skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Android game developer here. The fragmentation is massive and annoying and very hard to deal with. I've found it best to try to work around the problem by minimising my OS dependencies where possible. This is actually easier for games than for apps -- games can take over the whole screen and have their own weird UI, while apps have to integrate nicely.

I'd say:
- Find a nice robust framework. I'm using the built-in NativeApplication and I regret it. I think SDL might be a good bet. Lots of people like Unity (but it seems very heavyweight to me for small games).
- For a portable game, C or C++ is your best bet right now. (Or Unity's C#.)
- Pick a nice baseline API level and stick to it. You can actually go right back to API 8 (Android 2.2!) and you get OpenGL ES 2.0, which is an important milestone for games. I'd like to update my games to ES 3 at some point, but that only works from Android 4.3 onwards (fewer than 50% of users) so I'm holding out for now.
- Avoid using Java if you can help it! Seriously.
- Avoid using the file system if you can help it. The APIs are very bad and the hardware is often bad too, many manufacturers seem to cut corners here.
- Figure out a good crash reporting / feedback system. I haven't actually found a good one for native apps, I'd love advice on that! HockeyApp is great on the Java side.
- Figure out a good testing system. I ended up just buying lots of old phones and tablets on eBay and Amazon. Getting a good mix of screen sizes and CPU types is key (there are quite a few x86 tablets out there, it turns out).

I haven't even looked at Android TV yet. :)
Same here. I would gladly trade some of my income for more free time, but I was immediately shut down when I tried to discuss it with my employer. It would be great if companies started opening up to this idea.
The software that had "the focus of Steve" was generally very high quality. However there were a number of rotting products at Apple while he was still in charge.

The problem now is none of the SVPs seem to have that attention to detail, or they are too stretched doing numerous things.
Bus vs. Plane: Building a Long-Distance Travel Comparison Site in Two Days
In my experience I have found it more difficult to work less days and take holidays as a contractor. The company that is paying for your services expects complete short term dedication on delivering the project, and that is what you should provide. You can take longer breaks between contracts but again I have found that not to be the case as you always want to have more work lined up for a steady income stream.
Missing GE, MS, and other major platforms...
But .. why?
I mean - if that device works perfectly fine, why buy a new one for a _software_ upgrade?

And even that won't help in general (I was bitten by HTC, LG and Samsung in the past. Basically every Android vendor is crap and the GP calls out Google for being only slightly better).
Ask HN: How do you get back the ability to concentrate?
I can't focus on anything except for completing my duties as a programmer at my job.
All my side project ideas remain just ideas and I never get started with them. I have probably started and completed 20% of numerous books, articles etc.
I procrastinate like a crazy person on all my side project/learning tasks.
Even(if ever) I get started, I can focus for like 15 mins before my mind wanders off.
Has anyone come from this situation and gone on to be generally a productive person?
If so, please share your insights and experience.
The problem is that we have a bad model to describe the effect of EM-waves on biological tissue. Currently the model defines biological bodies as containers of water. This is clearly wrong.

What I propose is standard antenna science. Something needs to resonate with the biological systems. In artificial antennas there are free electrons. In biological bodies there are ions and polar molecules. Most proteins are diamagnetic, except when they are in reaction. These are the things that we need to concentrate on.

There are also new discoveries that show that biology uses quantum super position states in some of the important proteins. This allows these proteins to be far more sensitive to electromagnetism. For example: the magnetic sense of birds depend on it. Another example is chlorophyll, which becomes more sensitive to light (which is an EM-wave) than usual.
Other discoveries show that DNA might be a conductor. And in combination with EM-radiation the functioning of parts of the DNA can be reduced or enhanced.
This is new science which clearly shows that we were wrong about the effect of electromagnetism and biology before.

Also interesting are processes in biology that have certain frequencies of themselves like the firing of neurons. And other repetitive processes like the transcoding of DNA to RNA and of RNA to proteins.

