skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I believe that both Apple's letter and AnandTech's review show us that we shouldn't be measuring signal strength (either numerically or with bars).

AnandTech said "That brings me to the way that signal quality should really be reported - Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR)." [1]

I found a good comment on MeFi that discusses the bars' uselessness for CDMA. [2]

[1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2

[2] http://ask.metafilter.com/60227/What-do-cell-phone-reception...
From paragraph six, "We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see."

It's a psychological thing. A few extra pixels do indeed give the illusion of better network reception, albeit the actual level doesn't change.

Similar to designing progress bars, the actual progress is hidden from the user. Instead, the user is presented with the illusion that the process is progressing faster than it actually is.
Correct, but convenience is a strong motivating factor -- why else would people pay 20-30% interest just to take their own money out of an ATM? Most people just want to get a phone with service, and don't really want to mess around with the specifics.
To phrase that another way, it's not that covering the antennae gives you poor reception, it's that you've always had poor reception but didn't realize it.

Doesn't seem right to me, as I thought I had hear complaints about calls being dropped upon covering the antenna - not just fewer bars.
Would there be issues with an early termination fee or the contract?
T-Mobile does this. If you buy a N1 at full price, you get a $20/month discount on your service plan; making the total cost of the phone over 24 months the $600 that you pay initially. If you buy it subsidized for $179, then you are locked into a 24 month contract with ETF, and you end up paying $659 for the phone. (Not a terrible interest rate, but you're not "saving money" as you may think.)
I don't follow... More lithium was found, whereas helium is going to become scarce. What do the two have in common?
I believe that comment was dripping with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
What happens when you cover iPhone 4 on the same spot?
According to anandtech if signal is strong even the maximum loss of signal they could get is not enough to drop a bar.
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As far as I can see, people are just sticking with DVD's for the next 5 years.
Let me guess: they're trying to calm the media storm by releasing a quick workaround while the real hardware issue will be solved in the next iteration of the iPhone. Maybe by just applying a coating?
Hyperoperation
Why iPhone Broadband Caps Aren't Actually A 'Good Deal'
Sure, but who wants to buy an easily-scratched bit of plastic that actually has to be shipped around like a physical object if you're going to download and stream content?
I could care less about the signal problem. The proximity sensor thing is insanely annoying. I am much much more likely to end the call or put it on mute than I am to drop the call due to reception issues. I've exchanged the phone once already and the replacement phone has the same issue. At first, I thought it was my face (shape? texture?), or the way I was holding it (am I suppose to push it with force against my ear to make sure zero space is between the phone and me?). No luck. Right now, all my calls have issues with it unless I put it on speaker phone. But then, I shift the problem from my end to the receiver's end (other side: "what? I can't hear you, can you repeat that, wayne?"). I'd rather them fix how the proximity works, than fool around with how the antenna displays.

EDIT: It seems Apple introduced the bar bug in OS update 2.1 that "improves the accuracy of the 3G signal". Graphical representation of that is here (Source: Gruber): http://fscked.co.uk/post/754590440/this-infographic-hopefull...

So, RDF was hard coded into the bar display (50% = 5 bars?), and the sudden drop shows up if you're at the floor of that green bar, then you use your hand to cover the phone and force it to drop slightly, it will go into freefall mode since you're now crossing the threshold. Fix is to remove the RDF.
Do you have some reason to believe that Google seriously hosed the Java implementation on Android or these guys have massively increased the efficiency of the Python implementation? Otherwise, it seems the answer would have to be yes.. the same algorithm will usually perform (much) worse in Python than in Java.

Note I don't mean to slam Python here.. just being practical. Python's my primary language. Development efficiency usually trumps execution inefficiency.
AT&T:

b = (int)5s/100; // where b is the number of bars, and s is signal strength

Apple:

b = (int)5s/100;
if(b > 2) b += 2;
Naturally it's a software problem, not a hardware problem. Patchfix! w00t.
"LAMP stack on Windows"?
Bet big on the world cup - http://smarkets.com/sport/football/world-cup-2010
Truly obscene video of him being stalked.
Open Letter to the iLemmings
As far as I know ITA's QPX system has no inherent insurmountable bottlenecks, but I'm not sure Google's scale will make much difference anyway:

There's a C++ backend that collects and massages the various data streams and then loads the data into an in memory database. Much of that is quite parallelizable, e.g there are various data sources, the massaging probably needs only so much global state, etc.

