skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What are the negative comments? Could it be that your app needs improvement? Maybe it doesn't offer enough value to justify the "heavy branding"?

Without seeing your product, consider option 3- try to improve your software.

EDIT: Downloaded, and I really like it. I've downloaded a ton of apps that were clearly made because "we need an iPhone app with our logo on it", so I had no clue what to expect. Sorry for the uninformed critique :)
Does this really count as good news? The choice a user makes on the ballot screen is essentially random. That their downloads triple just says that they originally had very few downloads.
17 years is long for anything now. Heck, 7 years is long for almost everything, and anything that invested in their product relies on die-hard secrecy rather than throwing patents around. IE, cars. Software in particular moves faster than most because it has zero manufacturing time, so yes, it should have a shorter limit as long as patents exist. It's very clearly a special case.

Early-industrial-age, retooling factories took a while. Now, many things are made to be modular or simply replaced outright for cheap. Things do not take as long to develop and produce now as they did when the patent office was new.

What may have legitimately been protection to begin with hasn't kept up with the world, and has become a hindrance. Just like anything else that doesn't change. Stagnation is death.
Patents are not a reward for creativity, they are to reward disclosure of an invention that otherwise would be kept a mystery.
> "No injunctions..."

That's flat wrong.

Nokia suit wasn't simply for past due royalties, and Nokia also asked for an injunction across a range of products, not just GSM. In their suit, every count says "unless enjoined by the Court" Apple will continue to infringe, and in Prayer for Relief, seeks a "permanent injunction" against "Apple's iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch, iPod Nano, iPod Classic, iMac, Mac Pro, Mac Mini, MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air." (I'm disappointed they forgot the Apple TV.)

http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/Nokia_Apple_III...

Nothing "standard" about the royalties in question in Nokia v. Apple:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/29/nokia-vs-apple-the-in-dep...
Oh! Now you scare me :-) But it is true, I have not experienced it "long enough". Let some time pass, I will update my experience then.
I'm finding the way Apple handles the App Store less and less acceptable.
That is one of the nice things about Android development. You dont' need to use Eclipse. I've done all my Android development so far with Emacs.
Right, that isn't scalable, and it isn't crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is posting on HN "fund my startup". That's what I want.
I think this is the real reason - just a couple of days ago Microsoft announced they would license a database of geolocated WiFi transmitters from Navizon:

http://www.navizon.com/Microsoft_selects_navizon_for_geoloca...

Navizon was able to develop a huge database of geolocated WiFi transmitters by having people run their application on iPhones. They got people to run their app by offering actual cash for number of WiFi transmitters you located
Ins and outs Opera is a very good browser, mine favorite. I think they just have that bad karma, possibly stuck to them from the ealy days when they used to display ads on the toolbar.
Why Flash on iPhone Does Not Make Sense
Flash memory could spell doom for Fibre Channel
I have authored WiFi Hopper for Windows (http://wifihopper.com).

iPhone development was in the pipeline -- not any more.
"Standing on the shoulders of giants" is exactly what's wrong with programming, and technology in general. If we keep doing this, we'll eventually build up so much information that when the foundations (the "giants") need repair or improvement, nobody will know how to fix them. You should never rely on someone else's work without fully understanding it yourself, and in programming that usually means it's best to write things from scratch. There needs to be more praise for re-inventing the wheel.
This whole article is strange.

First, the author can't decide if patents last for 17 years or 15 years. The correct answer (in the US) is neither: since 1995, US patents have enjoyed protection for a maximum of 20 years from the filing date. How long this protection lasts from the issue date depends on how long the application process took, and how much extra time is tacked on due to PTO delays, and whether or not all of the maintenance fees are paid.

Second, the author gives no justification for the 7-year period. Why are 7-year terms better than 2-year terms or 10-year terms? And how will any of them get rid of software patent trolls or fix abuses of continuation-in-part applications?

The article consists of nothing but unsupported assertion and incorrect information.
Enforcement affects perception of validity and enforceability which can matter both at negotiation and court. To quote a non-neutral party, note the phrase "lax attitude":

> "Neglecting stick licensing [enforcement] has two problems. First, it results in a loss of potential royalty and damages revenues from infringed patents. Second, it undermines carrot licensing of both infringed and noninfringed patents. If an industry perceives a lax attitude on the part of a university in enforcing its patents, it will think it can infringe with impunity. Under these circumstances, taking a license would be tantamount to making a charitable gift, which few in this economic climate are inclined to do." -- Alexander Poltorak of General Patent Corporation in http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Thars+gold+in+Tham+thar+patent...
This is really cool. Lots of possibilities, and just imagine what the steganography crowd would think if they got ahold of it.
In my opinion, any discussion about the "free will" or its non-existence should begin with the precise definition of the term. I observed in the past than people have different notions about what the term comprises, and without that common ground the discussions tends to be fruitless.
That's a downside?