Note that all these antenna possibilities depend on certain frequencies. On some frequencies we might see no result at all, while on others it affects a certain process in a negative or even positive way. And looking a the actual research at http://www.microwavenews.com this seems to be the case. A lot of research show some kind of effect (negative and positive), while others don't.

Sadly many scientists do not know much about both biology and antennas. They usually talk about ionization and heat, which are not the problem at all. It is actually very stupid to see that as the problem.

I do not think that EM-radiation is totally bad. It is just something that is damaging on the long term due to stress and disturbance of the biological processes and systems (when they resonate with the specific frequencies of the signals).
> I hope more christian developers get involved

According to the Business Insider article[1], Trevor McKendrick is atheist:

Though McKendrick doesn't have to think about money, his
booming Bible-selling business does have him worrying
about one thing: his morality.

See, McKendrick isn't exactly a believer in his product.

"We don't believe in Christianity," he told Blumberg. "We
don't believe in the Bible."

"I would describe myself as an atheist."

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/atheist-makes-100000-selling-...
The Reality of Coding Classes
Indeed, I rarely have any kernel panics, or system crashes on OS X, and especially iOS with the latest iPhone. Other than iTunes, their software (that I use) has been pretty good lately.

I've actually had more problems with the hardware. My late 2011 Macbook Pro was just returned from the offsite Apple Repair with it's 3rd logic board (that being said, it's still under an extended warranty from Apple, which is at least a consolation prize).
Probably hosted on an apple server.
It's less about Snow Leopard having been supposedly perfect and more about how OS X feels like it's just floundered around randomly since then.

In fact, for me, I can honestly say that OS X has almost strictly regressed in terms of my day-to-day experience. Spotlight now covers up way too much of the screen for almost no gain; if I'd wanted that, I'd have just used Alfred. Mission Control is still not as powerful and flexible as Expose + Spaces, and now it even goes so far as to hide desktop thumbnails even on my dual 27" monitor setup. Seriously?

What's most shocking to me is how much Windows has caught up from a UX perspective. I have Windows 10 on my (primarily gaming-oriented) desktop. Since I don't use the desktop for much programming, I almost never find myself wishing that it was running OS X instead. That's a real blow to the magical grip that OS X once held over me. Cortana is just as good as spotlight -- better, even -- and it manages to be much more space efficient as well. Windows Explorer is so much more useful than the bafflingly overly simplistic Finder. On Windows, if I want to tile windows, I can -- get this -- just drag them to the side, top, or any of the four corners. On OS X, I have to either fiddle with their impressively clunky split-screen full-screen app disaster or use a third-party tool like Spectacle or BetterTouchTool.

I could go on, but I'll leave it at this: there was a day where I never wanted to touch Windows again because I felt OS X was so much better. Now I find myself only really sticking to OS X for two reasons: (1) it still has better touchpad interaction on a laptop; (2) it's still based on Unix so I prefer it for programming.
Kotlin 1.0.0 Release Candidate
What's worked for me for the past ten years was to negotiate to be an hourly employee at hiring time. In that position, there's no conflict of interest if I work 30 hour weeks, or take two extra weeks of unpaid vacation.

Once I'm at the job, I just take a normal raise when it comes along. That means I can then work less hours from that point forward for the same pay, giving me the same end result as what you're looking for without having to negotiate for something unusual every year.

I think the reason employers might be uncomfortable with letting you work four days is that it'll create the illusion of unfairness to your co-workers. They can't see how much you're getting paid, but you having a day off a week is very visible.
Trevor here, creator of the Spanish Bible app.

IkmoIkmo got this spot on in his/her comment.

Biggest two mistakes people are making in this thread:

1. $100k was revenue, not profit.

