounts routinely set them up in advance & run simulated activity.

This is normally used for e.g. selling fake likes. It's taken as a given that you will have regular churn as accounts are detected, occasionally high spikes of turnover as fraud detection and safeguards change, that kind of stuff. Often the action of converting network behavior into currency activity is what burns accounts.

Given an alternative way of rapidly converting part of that network into a compelling quantity of USD, and the fact that you're routinely rotating accounts anyway...offering to pay money or money-equivalents for Facebook connections in an automated fashion is pretty much screaming for fraudsters to call in the biggest airstrike they can before you come to your senses.

12년 전discuss

Let's just say, it's a fairly trivial exercise if you have access to a botnet.

12년 전discuss

Here's an option for organizing a "bunch of scripts" app that might be less intimidating to maintain.

foo_script.py

    from flask import render_template
    from flask_wtf import Form
    from wtforms import TextField
    from wtforms.validators import DataRequired
    
    class ScriptForm(Form):
        param1 = TextField('Param1', validators=[DataRequired()])
        param2 = TextField('Param2', validators=[DataRequired()])
        param3 = TextField('Param3', validators=[DataRequired()])

    @app.route('/foo-script', methods=('GET', 'POST'))
    def foo_script():
        form = ScriptForm()
        if form.validate_on_submit():
            do_stuff(form.data)
        else:
            return render_template('foo_script.html', form=form)
    
    def do_stuff(data):
        for key in data:
            print '%s: %s' % (key, data[key])

foo_script.html

    {% extends "base.html" %}

    {% block content %}
    <h3>Run foo script:</h3>
    <form method="POST" action="{{ url_for('foo_script') }}">
      {{ form.hidden_tag() }}
      {{ form.param1.label }} {{ form.param1 }}
      {{ form.param2.label }} {{ form.param2 }}
      {{ form.param3.label }} {{ form.param3 }}
      <input type="submit" value="Run foo script">
    </form>
    {% endblock %}

base.html

    <!DOCTYPE html>
    <html lang="en">
      <head>
        <title>FooCorp Script Service</title>
      </head>
      <body>
        {% block content %}{% endblock %}
      </body>
    </html>

app.py

    from flask import Flask
    
    app = Flask(__name__)
    app.config.from_pyfile('config.py')
    
    import foo_script, bar_script, baz_script

config.py

    # You need this for CSRF protection & cookie signing
    SECRET_KEY = randomly_generated_secret_key

You should also look into Flask's blueprints at some point if it keeps growing. But it's not really essential, just another tool to help you keep projects organized. Flask is mostly "do whatever makes sense in your specific case" rather than imposing many global constraints on structure.

Also, I'd use gunicorn if you're deploying your own server. It's a bit less intimidating to get set up than uWSGI, and the main tradeoff is that it doesn't support quite as many thousands of users (i.e. not relevant).