skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>1. Adobe isn't completely innocent.

Who cares about a company being "innocent" ? What does that even mean ?

>(their Creative Suite costs as much as a MacBook Pro)

Do you have a serious study saying that Creative Suite is overpriced ? Because it doesn't look that way to me. And what does that even have to do with anything ?

>I'm sure they don't want to deal with developers using up their support time over things that are the fault of Adobe's Flash SDK or Novell's C# one.

So they could have added a clause to the dev agreement saying they won't support the dev choosing to go with other SDK's or languages. That would have been a TOTALLY different story no ?

> 3. It's also in Apple's interest to [...]

Of course it's in Apple's interest. The way they're ready to alienate a non negligible part of their partner's base (because that's what devs should be, partners) for their short term interrest is kind of scary though. I even really doubt it's a clever strategy if you consider Apple's interest alone.

>Do I like Apple's stance? No. As a user and a developer, it's bad for me. However, Apple's the market leader and getting people to use their API gives them control

However what ? You know the problem isn't even the fact that the platform is closed to others languages. If it has been like that from the beginning of the IPhone/Ipad, it wouldn't be the same problem at all. The real problem in this story is that Apple is ready to screw other peoples businesses. It reminds me of the Playstation3/Linux story, in some ways. People have invested time and money in this platform, and yet Apple decides to change the terms of the game and screw them over completely. The fact that they have the right to do it doesn't make it right. It's immoral and wrong.

> Adobe isn't known for being open. Given the chance, Adobe seems to wall itself off as much as Apple.

Examples please. I may have forgotten some things, but on the top of my mind, i can't find anything even remotely similar to this.
True. That would be like Singapore telling us how to build a widget if we want to be able to ship it through their harbors and sell it on their territory.

/me wonders about Squeak on the iPad.

Found it: http://isqueak.org/HomePage
Developer signed goodness!
> It brings developers to the Mac by forcing them to buy one

No. Thanks. I have no urge to develop for iPhone, iPod or iPad, much less in Objective C.

I think I am gonna pass this one. ;-)
I think that's exactly what he's doing.

He wants iPad/iPhone apps to work, to be elegant, and to be consistent.

He wants the Android space to be full of sort-of-works crapware that you find when there are tools that let any half-wit drag-and-drop an app together.
> Jobs' perfectionism is an asset now

You know that "too much of a good thing" thing, right?
heh. love how this comment keeps changing value over time. +4, -4, 0, -2....
Original article here: http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/83396-errors-in-database...
If it is true that non-HTML resources are a factor based on Google Toolbar reporting, that's scary. On high confidence sites -- more than 1000 datapoints, in Google Webmaster terms -- average speed seems stable and correlated with other performance measures. This is not true in my experience with medium confidence sites, 100 to 1000 Toolbar datapoints.

I'm hopeful that Googlebot is the primary signal.
His customers?

I think application developers are most used to thinking of users as _their_ customers. But you're right, that is clearly not what Steve is thinking.
Except, of course, their own ad network.
Again, these two continuums are completely unrelated.

Stab <---> Not Stab

Professional <---> Not Professional

My claim is that a professional, not-stab approach would be more effective than a not-professional, not-stab approach. To me it seems like this is a bit difficult to argue against, but I suppose it's possible that this temper tantrum post will be more effective than a strong-but-professionally-worded post in the same direction. Maybe you disagree.

Regardless of whether you do, comparing Apple's behavior to Adobe's is irrelevant and misleading. Comparing the two might incorrectly lead people to believe that this post is a good idea because it compares favorably with what Apple has done. In fact, whether this post is a good idea is completely unrelated to how bad Apple's behavior is.
> If you don't like my rules, develop for a different platform.

Okay.
The good news is that Disqus is trying to hire someone to speed up performance.

http://disqus.theresumator.com/apply/RwUhQj/
Generator Tricks for Systems Programmers
> Any real developer would not in good conscience be able to support this.

