skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> It's probably a poor business decision to just "give up" $5000 per day of revenue because you need to rewrite the app.

It's poor business to rewrite an app for no reason. How many months will it take to rewrite these apps just to achieve the exact level of functionality they have now? What if the developer has no Objective-C experience at all (which, given the choice of MonoTouch, might be likely). What a massive waste of time and money for nothing.

> I'd probably jump at the chance to make a similar clone in hopes of taking it's place.

On a forum full of developers, this attitude sort of disgusts me. Here are these poor developers having the rug pulled out from the under them but it doesn't matter because we're all replaceable cogs and someone will be there to take their place. That stinks.
Ok, thanks for the pointers. I don't actually watch TV or follow any mainstream media (unless you consider NYT as one).

On number 3 I think you got your numbers wrong. On March economy did include 162k jobs, 200k from temp census jobs. Wouldn't the total be higher than 162k jobs added?
Stack Overflow and Server Fault are full of questions like this.
We are supposed to be business oriented here; You pay me $200 and I will stop making comments you dislike. I feel that is a reasonable amount.
There are currently ad libraries you link into your app, and I really have no idea what's in those libraries and what kind of stuff they send home. Which is the crux of the problem, really, and one of the things Apple is trying to address - we should know where we send the data and how it's being used, but individual developers are not powerful enough to affect change from ad provider. Apple is.

So anyway, since I don't know what these apps collect, I can't be certain if thy will be banned in short term. Obviously once they clean up their act they will be admitted, but the transition period may be messy, that's all I'm saying.
You can create anchor tags like this:

[debatezone](http://debate-zone.com) debatezone

You should make it add rel="nofollow" to the generated links otherwise spammers will post items in order to gain "link juice"
"The easiest way to debate online – argue with people and get points."

I would change that to just "The easiest way to debate online" The rest seems superfluous and poorly worded.
Not true, agreement forbids using user data in ways not related to the primary function of the app and it also forbids passing device data to third parties.

I'm fairly sure moblcix and admob libraries collect device ID which falls under "device data".
Err... why is this the top voted comment, what the hell?

More on topic, why would you spend $500 on a high profile gadget where one of the main attractions is the style of it, and then balance it on some moulded plastic that was only ever intended to be a temporary shipping support to the things you wanted (blank DVDs)?

It's not the perfect iPad stand, it's a really incongruous luxofrugal mixture that looks ripe for you to touch the top corners, dislodge from the small gap the lower edge is hooked into and have it at least slip down onto the table, and at most slip down scratching the back, then slide onto and off the edge of the table causing you to start forwards, spilling whatever you were holding and end up with a damp crotch, and stained carpet, a scratched iPad and feeling like an idiot.

Nice observation, now stop doing that and treat your expensive stuff with more respect; or if you have enough cash that you don't consider an iPad expensive, buy a proper stand!
"User of AirBnB"

This should be a requirement rather than a bonus. I can't tell you just how helpful it is to hire people who are customers/users of your service. They obviously believe in what you are doing because they use the service and have given the ultimate vote - opening their wallet.

Here's an old blog post where I talked about that with our company
http://www.cattlemanagement.com/customer-service-hiring-phil...
Dashboard iPad app rejected by Apple, made open source instead
I don't think you can really do much better than Google. If the competitor/originator isn't on the first few pages, then you have an advantage even if you weren't the first one to make it.
recent update: http://www.nationalmssociety.org/news/news-detail/index.aspx...

"On February 10, 2010, the University at Buffalo Medical Center released a press release describing preliminary results from an ongoing study led by Dr. Robert Zivadinov combining the use of transcranial and extracranial venous doppler evaluation in people with MS and controls, with the aim of evaluating the prevalence of venous obstruction in people with MS. [...] The results reported are based on the first 500 participants in the Combined Transcranial and Extracranial Venus Doppler Evaluation study.

