skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not sure it's possible to help given the information provided. You're asking how to stay motivated, but you haven't told us what it is that motivated you in the first place. If your only motivation all along was money and gadgets, then perhaps that's the root of the problem.

You live in a cheap part of the world? What about spending some of that money to travel to not-so-cheap parts of the world? My best suggestion would be to take some time off to figure things out. And I mean real time off. Leave town, don't take your computer with you.

Also, given your frugality and the inexpensive standard of living in your part of the world, I'd say your experience is similar to those who have gotten FU money. I'd highly recommend reading this thread: "Ask PG & other successful folks: how did your life change after FU money?" [1] Especially read ttol's comment about mentally preparing yourself and the frame of mind required to handle FU money [2].

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1511104

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1511232
There's plenty of examples of proprietary software vendors doing their best to avoid lock-in from other proprietary software vendors, while doing the same to their own customers. Apple vs Adobe on the iPhone flash issue for example, where Apple proposed open standards and developing directly for iPhone as the two permitted options.
It sounds like you haven't actually read or understood The Innovator's Dilemma. TID isn't about companies growing too large and making obviously idiotic mistakes - it's hardly worth a book to point out that that might not be the best way to do things.

The point of TID is that in certain situations a company can make all the right decisions and still end up losing in the long run to worse products.

An industry that's being disrupted is one with higher-end customers served by successful businesses with expensive, high-margin, high-quality products, and less demanding customers being served by businesses with cheaper, lower-margin, inferior products, where the product quality of both segments grows at a faster rate than what the market demands. When the worse product becomes good enough for a large enough segment of the market, the industry swings - disruption.

The "Innovator's Dilemma" is that at any given time prior to the disruption, the right decision for the successful high-end company appears to be to not enter the lower end of the market, because the same investment applied to the current business will yield continued higher return.

Nokia doesn't have an innovator's dilemma here, they have a shitty product that nobody wants.
>phones that take 5 minutes to switch on, frequently crash and drop calls and explode in to a variety of parts (cover plates, batteries, main boards, buttons and so on) with normal use.

Sounds more like an exaggeration
Piano and guitar are more similar than you think.

A lot of guitar music, especially on the net, is written just as chords, which may be what you're thinking of. But the chords are the same notes whether you're playing them on guitar or piano. You could play exactly the same thing on piano as the guitar players do, and aside from sounding a little stiff, would make good musical sense. It's also common in pop and jazz for piano players to read off chord sheets (lead sheets).

Likewise, guitar music can be written out note-by-note just as piano music generally is. Classical guitar music is written this way, as well as rock leads.

Here's the thing about it, though. If you're thinking of it as individual notes, you're doing it the hard way. Scales and chords are a form of compression between the page and your brain, just as gzip is a form of compression between the web server and your browser. Once you figure them out, you can look at a measure and know what keys you need to hit without having to look at each note individually. Playing any instrument becomes much more fun once you have that skill.
This is really old news. They've already admitted N97 was a disaster, and have since recommitted to doing everything better. At this point we're in wait-and-see mode. Revisiting old failures is not constructive.

Come on guys, keep up. We're on Internet time here.
Dipshit Companies are those without a clear business model, or with a model invisible for users: Facebook, Tumblr, Foursquare et all -- "Social web tools which aid in the consumption of goods, or which are forms of consumption in their own right" (via @danielleary)

Or taking a more in-depth look from Daniel Leary:
"Now look at consumption-services markets. Social web tools which aid in the consumption of goods, or which are forms of consumption in their own right, represent absolute costs. And if there’s anything we’ve learnt about absolute costs in the digital world, it’s that people are unwilling to bear them. I don’t want to speculate too much about why this may be. I will note that people are seemingly unwilling to incur costs which they know are in place purely to generate profit rather than to shoulder distribution and manufacturing outlays (as admittedly unfair this is of consumers)."

These are the Dipshit Companies: taking heavy investment without letting to know to their users how they will return, on behalf of whom they will generate profit.

Educated users are watching carefully this current VC 'bubble' trying to imagine themselves as VCs investing in Facebook and wondering why worth it when users will never pay a penny to use it.
And thus privacy concerns are immediately raised.

