skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't have Menlo on this computer (still on Leopard), but from what I can tell from comparing this font to my current coding font, Droid Sans Mono, they must be very similar. It's okay, but it looks like all the things that annoy me about Mensch are the things that were changed from Menlo!
No no, I won't. I tried optimizing the blog for the iPad a few weeks back. It works great there, but it's not the best for the actual computer. I'm going to scrap the current design and go with something fresher now that I'm writing more often. The iPad formatting? More on that later...
Hi conesus, that's great feedback, thank you!

I hate I have to run out for a meeting now, but I'll get back to you in more detail asap.

Thanks again!
Shell script version

#!/bin/bash
VOICES=("agnes" "kathy" "princess" "vicki" "victoria" "bruce" "fred" "junior" "ralph" "albert" "bad" "bahh" "bells" "boing" "bubbles" "cellos" "deranged" "good" "hysterical" "pipe" "trinoids" "whisper")
MSGS=("deploy is now complete" "deploy complete" "deploy completed" "sir the deployment has finished" "hey the deploy is done" "look at this cool deploy" "deployment completeed")
VOICE=$RANDOM%${#VOICES[@]}
MSG=$RANDOM%${#MSGS[@]}
say -v ${VOICES[VOICE]} ${MSGS[MSG]}
One quibble with using the GPL: it is the position of the FSF that it and the Apple App store licensing terms are incompatible: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-...

However, if you're holding the license, it's up to you if you take action against anyone using your code in an iOS app. (And perhaps you don't want people going down that dark path anyway...).

The more you care about other people using your code, the less you'll want to use a restrictive license. The vast majority of open source Lisp implementations are not GPLed, I assume at least in part for that reason (CLisp was coerced into the GPL by its use of readline). For Clojure Rich Hickey uses the Eclipse Public License -v 1.0 for reasons that I forget but that made complete sense to me when I reviewed them (http://opensource.org/licenses/eclipse-1.0.php). Do pick one of the most common, license proliferation is a bane of FOSS.

On the other hand, software like language implementations that don't require including so much of themselves in a released version are very natural fits for the GPL, e.g. GCC. The more community involvement you get, the better.
The Modern Development Team
Frank Herbert says this better than I can in "Chapterhouse Dune", where the captured Bene Gesserit Lucilla is speaking to Spider Queen, head of the Honoured Matres (p 150--158.) (Actually the whole book is about law and governance.) An excerpt:

"That's not what I said. We have no conventional government."
"Not even a social code?"
"There's no such thing as a social code to meet all necessities. A crime in one society can be a moral requirement in another society."
"People always have government."

...

"I knew you didn't allow a democracy!"
"Why won't you believe me?" [...]
"Because you'd have to permit open voting, juries and judges and . . ."
"We call them Proctors. A sort of jury of the Whole."
Now you've confused her.
"And no laws . . . regulations, whatever you want to call them?"
"Didn't I say we defined them separately? Regulation-past. Law-future."
"You limit these . . . these Proctors, somehow!"
"They can arrive at any decision they desire, the way a jury should function. The law be damned!"
"That's a very disturbing idea." She's disturbed all right. Look at how dull her eyes are.
"The first rule of our democracy: no laws restricting juries. Such laws are stupid. It's astonishing how stupid humans can be when acting in small, self-
serving groups."

---

To relate this more directly to your point; if we take the definition of regulation as past and law as future, then regulation is almost by definition a tool of the monopolist and the vested interests. However, in the case given here, the problem is a monopoly, and we have a law against monopolies, that can interpret things sensibly, and will ultimately go before a court with a jury that can suggest and enforce radical solutions. We don't need new regulation to fix the credit and debit card market -- we need to kick existing law into action.
If you are making 80, or even 20, chances are you're not really making apps but repackaging offline or online content in the form of an app and that's a rather different niche. It's also one that Apple is making efforts to squish, although I'm sure it will continue to thrive on Android and other non-restrictive markets.
Neat. Before I read the comments and realized this actually existed I was thinking about something like this; a physical "token ring"!
I was already building something like this and your comment made me push the private beta :P.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1451758
I did remember that the '96 act was axed by the court, but I wasn't aware of the more recent versions. I suppose this story is a perfect demonstration of why this kind of thing is a bad idea
The Beauty Of Typography: Writing Systems And Calligraphy, Part 2
Ruby Push API for Newbies
A full-time salary with benefits, a 20-hour work week, 12 weeks vacation every summer, a state pension, an office with staff and secretaries outfitted with equipment you didn't pay for, TA's doing the heavy lifting, Santa Barbara's weather, coastline and restaurants, and of course, tenure.

