skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Strong agreement on this point. Roads like River Drive in Philadelphia and Storrow Drive in Boston have twisty, blind corners and a 35 mph speed limit, but a regular flow of traffic that is at least 20 mph faster than that. It seems that once people become familiar with a road they fly along way faster than is actually safe. They promote their speed to their level of incompetence, if you will.

On the other hand, it makes me consider (but doesn't remotely convince me of) the possibility that all of Boston's rotaries maybe aren't the dumbest road designs possible.
I would have bought the app just to be able to use a hardware button to take photos.

I'm a bit confused though: If Apple doesn't want to let Apps override the behavior of the volume keys, why did they even make it possible?
WTB a PG essay on how our angry and competitive culture results in people being mean and wrong about things they don't really know about, why it's a mindset to be assiduously avoided in favor of a pensive and open-minded one, and some prescriptions for doing that.

This problem seems to permeate our culture these days, from the Internet to politics to road rage. It seems to result from a combination of a highly competitive society that has adopted the trash talking mental games of sports and anger at the traffic/opposite sex/government/corporations/world/whatever people are angry about. Trash talking is fashionable and being mad is the new black.

The consequence is a crowding out of thoughtful, rational thinking about things, to the detriment of all of society. If anyone could give such a topic the treatment it deserves, it would be PG.
How Much Equity Should You Offer?
But then they say:

You have to be completely comfortable with:

* Developing Ruby on Rails applications

Now, technically they don't say you need to know Ruby, but I'd be rather surprised if you don't need experience in Ruby to be completely comfortable with developing Ruby on Rails applications.
Does anyone have data on how thinking in a certain language relates to problem-solving skills? I know that e.g. for any programming related task I automatically switch to English, even though I'm not a native speaker. I wonder if you could hack your thought processes to be more efficient? Kinda like pick the right language for the right problem, but for natural languages.
> Ostwal could have come up with the plan to use standard cellphones to communicate sooner than he did

Probably not. He decided to use cellphones in 2003. See this graph:
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&ctype=l&s...

Only 3 in 100 people had cellphones in India in 2003 and I suspect that number was even lower for rural, poor farming areas. My family is quite well off, lives in a big city, and I know for sure they didn't have cellphones till 2004 because the cost was too high.

> If you've read too many success stories that go through a phase of extreme hardship, you might be self-selecting to only remember such stories.

Maybe journalists/editors select these stories about fighting against all odds or give the "struggled very hard" angle to every inventor's story. Sounds much more endearing than "he had a cushy job, kickass life, and helped changed the world on the side."
A Brief History of AI (2009)
Are the laws of quantum physics still spooky? IANAP, but I was under the impression the novelty has worn off and quantum behavior is business as usual these days.
Privacy for one. http://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html
Two of the best interviewers I've seen are Michael Parkinson and Andrew Denton. I've spent some time watching them trying to find what makes them so good, and I think I've figured some of it out

The both have two abilities

1. They get out of the way. Both understand, which so many interviewers don't, that we're interested in the story the interviewee has to tell, not the interviewer. Their job is simply to bring out the best in the person opposite.

2. They have an instinct for a potentially interesting story, and are skilled at detecting and then drawing this out of the interviewee.
Borrowers Refuse to Pay Billions in Home Equity Loans
Maybe the author was alluding to "Einstein famously derided entanglement as "spukhafte Fernwirkung"[2] or "spooky action at a distance"." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement
I'm sorry, but where I come from it is assumed that people will pad their salaries. Most of the time I add something small like 10-20%.
I'm skeptical of that.
People of Perl 6: Jonathan Worthington
Designing Web Apps for the iPad
Hi. My name is John, and I use PHP.
If the user can't buy an app the user wants to buy, then the user is being screwed just as much as the developer is. Maybe it's the developer's fault that the user is being screwed, but I argue that the developer was giving the users their most requested feature, and Apple is the one being user-unfriendly.
surely you have your own additional "timewasting" when it comes to looking for opportunities, convincing employers you actually have the skills to do the job, dealing with corporate departments who think you should be filling in the same paperwork as the regular employees do at the start of their employment for each individual project (the only part you might actually be able to say no to...) and managing your own accounts.
Outdoor furniture
Outdoor Furniture Shop provides you with quality informative articles regarding what kind of materials you can use, how to clean your furniture, where to buy/sell it and many more.
nice and simple, I suggest you make the difference between the "list adding" and "task adding" contextually clearer, I don't mind registering (it was short enough)
Statistical Literacy Guides
After all, I got an invitation to the company holiday party while Sam stayed home counting his stack of contracting money.

Keep the holiday party, give me my check---I have a family to take out to a nice holiday vacation.
That's true, but I usually regard articles or posts like these as sales pitches for LaTeX to people who use Office or something similar.

