skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think Section 3.3.1 is good for hackers in a very different way than explained in the blog post. Good hackers will (by and large) follow the law for their commercial endeavours rather than try to work around Apple's insane (and ever shifting) policies. I for one wouldn't set out to build a business based on explicitly breaking the law and with the possibility of a lawsuit looming.

That said, the IPad, IPhone and AppStore have raised the bar for UI design, user installation, sales (and payment) processing and so on where there is now a clearly defined "what hackers want" gap in the ecosystem. The Apple AppStore is an existence proof of what is possible and this is orthogonal to languages used and so on (as demonstarted by games using Unity3D).

Hackers want to build their own languages that compile down to the "native" language and APIs but they also want the AppStore style payment processing and so on with better facilities for updating our apps, a faster and more comprehensive review cycle (assuming that a review is a good thing) and so on.

If someone (Google? Microsoft? someone totally new? ) were to fill this gap (and someone eventually will), it will be "good for hackers". Section 3.3.1 is good insofar as it will spur development of alternative ecosystems and force disgruntled hackers off the Apple path. No one who has a choice and wants to stay within the bounds of the law will accept such inane terms and conditions. Microsoft had far less onerous policies and far less competition than Apple in the mobile space, and yet, over many years there was a drain of top class developers from MS's platforms to Linux/BSD and later to Apple. Once upon a time MS was the only game in town for commercial projects. The advent of teh Web and Open Source changed that game. The same scenario, with different players and technology, will play out with Apple, but it won't be instant and will take a while.
It was the "sheets" part that I was referring to, but fair down-voting as it was a trivial gripe!
(full disclaimer - I work at myGengo)
myGengo (http://mygengo.com) tests translators and does quality-checking for multiple levels to ensure customers are happy with the output. We also allow customers to rate translators and - I'm trying to be honest here - we're almost embarrassed to show the feedback comments because they sound too good (http://mygengo.com/talk/customers/testimonials).

Customers also have the option to request changes / corrections, and even to reject if they are not fully satisfied.

Anyways, just an alternative solution. The online-translation market gets interesting by the day :)
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With a heavy hitting roster like this, it's hard to believe that a startup might bite the hand that feeds it (or at least used to feed it).

Sounds more like the hand that called the dog over with promises of bacon that wasn't there...
Good point. The wisdom to use opportunities is underestimated I think. There is a lot of creativity in building something good with the tools available. I say good instead of new, because for developers the result will be something you've seen before. But under the hood, there is something that makes it quicker, more stable and more easier to use.

Sometimes creativity is not so fancy or easy to see. I think the author is talking about the fancy.
By that logic, no one can impose any restrictions on anything ever.
American standards, with which the iPad does comply, allow for lower wireless power levels than do the European standards. Because of this, Haaretz quotes unnamed ministry officials as saying, "the broadcast levels of the [iPad] prevent approving its use in Israel."

They're confiscating them because they support lower power levels? That seems weird. Typically radio-like devices run into trouble for being too powerful for local regulations.

Not that that should be an issue. My Airport Extreme lets you turn down the transmission levels from 100% to 0% in 25% increments anyway.
I'm not sure I agree with the opinions expressed by Dana Oshiro in this article, but it's an interesting perspective nonetheless. As much as others may benefit from this lesson, Jamie's candor might end up hurting him in the long run. (I hope it doesn't, and I'd say that it reflects poorly on VCs if it does: The world needs more people who are prepared to bluntly state their opinions, not less.)
Ask HN: founder dating website
Anyone knows of a website that connects people with ideas and necessary experiences (dev, design, marketing) to start companies together? Sort of like a founder dating website.
"It takes experience to predict what other people will want."

I'm pretty young. Will asking people what they want work?

Has there been any scientific research on the effectiveness of focus groups?
That way they can attract visitors to the other n articles theorizing as to what black holes are exactly.
I found this out yesterday and submitted http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1264183

I don't understand the wifi issue. This screwed my plan for my father's 50th birthday gift. I have been hiding an iPad in my dorm room, still in its original gift wrapped packaging. What do I do now?
We go by bytes, not chars.
A lot of open source software go down the route of having the software free, and paying for guaranteed support and/or funding developers directly in order to get their specific bugs and needs met faster. That's definitely a viable path; the question is, can you make more than just a salary on it? Some companies do, but then you have to get into hiring, managing people, which most hackers don't really have any interest in.
What's the purpose of this ?
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"We were trying to make SaaS for PR professionals because it seemed like a good opportunity."