Let me be the first to speak on behalf of all the students and families out there struggling to pay the equivalent purchase price of a brand new BMW 760Li in tuition for a four-year degree while you were actually taking the time to think about, write and publish this tripe:

Fk you and the horse you rode in on.
You read too shallowly. Wikipedia says she met him in college, not that they married there. In point of fact, they married in 2000, sometime around March.

By 2000, Musk had already helped found and sell Zip2; Paypal had already been founded and in just 2 years would grow to the point Ebay would buy it for 1.5 billion; immediately on selling, 1/3rd of the way through the marriage, Musk founds SpaceX; halfway through the marriage, he founds Tesla and a bit after that SolarCity.

(I too have little sympathy, but rather for someone who married a millionaire, signing a prenup (which no one has demonstrated to be unfair or stingy), and now expects to break it when the stakes have gone way up.)
Yeah. I've been a huge Hacker News fan since the beginning (was a Paul Graham fan for years) - so it was weird when my posts started showing up on it last summer. Trends, I guess.

Flattering, because you guys are my closest peers. But I'm always surprised when something I post gets upvoted here.
I already don't have a boxy computer on my desk. Last time I had a boxy computer, it sat on the floor. The last boxy computer on my desk was, IIRC, an IBM-AT lookalike with a 386 inside it. I then moved the 386 motherboard and disks to a big tower that sat happily under my desk for years, moving from motherboard to motherboard. The last one it had was a dual Pentium 60. Wicked fast for the time. I then had a quick succession of smaller ATX towers, before moving to notebooks. I had been using notebooks since mid-2003 and never looked back.

The only boxy thing on my desk is my IBM monitor that will, eventually, be replaced by a large LCD, but not before its flyback transformer burns out (it's making funny noises for a couple months now). The vintage bondi-blue iMac that doubles as sound system and iPod docking station is on the desk, but it is anything but boxy.
This could turn out great. The music industry sues Google for linking to sites like The Pirate Bay, and Google with its deep pockets successfully defends linking in count. That might set precedence not only for general search engines like Google, but also torrent search engines like The Pirate Bay.
Maybe it's just the bias lens, but it seems like the dream is to work for yourself.

If everyone did that... well what would it be like?

I still treat myself as a free agent when I work as a salaried employee for someone else. I am invested in what I do with my time and want to accomplish things like anyone else. I just don't find it very practical to put my wife and I through the stress of financial insecurity just so I can get a kick out of my day. That being said, I don't just work for anyone to get a paycheque (at least not anymore now that I have some years of experience behind me).

I prefer jobs where I'm treated as part of a team. I like to think that the company hired me because it found my skills and experiences useful to their goals. I'm also more likely to work for a company who is working on things I am interested in working on.

Some people though; they take any job they can get. They need the paycheque. You'll wear yourself in that kind of job. But sometimes it's unavoidable.

The only thing I don't like about articles like this: the mention of the big-ass six-figure salary that they walked away from. If it wasn't about the money, then who are you trying to impress? "Hey guys, I could've bought a nice home in the hills and a lambourghini if I wanted to, but I'm way too cool for that." Give me a break.

I understand the pursuit of happiness and so the article wasn't a total loss of time. I just think he could've changed the headline to be more appropriate to what he was actually writing about. It's too sensationalist.
Try http://www.accesspdf.com/pdftk/
So you are 27 years old (same as me)?! For how long have you been working now?
I'm asking, because I am also thinking about when to quit my current job and what to do next. What holds me back are just two things. First, its the paragliding course I already paid for but didn't finish yet. And second its the feeling that leaving my job would be too early right now. I have been promoted as teamleader just one year after graduating.
But still I envy people like you who are able to simply quit and start a new thing.
You can use espeak for voice.

> espeak "Hello World"
a) "Experience" is really supposed to be "Accomplishments". Rather than saying you worked X hours (which anyone can do), say what value you brought in those hours. The objectives section should ideally be tailored to the company you're applying.

b) network like crazy and you'll find out

c) rather than asking, you should focus on offering to do something. Ask in the interview.

d) to be honest, no. You say you have ~2 years full-time experience being a developer on bunch of fairly different platforms, plus an audio engineer, and customer support, and you're still a student. That has Dunning-Kruger written all over it. Show what you worked on (e.g. by linking to them)
> (The formatting is also very unprofessional.

No, this is what academic papers usually look like when prepared for submission to journals. After review, if the article is accepted and modifications done, the journal staff takes the text and images and prepares a typeset article.

This is all unfortunate since the reviewers and editors have to read the damn stuff looking like this.

Edit: the point of this comment is to say that this is what high-quality work looks like on submission. This work may be good or bad, but you can't tell by the lack of typesetting.
It provides a simple payment system.
Looks nice, the logo design could use some work.
One shouldn't forget that he was a Nazi collaborator, used his skills to design bombs at Henschel among other things, and was financed by the Nazi regime right till the end of the war.
It'd be interesting to see a comparison to "traditional" distribution methods, eg shareware, web apps, and so on. Maybe it's just that writing small software applications doesn't pay?
Man I wish I could find reasonably priced jamón in the states. Anyone?