2. I get capital gains rates on the sale, versus ordinary income rates.

(If you didn't know about #2 you should probably sign up for my accounting and tax course for freelancers and entrepreneurs: http://trevormckendrick.com/accounting-course-for-entreprene...)
It's a Goldman Sachs analyst pointing out anomalies in global capital flow. Where are seeing an agenda?
I'm not sure why you're so critical. This is how science works. No one wants to do (or pay for) a huge survey if you have no idea what the results will be. So you start out with a smaller survey and see if it's worth investigating more. Right now there's no consensus about the effects of RF-EMF on semen quality. The proper solution is to continue doing research, not ignoring it all together because "it can only harm us in a way that QM disproves".

But yes, this is not a "this will change your life"-paper, it's just "another data point which we should investigate"-paper.

Anyway, I found it interesting that their survey did discover another variable:

> A multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed a strong
independent effect of two variables on the risk for abnormal
sperm concentration: talking while the device is being
charged and smoking.

There seems to be quite a consensus that smoking does indeed have a negative effect on sperm quality. Their survey did manage to pick that up.
In my mind, if you have to ask for a regular raise, then your company isn't treating you fairly in the first place. It's one thing to ask for a change in your salary because you feel you're underpaid, but it's worse when your company doesn't even have an annual evaluation and accompanying raise.
Freelance. I do 4 days a week, or rather I will after spending a year at home with my family, whilst doing odds and sods to keep me ticking over.
It is not fair to single out Apple - all the software has gone downhill in the past couple of years - browsers, websites, apps, appliances, virtually everything.

My suspicion is that it's the proliferation of new ways of doing things - new languages, no-sql/key-value db's, new hosting platforms such as AWS, docker, big data stuff like hadoop, storm and spark, all kinds of embedded software (tv's, cars), etc - we've got a lot of new stuff lately, a lot of us don't understand what we're doing and we've introduced a ton of bugs.
This is bang on. Anyone here willing to share how you convince yourself to ask for a pay raise?
I am a product manager of this tool, if you have questions or are interesting in working for us (we have offices in Cambridge, Munich, Saint-Petersburg and Moscow and can offer remote positions), just ask.
Creating an autonomous AI that will "kill anything in the air that isn't a drone" is easy to type, not so easy to implement. First, the drone would have to detect its opponents. How? Is it going to carry radar? Carry IR sensors? Both of those cost money. Then it has to discriminate between a drone and an aircraft. How? Drones look like fighters/bombers/civilian airframes, tankers, helicopters, etc etc. Discrimination will be a huge problem.

Batteries don't have the energy density for powering high performance aircraft. They can't even power something along the lines of a Cessna 172. Assuming battery tech will take off is just handwaving.

What everyone seems to be espousing is already in place: SAMs. SAMs can be autonomous, have the performance and range to shoot down any aircraft. The current generation of Western and Russian SAMs are all excellent. The question is whether they'll be good enough to defeat stealth technology. The jury is still out on it.
Apple and Android have very different strategies here. The result of Apple waiting until the OS works on most hardware means they never have articles like this published.

The real headline should be this:
Android has 1.2% of users using a brand new OS that Apple would never ever release until >50% of users could be using it.

It's not that other users and phones are behind. It's that Android itself is so far ahead.
You are forgetting that the hyperloop design naturally lends itself towards being placed on separate, comparatively cheap pylons, since the structural rigidity and relatively low weight of the tube sections allows them to be far more self-supporting than maglev tracks or even traditional rail tracks.

This essentially removes the requirement of flat land from the equation.

Also, remember that the hyperloop is really much more geared towards the American need: large cities are separated by much greater distances than Europe, meaning that a faster and cheaper per kilometer solution is needed than high speed rail.
Tiny Habits with Dr. BJ Fogg – Behavior Change
Green Bay may be off the hook for NFL stadium costs, but Wisconsin's still paying at least a quarter of a billion dollars for the new Bucks arena.
"Planes are great support tools for infantry and armored units who actually win the wars by taking and holding territory from the enemy"