What was your strategy for figuring out what PR professionals wanted?
One problem is that to create something that's never been done before, and devote the required amount of resources to give it a passing shot at success, requires a certain level of naivete and hubris -- the exact qualities that good investors suppress. So for investors to take advantage of naive entrepreneurs by failing to give full disclosure up front and failing to "do unto them as you'd have others do unto you" is an especially sour pill. Think Grapes of Wrath: it's all just business until the lives of ordinary people are ruined.
They will die, as simple as that. Bit.ly was a short-sighted, stupid investment. I mean they took $2m in VC a year ago, and now another $1.5m in debt? To build a hash of urls, an ACL system, and some metrics?

If only there were an exchange on which we could sell short stupid, private companies.

Twitter is a business. One that is potentially on the same scale of bad investments like Napster or Friendster. At some point they're going to need to focus on features that will make them revenue, and they'll start looking at the "ecosystem" of 3rd party apps, figure out which ones are low-hanging fruit, and harvest.
"I said pretty much the same on "Lambda the ultimate",

well the very next comment (on LTU) was interesting. Titled " Steve Jobs' Sales Prevention Program", it says

"Back in the NeXT days, some of us involved with the NeXT in one way or another used to talk about Steve Jobs' "Sales Prevention Program" because it was all too common for him to implement policies or do something that would kill a particular sale (in some cases a sale of many machines), or destroy NeXT's prospects in a market.

It was the flip side of his amazing intuitive sense of elegance and form. This sense allowed him to instantly 'know' the right way to do things, most of the time. But because he lived by that intuitive sense, when it came up wrong he had no way to rationalize an alternative. Just as there was no way to express why he was right in the 'right' cases, there was no way to argue with that intuitive sense when it was wrong - and quite often there was no way to know whether he was right or wrong until later. "
Congress to archive Twitter
Probably sometime this Summer; there's a lot to work still ahead. The name will be different, actually. The most difficult aspects of the startup are the legal and regulatory ones.

If you want to know more or be part of the private Alpha, just email me (the address is in my profile).
Unrelated point, but this sort of evolution is expensive--you often have to throw away software and marketing efforts, and all you got in return was some knowledge about what users want. Might not it be possible to figure out more about what users want by thinking harder/interviewing them and avoid this waste?
I'd like to be added, thanks!

On a side note: this post has inspired me to donate all the stuff I don't need to the local thrift store tomorrow (mostly books/clothes).
I wonder how far you could get bending a combination of the C, C++, Objective-C, and the C preprocessor (assuming it's allowed) to you will to come up with an interesting new language.

But I guess most people don't want a new language, they want whatever existing non-Objective-C language they're already comfortable with.
I agree with him that mostly the bottleneck is not in idea generation, but in what you do with the ideas that you and others have. Unfortunately, he does not really address the "doing" part, except by saying diligence is good. Sure, but you also need audacity to push good ideas against resistance. You need an open mind to use the best ideas of others. To me diligence implies doing what you're told, but I don't think that will result in too much innovation, because that presumes that your boss understands the value of the new thing as well as you do, which is very rarely the case.
I agree completely. The other point I guess is that if you build something that satisfies a need for you, you're far more likely to use it day in day out. Using your own product is extremely valuable, and it's surprising when you hear of businesses that don't use their own products - how will they know what needs fixing/improving etc.

And making something you want means you likely have a lot of knowledge already about the space. It's like an author being told "Write about your own experiences - write about what you know".

Also it really surprises me if someone is working at a big company 9-5, and doesn't have a side project. Get a side project all you people! It could turn into something other people want as well.
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very interesting i like it
As a Canadian, I'm sure you realize that we apologize for everything, whether it's our fault or not.

And this is a hang over from your British heritage.

Sorry about that. :-)
I don't know all the maths behind it, but try saving a JPG, close it, open it, save it again, repeat a few times. You'll see quality degrade every time you close it. My guess is that the lossy compressors try their best to preserve the previous compression artifacts, but in doing so they introduce more compression artifacts.
Nice, thanks!