The "bocadillo with jamón" recipe says "sometimes the bread is moistened by rubbing the cut side of a tomato onto the bread, or drizzling some olive oil – or both.". I'm only familiar with the Barcelona area, but I've never seen it made without the tomato and the Spanish put olive oil on everything. As he says, it will be pretty dry without at least tomato or oil.
I can say that in the case of my friend, it's not repackaged content, but actual real apps. They tend to be somewhat on the basic side, but are nonetheless 'real' apps in the sense of having real hand programming behind them and such. FWIR, he's using Titanium, which makes it pretty easy to do basic apps fast (but still native apps all the same). Whether Apple will continue to let Titanium exist on the iOS platform is a whole other question :)
Use GOOG-411 and Skype to Call Any U.S. or Canadian Business for Free
I use Plupper and they have a very decent free version.
Why does the author assume normal distribution (bell curve) for apps' revenues? In reality app sales are similar to those of books and follow power law distribution. A few bestsellers will account for large chunk of overall app sales. Then there will be a very long tail of unprofitable apps.

Therefore all of his numbers and his final conclusion are wrong. People do not write iPhone apps in order to achieve some sort of 'average' income. They hope to strike it lucky and get a disproportionately large payoff.
Ask HN: Need advice for starting freelance biz and eventual startup life.
[Note: I'm using a throwaway account for anonymity]

I'm currently working at a small development agency and things are looking grim. It looks like the company may have 2 to 3 more months before it goes under (due to circumstances outside of my control. Poor business decisions.)

In my off-time I've been working to develop a few freelance connections and have lined up several projects for the next few months. Until now freelancing has been just a way to supplement my (low) income from my development job, but I would like to switch over to freelancing fulltime and eventually work on my own application. While I'm not generating enough freelance income to live yet, I'm confident that if I was focusing full-time I could.

I'm sure this has been asked several times in the past, but what should my next steps be? I haven't set up any formal business for myself. Is an LLC the best bet for a freelancer who wants to release an app eventually?
Yes, but the difference is that the "normal tolerances" are completely different in the two cases.
I'd like a web app, kind of like DabbleDB, where you can just drop in data and easily make pivot tables and get interesting outputs. It could just throw a bunch of analyses at the data and see what it comes out with.
A++++++++++++++ WOULD READ AGAIN!!!!
Online viewable http://viewer.zoho.com/docs/mPWtg (expires in 1 week).
We're building it mainly for ourselves to make it easier to start new products in the future. Will it be usefull to you?
Count of total apps paid compared with Count of total apps free has probably very little correlation with app store revenues. The best case (equal sharing) isn't realistic, as we all know that some apps generate hundreds of thousands of dollars over their lifetime.

> So the best case of how few apps get to divide that 1.43 Billion dollars over the past 2 years, is 164,000 actual apps
>I realized that it was a very poorly designed and visually unappealing document that did not convey especially well what I've done or what I want to do

I was expecting a high-graphic presentation when you said that. This is clean and crisp for sure, but I wouldn't call it visually appealing.
Should I be at the Apple store at 7AM on Thursday?
WSJ: Yuan Day Later
His analysis of free apps doesn't really do that segment justice. He totally ignored the mobile ad network space and addressed only a portion of what the market seems to be by focusing on Hilton and Walgreens. I'm not sure those cases are worth refuting.
"Markets were a little too quick to cheer Beijing's currency move."

For subscribers: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870489520457532...
Every file is copyrighted dude, except content gone into public domain ... I think you meant "illegally distributed".
In the NFL there is generally at least one hold on every play that goes uncalled. Far from offending our sense of fair play, we accept it as part of the game. Basketball is actually strategically centered around fouling and drawing fouls, charging players under the hoop and assuming their feet aren't set, which they usually aren't. These are perfectly accepted aspects of the sport. I hate the diving in soccer, but the push and pull of what the referee will allow you to get away with is a large part of every sport.
What does america have to do with it?

> It doesn't matter; because it is just part and parcel of what makes up the game. End of. Football doesn't need to be Americanized (I think that term is justified, no offence intended) as far as I am concerned because we enjoy it the way it is.

BTW, I'm from Europe. And everybody I know agrees that TV replays for judging fouls is good. So, your appeal to "we" is a non-argument at best.

> Obvious to you. For those of us who love and enjoy the sport it is a terrible and badly thought out fix. No thanks :)

You are dropping all reasoning and you are just saying "we like it this way, no thanks.".

> TV is not the way.

Then what is?