/me reads next article
I'd go for the Andriod, it is gaining steam. I think the big fish in a smaller pond idea makes a lot of sense. If it does well on one platform I would look at finding someone with experience on the other to help port it.
If they were using private API's (as many here are claiming), then why didn't the infamous and lengthy app store review process find that before these apps made it to the market? If they can't even find out that an app is using private API's, what are they spending 7-8 weeks reviewing?
Anything I've looked at on Archive.org (mostly video but some audio) has the original uploaded file plus trascodes into Ogg Theora and H.264. So even if it is "transcoded crap", you're given the option of the original. Which makes sense when you've got "archive" in your name.

Wikipedia may only serve free formats, but they'll make use of stuff from Archive.org so you can click through to the original if it's there.
Anyone know the temperature required?
Thanks Sanjay. Please don't take personal offense at the comment about MBAs. I worked as a 'creative' in a medical marketing firm through university. So I made descent money from the creation of cargo cults, making something that looks right but doesn't work, makes me :(.

Just out of interest, how many companies did you start with? How many are earning revenue after 12 months?

I'd be in interested contacting them about their experiences.

Thanks
That's true, I wonder if what % of sales were international though?
Why are we taking McAfee's word on what happened again? They never claim to have directly investigated Google, and from what I can tell Google isn't their client. They are purely extrapolating based on other companies they work with.

This just sounds like they are trying to scare everyone about what happened to Google so that they can sell them McAfee Security, which as we all know will fix all your problems.
* shock and awe * low quality ads on Facebook??? Say it ain't so!

FB has encouraged some of the worst ads I've seen on this side of my spam filter.
A Combat Zone iPhone? Soldiers Have an App for That
I disagree that you cannot put intelligence (which in this context means mathematics and language skills, hence 'IQ') aside and practice other skills. Developing a sense of empathy and charm can have almost nothing to do with how intelligent you are. Selling a product has almost nothing to do with this version of 'intelligence'. And building a decent level of physical fitness, learning a musical instrument, learning a trade or craft such as carpentry or painting a picture have almost nothing to do with intelligence as defined here.

Lots of mathematicians, scientists and academics are hard-working, 'intelligent' people who are completely underdeveloped otherwise - there's an argument for saying that I am one... - so I think that this analogy holds better than you give it credit.

I can't help but think that you are using the word 'intelligence' in a different manner to that intended by the post. The trait that you are talking about, applying your intelligence to as many situations as you can, is closer to wisdom, I feel.
Even if that is the "reason", it still doesn't explain why, or provide a "reason". What has that got to do with Apple yanking such apps.

Is Apple now just pissed that its hardware was used to create a valid business for another company?

So what if Navizon created that database, and so what if MS purchased that database. What has that got to do with Apple??
> Unlikely!? Doing damage with a knife is tough? Yeah, 4 inches of steel in your chest is no problem, lol, walk it off.

It would hurt quite a bit yea.

Any knife fighter will also tell you that hitting a skilled opponent there is bloody hard :)

Bearing in mind how an unskilled person will almost certainly hold the knife (pointed straight at you) them hitting you in the chest requires a serious fuck up on your part :) There are 2 defence options (lets assume a right handed attacker):

1. Side step the knife on their off-body side (so they have no way to swing their arm at you without reversing grip - which will take too long). Take their hand in a standard grip (I'll dig out some pictures later) with your right hand and pull the knife/arm "forward" (i.e. into the place you were just standing). Reverse left elbow into their face to stun them, pull left hand forward to pressure point a knife released. This should take 2 or 3 seconds at most. They will either be on their knees behind you (kick the knife away btw) in which case you can push them sideways (not forward - that will put them potentially near the knife) and put them into a lock. If they are still stood you could do all manner of things.

2. If your better and prefer a more violent approach you can step onto their on-side inside their arm. Take the wrist in a lock with your left hand and push outwards (let them bend the arm up if they try too, it gives little extra leverage). Hit them really hard in one of the open spots on their body with your right. Preffered hit is the heel of the hand into the kneck just under the jaw. Disadvantage is a) it might break their neck and b) often they will put their head down. Side of the neck is probably your next best target. Again this should take seconds.

> There may be a time in my life where I get robbed with a knife wielder. I'll assess the situation, and I might even take action. But it'll still be the stupidest decision of my life, and I might have to pay for it.

Are you trained in unarmed defence? Have you practiced disarming knife holders? Are you able to react instantly and violently?

If the answer to any that is less than a Yes then you, clearly, shouldn't be doing this. And I've never said otherwise.