Though this seems to say that this has absolutely nothing to do with relativity, and everything to do with the speed of light. That x years of light can arrive within x/10 years of each other makes it look like it's traveling 10x faster than it is. And if it's already going near light speed, it appears to go beyond that because it's nearly keeping up with its own light.

(for tl;drs / those still confused) Think about wave-fronts collapsing onto a beach zipping away faster than you can run, despite only traveling a few miles per hour towards the beach. Same basic thing, but with light.
I vote we send "o rly?", since they're clearly talkin' smack about us, and we're just picking up some joker's over-powered ham radio.

If they reply "ya rly", it's evidently not from an intelligent source, and we start hoping it's a black hole.
I've been playing SID for the past few days. The interface is fairly confusing but the 'gameplay' is absolutely fantastic. Highly recommended.

At first the 30 second limit seemed outrageous, but once you find the rhythm it makes for a really engaging experience. You start becoming less ambitious and the scenes tend to become more driven by dialogue and character. A great decision on Rohrer's part.

When you buy the game, you get two licenses so you can send a copy to a friend and start playing immediately. There are also player matching sites springing up like sidtube.
i wish I could upvote this sentiment more. I've also been accepted into an incubator, but had I been declined, I still would of moved forward with release, and marketing plan. After being accepted, I've adjusted my schedule some, but still on track regardless. To me it seems that Jamie is giving up on something that if he truly believed in it, he should continue even now after finding a real job and getting back on his feet. For this reason, it makes me feel that maybe Bootup made the right decision. Regardless its a terrible situation for everyone involved.
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Going to http://sidtube.com is the only time I have ever smiled about my cursor changing on a website.
Your comment on LtU reads like satire :)

"Hey ya know, the good thing about WW3 was we all learned really useful survival skills like how to get all the meat offa rat and such."
I thought spam was dead (for power users at least).

Good spam filters killed it (gmail and co).
I guess if you know you'r going to code a lot, you'd take a laptop. OTOH, if you'r somewhere and need to fix a bug (or build your latest greatest invention), and only have an iPad around it's great to have a good online editor.
Problem rises when gas station operators, assuming they are rational, know that customers are using this strategy. In this case, they will set a price that will be function of how far and frequent other gas stations are located. The favorable outcome for customer is random chance here, somebody with less gas who would have used the same strategy would end up at more expensive station.
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Yet another emotionally unpleasant yet viciously necessary dose of reality.
Sure, I didn't mean to imply any particular chain of causality -- just the fact that there is virtually no value in a positive article from Techvibes given their financial conflict-of-interest in this story.
Starting a company in Canada among 2 or 3 people is easy. I should know because I did it when I was a teenager. It cost me $15 for some incorporation templates, $150 for a name search report showing potentially similar company names to the one I wanted to start, and $350 or so in government fees. This got me a company incorporated provincially. You can do it federally too but it's a bit more complex. If you have as much money as you claim you could probably emigrate to Canada in a special business class meant specifically for people starting businesses here.

Starting businesses is easy as pie. If you have enough money to sustain the business before it brings in revenue then I'm not sure what the attraction is to these sort of ventures. If your execution is good then VCs will hear you out regardless of whether you've been "accepted" into a program like this. They may facilitate introductions but there are also government funded programs here in Canada that do not charge money which will do the same.

Tax rates for people smart enough to start businesses in Canada are fairly attractive. It is especially so when you factor in healthcare costs or lack-there-of. However one thing to bear in mind is that it is often a severe hassle an American company to exit an investment in a Canadian company. In some cases it would require 900 signatures of limited partners in the American company and for each to file Canadian income taxes. Google "Section 116 foreign investment". It is something the government here is tackling in a bid to spur VC investment in Canada. But there are still some gotchas (and benefits) to starting a company here.
I'm actually looking for the same thing :)
It's such a great idea for a startup btw - at the moment we have "job search" like co-founder directories/searches.

What we need is "dating site" like services. Co-founder is like a husband/wife isn't he?
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They got it backwards.

IIRC the max effective power on 2.4ghz is 200mW in the US and 100 mW in the EU. Changing the limit is a software/firmware configuration issue plus a little calibration with a signal meter so it won't have any impact on a worldwide launch date.

