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zacstewart

Re:FCC Open Internet Apps Challenge on Sunday January 16, 2011 @08:37PM (#2110896)
United States Code repo. Tree visualization to show which laws stem from preceding laws stemming from the Constitution.

Ask HN: Anyone else noticed the 3px margin-top on embedded Google map iframes?

A client complained that I added a white line above his map the other week. Sure enough, there was a 3 pixel line above the map. I investigated further and it's actually in the iframe, inline, applied to the body tag.I figured it was an anomaly at first, but then I started to look at other projects I'd used embedded iframes on. Now I'm noticing it all over the place. I found a bug report, but...

( Read More... | 1 comment | on HN )
Re:"Naenara" North Korean government online on Thursday January 13, 2011 @11:43PM (#2102585)
Looks like it just got combinatorized.
Re:"Naenara" North Korean government online on Thursday January 13, 2011 @10:36PM (#2102441)
Whoa. Seriously? Is South Korea known for heavy online censorship?
Re:"Naenara" North Korean government online on Thursday January 13, 2011 @09:56PM (#2102350)
Ah. I only found links to naenara.kp, which didn't work.
I've got to say I agree. In my last job, I trained a guy fresh out of law school to be a pizza delivery boy. From what I learned from him, law school is extremely expensive and you're in a tough spot after graduating and waiting for your bar exam, but he was still capable and determined to make enough money to keep himself afloat. Even as a pizza boy, he was making more than $12, and working more than 24-32 hours per week. I don't see any martyr here, and the entitled tone of the article doesn't help the argument either.
Re:Ie7-js on Sunday January 09, 2011 @10:23AM (#2085588)
The png fix included in this is terrible. Give me DD_BelatedPNG over this any day. It doesn't support background-position.

However, while we're talking about fixing IE6, who wants to port WebKit to Javascript with me?

That sounds more likely. I feel better.
That's the first thing I said when I looked at it. Are all the people who've merely subscribed to them on Twitter considered part of the investigation? That's quite scary to me.
Re:Why are restaurant web sites so bad? on Tuesday December 28, 2010 @12:26AM (#2044738)
So true. I designed a site for a restaurant while working there as a delivery driver. The site, sucks, and I'm aware of that, but for the hassle of physically meeting with the owner to get the specific on an update about a Christmas party update or the unwillingness to pay something worth 10 hours of work per month I'm not really going to try to improve it.

I have a job at a web agency now and doing anything better than what's there simply wouldn't make since.

Re:Why are restaurant web sites so bad? on Tuesday December 28, 2010 @12:18AM (#2044727)
After delivering pizza for a restaurant for two years, I finally convinced the owner that his free, Frontpage-generated site wasn't good enough, and got him to pay me to do a redesign. I learned a few things along the way.

1. Restaurants have tiny margins. 7% profit is doing well, and dishing out $1k or more for what they perceive to be a Yellow Pages ad is unthinkable for a brick and mortar store.

2. Restaurant people are techno-iliterates (in general). I set up a Google Apps account so the managers could communicate with branded email, share documents, schedules, etc, and had to give more than a couple training sessions on these basic tools.

3. They don't consider it something to be 'involved' with. I've tried to press the point of building a presence through social networks, etc, but they can't wrap their heads around it. To them, you should pay someone (as little as possible) for it and it does it's job.

4. They explicitly ask for the faux pas. Owner asked me to take down the "outdated announcement" that we'll be having an event, since it was from last month. This is on the blog portion of the site. Owner asked me to upload the rest of the photos from an event (at least a hundred), even though the entire album is on Facebook, even though I explained no one in the world is going to care enough to flip through hundreds of jell-o wrestling photos on the news page of some restaurant's website. Owner asked for a photo background versus the subtle textured one I had designed the site with.

In the end, trying to teach them what emails is, arguing over design elements and explaining how people will use the site isn't worth it because they are going to be more work and less money than just about any other business owner. Slap something together and collect your $500.

Re:Ask HN: Appropriate platform for a data crunching app on Friday December 24, 2010 @02:19AM (#2036801)
I've definitely been trying to abstract all my models out so that I can swap out a new DAL if needed. I've got a pretty extensive SQL class going, but the app still has some hard coded SQL queries in it.

I'm not too sure I'd be enticed to use lots of python modules. I think this may be a programming character flaw, but I am averse to using pre-built stuff in my code, otherwise I'd be using CakePHP or Codeigniter instead of my own framework right now. I always want to build everything from scratch.

Ask HN: Appropriate platform for a data crunching app

I'm in the process of building a social Bayesian suggestion engine. I've coded out a large portion of it from scratch in PHP following an MVC design pattern, but I'm starting to wonder if this is the right environment for doing some Bayesian inference. Will good ol' MySQL work on a grand scale?Reading about the obstacles Hunch has encountered has made me reconsider PHP, but that's what I know...

( Read More... | 3 comments | 2 points | on HN )
Looks good!
Re:Show HN: Osmoar: A Bayesian Suggestion Engine on Sunday December 12, 2010 @03:00AM (#1996738)
Haha. Sorry. Pretty much all your activities can be broken down into a recipe of the things you do them with, the place you do them, and a description of what it is you do.

It will help you find something to do with your possessions in the place you live. E.g., if you have a bike, it might suggest you right critical mass on the last Friday of the month. If you have a dog attend the people with dogs party at your local park this weekend. I can't really come up with a great example myself, but once it's in action, I can see some pretty interesting "recipes" of place, items, people and activities arising.

Value insofar as monetization, is obviously affiliate income from retailers. We're planning to establish an API for any retailer that wants to sign up to add their link to an item's page, which is also helpful to users so they can sort by price and compare retailers.

Re:Show HN: Osmoar: A Bayesian Suggestion Engine on Saturday December 11, 2010 @11:43PM (#1996459)
Good assumption, but we're doing more with it than that. There's also an "activities as recipes of items" aspect we're working on.

We don't want to just push more crap from amazon on users. We want to help users become aware of activities they could be doing with the things they own as well.

"789 users that own a MacBook and a DSL camera are doing photography. Maybe you'd like to try it"

Re:Show HN: Osmoar: A Bayesian Suggestion Engine on Saturday December 11, 2010 @11:37PM (#1996448)
It's basically so you have a profile started when we launch. We're planning on users adding a whole inventory of their things via iPhone barcode scanner, ISBN, search, etc.

From that inventory, we calculate interests in other items. From aggregate user input, we suggest interesting things to do with things you have, things you might want, etc.

I'm still learning how Bayesian networks work, and we might decide on another algorithm entirely, but we'll see how it goes :)

Thanks for your suggestion. We're building an FAQ out of questions like the one you just asked! Is there anything I could explain better?

Show HN: Osmoar: A Bayesian Suggestion Engine

http://osmoar.com/

A friend and I are launching an alpha first thing in 2011. We're trying to gain some momentum and whatnot, so we're opening early registration as of tonight.We're planning to develop a Bayesian network to derive suggestions. If you're interested in seeing our progress, check it out.Edit: Any and all suggestions, criticism, advice, etc is highly appreciated!

( Read More... | 6 comments | 6 points | on HN )
Re:To Do List Advice on Sunday August 01, 2010 @02:08PM (#1565736)
Combinatorized.