Dipshit Companies are those which are selling our digital path behind our back to invisible beneficiaries.
Download PowerPoint Shapes
We have around 500 PowerPoint Shapes for you to choose from. Browse through professionally designed arrows, cubes, pyramids, spheres and more. Use the shapes to enhance the retention of your audience, and use them to make your PowerPoint presentation stand out in a visual way.
That might be the case in the US, but the world is so much larger. In Scandinavia (and elsewhere, surely), every manufacturer also sell their phones "bare" (not coupled with a GSM subscription) directly to customers via a million different outlets.
"hot startup ... they are oversubscribed the second they mention fundraising"

Is that so simple like in the nineties?
To further this, get a job with one of these folks: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1557972

A lot of the jobs posted sound pretty interesting, with interesting problems to solve.
He didn't include one of the most essential knots to tie two ropes together: the one-sided overhand bend (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-sided_overhand_bend). It's very strong and really simple (which is most important in stressful situations when you can't afford any mistakes).

In rock climbing when you do multiple pitches, you usually climb with two ropes (50 or 60 meter each). That provides double safety and you can abseil 60 meters straight. At abseiling you make the bend on one end, put the rope through the carabiner on top of the route and use both ropes to get down on. Then you simply pull on one rope and both come down.
This Week's Cloud Watchlist
Actually, it isn't. I have sworn my current one is my last nokia. It takes literally forever to start up, and after it seems that it has started up it is frequently still impossible to make calls or look at the call history or the sms messages section.

It crashes with some regularity (which is really annoying, because it takes a long time to start up again), it drops calls in the middle of a conversation about two or three times per week.

I've had to re-assemble the phone after just carrying it around in my pocket, not without danger because the battery easily pops out and might get shorted out by my keys. I've been a very loyal nokia customer for more than a decade with one (very short lived) excursion to Samsung, but this really is my last one.

I've just about given up on them.
It's the same here in Brazil - they are even required to unlock your phone on purchase, if you so demand. Subsidies are tied to contracts, so, if you rescind the contract you pay part of the discount you got.

The problem is that the US is a huge market and that distorts the forces that generate products.

And, sure, Nokia seems lost. They should give up software and differentiate on hardware. I am sure the N97 would be a fine Android phone.
I think you forgot about the part where he mentions he is in a country where he can live so cheap that he only has to work 2 - 3 months out of the year. He likely has all the status he needs for the cool chicks in his neighborhood. ;)
In earlier times, the spread was considerably higher. So instead of an HFT firm earning a $0.02 bid/ask, a human on the trading floor might be earning a $0.05 bid/ask.

If you don't want to pay the spread, you can place ALO orders and you will NEVER pay the spread. Your order might never be filled, however.

The $0.02 spread you pay is the cost of getting filled right now. Pay it or not, it's your choice, but remember that immediacy isn't free.
High Powered Android Utilities
Actually, if there was one tension point underlying the conference, it had to do with the impact of this model versus the older VC model that encouraged companies to "swing for the fences." There undoubtedly has been a decided shift in typical early-stage funding during the past two years. The VCs, which once controlled all the key activity, are now in a position of having uncertain deal flow, while the angel side of things is plainly booming. Of course, the biggest winners likely will emerge from the VC side but even then angels are typically heavily involved as co-investors in those deals as well.

The write-up in this piece nicely captures what occurred at this conference. For a few of my notes of the event, see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1560091.
- London, UK

- Looking for Java or Rails contract in/near London

- 10+ years experience in development

Contact eliotsykes via gmail
None taken. I agree with "anyone can do this", with the proviso that it really helps if you can do at least one kind of programming and enjoy learning things.
> My current project competes with Google, AOL, Microsoft, and about 20 other companies...

Sounds like you have your work cut out for you then, makes me wonder why you have time to post here ;) With that sort of competition I figure you'll be the most overworked person on the planet by years end!
At the moment I use only C and the various language of the GNU build system. But in the past I used C++ or a personal project and before that I did some smaller projects in Ruby, PHP, Python, Javascript and HTML (with CSS).
Look at the picture attached to the article you just posted. At the bottom of the screen 'Options, exit'. Just where the soft menu keys would have been. And the same size. And the same amount of buttons.

This is a touch phone. Why do you place on screen items like they're going to be activated by soft buttons?

Disaster #2 on the way.
Utah seo, Utah search engine optimization, Utah Internet marketing
Utah SEO and Internet Marketing Services | Big Leap Web
Indeed. Port it to Android and make a bunch of money there. Or in Nokia's OVI store.
New to iPad? Must-have apps out of the box
HFT financial engineers can not necessarily learn software engineering in their operating time-frames. There is no "High Frequency Learning"; by the time they learn to configure a development environment they could have lost the edge.
The 'explode' verb is a little strong, but many Nokias disassemble themselves after being dropped.
At $50 I'll sell you all the t-shirts you want.
Paper receipts.
I think what you're trying to say is to diversify your income. 100% security is just an illusion.
Touch typing on DVORAK?
I am on a quest to learn to touch type. Is DVORAK worth it? Mostly programming/english/polish??
Airlines - They are nearly all just a pain in the ass to deal with. When was the last time you heard someone tell you how they had a great experience with an airline?
Thread starter is not the same as topic starter.
Things To Do Travel
I have read it and am fairly confident I understand it.