A lot of people in the EU load US firmware to get more range, even though it's not permitted.

The lower default power is actually a good thing. 100mW is fine to cover an average European house/apartment, and it helps cut down on interference and boost total available capacity in densely populated areas.
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This is a new and disruptive idea from innovators in the field.
This is one of the most one-sided articles I've seen on RWW. Of all the comments here, they choose this one?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1266864

And they mentioned Robinson's "This is not how it went down" comment without the main substance of his post (which consisted only of small quibbles) -- or the responses to it.

And does the fact that there was a "a heavy hitting roster" backing Bootup make what was done any more excusable?
Oh. Enlightenment.
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Apple, just require that translation layer be open-source
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IPad To Be Release on Vodafone, O2 and Orange
Never seen such thing before ..
Guys watch this you will not be able to believe this ..
i could always use more space !

It seems that helping a non-profit foundation to make some genetic calculation for college is hitting my budget hard.
I have a pathetic 500gb hard disk that is getting hammered and is getting full !
If i could get two of those and raid them then i would be sooooooo happy ! :D
Consider me !
Yes, this is the only downside, but I believe that would also apply if you bought direct and had it shipped to BB. At 6%, though, it's less onerous than our 17.5% VAT, and was about $24 in all (plus VAT..)
Why do people keep stating it like an eternal truth that Flash can't support VP8. They've added video codecs at least three times in the past.

All those codecs have been bought in so it's not NIH syndrome. One of them was VP6! And if you think they're allergic to open source codecs then note they just adopted Xiph's Speex as a better alternative to NellyMoser for voice a year or so ago. I'm sure they appreciate not having to pay licence fees as much as the next giant corporation, and understand that customers appreciate that too.

(edit: just realised the post I'm replying to is actually saying something different i.e. that existing Flash video is often H.264 and so can be moved to HTML5 without touching the video file itself. I think the point is that Google doesn't want to move from Flash to HTML5, they want to move from royalty-bearing codecs to open source and open standard friendly codecs, so yes replacing those H.264 files is required regardless. Flash will become optional as a side-effect.)
Nice job! I used to be in translating business for a short while.

I would suggest that freelance translators are asked to enter their profile information in all languages they translate to and from. Depending on initial language a site user has chosen, profile information can be updated to that language. That way a customer who speaks only one of the languages can understand too.
Say the unsayable: countries get the HIV epidemics they deserve
Why do you say that? It might open them up to some sort of liability (I don't know either way), but as long as they watch their tongue, I think it reflects well on the company to be so transparent.
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That looks pretty good. You should however add categories for areas of expertise.

For example, technical and scientific translations usually fetch much higher prices. Thus, translators with technical expertise are unlikely to use your site and compete with the lower priced general purpose translators, unless their special skills can be easily differentiated.
Sad, but I agree. Be curious to hear why the investors wanted to invest In the first place if the idea isn't good enough to keep the founders committed when they hit this sort of minor setback. And weren't they working on the business for two-plus months in Vancouver? No demo? No prototype? No sense of next steps?
Xiph's Vorbis is the only audio codec that's suitable for use alongside a hypothetical Google royalty-free video codec.

Well it's not the only one. Xiph's CELT and Xiph's FLAC are probably interesting too for certain use cases, and maybe the upcoming IETF Wideband codec that Xiph are helping standardize. And they appear to be working on their next-generation audio codec, Ghost, again too, so that's one for the future.

So yes, well done Xiph.
I'll gladly take it... actually forget that, Vietnamese customs would probably hold it forever before loosing it in someone's pocket...

So, Israel, Apple? First they shoot Macbooks, and now block iPads from entry? What's going on there‽
Which part did you find unpleasant.
But the query language is much simpler than SQL and integrates seamlessly into JavaScript. It should be easy-to-use for beginners.

Yes, I'll fix the video.
There's no reason the sections can't be given constant names-- instead of #toc29 you could have #visas. This would avoid the explanation of how links can break, as well as avoid breaking links (and, as a bonus, you can stay backwards-compatible in the transition). Though of course, this does require you to update it, blah blah blah. Perhaps consider it in the future? :)

Very nice collection, of course.
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