> I hate such broad-sweeping statements.

I know no "real developer" who really likes Flash either, so, I find all this "oh no we want Flash" thing rather amusing.
Better one than ten.
Wouldn't this also have an impact on ad heavy sites, even if the ads load after the content?
Oh, Apple, your transformation is complete.

How long until Apple disbands the senate and declares martial law?
One that I've always liked, supposedly written by Shackleton:

"Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success."
JavaScript Badges and Widgets Considered Harmful
> But Apple has no right to any opinion whatsoever regarding how I create those deliverables - that is my business, and remains so until I submit it.

So, companies in the 1980s had no right to any opinion whatsoever regarding whether or not the products they sold benefited the apartheid regime in South Africa? Amazon has no right to any opinion whatsoever regarding whether or not the books they sell are printed on paper made from trees harvested from virgin rainforest? Target has no right to any opinion whatsoever regarding whether or not the clothes they sell were produced in sweatshops?

There are a lot of arguments that can be made against this new rule, but the argument that Apple doesn't have the right to impose the rule in the first place is utter and complete nonsense.
Media Temple Grid service also reported a similar attack, where several DB passwords where leaked, and systems were infected. They reported that all the sites were running Wordpress.

http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/2010/03/02/1167-gs-atta...
There may not be an out-of-the-box solution for writing Erlang apps on Zune, but what if someone wanted to make one? There'd be no problem. They'd still have to compile down to something that Zune understands and that's all that's necessary. Cross-compilers and language-to-language compilers are a big part of computer science, they are cool and great, and it is none of Apple's business how you build your program as long as it doesn't cause trouble.

If Ford made "drives a Ford" a requirement for all of its employees, would that be fair? Couldn't you just say "they want you to use their stack"? It is totally evil.
People have invested time and money in this platform, and yet Apple decides to
change the terms of the game and screw them over completely.

Investing in a platform does not guarantee you'll profit from your investment, nor does it oblige the provider to continue providing you the means to recoup your investment.
No, you're missing the point, this discussion isn't about what we would like. This is about whether Apple is insane or within their rights to do what they did. There are lots of other discussions on this site about whether it's a good idea, or whether developer's should like it.
Apple also forbids me from making notes with pen and paper before I start writing source-code because then the paper notes are the original representation of my ideas and I rarely represent my ideas as Objective-C code.

Actually, I am more inclined to think the synapses and neurotransmitter concentrations in my brain are the original representation of the program, but that's another story. ;-)
What?! Do you really like ActionScript?
Mass. health insurers halt new coverage offers for small businesses
Why custom software shops need to hire designers.
It would be fun to watch those three trying to out-evil each other...
For 3D context free art, check Structure Synth. Combine it with the Sunflow renderer, and you'll be in love with it - http://structuresynth.sourceforge.net/
I thought that was because I had to go to work...
Youtube also uses linear-gradient and box shadow for its account button.
IIRC, this has been a factor on AdWords for some time.
I live close to an In n' Out, but I would kill for a Five Guys burger. There has to be opportunity somewhere in the regional food trade.
Actually it has never been positive since the first vote, let alone +4.
In this, Apple is analogous to a totalitarian state. Most corporations fit this model with regards to their properties. They arbitrarily had closed off their harbors and borders (no native 3rd party iPhone apps) but then saw the opportunity to make a lot of money and opened the doors. (iPhone SDK and App Store.)

We should not be surprised when a totalitarian state employs arbitrary coercive actions in its own interest, and this is not the first such maneuver by a closed source company. We should be in the mindset of people doing business in a totalitarian state. We should be aware that there is an iron hand under that velvet glove and that equitable treatment under that regime is motivated by that regime's self interest, not by a principle like the rule of law.

Open Source = The Rule of Law? I never made that comparison before.