The computational front end is an SBCL process that does its magic based on a copy of the in memory database. One process, one query at a time, that scales out very nicely.

I suspect the biggest tricks besides groking the data (hard since it's so messy and special cased) and their secret sauce that does the routing is maintaining the required availability. There I suspect ITA's service/operations culture has things it can teach the corresponding Google culture.
I was looking at some phones the other day and overheard a customer who agreed to basically pay 15$ more a month for the next two years, just so that they could avoid having to pay $120 up front. That sort of thinking is strange (unless you are a cell phone carrier, in which case it is awesome).
Here's the (small) universe of existing apps:

searchyc.com;

subreddits;

infoq.com; artima.com; theServerside.com and .net;

Lambda the Ultimate

Delicious and stackoverflow tags.
Anand doesn't mention it explicitly, and neither do you, but I'm assuming that signal to noise ratio drops when you short the iPhone 4 antennae too otherwise his conclusion doesn't make sense:

"At the end of the day, Apple should add an insulative coating to the stainless steel band, or subsidize bumper cases. It's that simple."
So.... they're fixing the way I hold my phone through software? Can they do anything for my racquetball game?

Dubious indeed.
> One very minor mention of subpixel rendering, no mentions of antialiasing, no mentions of hinting.

This isn't a technical limitation, but a legal one. The functionality already exists[1]:

> Most other systems use the FreeType library, which falls somewhere between Microsoft's [optimized for on-screen clarity] and Apple's [optimized to closely match print] implementations; it supports hinting and anti-aliasing, and optionally performs subpixel rendering. Due to problems with patent licensing, many binary distributions of it do not support hinting non-Free fonts with the same quality as the Windows and OS X rasterizers, although the functionality is present and easily enabled. The Free fonts included with most Linux distributions look better with FreeType's "auto-hinting" mode, which is high-quality and not encumbered by patents.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_rasterization

FreeType offers more rasterization tweaking than you could ask for. And it appears some major distributions (I've seen it in Ubuntu) just ignore the patent issues and enable the probably-patented rendering techniques.
Over here, I wanted to try doing some web dev with Lisp, but couldn't find a CL implementation that would compile on FreeBSD/sparc64, so I guess I'm boned.
What a strange coincidence.

Just after releasing a phone that uses a metal ring all around the chassis as an antenna (which is something that perplexed every engineer living outside of the reality distortion field as soon as they saw the first pictures of the phone), they discovered that they've always used the wrong algorithm to calculate the signal strength.
I second that. I love my iPhone 4, but the proximity sensor problem causes me to accidentally mute calls, call random people in my contacts list, etc., etc. It is beyond frustrating and I'm surprised there hasn't been a greater mention of this.

There is a lengthy thread on Apple forums about this issue, with no resolution:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2475509...
Interesting list. It's clearly not trying to sensationalize, or the Brown Tree Snake would have been higher. The explanation of the methodology at the top is good. A little more detail for each of the entries would have been nice. I've not heard of the #1 entry before and don't quite see how it meets the criteria to the degree of being the most harmful invasive in the world.
To my knowledge, all carriers in the US have at least a 14 day 100% money back refund with no egregious loss. (Maybe lose the $30 setup fee.)
That's no fair. The 1100 was manufactured during an era when cellphones were built to make phonecalls.

Today they are built to be fashion accessoires, which naturally leads to different design trade-offs.

Sure, your 1100 may have the best reception of any cellphone ever produced. Sure, your battery may last 2 weeks under normal use.