They may not mention the best features, but they are possibly the sexiest to people new to LaTeX.

Having said that, I'd love to see more articles emphasizing the feature you are praising. Different audience, different sales pitch.
Yep, the search API is far better than what Google is offering.
It's hardly "backstabbing" to allow an additional feature that users want that has no negative consequences for Apple whatsoever
once a bus-stop was stolen. http://www.mid-day.com/news/2008/oct/151008-Borivali-bus-sto... .
wire - hrmph ...
Am I "screwed" because I can't swap the brake and the clutch on my car?
Apple will allow easter eggs, but you have to disclose them to the review team (they promise to keep them confidential). This "easter egg" wasn't disclosed, and was an attempt to get a feature into the phone that was rejected by Apple before.

Right or wrong, this violated Apple's documented restrictions--this shouldn't even be a story.
The Himalayas of hiring
Fair point about the cellphone hack, but there are always other things that might have worked out faster or cheaper in retrospect. My point was that it is plausible that in other universes, the other Ostwals did come across these hacks, by chance, and therefore it does not seem necessary to undergo x units of hardship to obtain y units of success.
it probably looks healthier still when compared with the traditional "media companies" they stole the brand advertising market share from.
I get plenty of great food here in Italy, but I would absolutely kill for a decent burrito. In some dream future where I've made a ton of money and decided to continue living in Italy, I would open a good Mexican restaurant here. It would probably lose money, but I would not care. I would have good Mexican food to eat.
Every company says the want to hire the best.
I think you're overestimating the value most people place on math theorems. I doubt this story will be given more importance than "robot who can do the laundry" or some similarly "soft" science stories by the mainstream press, as important as it may be.
Here are some earlier submissions on this and similar topics:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1500564 <- This has lots of comments

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1491252

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1175576

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1011716

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=726110 <- This has lots of comments
OK, now I wonder: Any connection between this and the earlier piece linked to on HN about "God's Number" and Rubik Cube solved in 20 moves? Probably not, but I still must ask.
The idea is really nice (IF you can actually execute)!

I don't like the website though:

* all the toplevel links take you to another website. I usually expect those to take you to pages that are at least consistent with the top domain I'm coming from.

* FOUNDER'S BLOCK is listed twice.

* There is a list of people with a small blurb, that initially made me think they work for this website: Eric Ries, Steve Blank, Brant & Peter. Now I think it's just a list of people that "inspire" the author. Anyhow, it looks like a way to use the "celebrity" of these guys a bit.

* "rcavezza [atttt] gmail {dddottt} com." Bite the bullet, make actual mailto: links or at least some form. Don't make me hand-edit your email, it's an artificial barrier to getting new customers.

* "ANOTHER WEBSITE CREATED BY BOB CAVEZZA." Not to be rude, but it sounds puerile: "another website"?

* "Designed by STUDIO7DESIGNS": This is too prominent.
IMHO it seems fair for Apple to have removed the app.

I can only imagine how many more copies they are going to sell once the app is added again.

The people from TapTapTap/ MacHeist are incredibly smart. I think they planned it to go exactly this way.
Alzheimer's prediction made accurate with spinal-fluid biomarkers
Burning man defeats PayPal
Cattle 'cloned from dead animals'
> this shouldn't even be a story.

If people are interested in the issue then of course it should be. Just because a law or rule exists doesn't mean that people should be happy with it, or accepting of it. If my government passed a law that I didn't agree with and prosecuted someone for breaking it, then I'd be happy for that issue to be discussed in the media. It doesn't matter whether the person knowingly broke the law or not, I'd still want the issue to get publicity.
An excellent concept. The reality is, most 'ideas' can be tried out in it's minimum form fairly quickly - with the added benefit that from day one, you are getting ranked in google, getting feedback, collecting email addresses and taking sign ups.

My personal approach, is to use word press on cheap hosting. I know how to customize word press to do almost anything I want and can get something up in a few hours to test the market (check for validity of my keyword analysis). Obviously not everyone knows php / how to customise word press, so your solution is ideal for those founders with the idea but no technical knowledge.

Once the idea has been tested, I'll then spend longer building the better product (if needed), knowing that the initial feedback I got from launching early will save me from building the wrong thing.
In the realm of risk, unmanaged possibilities become probabilities: Most security concerns and breaches are due to a lagging business culture, and lack of user awareness/training. As CIO, I'm always looking for ways to help my teams. Required reading is "I.T. WARS" - you can Google to it, as well as the author's blog, "The Business-Technology Weave" - great stuff. I like to pass along things that work, hoping good ideas make their way to me. Keep security front and center! We're all susceptible...
Agreed. I wouldn't say Gmail is fluff, either. Of course, he's equating fluffiness with non-profitability, but I think that's wrong. I doubt he'd be willing to stand up in front of a roomful of geeks at a conference and call Twitter fluff.
I don't know. The guy who called said he was working as contract recruiter for Google. Maybe it's due to bad economy or downsizing?