(I will continue to prepare to do business in the totalitarian state, but I will be a good little merchant and try my best to avoid notice, and I won't be surprised if I find the police closing up my shop sometime.)
Can I ask what your authority is on that? It seems that most people agree with you but I don't understand why!
I understand the angst that this is causing, considering the news from yesterday, but really, who wants their location data sold to some 3rd party for the purpose of ad targeting? Not me! I think this is a good move for consumers, despite the negative impact it may have on some application developers (ad networks).
More reasons we’re through with native iPhone apps
I think you've touched on our disconnect.

I'm not complaining about your complaining - I don't think you should stop or anything like that. I'm simply voicing my opinion just like you are. It's all good.

On to your points. If I was upset at my phone's browser (and believe me, my phone's browser shouldn't even be called a browser) I would just look for a better phone, one with a browser I liked. Same with the DVD player. I don't think that's what we're talking about here though. It's more like your DVD player vendor was saying "you can circumvent the FBI warnings, but only if you do it while singing the alphabet backwards"... well, if I cared about the FBI warnings that much and had the time to spare and otherwise enjoyed that DVD player, I'd just do it the way they wanted. I just have better (from my perspective, of course) things to worry about than "HEY, they should let me remove those warnings while singing anything I want!"...

To get back to specifics and away from stupid analogies: It is true that I'd prefer to write an iPhone app in Ruby than in Objective-C. I just don't think that my preference is Apple's problem. They're just doing fine without me, after all. This could come back to bite them, but then again it might not. So I'm perfectly happy to agree to disagree here.

So to reiterate. I don't think this is not significant, just that it is not significant to me. I didn't mean for my comment to be taken literally as a "no, you should all stop caring", even if I came across that way.

Cheers.
Watch out for Supreme Chancellor Palpatine.
PlatformFu for Hackers and Startups
You do realize that "ability" was already there? They've always had full control of what they allow in the store, so this latest change is only significant in intent, not ability.
I've heard this criticism a lot and it always perplexes me, because it's completely divorced from the reality of how mobile ads are bought and sold.

Right now the mobile ad market can work with your approximate age, your gender, your location down to the city level at most, and very high-level interests derived from the site or app you happen to be using at the time. Anything else is too finely grained to sell meaningful volumes of advertising against and therefore not wanted.

I'm guessing people take the reality of the online ad market and falsely assume the mobile market is there as well.
33 states out of money to fund jobless benefits
I will assume the down-voter thinks Apple is forcing him to buy a Mac.

If you want a Mac, go buy one. You don't need Apple as an excuse. They are very good computers, very well built and have an OS that, IMHO, is second only to a decent Linux box as a development platform.

It's so good it breaks my heart to install Linux on top of it. So much in fact I never did it.

Except once, when I installed MkLinux on a Power 9500. Very nice X terminal, BTW.
If his algorithm is correct, it is known that it is possible to guarantee a loss in truly random Tetris with the right sequence of Ss and then Zs; you can force a hole, and this means that the player must eventually use.

Now, he may not be implementing his "worst possible piece" algorithm correctly, and it is certainly the case that the requisite sequence of Ss and Zs will take its sweet time about killing you.
Is Steve Jobs Ignoring History, Or Trying To Rewrite It?
That's a surprisingly strongly worded endorsement of Theora from Google. I'm still fairly shocked that they support it in Chrome at all, and this seems to point towards Android support.

Strangely this is credited as if it was written by the guy who did some of the ARM tweaks for Theora, who doesn't work for Google as far as I'm aware. I knew of the work but thought he'd done it on spec and then got paid by Mozilla/Xiph to relicense it as they required. Google's involvement was news to me.

They also seem to make a point of mentioning On2 but say nothing more about the fact that Google just bought them.
I agree. I find these clauses to be the exact opposite of 3.3.1, they are ethical and they show a laudable concern for a user's data and privacy. A welcome stance in this day and age.
Is Apple just trying to regain control over every possible facet of the app store? Banning all third-party analytics from apps sounds huge, so if I am missing something then please enlighten me. I thought the location-based data verbiage was just one example of something not allowed.