But what does that help you in a real emergency, like when you urgently need to edit a video on the go?
They look hot. I would love to see a mass market version. Even a 50k model could potentially see wide adoption.
I've had the exact same problem, but this is the first I've heard of someone else having it.
I think many people who defend Common Lisp in this thread never actually deployed web applications written in CL.

I have.

I had to seriously hack on Weblocks just to get things to work they way they should. I had to work around various bugs and omissions. And worst of all, every once in a while I discovered that I am clearly the only user of said software.

A good example is when I discovered that the database interface (to CLSQL) isn't thread-safe. It was a quick hack intended for a single thread only. Obviously you'd never notice it in a demo setup. Turns out I noticed it just when somebody else had that problem and wrote CLSQL-FLUID.

But there is more — after running the application for several months I discovered two things:

a) there are obscure bugs related to caching in CLSQL, which I don't have time to hunt down (stale content is being served),

b) there are bugs somewhere either in CLSQL or Weblocks that blocked part of my admin interface and they are obscure enough that I don't even know where to start looking,

c) every once in a while SBCL will crash on me and land me in the LDB.

Don't get me wrong — I like CL and I invested a significant amount of work in to Weblocks — but I agree with Brian here: I don't want to discovere somewhere along the way that I'm the first real user. At least not when I am on a deadline.

I do most of my work in Clojure now, but when there is a simple web application to write — hey, we get our hands dirty and we do it using PHP. Because life is too short.
Because the band has no mechanism for gripping the edges of the phone, I doubt it will have much staying power if deflected. If the phone were to fall a short distance and land on the edge, the rubber would provide some protection, but I wouldn't count on a case like this for drop protection. Then again, I wouldn't count on the Apple case for drop protection either. Look for something from OtterBox if you drop your phone.
Please don't say familiarity with "any other language" prepares you for PHP. Not every language teaches you that when you get an error with a line number, you need to look at previous lines for a missing semicolon. Not every language teaches you that = is not for comparison. Not every language teaches you the difference between && and &. Having seen PHP newbies struggle with issues like this, I am confident that the list of languages where prior experience makes PHP "easy" is short and specific.
The most recent investors, who probably invested at least in part based on the promise of RES are no doubt happy to get out with something like this.
This is actually a very good point. Know when to be bold and confident, and know when to keep your mouth shut.

I've actually found a good heuristic to know when to do which. If I'm uncomfortable and insecure, it's time to be bold. And if I'm sure I'm right and the other guy's wrong, it's probably time to shut up and listen. It basically comes down to doing the opposite of my emotional response.

It's not easy, but when I follow that guideline, things tend to work out better.
yea, while the antenna is arguably theoretical/subjective (apple: faulty formula / world: rdf?), the proximity sensor is very real and affects calls now. i too am also surprised people are focusing on antenna and not proximity.
The idea is really neat. If you want a really nice visualization of how the whole thing works you can find it on his website:

http://www.groasis.com/page/uk/principle.php
Same here.

I live in Montevideo, Uruguay, and Buenos Aires, Argentina or Sao Paulo, Brazil are major hubs nearby (especially Buenos Aires which is an U$ 30 trip).

Last trip I made to Toronto (Canada) I just booked from Buenos Aires, and saved about U$ 400.

There's also the visa restrictions you have to factor in - for example I can't take any flight with stopovers at the United States because said country is stupid and requires visas for stopovers (!!!) - end result is I won't travel to the US, they've lost at least a few thousand bucks of my tourist money, make me book different carriers (I used Air Canada even though an US-based airline would have been cheaper) and make my life more difficult.

So, booking a flight requires nontrivial calculations for me :(
I actually believe them.

I can't recall ever seeing my iPhone report 2 or 3 bars -- it's always a very low or very high signal indication. And yet, so many times I've gotten bad performances at "full signal"...
AT&T have a fee-free 30-day cancellation policy [1]. AT&T will refund any activation fees, but you're still liable for any usage fees.

If you cancel after the 30 days, there is an early termination fee of $325.00 (minus $10.00 for each completed month).