I can imagine a software engineer who is suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome switches jobs from writing to keyboard to talking on the phone.
The good guys and bad guys algorithm
I wonder how long their next app will take to get 'reviewed', if ever.
What advice can parents give for parents with multiple kids? I have a beautiful 3.5 yo,2,and newborn. Love them all. They are amazing. I thought I was busy and sleep deprived with one child...three is a different story! :)

I find it difficult to work 60 hours per week, take my kids to sports and then muster energy when they sleep to work on startup

Advice?
Are you ready for a world without antibiotics?
is there a legal requirement to have them in a particular order? Otherwise, I'm fairly sure you could have a mechanic do that, although it could end up being fairly expensive.

To extend your analogy to the issue at hand, Apple are in the position of owning every mechanic shop around, and explicitly forcing them not to offer this service or risk being shut down.
If the power fails they'll come on at the wrong time.

Of course the pumps will not be able to run when there is no power but it might be less than ideal to run the pumps at the wrong time.

That said, you could solve that fairly easily by running the timer circuitry off a rechargeable battery and drive the pumps through a relay. When there's power the battery recharges from the grid, when the power has failed for a while the timer hasn't lost track of the time of day.

I wonder how much an SMS message costs an indian farmer (it also requires an extra cell phone), it might very well be a substantial part of the cost of operation. In the end it's a convenience thing (you don't have to walk) which is worth some $ or it would have to save money or create a better yield.
Congratulations to thegyppo and all the other new parents in here. Father of a 4yo daughter myself, and another on the way ...

Everything changes, best to accept it and just try to roll with it. Every kid is different, even if you have twins, every parent is different, even your and your partner. What works one night for might not work the next, or vice versa!

Expect your hours to change, unless you've got an extended family to help out with the bub.
If she's sleeping, you'd better be sleeping! :-)
Wire - sometimes even high voltage cabling - is stolen all over Europe (and probably the world) for the copper. Not a few accidents happen with people trying to steal a live wire.

http://www.google.com/search?q=cable+thieves+electrocuted
> I don't have the time I'd like to have to dig into new technologies, new tools, etc, but I feel I'm a good dad.

That sort of sums it up for me. Being a good dad is the priority for me too, but I feel that perhaps it's the beginning of the end, in a field where you have to rush to keep up with so much stuff happening.
Ooops, I meant to say Java, not JavaScript. JavaScript is great.
Your last ticket ever
When I get a ticket, I usually bitch about it for a few months. Then I plan a letter writing campaign. This time I spent 5 years and designed an improved cruise control and worldwide database of speed limit signs.
Steve is the ultimate product guy. Agree with him or not, agree with his vision or not, he clearly has a vision for Apple and its products.

The same can't be said for Carol Bartz or Steve Ballmer. Those are the people you want in the room when you're organizing an M&A deal, not when creating consumer oriented products.
Very similar to AOL's situation except they went even further in becoming a media company.

Dial-up access was their inflated source of revenue and their focus for much of the 2000s was on ad sales and not hacking.
I have three girls under the age of six. I tend to work 8am=>4pm in the office, three hours with the girls, bath and bedtime stories and then I'll work between 8pm until midnight'ish, between Monday and Thursday. Friday/Sat/Syn nights are for me and my wife to spend time together and Sat/Sun days are for us all to spend time together. I sometimes need extra time at weekends, particularly recently completing a dissertation.

Get you and your family into ROUTINE. It feels like groundhog day sometimes, but when you go out of routine, it's not good. Achieving a routine means you will be able to plan the work you need to do, and understand how much time you have. If you don't have a routine, then you will suffer be warned!

If you need time to work extra which means your wife is taking care of the kids more often than not, then respond in kind and give her time off, treat her, look after her. I never blame my wife for my stresses, ever. You will argue no doubt. Develop broad shoulders and take it on the chin, don't hold grudges, be there to support your wife.