This would affect far more than just ad companies, right? I understand that's probably a motivating factor, but wouldn't this incorporate an even larger subset of third party analytics companies (like Flurry / Pinch Media for example)? The purpose of those companies is not the same purpose as the app itself which rules them out. It could depend on the definition of "User Data" and "Device Data" in the agreement, I suppose.

Third party gaming tools would seem to be safe at least.
The divorce: Adobe Vs. Apple
> #4) The last guy who did this job was awesome. He worked hard to help us become who we are now.

The fact that he left should tell you something.
Sure there is. I'm not saying they'd go there, but they could make a blanket statement that all i{pad,phone} apps be exclusives, and if they see the app appear in another mobile store, it's gone. Again, I'm not saying they'd go there, but they certainly could.
Tell HN: script to hide Apple-related news
Some people were complaining about the amount of Apple-related posts today, so I whipped up a quick script to hide them.

GreaseMonkey
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/73977

Bookmarklet

javascript:(function() {var as=document.getElementsByTagName("a");for(var i=0;i<as.length;i++)if(as[i].innerHTML.match(/Apple|Steve Jobs|iPhone|iPad|Gmail|Google/gim)){var tr=as[i].parentNode.parentNode;tr.style.display="none";tr.nextSibling.style.display="none";tr.nextSibling.nextSibling.style.display="none"}})()
You can tell if someone is coming up to speed within the 60 to 90 days associated with most contract to hire jobs. What you can't tell is if they'll pass that 90 day mark, or if that is actually their peak.
Can you email me with your phone number? I'll give you a call. (zackster@gmail.com)
I don't care what they're doing with the data today. I'd rather they didn't have it at all. I directly benefit from this decision.
Am I a Bad Man for Naming my Classes after Patterns?
They are changing the rules, yes, but they are changing it along with a new set of circumstances. With multitasking support coming, the consequences for user tracking is growing. Considering Apple's zealous focus on user experience, I can see how they would want to manage the exposure of third party marketers to their users.
> Between that and the several mysterious unattributed appeals to authority, followed by a big apple marketing pitch... is this from a gossip column or something?

We are talking about AppleInsider here...
The location data is a little iffy, but defensible. The real problem is the third-party analytics clause.

Ad companies are, at their core, analytics companies. By understanding your audience, you serve higher-potency ads, which means you can charge more for their placement, and developers have a higher incentive to use them. Companies like Google and AdMob are analytics companies. By understanding an audience, they can serve relevant content (ads). If they can't understand the audience because collection of metrics is prohibited, then their ability to act as an effective ad provider is massively diminished. Ad revenues dive through the floor and advertisers stop using the platform.

Enter iAd. We can provide you with detailed user analytics and possibly even that coveted location data. Thanks to the new iPhone user agreement, we can even tell you what size underwear a user wears, and how many eggs they had for breakfast. We will give you returns on your ads that you have never before dreamed of. Stop using those wimpy ad companies that can't give you an ROI on their blind-targeted ads to save their life. Use iAd and make more money for us.

It's very difficult to interpret this as anything but a move aimed to invalidate other advertising platforms on the iPhone, in order to make room for iAd as the only viable choice.
I hope you have a nice life.
Thanks for the links. Very nice videos.
Yet this is completely fair to consumers who buy the application. Some welcome protection for them against unscrupulous developers or ad agencies.

This change of the rules makes a ton of sense; with location-aware backgrounding (applications waking up and getting a notice when you change locations), it would be very easy for an agency to track where you're going and in turn sell it to someone else to make a quick buck.
We are the authors with last names not Q.

We are the ones being rejected and leaving the platform.

Look at what is being rejected: our personal ideas of the best ways for us to do work, our molding of the computer to the vision in our head.