[1] http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/specials/iPho...
isn't it a relief to know it's not your face and not the way you're holding it? once i found out others were experiencing it, it was a great relief. you can now stop doing hand gymnastics with the phone and wait for some fix too.
My phone has six bars, and they never, ever go away, even when the phone is powered off. Take that!

(Electrical engineering textbooks should come with warning labels. "DANGER: once you understand how reality works, human psychology will occasionally give you migraines.")
Ask HN - Are HN submits being killed for political reasons?
This post was apparently killed because some wall street casino fundamentalists didn't like it:

http://johannhari.com//2010/07/02/how-goldman-sachs-gambling-on-starving-the-worlds-poor-and-won (http://apps.ycombinator.com/item?id=1480620)

What can we do to stop posts like this from being killed because of extremist political positions?
why do random versions of how to turn $x into $y in z time seem to be the most common Ask HN of late?
Does anyone else feel this letter seems strangely/hastily/poorly written for corporate communication?

It uses terms/expressions like "totally wrong", "Their big drop in bars", "the iPhone’s bars", pretty much anything that mentions "bars", etc.

Or do you think this is just about keeping it colloquial, so it sounds like a real email from one of your friends?
There shouldn't be. I believe most cell companies give you a 30 day window to change your mind and cancel service.

Verizon does, and I ended up taking advantage of that when I returned the Droid and switched back to the iPhone after 2 weeks. Unfortunately, because Verizon's billing department is terrible, they charged me the ETF even though they shouldn't have and I had to go talk to a CSR to get it removed.
Just to provide a counterpoint: N900/Maemo has had the ability to have apps distributed in an arbitrary language since launch, and Nokia seems to especially like Python, sponsoring the developement of Qt bindings for it etc.
Yes they do and I like Racket (aka PLT Scheme). You have to define your "easy". PHP is 1000 times easy to pick up than Scheme.
Raw, massaged data. From everything we've been reading ("the industry worships syntax, not semantics"), turning those data flows into something comprehensible is a major trick.

ITA's start in this reminds me of the FU MIT delivered to Xerox when MIT bought their first big mainframe Xerox laser printer in the early '80s. Xerox wanted $100K to reveal the format, so instead a group just took one or more output tapes (a normal data flow was the mainframe wrote to tape and the printer read them) and decoded it.
Am I missing something here, but if there is a bug in how they calculate bars shouldn't it apply equally in all the cases.

for example, if signal == some-weak-signal, then bars = 5
then, if signal == some-weak-signal - 1 (for example), then shouldn't bars = 4 instead of bars = 0 (or 1).

This seems like horseshit to me.
Though it seems people are buying this explanation, so as far is Apple is concerned, it worked.
Good to know. I've already been vetting the device. At home, 4G is the same speed as 3G, but with unlimited use.
Buy a lawn mower and an old truck for under a grand. Go around your neighborhood and offer to mow lawns for $50 1 time per month or more. Stop once you have 33 customers. Mow lawns everyday for 6 months.

50x33=1650x6=9,900. minimum. Hire help at $25 a lawn to scale.
There are far more people and bloggers bitching about the Antenna issue, so it's become Apple's biggest priority. Just give it time, these issues have a way of getting solved.
Developing World Phone
Maybe the iPhone can be obtained from all cellphone providers soon
We can brainstorm some ideas for you via Skype if you'd like. Just contact me. Deets are in my profile.
This sounds exactly right, considering all the reports about the signal issue mention that it's worse in areas where coverage isn't great to begin with.
http://www.fakesteve.net/2010/06/there-is-no-spoon.html

"Probably the biggest thing I’ve taught the team at Apple is that people never know what they’re supposed to think about anything. This is true in Hollywood, in the book business, in the art world, in politics. And especially in technology.

"So we put out a new phone and everyone is sitting there wondering what they should think about it. What I realized many years ago — and honestly, it still amazes me — is that most people are so unsure of themselves that they will think whatever we tell them to think.