My point was basically that the lower end markets here is the smartphone market.

I agree though it might be a stretch as I am turning the metrics upside down. But I don't think it changes the fundamental point.

That Nokia is turning themselves out of business by making the "right" decisions.
Sheep herd mentality. It also annoys me when my CD skips
joshu, very nice to meet you as well - your investment philosophy and methodology came across nicely in what you presented and the minor glitch in the middle only left one wanting to hear more.
Yes. To allow "downstream" to do whatever they want with a piece of code I gave them being free from my command what to do.
People in the left lane driving with a speed <= or 1mph faster than the people in the right lane.
There's so much wrong with this article I don't even know where to start.
Propadoo: Making Testimonials Easy and Social
I think you nailed it: I was motivated by the need for living decently. Now I climbed out of poverty and feel I have potential for much more, but don't have any particular challenge in mind to tackle, and have no idea how to find one: reached the Esteem step of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and stuck on it :)

PS: thanks for FU money links, very interesting.
> I disagree with him that it is immoral to do so

Agreed. I won't go as far as he does, but I thank him for making a stand. As far as the user makes an informed choice, I am not against selling proprietary software. Still, God kills a kitten every time a proprietary license is sold.
Well, there's that one background image ("dropzone_repeating_pattern.png" in both; I'm not sure of the original source for this image). But otherwise it seems like a sort of standard JS-GUI interface, and not all that much exact overlap in functionality beyond commonalities you'd see in anything that tracks tasks through stages.

FWIW, it looks like BetterMeans is using JQuery-UI and PivotalTracker is using YUI, and I don't notice any commonalities in their source with a quick review... so it may well just be mostly that bg image (which they may have both gotten from a common & free source).

Dunno if you see a smoking gun somewhere, but I haven't thus far.
Absolutely disgraceful treatment of a very reasonable person.
Looks more like a transition from cvs to a propietary fedpkg (proprietary in the sense of nobody else uses it/custom-made) with underlying gitolite with underlying git. Hm..
Very blurry indeed.

See for example, "Predictable Programs in Barcodes":

http://repository.upenn.edu/cis_papers/200/

From the abstract: "...In particular, we consider programs for microwave ovens, which provide a basic open API for controlling cooking times..."

The authors were only able to _simulate_ a microwave oven, presumably because the software on real microwave ovens is closed. A reasonable argument could be made that the proprietary nature of microwave oven software has limited innovation in this market.
Including denying its users any freedom.

Tell me one freedom that does not involve denying freedoms and I'll give you the point. If, however, the only freedom you want is the one to deny freedoms, then, this argument became circular a couple messages back.

Using the GPL you deny no other freedom to your downstream users that that.
Are there any HFT dealers in penny stocks or small caps where some liquidity would be much needed?

False. There are long tail funds, I believe tradebot works on the long tail (among many others).

The thinly traded stocks have better spreads and less competition, which means there is money to be made.

Incidentally, most HFT firms stopped trading on may 6 due to a fear of broken orders. If you buy at 5, sell at 10, and the market goes up to 15, you could wind up losing $5 on a short position if your buy order is broken. Unfortunately, broken orders are impossible to predict algorithmically, since humans came up with the criteria for order breaks hours later.
To be fair, it's more like he pledged 50$ and they gave him a t-shirt.
Reading posts with a lot of comments in HN. I never know what comments are new without looking to the date (sometimes they are hundreds).
Nokia doesn't get that they have competition at the high end.

Selling phones that are so obviously sub-par compared to iPhone and Android, and still expecting people to fork over iPhone/Android money, is laughable.

Developers aren't going to move to writing Symbian apps, there's just too much alternative, and it's not where the reward is.

The goalposts have shifted.
Did anyone honestly believe that use of the VoIP in background API was going to be allowed for non-VoIP stuff, though?

Having said that, the rest of the story seems conflicting and with confusing back-and-forth.
Ok, I'll take it for a test drive.
Solving Sudoku with graph theory and LINQ.
In fact, Nokia has been active in electronics since 1960.
Dave McClure officially files to start venture firm, 500 Startups LP
Naggers
I get around this by archiving emails as I complete them. If completing them just means reading them then they get archived immediately. If I need to refer to them later in the week I just leave them in my inbox. If my inbox gets bigger than 15 emails then I'm doing something wrong :)

I have Taskforce installed but haven't found it benefiting me yet.
Happy SysAdmin Day (despite the pay)
Does your website make this mistake?
How To Prepare For Personal injury Deposition
Deposition is not time constrained. Please take your time before answering a question. Give a thought to the question and then answer.
How does it feel to be the author of a goddamn resume requirement?