That's a pretty loaded perspective on the nature of war. Occupation of territory isn't necessarily the objective and it's a crude sort of "victory" which is not appropriate for many current conflicts.
Imagine how many "this never would've happened if Steve were still alive" articles would be written if the iTunes 13 installer were to delete users' entire hard drives like iTunes 2's did (http://www.wired.com/2001/11/glitch-in-itunes-deletes-drives...).
NASA hacked by AnonSec that hijacked a $222m Global Hawk drone
Then why doesn't your White House or Obama do something about it? (non-US citizen here).
I think Apple will remain in style for this broad generation of consumer computing (mobile devices physically separate from our bodies). No other company has quite the holistic philosophy and approach that Apple commands, even if their dominance lacks perfection. Google and Amazon are ok, and Microsoft has a while to go, even if it is clear that they are trying very, very hard.

Once the nanomachines are here, there is no guarantee that Apple will remain relevant.
Since the tubes are only partially evacuated, rather than being at full vacuum, it's not super hard to do it on Earth.
The main reason could be that they don't have a competitor in UNIX devices at the moment, at least when it comes to hardware quality.

Beside that, if you want to do mobile development, you need a OS X at hand, again, not much alternatives.

All companies have a life time at the end, and I think Apple is enjoying its 90s of Microsoft era.
Really good material here. Particularly liking the dry humou?r here:

-----------------

Programmer welfare

Software developers should not work more than 40 hours per week. If they do overtime one week they should not do more overtime the following week. This helps keep software developers happy and makes sure they don’t get overworked.
This title is misleading... he has not won anything yet... he is still waiting for their ruling... The ruling I believe from the article suppose to come out tomorrow. So please make sure you read the article. He has also said that if he looses which might still he will freely give himself up for arrest tomorrow at noon.
Idk how many people care, but one of the new features in 0.27 is the addition of ContainerLoggers, and a logger that uses logrotate. Here's a blog post I wrote on how to get you started with getting this working: http://continuousfailure.com/post/mesos27_logging/
> There's just no way in hell Steve Jobs would be putting up with this

Maybe. I felt like the quality started going downhill shortly after iOS came out, starting with low-level APIs, then xcode, then making it into user-level applications.

My theory is that a lot of the really experienced engineers (the one who started with NEXT and OpenStep) left when they were rich after the iPhone stock jump.

So really there is nothing Steve Jobs could have done unless he had a developer education program or something.
I learned Napier's bones in school too. It is impractical nowadays, but I think it shows some of the fascinating beauty of math that can inspire kids.
just curious, what software were you using for audio production under windows?
If there were any worldwide system of incentivization and value that was non-monetary, I'd be inclined to agree with you. As the world exists, paying inventors == convincing innovators to share their trade secrets with the public.

Unless you'd like to offer feasible alternatives?
Another hint is that Roman Polanski lives openly in France despite being convicted of drugging and raping a child but somehow Assange is much of Europe's priority...
> it’s tragic that Aperture and iPhoto were axed in favor of the horrifically bad Photos app (that looks like some Frankenstein “iOS X” app)

I find Photos.app to be the best Apple app I've ever used. It's simple, modern, works amazingly well between iOS and OS X, transparently manages 100GB of data between iCloud and local storage.

This entire piece is surfing on Mossberg's take and goes way too far.

From what we know, Apple does seem to be sorting out big challenges on software side:

- transition to Swift on 2 platforms, which won't happen until they decide to only support 64-bits OS X and iOS at some point in 2017 or 2018 or later

- OS X and iOS foundations are actually super solid. Accidents happen, both codebases are now much more mature and stable. Probably the best they had for decades

- manage the largest updates in history yearly. You hear of bugs because everybody gets to experience them at the same time. Windows never got that many million devices updated overnight

On top of that, they do seem to have conflicting marketing priorities. They don't know what to do with iTunes - as a brand, as an app, as an experience. They're obviously conflicted whether a user should depend on the AppStore to do stuff (feature creep in Notes.app).