The preliminary results reported that at least 55 percent of the MS cohort participating in the initial phase of the study showed narrowing of the extracranial veins causing restriction of normal outflow of blood from the brain. This was also true for at least 22 percent of the healthy controls."

So it looks like the MS research community has significant interest in this, and that early reports from a larger study confirm an association between the disease and venous blockage.

---

edit: and on the other hand...

http://medicalmyths.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/the-zamboni-myt...
Wouldn’t something like getting the actual video file (flv or h.264) be a simpler approach? I mean don’t you have to have some kind of sandboxing etc. since you are executing unknown code (swf)?
At the SXSW Flash vs. Canvas panel it was mentioned that canvas has virtually no browser quirks; all browsers that implement it implement it correctly.
I've actually been hoping that a formal review process will be put into place soon at my current company, and I've been asking my boss(es) about it regularly. This is because I was under the impression that a formal review is the only way for me to get a raise. From that perspective, it's definitel in the company's best interest to dodge this as long as possible: upon reviewing me, they either have to tell me I don't deserve what I think I deserve, or they have to pay me more.

Is my understanding of the process wrong? Granted, this isn't a GE kind of company-- we have employees in the hundreds, not thousands-- so hopefully it's different.
That No SQL Thing – Document Databases
1. yes, leads to more content
2. irrelevant to SEO
3. irrelevant to good search engines, eg Google. PS: Speed is relevant, yes.
5. Irrelevant to actual rankings from what I know
6. Duh. It's not a design if you don't tailor the site to your client.

Nothing new, many questionable statements. Move on, you won't miss anything.

PS: improve "SEO"? The O stands for optimisation.
Progressive Disclosure
Google boosts open video by funding ARM Theora codec
So I guess there is still hope that I can be the greatest programmer in the world and don't have to rely on my genes. Awesome :)
> Otherwise we would all be filthy rich by now.

Would you trade places with the richest man on Earth in 1900 ?
If you're going to use someone else's artwork for your iPad app, it's probably best not to get that artwork from Apple's desktop operating system.

I'm sure he'll enjoy his letter from Apple Legal.
Customers first - our customer service hiring philosophy
Apple, who is primarily a computer hardware manufacturer, shouldn't be in the business of dictating what tools or languages software engineers use to create applications.
I would read it.
It'll matter if it's slow, bloated and buggy.
the news report that 48000 new census jobs were added in march. where do you get the 200,000 number?
Where can I go for more benchmarks?
Super-High Alcohol Beer Heads to the U.S.
I’m the creator of Markdoc (http://markdoc.org/), which is pretty simple (bias bias bias bias) but it's just plain-text files in a directory, which means you’ll need to be comfortable with a text editor and a version control system.
Where are the "Forgotten your username/password?" options?
Why the Yale Model of Investing Doesn't Work for Everybody
For sysadmin postings, I like to see at least a blurb of "technologies we use," since it allows me to avoid, for example, Microsoft shops.
I don't think he was asking about the smart part, but the engineer part.
IMO, dokuwiki works fine. Reasonably easy to install as a Ubuntu package, has several authentication plugins. And it doesn't look ugly.
If you cannot wait for Java 1.7, use usual trick with anonymous classes and static initializer block:

Java 1.7:
List<String> list = ["item"];

Java 1.2:
List<String> list = new AList<String>() {{ items=["item"]; }};

where:

public class AList<T> implements List<T> {
protected T[] items;
// Implementation
}

Set<String> set = {"item"};
Set<String> set = new ASet<String>() {{ items={"item"}; }};

Map<String, Integer> map = {"key" : 1};
Map<String, Integer> map = new AMap<String, Integer>() {{ keys=["key"]; values=[1]; }};

I can post detailed explanation and examples of this technique, which I love to use, in my blog, if somebody will be interested. (English is foreign language to me).

It is much better than to use full blown implementation and bunch of setters just to pass around one or two elements.