"So we tell people that this new phone is not just an incremental upgrade, but rather is the biggest breakthrough since the original iPhone in 2007. We say it’s incredible, amazing, awesome, mind-blowing, overwhelming, magical, revolutionary. We use these words over and over.

"It’s all patently ridiculous, of course. But people believe it."

....

"Which brings me back to iPhone 4 and the antenna issue. Right now you’re confused. You’re worried. You don’t know what to believe. You just wish someone would come along and tell you that everything is squared away and there’s nothing to worry about."

"Well, stay tuned for that. And remember: There is no spoon."
Erlang/OTP sample projects (erl-tutorials)
There was some discussion of this topic yesterday at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1477734 but that got killed - not clear why - things did not get especially heated or anything...
I do hate optical media, but the problem I have with this is that adequate 10mbps+ connections are still hard to come by in a lot of places. Adequate in the sense that if you have a few people in the house using the network at the same time, streaming high def video, gaming, downloading files, etc, there is a limit to what the bandwidth can handle. Also, it seems like (with Netflix anyway), I'll get the occasion when either my ISP hiccups, my router, or servers, that cause significant issues or completely prevents streaming. If I'm feeling the urge to still watch something in these situations, I just pop in a movie and enjoy the optical goodness.
Apple Hopes to Re-enter the Living Room
At D8, Steve said the biggest problem with the TV market is dealing with the fragmentation of cable providers across the country. He also said users have too many boxes and interfaces to deal with. I wonder if this supposed re-imagined Apple TV addresses this.
Call me crazy, but I have a sneaking suspicion Apple's not going to get a lot of returned phones. Just call me crazy.
Just did this experiment with my Nexus One:
Lying on the couch: -75dbm.
Held by the top away from body: -70dbm.
Held by the top by ear: -75 - -87dbm, depending on which direction I face.
Held across the bottom by ear: -75 - -97dbm, depending on direction.

So it seems that in the worst case, holding it across the bottom attenuates the signal by about 10dbm, i.e. by a factor of 10, compared to holding it across the top, which is about the same effect as the relative position of your head vs. the tower.

It's weird, though, that in the best case, holding it by the bottom has no effect at all on signal. You'd naively think that the best case would be when the phone is on the side of your head facing the tower, in which case the hand across the bottom should make maximum difference. I guess this just goes to show how nonintuitive the results are of loading the antenna with a bunch of conductive goo of strange shape...
It seemed to me to actually jive with AnandTech's testing, and with user experience with the holding problem occurring in already weak signal areas. To wit many report that they only have the full drop in some places.

As for holding the phone, I'm not so troubled by the antennae, could it be better, yes, but is it that terrible, doesn't seem so.
At D8, Steve said the biggest problem with the TV market is dealing with the fragmentation of cable providers across the country. He also said users have too many boxes and interfaces to deal with. I wonder if this supposed re-imagined Apple TV addresses this.
this could be tough to translate in written form. the visual design of the playback screen (http://beta.isound.com/#/artists?search=outkast) is confusing and unbalanced.

maybe it's the repetitive use of the play button (search, similar songs).
maybe it's each song being in its own container.
maybe it's the lack of visual emphasis on any one area (the shared white between the header, player, and playlist).

ultimately, i like this (http://grab.by/5f07) over this (http://grab.by/5f04). sorry i can't be more specific.
Living Trust: Know The Advantage and Disadvantage - Health and Financial Freedom
Wikipedia:Spoken articles
IPad DJ's New Video Composed on iPad, Shot and Edited Entirely on iPhone 4
Top 5 Best-Selling Movie Videos Ever
One of the first posts I wrote on my blog last year was about tools - the first lines were:

Use tools appropriate to your skills and to the job you are trying to get done. Learning to use more powerful tools is one of the best ways to increase your effectiveness.

That is the best tool depends on both the job and your skills. (Most of the post was about my main illustration though, which was drafting versus CAD.)
See "My Favorite Liar":

> "Your job, as students, among other things, is to try and catch me in the Lie of the Day."

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/02/my-favorite-lia.html