The Israeli in the OP clearly was a Yes for all of those. I am confident I am enough of a yes to take on unskilled combatants like the one sketched out in the OP.

And I have been held at knife point. At that time someone else took action but I was prepared too if needed.
I don't know how well this works, but this is how I was told to deal with robbery.

If you have anything substantial to lose, carry two wallets, one in an unconventional place. Put about $100 (with a few ones, so it seems like a real wallet) and some expired or fake credit cards in one as a dummy wallet.

Most robbers just want to get some quick cash, usually for drugs. So they get what they want and slink away, and you only lose $100. If you're traveling in dangerous parts of the world, the police are usually corrupt and you expect such random losses in the form of shakedowns/bribes.
That's true. I quite like OS X and use MacPorts as well. These days I use OS X almost exclusively. The only reason Linux wins is OS X still has some installers. Not many, but any at all are too many for me.

Copying app bundles around is easy enough though and they make things Just Work w/ fat binaries, so kudos to Apple for making that easy. Their Migration Assistant is slow, but still eases much of the pain of migration.
Local Coupons From St. Paul SuddenValues
I'm an Android user and generally find HTC sense an improvement over my old iPhone in a number of ways.

However currently applications downloaded from the market must install to in-phone memory, not the SD card. This severely limits their size. Some apps alternatively just have a downloaded in the market that fetches the rest of the app onto the SD card when launched, but the user experience for that isn't great.

I'd wait until Android gets native market -> SD card capability. In the meantime, go for iPhone.
One of the very cool things about the iPhone is that it can locate you almost instantly because it uses SkyHook's database of geolocated WiFi locattions (exclusively maybe? anyone else know of a mobile device that uses SkyHook for location?) I see it as Apple trying to defend that instant location feature from Microsoft adding it to it's new mobile OS. Apple isn't suing them, but no sense in helping them make their device work better with an app running on an Apple device.
So, pretty trivial, except on mobile, you agree?
It is. I have been trained in unarmed combat and it is relatively easy with a little training. I personally would be confident of disarming, with minimal or no injury, someone unfamiliar in handling a knife.

I'm afraid you don't understand the difference between a partner in training who is offering resistance, and a person who is actually trying to hurt you.
Switching from CruiseControl to Hudson (CI Software)
"..when picene (C22H14) is doped with potassium, it superconducts at a relatively toasty 18 kelvins (–255 degrees C)."
Sorry, I jumped on the story pretty hard :(
The demo page locked up FF 3.6 on Snow Leopard. I would avoid that page.
Locking down individual developers to only the source they absolutely need.

In that model, a single compromised workstation would only expose a few modules to malicious changes and only a few projects to code theft.

In the more-common wide-open implementation, a single compromised workstation exposes the entirety of code for every project to theft and malicious changes.

When you're talking about an under-the-radar hack that took place over months, hackers intentionally slipping vulnerabilities into the code is a very real risk.
That's one of the problems with review sites. They're typically artificially-deflated, because unhappy people are the most vocal people (especially on the internet). There are also loads of people who give poor votes because they couldn't figure out how to pay by credit card, or gave the wrong shipping address, etc etc, when it's unrelated to what's being sold. Amazon reviews are a prime example.

IRL, complaining that much would annoy everyone. On The Internets, you just ignore them. It does create a hairy situation for producers, though.
Platform shifts Mainframe to Mini to PC to Mobile. .. leaders fail to make shift
Well, I don't know about you, but I suspect that my efforts to write an IDE, OS kernel, database engine, virtual machine host environment are probably going to be rather worse than the ones that already exist. So I'm quite happy to use existing ones.
Why not let the market decide? This autocratic policy of actually killing apps is bound to generate speculation, mostly unfavorable. What possible benefit outweighs that?
Also, it gives people behind computers the opportunity to opine on the intricacies of knife fights.
Apparently I can't thread this reply deeper so I replied to the parent message instead.

No offense taken - I rail against MBAs myself when they lack experience.

We funded 8 startups last year. They're all still around but I can't speak (well, I could but I won't) to revenue, etc. I'll leave that to them to discuss or not as appropriate.
1. Using HTTP does not save having to properly format requests or parse answers. What makes exchanging messages by means of an HTTP library easier than exchanging messages by means of the socket library that that HTTP library is built on?

2. Hm, maybe. Or maybe using HTTP would increase the need for such mechanisms. ...How much would be cacheable, anyway? About the only thing would be fetching past posts, and I'd expect most of that to come from web frontends anyway (which would have their own caching).

3. HTTPS is just HTTP over SSL. SSL is available without having to use HTTP.

4. Hm. Maybe dns SRV records could be used to get around needing a port assignment, and what firewalls would actually matter? I'd think it would be like smtp/pop/imap, people just use webmail clients and their firewalls don't care.