I often use this technique to pass optional data to/from methods or to program in declarative style in java.
What I like about that mentioned Times article is nothing about religion, atheism or another child abuse related news item, but as an example of the way rich and famous people have the power to do things that ordinary people cannot, but currently rarely do so outside certain 'approved' ways.

It's much more interesting to me to see two people consider doing something unusual like that, than do something more ordinary like fund a school library or join a museum board, or do something like buy a sportscar.

Whether they can or cannot do it, or if it's right or wrong to do so, that they thought "we have a problem with this ex-head of state and world spanning organisation and we don't need to wait for another head of state to act, we might be able to do something about it ourselves" stands out to me.

Does that sort of thing happen a lot, or is it a fairly modern development? I can't think of many other examples.

Edit: May not quite apply - update: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/04/you_cant_trust_a_...
I'm not professional developer, but I'm a passionate computer hobbyist. I make a good income with my day job - I'm a medical doctor - so I have no financial motivations when it comes to programming, it's just something I like to do.

When I became interested in web development I spent some time learning Django. As a result, I put together Instant Django, a no-installation-required Django development environment for Windows, and I also wrote an introductory tutorial. Over the last few years I've had a couple hundred thousand downloads. I don't make any money from it, but a couple times a week someone emails me a thank you note, which gives me a little thrill.

Last year I decided to learn to program the iPhone, because it seemed interesting, and my 3 year old daughter loved to play with my phone. It looked like a great way to share my hobby with her. I've spent the last few months writing an introductory tutorial for iPhone game programmers, based on the Cocos2d framework.

I've been unhappy with Apple's policies up to now, I especially thought it sucked eggs that I had to pay $100 a year to run software on my own phone, but I tolerated it. With this latest move, I've decided to drop the whole thing.

I purchased an AT&T Nexus One, and I've begun learning how to program for Android. I've also started to rewrite my tutorial.

Will Apple miss me? Nope. But I'm a passionate user, and they've lost me for good.
If you're talking startups, I agree. But sometimes it's just some little library/tool that I need, and I'll spend an afternoon writing it and put it on GitHub if it doesn't exist, but if it does, I'd rather just use that than waste my time.
Misdirection is a part of their secretive nature. They don't telegraph their punches. Instead, we hear Jobs say that they can't think of what one would do with a tablet beyond reading on the toilet and that people don't read anymore.
Come build the world, enjoy virtual friends and do business in Woozworld
My job posting would be similar but would add "Bonus points if you are musician who takes jam breaks in between coding." Which I do myself often.

Instead of just having Rock Band the game I'd have full on band equipment.

Working towards this type of environment!
It's very interesting to see how (almost) all these links have less than 15 points when it is the same content....

I guess there is nothing better than an attractive headline

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=494066
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1003875
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=495561
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=474588 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=918637
Gigantic-scale businesses are different than startups, and with different problems and different avenues and different dynamics.

As troubling as I find management built on an up-or-out career treadmill and deliberately roiling the employees and the bungee-bosses and the management schools, these are a counterintuitive and cut-throat and effective way to keep the management and the organizations from getting complacent.

Commission sales folks are accustomed to the up-or-out model, too.

This doesn't scale down to smaller businesses nor to startups, nor is it usually particularly necessary. And for all the reasons discussed elsewhere in replies elsewhere here. But the dynamics in bigger organizations are different than smaller ones.

(And no, I never thought I'd be sort-of defending this approach, either.)
I don't have one.

If I now just DON'T buy an iPad, I'm set.
I don't get why this is seen as a good job posting. There's very little info about the job, the compensation and only minimal info about the skills needed.

When I was, say, 20, the blank slate might have been appealing. Now I'm actually good at stuff. I have deep specific skills and sorts of problems I like working on. Working in a job where I'm not using a significant subset of those skills is a poor use of my abilities. (Though, notably, doing the founder thing that happens anyway. ;-) )

To me this post basically reads as looking for, "young, excited and inexperienced", which may be their goal, but would be disastrous if used as a general template.
I find it funny that the Rails developers have a worse rep than Linux users, compared to whom they are cuddly teddy bears (on the whole).