To summarize your two points:

1) "We already like it this way" -- unclear who we is, and not an argument against replays: maybe it would be even better with replays.

2) "There are other, better fixes" -- without mentioning what these fixes are.
An extended version of the same paper:
http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~babcock/College_time_use_NBER.pdf

While it doesn't have all the information you'd like to see, it does contain a much greater amount of detail and raw statistical information, broken down much further.
Yep, Half of all developers will earn less than $682 per year assumes the average developer produces 1 app. Also, most apps revenue falls off over time so a more realistic number is 80% 682 * 2 probably 1091$ in the first year and 272 in the second.

If someone is churning 20 in a month and then getting 1364$ * 20 = 27,280$ over two years for one months work that's not bad.

PS: The average app has probably only been out for 1 year so it may be reasonable to double these numbers. Basically, anything released yesterday is unlikely to have generated much revenue, averaging ALL apps over a 2 year earning period is silly.
Care to comment on the quality?
PWC Technology Forecast: Making Sense of Big Data
Would you still follow the same strategy in the current real-estate market?
Obama is probably doing it because it could open the door for shareholders to engage in asset stripping (selling off corporate assets and shut dow the company). Asset stripping, while good for shareholders and the economy at large, tends to be bad for unions.

(A hypothetical example: consider a company with 1 billion in salable assets, but no hope for future profits based on existing business due to union costs. The best way to create shareholder value is to shut down the company and sell the corporate assets. The current CEO probably likes his job and doesn't want to be "the guy who killed BigCo". )
EcoFactor's Smart Grid VC-Funding Saga
Assuming you're in the US, it doesn't take any paperwork to do business as a sole proprietorship. You and your business are legally the same, you have unlimited liability (unlikely to be an issue for you) and you pay taxes the same way you do now.

Read as, spend all of your energy finding income-generating projects at this point. You're safe as you won't run into any tax issues down the road you forgot to prepare for.
You got it.

You can treat apps the way the music industry treats songs with the ambition that 1 in 100 is a "hit", and cover your losses with the success of the few...

...or you can provide a unique app that serves an existing need and charge a reasonable price (far above the typical app store prices).

There are countless examples of the latter, and not only are they successful financially but they serve to raise the standards of quality and compensation for the other type of participants.
Adobe announces Flash 10.1 for mobile
10 Drugs You Can Legally Grow Indoors
Another advantage is that you get to see user comments on blog entries.
IANAL: If you just want some personal liability protection, an LLC is a good move. Also, you should have a business checking account and do not co-mingle funds to maintain the separation. If you plan on having investors in your company, you'd probably want to consider a corporation at that point. For more information, checkout the Nolo resources online, at your library, or on Amazon. http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/faqEditorial-29070.ht...
Where are you getting the normal distribution information from?

"This is the average, remember, it is not the median. The average skews too high because of the long tail. There are a few who make several millions, who distort the average number, so it is not true that half of iPhone App Developers earn more, and half less, than $3,050 per year."

He references the long tail you mention, and describe exactly what you mean about some people making a lot, but because of distribution and how users find and download apps - its more akin to say - the lottery - than actual market strategy.

Some will make money. Most of them will be development/contractor shops that charge out-the-ass for mobile apps to companies who want a "mobile presence." These medium to large companies won't realize that the money they are losing isn't worth it until its happened a couple of times. Then they'll stop coming back.

That said, independent developers making money on that app store directly is a complete crap-shoot. Very few get rich, lucky ones make a very modest living, more get a hobbyist return, most get dick - and some don't even get the money they did earn from Apple.

Therefore all of your rebuttal and final conclusion are wrong. How many books have you written on the subject?

Note: The reason he uses a normal distribution is because it would actually help DISPROVE his thesis, a normal distribution would make it easier for an app developer to make money, not harder. When the normal distribution showed a shitty return - he reminded us it was actually worse.
Maybe I'm not as cynical and jaded as I should be, but I still believe that lawsuits are not won by deep pockets, at least not exclusively.
You will always be able to come up with reasons not to take risks, and they don't have to be particularly good ones as long as they give you an excuse to wait a little longer. There will never be a right moment. I recommend you evaluate whether you're happy with your current situation, and if not, then seek to change it. Your choice isn't simply between keeping the job and quitting it; perhaps you can find a different way.

I was in a similar situation as you are; running a small programming team at age 27, with no real commitments. I decided to stay because the opportunity seemed too good to pass up, but I'll never know where I'd be now if I took a risk back then. Over those three years it seemed like everyone I interviewed ran their own project. Many popped back and forth between working as part of a team, and running teams several times in their career, so it's not as special an accomplishment as I'd thought at the time. Now it's three years later, and I've gone part time and started telecommuting so that I can travel wherever I want and have time to figure out what I want to do next. Your choices may vary. Good luck!
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