5. :) I just don't see that requiring http for something that would in practice be almost entirely for server-to-server communication would actually provide any benefits.

...hm. I included a spec on how to make posts thinking that it could also be used by client programs, but the connect-back design for forwarding messages wouldn't work for that. :(
This is an issue that needs more attention. The app review process gets plenty of attention as it is, and in this case, deserves more than it is getting.
Please tell me you are trolling.
My best mate is into Aikido - some of the masters he's trained with wouldn't flinch if threatened with a gun. It's no threat to them.

That's a ridiculous statement. If someone has a gun pointed at you and is outside of kicking, punching or grabbing range, you are always a split second away from death. All gun disarms have one thing in common: you have to be close enough to touch the man with the gun. In the moment it takes to move into a range, they can pull the trigger.
You're assuming that the reviewers are programmers; don't.

The review process was changed a month or two back; from something along the lines of "Will the app crash? Does it look like its doing anything evil?" to something closer to `automatically scans for private api usage` + "does the app crash doing basic tasks within the app".

The review process now takes a lot less than 2 weeks (or 2 months, at worst). I've heard stories of approvals for updates within an hour recently.
“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” - Thomas Edison
Im not sure how I give that impression.. I've deliberately tried not too.

You gave it by saying things like:

If your well trained and you are happy that your assailant is unskilled then it makes sense to take action :)

Anyway, I think the biggest difference in our standpoints is that I've been robbed at knifepoint.

In the moment, all I could really think was that I wanted to be around for my wife and kids far more than I gave a shit about anything else, so I decided, in the moment, that I'd engage only if it seemed like a physical attack was inevitable. I tossed the wallet, and avoided the attack.

I was, and still am, happy with the result. And I will continue to disagree with those (such as yourself) who advocate fighting simply when you think you'll win, drawing the line instead at fighting when there are no other viable options.
GPS and tower triangulation make location by WiFi not as useful on a phone. Phones by law have to be able to know where they are (for e911) and a WiFi database doesn't meet the level of accuracy.
And HTC appears to be saying "we have patents too". Apple seems to have convinced themselves that they invented the mobile phone. Seems like a slightly different portrayal of the case.
I think that your point about taking serious damage from a knife fight is wrong.

A very quic search throws up this page: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/guns/archive/knives/msg0...

with this quote:

"Gun and knife robberies are equally like to result in serious injury.
The fatality rate in gun robberies is three times that of knife
robberies.
(Cook, J of Criminal Law and Criminology 78:357-76)"

Personally, I am not willing to risk even serious damage from a knife for the sake of whatever valuables I am carrying in a situation where I may be robbed. I cannot imagine being in possesion of more than about $500 worth of stealable, uninsured equipment in any situation where someone with a knife can take me by surprise.

Yes, I've done various martial arts - I've even practiced with sharps - but it really does not make sense to tkae the extra risk. If you know that you will be attacked anyway, this is different.
> And I don't mean saved my life in a hand-wavy, metaphysical way, like "Punk rock saved my life" or "Martha Stewart Every Day Living saved my life".

Being the literal-minded computer sort I am, I was waiting for the punch line, and it's kind of disappointing:

> Shipping my own projects saved my creative life.

Which is a bit annoying, because the rest of it seems like good enough advice.
"It's about challenging yourself. Becoming better. Training. When you can do stuff good, then you have to find stuff you can't do as well that is even harder."

Good read and solid advice.

But the title raised the expectation that the article would delve into how the thought process (and potential lower social/emotional intelligence) of high IQ individuals can be a detriment to starting and developing a business.
* gah * how did I miss that? Thanks!

For an early development, that is relatively "toasty". But aside from relative cheapness (I assume), there's little use to superconductors that require temps colder than -196 C (liquid nitrogen).
comment noted. we're developing the next version, as well as a more feature rich iPad version. it's a bank finding app. when you're out somewhere and need to find the closest bank to you, you're extremely happy that this app exists.

we think it's the bees knees. but, try it and let me know what you think.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bank-tracker/id345667440?mt=8
http://www.mybanktracker.com/iphone
Google Releases PowerMeter API to Developers
http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Free_will_(solution)
The world's largest cruise ship
Google Index to Go Real Time
Everyone here is negative, but I think the general idea is reasonable (though not new). I don't know that the length should be 7 years, but something significantly shorter than ~17 seems like it could help fix a lot of the current problem.

This would definitely change the cost-benefit analysis on filing patents. Companies definitely take into consideration the costs of employee time, legal fees, filing fees, etc. when considering whether to pursue a patent. If the expected benefit is suddenly less than half of what it was, then decisions start to change. If some portion of patents can't even make it through the system in 7 years (or whatever), then that makes the expected benefit of software patents even lower.
You should develop it for Android instead.