FTR: Zed Shaw writes/says everything very tongue-in-cheek. And he makes it funny. He's like Maddox. Oh yeah, and he sees the deeper issues, whereas this guy is just ranting.

FTR 2: The "Fuck You" slide is massively misunderstood (I was there).
IJab – Instant Messaging for XMPP/Jabber – Webmove.org
Good point, changed. Thanks.
Besides the artwork that was plainly copied from the Mac version ... I just compiled and installed it. It does not work that well. If this is the same version that was submitted then it needs a LOT more polishing.
Not there because I am too lazy. You're right though, and I will add them eventually.
sidenote: I wanted to do some "startup field day" event for Charity in the valley sometime in the summer.
the autopackage site has no (easily) locatable links that compare it with new installation systems like 0-install, Nix.

Can you comment on what advantages does autopackage have over other package managers. Correct me if I'm wrong, but all package managers are essentially cross distro - I can run rpm/yum on my Ubuntu machine.

And a google search turns up .... umm.. this - http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/autopackage_designed_by_...
Flex definitely won't output to FXG. FXG is simply a declarative graphics specification. Don't expect ActionScript to port over to JavaScript reliably using this tool.
How to Make Your Stuff In China, Part 2
I think there are lots of cool things that can be done with SMS but I don't think I get this. Why would an advertiser want to text in their ads instead of just typing them up in adwords or another advertising platform?
This is because I was under the impression that a formal review is the only way for me to get a raise.

This seems rather directly mistaken. If you feel you deserve a raise, communicate this directly, rather than artificially putting a formality in the way.

upon reviewing me, they either have to tell me I don't deserve what I think I deserve, or they have to pay me more

I think it's pretty safe to say this is a false dichotomy. A formal review could tell you all sorts of things, none of them having anything to do with money. Absent some kind of clause in an employment contract, they don't have to do anything.
I'm not talking about professional programmers.

Here's a use case: someone in a niche field - say, an archaeologist, just to pick something - has a clever idea for a phone app that will assist him in his job. He knows a little about programming, and manages to put together a Lua script that does most of what he needs. Several of his colleagues find his code really useful and recommend it to their friends too.

You're probably right that the app store isn't the right place to distribute it, but Apple doesn't give you a lot of leeway there, does it? In any case, if it's some random app for a niche, and people find it useful, who cares if it's got some deficiencies?
Wont let me create a debate. It claims every debate title I try to use is already taken.
actually, i don't (hate them). normally i have done ok, so it's a chance to say so and ask for a rise.
Neither. Google has a an interest in getting video to work on multiple platforms, it seems clearer that html5 will be the future of youtube. However Google's codec of choice does not work well on mobile platforms. Doesn't this make mobile consumption of video easier for all vendors? A win for all, but most of all the service provider.
As much as I hate performance reviews, from my limited experience with them, I'm not sure they are bad for business. I mean if you're doing a tedious job there's an obvious conflict of interest: you, the worker, want to relax to make the work more bearable; they, the employers, want as much work to be done as possible, no matter how boring it is. What's the point of pretending otherwise?

Now, I quit my last job partly because of this. I'd say on one hand its their loss because a) i contributed lots of helpful ideas/processes, b) if nobody ever sticks around they wont have long-term, 'expert'/veteran staff, who are very important. However, perhaps good ideas always tend to come in with new employees, and perhaps a high turnover of staff ensures they only need to pay the entry-level wage, while they also want to minimize future reliance on veteran staff. I can't call it myself.
To whom? Apple?
Study Catches Two Bird Populations As They Split Into Separate Species
Maybe because there was a loss of 238k jobs in other sectors ...
Nope, there were serious legal issues.

Edit: Just to be clear, these two firms would essentially own the mainframe market (sure IBM does pretty much already but that doesn't mean you let the acquire more market share)
>.< There was an issue with .downcase! returning nil, fixed it.