IMO this "apple software sucks" is more a consequence of a stalled marketing than an engineering problem.
Windows 10 is -in my limited experience- awful. Admittedly I don't use it for much more than gaming, light browsing, and occasional ssh sessions but it's painful to use, the apps aren't great, and it frequently craps out with weird error messages (e.g. "The required TCP protocols not installed on this machine" actually meant "The NAS isn't responding").
Facebook Chat Encrypter – Encrypt Your Facebook Messages
I don't use cellphone devices. I have a desktop computer, and my life is 100%.

Maybe we don't need cell phones?

I think they are generally overused and do not accomplish anything productive in comparison.

Mobile is the past. Rooms are the future.
The Microservice Version Problem
There is a Grand Jury investigation. "might" is not the right word to use.
To be fair, Apple seems to be addressing this with the last release. El Capitan had fewer new features and concentrated mainly on performance issues. I hope they do the same in the next release. I don't care for more features at this point.
How did you figure out which salary bracket you fit into?
I wonder how much does this relate to Bertrand Serlet leaving the company. It seems to me that the quality of Mac OS X dropped quickly after he left.
There's also https://www.kimsufi.com/en/
I'm on the last El Capitan.

Actually I have to restart the Finder every few days because the network drives either disappear or are no longer reachable. Sometimes the shortcuts disappear as well especially the ones that are located on a network drive (I tried both smb and afp).

I've also noticed a lot of slowness throughout the OS. The spinning colored wheel shows up very often compared to previous OS versions and on all kind of actions.
As far as aggregators go, Skimfeed.com is the obvious choice, and for more focused stuff I've also found applying filters on newsnow.co.uk can be quite useful as well.
The unfortunate thing about "modern prefab" is that it is so dang expensive when the minimalist designs with builds in a controlled environment should be inexpensive.
Show HN: Xenon boilerplate – typescript angular protractor framework
Defecting being an optimal play is something that could be addressed via co-op rules.

But that's my entire point. Currently, selling out to a patent troll (ignoring patents obtained from bankruptcies) is honestly the smartest move if you're a small company with a great patent. We should give such a company more socially-beneficial alternatives.
Are you a fuckongfucking retardeded???
While I think this is exaggerated I also think there is truth to it. I would not blame this on inability to make quality products but bad high level choices. What is xCode today used to be multiple separate apps. The synch process for iPhone used to be separate programs. Now we are getting these huge monolithic programs like xCode and iTunes. Making big monoliths just isn't good software engineering IMHO. They should stick more to the original sound Unix philosophy. Make smaller apps which do a few things well. I think if users find it cumbersome to use multiple programs together, then the solution isn't to combine them all into one but to create an Operating System environment which makes it easy to use multiple programs together.

I think xCode e.g. which I use every day could easily be made into 3 different programs. 1) Project management and configuration. One program where you define which pieces go into your project. How they are compiled, deployed etc. 2) An Editor component which does syntax highlighting, refactoring, code navigation etc. 3) A GUI designer.

Sure integration has its benefits. But it also has many big disadvantages. Many people like to use different editor components, e.g. AppCode does refactoring and code navigation better in many people's view than xCode. Yet it becomes an incomplete solution as they do not have as sophisticated GUI design and project management tools. But it these were separate tools which could just as well be used with AppCode one could inspire much more diversity.

Likewise the monolithic iTunes locks out any kind of alternative third party solutions. There should be one synching applications which can sync content like pictures, books, music etc. But that is all it should do. Movies, Music, Apps etc should be separate apps and we should allow alternative third party alternatives to these. People might want other ways to display and organize their iTunes music e.g.
>Also, a high percentage of OSX users have no idea what XCode is, let alone care if it's not as nice as VisualStudio.

I really liked XCode, a lot more than Visual Studio, until they remade it to look like iTunes (around 2012).

So there is definitely some preference involved for those people who say Visual Studio is better (and of course, vice versa).
Show HN: Demo: most accurate speech recognition