If they told Van Gogh he had to work exclusively in the medium of gummy, he wouldn't take it quietly. After he cut off his ear and threw it at Steve Jobs, he'd pick up his paints and move to a new country where they let artists be artists and programmers be programmers.

Yes, we know this is boneheaded by Apple. And yes, in a just world, fiery judgment would rain down on this business strategy.

We are trying to persuade others of our point of view. Legality doesn't enter into it. We want understanding, we want minds, we want defectors.
How do you know that? Are you going by the webmasters tool performance page? I'd imagine that view is a very simplified perspective on the actual metrics that search uses for ranking.
"User Data" means personal information, user location data, user content (e.g., address book contacts, SMS messages, photos and calendar events) and/or Device Data obtained by You or Your Application from a user of Your Application or from such user's iPhone OS Product.

"Device Data" means data or information regarding the characteristics or usage of a particular device, including but not limited to UDID, crash logs, OS version, carrier name, hardware model, installed applications and application usage data.

---

Many third-party gaming tools do collect UDID (or a hash derived from the UDID) since this is the only common identifier available across applications, due to sandboxing.

Interpreted liberally, this affects anything that makes an HTTP request to a third-party, since the application name ('application usage data') and the IP address ('user location data') is in the headers.
Liked the first 4 better than this one, FWIW. This one he mostly talks about the browser/JS security model.
Thanks for the pointer! Looks awesome!
They should, but ultimately they go where the money is. Like the guy at the top of this, who describes the situation as a totalitarian state, but says he'll continue and just try to keep his head down
That's not true, as a developer I'm well within my right to collect every piece of data I can get my hands on. That being said, I personally never would.

Apple is just banning the competition for analysis of said data so they can be the only game in town and "control the user experience" as they like to call it. I wouldn't be surprised if iAd included an analytics dashboard when it's released to the public.
Because embedded interpreters in iphone apps are already banned in another part of the developer agreement?
I think Jobs is one paranoid mofo. If analytics is stored on 3rd party servers then Google might decide to buy that company and their data and gain some insight into the Apple app ecosystem. Launching Apple's own ad network and I hope their own analytics system keeps all the data in their walled gardens. I don't really care as long as I have some kind of app analytics.
You don't send them your code. That said, patterns can often be found in the binary as well. So your point stands.
what an intentionally misleading graphic.
So, does this mean that I can't use something like MixPanel to track activities users make in my apps? I'm not so fluent in legalese... What if I don't track any "user-specific" data... just tracking aggregate events like "how many people clicked this button in this part of the app today"?
The fact that they have the right to do it doesn't make it right.

What in this sentence do you not understand ?

Also, Apple relies on developers to make some of their profit. Even if it's a relatively small profit, screwing theirs openly doesn't look like a very clever business practice to me.
There is a fair amount of variability in the data, just because it depends on who happens to be browsing your site (data is collected from people who have the Google tool bar installed and the page rank feature enabled). So you kind of have to look at the basic trend over multiple weeks.

They don't say though that this is the same data being used in their ranking factor.
I think we should think of it like doing business in a totalitarian state. Expect them to play nice so long as it suits them, play it safe and by the rules, but don't be surprised if they ever send the police to close your shop.
Not pleased. It can cost a lot of money to have a fast site.

If you're a neighborhood blog trying to make a go of it, you can't afford a developer to optimize your site and cache the crap out of it. Meanwhile, the local newspaper site, running a tag archive page for your neighborhood powered by Outside.in or some other McLocal scraper app, can do that. You lose every time on the speed front, despite having original content.
The problem with this is that the erosion of quality is not necessarily noticed immediately, but the slow increase of dissatisfaction builds until people finally reach the quitting point.

There's many instances of media where I look at older versions of the product and think, "man, why is this quality absent from their product today?". I didn't consciously notice it when the snowball was still near the top of the mountain. But eventually the snowball got big enough for me to bail.