Can you try again please?
Isn't this how intense debate started?
IAd Is The Coming Fall Of Apple
If this turns out to be affirmed by the medical establishment I hope that man gets the Nobel. It's exactly the kind of medical efforts we need more of: trying to CURE a disease, not just temporarily reduce symptoms via a pill sold for profit, a pill which in turn causes the patient other problems, which require more pills, and so on.
Dixie Carter Cause Of Death
Dashboard widgets are just HTML and JS so they probably copied the entire widgets unmodified from OS X.
In Steve's response to Gruber, I think I have an idea on how you could summarize his stance.

"OK, I realize that by banning other development platforms, I realize I'm making that initial hurdle painful for those who aren't familiar with our preferred tools or languages. However, our tools/languages are always at the forefront. After reviewing Gruber's comments I'm well aware that it seems like a harsh move, but I want developers to bite the bullet and deal with the learning curve now rather than wait while everything else attempts to catch up to what we already offer."

Steve's at least acknowledged that it was harsh. However, the main argument holds: If you want everything the platform has to offer - including optimal performance - you're going to have to use Apple's tools anyways. As a developer I myself think it was a very harsh move, but I'll also agree that using alternative development tools has a significant performance/feature trade-off right now. It's a significant learning curve.

I think he's incredibly wary about user perception of not only the platform, but it's ecosystem of apps. The effect of banning alternative development platforms will probably have a minimum effect of the quality of the app ecosystem, but any negative is still negative to a notorious perfectionist who caters to the premium market.
Formula 1 Live Streaming: Formula1- A sport for speed lovers
So you are saying that if someone sells an app (which might be sold with minimal modifications to other hospitals) for the 100 ipads to a hospital as an enterprise solution (let's assume we can get the hospital to buy the iPad directly), the app still has to be put up on the App store? Doesn't that confuse the hell out for users that don't work in the hospital?

I develop iPhone apps selling on the app store, but have never explored the enterprise distribution side of it. With the iPad, it's becoming interesting.
Does anybody know of a markdown git-backed wiki?
Whether or not you believe Mr Ritholtz or the WSJ is your call, but here's one review of some data and a look forward:

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/04/worst-post-wwii-recessi...

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/04/retail-jobs-suggest-str...
Past performance is not indicative of future results. Otherwise we would all be filthy rich by now.

No, the market price of Microsoft stock would simply adjust to that expectation. In fact, this would preclude you from ever becoming filthy rich by making smart investments.
I just created an oddly named debate and it seems to have broken things. I named it: <"'&>------

Can't even view it.
Flash can do both vector and bitmap graphics (which is BTW much faster than current canvas implementations, even in fast browsers like Chrome [1]).

Adobe used canvas probably because you can redo vector graphics with a decent performance in canvas, while it doesn't work the other way around.

Flash exporter to SVG could be marginally better for vector parts of what Flash can do, but it would lose all bitmap capabilities, while Flash exporter to canvas can potentially replicate everything what Flash can do.

----

[1] Flash bitmap graphics is fast enough to do pretty decent full-screen 3d graphics with textures and shading:

http://away3d.com/

http://dailypv3d.wordpress.com/
Interesting, but I'm doubtful that the Justice Department or FCC are going to regulate an ad network that only runs on a particular (albeit a very popular) kind of phone.
Python seems to be the best argument against misunderstood pseudo-OO since C++ and Java.

"While 3A is shorter, I think it is much less clear then 3B, 3C or 3D, the class examples. I think of a closure in terms of an outer function that needs to operate on an inner function, such as in the case of a decorator. Using a closure just to delay execution of a function doesn't seem right to me, and I feel like it obscures the code. "

Well, this exemplifies everything that is wrong with Python and its community. I have long since decided that Python is not for intellectually honest people, and every blog post about it I stumble upon just reinforces that observation.
Even if SWF was open, I doubt browsers would have implemented it since SWF doesn't really fit the spirit of the Web.