Enjoy this new part of your life !!
90 minutes? What tool(s) did you use? Looks good.
The Future of Public Service Broadcasting
Those "saved" DIVX/XVID are usually SD, not HD. And even if it was HD, in home environment the bandwidth is not an issue and for the intermediate consumption you can transcode to I-frame only stream.
JSOP: An idea whose time has come
I certainly thought it was a stretch to call it "backstabbing", but of course that's not Apple's choice of language. Really though, if you get rejected specifically for a certain feature, then secretly enable it anyway and try to slip it past the reviewers... obviously Apple cannot be expected to say that's okay. Even if you dislike the review process, surely you can't expect Apple's policy to be "it's okay to include functionality we've specifically rejected and hide it from us".
Bingo. thats the point you can't deliver 8Mbps 1080p of any decent quality. In fact 1080p at 8Mpbs is generally worse quality then 720p upscaled.
Like when Yelp snuck in Monocole in before the iPhone 3.1 release? Except in that case, there was a very different outcome (they weren't removed from the store).
I'm getting tired of these publicity stunts. Developers who knowingly try to pull a fast one should have all their apps pulled and their developer license suspended for a year. It's just too easy to leverage the review process to game the media.
Tips for selling your software in China
While it was dumb of the developer to try and do it behind Apple's back, and they should have known they would get caught...

The logic behind Apple's rule that volume buttons cannot be used to control anything other than volume is that it may confuse users. Surely based on that, the fact that users had to go out of their way to enable the feature (more so than even changing settings within the application), the feature is only accessible to users who won't get confused.

Of course, once they discovered it, Apple did have to take the action they did (or risk opening themselves up to all developers taking the same risk), but they should consider allowing an exception to the rule for developers who make it hard enough to enable that kind of feature, while also providing users with valid warnings, documentation and an option to disable it again that is far easier than it was to enable it.
I was half-expecting an article on outsourced Indian coders (an overdone stereotype, imo), given the title. It was nice to see that it was nothing of the sort.
Developing products with practical value. Early Facebook was a great little tool for keeping in touch with friends and getting invited to parties. They could have built on that aspect and made something useful.

Instead they decided to encourage the kind of spam that generates page impressions that sell ads like a media company...
Lucky they're full of clever people, I guess.
Life is short, but it's not that short. If you spend the next few years enjoying family live, having a job, and just taking it easy, don't worry. Let your ideas fester, play with them. Your children age, they won't stop to wait for you. You'll hate yourself if you miss out on milestones. You'll still be able to hack, but enjoy their smiles. And hold them. Dear god, hold them, because too quickly you won't be able to.

Father of two sons, a 20-month old and a 1-week old.
The Etiquette Of Hats
Congrats! And welcome to the Voxeo family!
I assume the API provides notifications when the volume buttons are pressed so that an app that has music/sound can adjust it's own volume. Of course there is no way for apple to determine programatically that the app is using those notifications for some other purpose. So features like this end up being in the app, until a human spots it and rejects the app.
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I don't need to become as rich as Bill Gates to do this. I'm simply talking about having a large sum of money at the end of my career that I can use to help others. That could be $10k or $10M; the point is I will have the time to see that it gets used properly.

At this point, my biggest responsibility is to my family. 100% of my time and money goes to them, as it should. By making sure they are well provided for and educated properly, Im doing society a bigger favor than throwing a few bucks towards some charity every month.
Your point has some merit, but just by being an employee some place vs a contractor doesn't mean you'll automatically have that institutional knowledge. The only benefit I've had in some employment situations is knowing early on that the people with answers had already left, rather than spending time researching who would know the answers to XYZ.
Well, what I should have said then was I want to give my money away Warren Buffet style: carefully research which is the best nonprofit to donate to, and go all in.
He said he was getting paid more than twice the amount his fried was. Are you saying that your benefits equal your salary? Highly doubtful unless your salary is artificially low (I assume you're a developer-type). Benefits aren't that high for contractors, usually it's just the healthcare that gets you. But even if you pay a non-group, family rate, it's only 15-20K a year which is chump change if you're charging $100+ an hour. Then you get into tax deductions that you just don't get as a full time employee.
If you're not facing any fears of going broke and confident of amassing vast wealth in future, any income that's not spent or invested in amassing vast wealth may as well be donated to causes you support in the short term.

Then again its a pretty common human trait to defer charitable spending to an unspecified point in the future, possibly after death.
Increase your chances of success using the Dog Strategy
Programming followups
They just cannot please everybody. There was a fuss when they were being arbitrary with their rejections and now there's a fuss when they reject an app for not following the rules.
And it seems the rendering is bugged in Opera - the "Go" button and the "Already signed up?" text overlap.
I find it difficult (as in impossible) to work 60 hours a week without children.
Great idea ! However a few points:

* How do I know you won't steal/sell my idea ? How do you handle NDAs etc ?

* What will the "MVP" buy me ? Do you do any design ? Sure it may take "2-3 hours" but what exactly does that entail for my money ?

* What about hosting ? Do you provide source code, or just host a demo for me ? How long is it hosted for ? Is it password protected or otherwise restricted from general use ?

* External links that look like internal links are confusing. Have them clearly designated as such.