Now there's one for the bucket list...
David Heinemeier Hansson says, 'Unlearn Your MBA'
I'm not sure why this is being downvoted. The 3G has serious performance issues under iOS 4:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pdk2cJpSXLg
I stopped reading at 'literally forever'.
There were so many awesome answers. It was an excellent article. One line that really caught my attention was this:

> what are you working on which is more niche than bingo cards for elementary schoolteachers, anyhow?
There are also "hybrid" markets, i.e. countries where both models are active. I'm fairly confident this is the case over most European countries.
the reason i posted here particularly was that, i'm always jacked to soma.fm while coding or what not, it's the "friend" behind our back supporting us while we face the hardships of the day to day :) i can't even work without it ;)
I did this exercise, and to tell the truth, it works better than "normal" editors for some tasks. For example, fixing bugs from a C compilation, checking a particular line, finding some structure on file based on regular expressions.

Nowadays, I use ed regularly whenever possible. I even wrote a blog post on my experiments:

http://coliveira.net/software/using-ed-the-standard-unix-edi...
The YC model is great but I think it's going to continue to be a place that mainly turns out companies that investors like, rather than what is a hit with the public at large.

Why? Because of Farmville. Because no one in their right mind could have predicted Farmville's success. And that's the learning. If you're good, you might be able to guess singles and doubles, but no one can guess the homeruns.
I accept it.

I'm not saying iPhone is as bad. When I saw the N97 video it immediately reminded me of how my iPhone 3G started behaving after upgrading it to iOS 4 -- lagging, not responding to taps, etc. My response was tongue in cheek.

I'm a happy iPhone 4 user now and would never switch to any other "smartphone", let alone Nokia.
In what possible way can making a shitty phone and then lying about its capabilities in marketing materials be considered 'making the "right" decisions'?
That's what I was referring to.
Welcome to Enlume Mobile Applications, SaaS, Offshore Development
Enlume is a software solutions company with expertise in Mobile, Social Media, and Internet applications. We also offer Software Integrations, WebScale Systems, Cloud Computing, Analytics, Open Source and In-house frameworks.
At this point, anyone who develops an iTunes app is bringing this on their own head. Apple's arbitrary stupidity is a known risk. If you don't want to get bit, then don't play with the pit bull.
I am a big fan of the older nokia phones, especially the ones with only two screen colours. I accidentally flung them across rooms, dropped them on sidewalks and even put one through a dryer once. They always still worked and I have only ever replaced them when other people bought me newer models.

However, my latest nokia is shocking compared to the others I have had before it. The case started falling off the back about 3 weeks into using it. It takes around 3 minutes to turn on and freezes without fail every time I try to delete my messages or have a look at my call log. A few friends of mine have experienced similar problems with their more expensive models too.

When I run out of room for messages (because I can't delete them), I'm just going to find out where I packed up my phone from 3 years ago and use that. I'd rather have no internet/camera/mms then try my luck with another new nokia.
Two words: Ovi store.
35 Most Glamourous Photography | Kitaro10
The reason this is better is because their ebooks are DRM-free. Not so with Safari's books. When you use the download tokens from Safari, you get a book that is riddled with watermarks and legal threats on every single page.

When I'm reading a book having a legal threat with my name embedded in it at both ends of every single page is extremely distracting and makes the book nigh-unreadable.

I let my download tokens expire on purpose because what you get with them is garbage.
As much as this all sucks, it just seems like a reviewer clicked the wrong button. "Whoops, undo".
Tribalism is the enemy within
Yes, 370€ unlocked & untaxed according to Nokia: http://conversations.nokia.com/2010/04/27/nokia-n8-official-...
I posted this without editing the title a while back, went unnoticed...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1506269
I'm exactly the opposite--I'm looking forward to the day when I can run a GNU-free Linux with no stupid compatibility issues. It'll be hard, given how badly 20 years of GNU has broken Linux, but maybe someday it'll happen, and we'll have a decent C compiler and a non-bloated /bin.
Thank you, that really needed saying.
Email - Not a lot has changed in the past 20 years, I think we can do better.

Yes, Gmail was pretty innovative but I still think there are plenty of things to improve.
That's not what I was referring to with my TID comment but the focus on selling large quantities of "dumb" phones because that is where the largest revenue (still) is.

This affect their lack off proper focus on the smart phones. They can't get exited about the numbers so to speak.

But as I said, it might be a stretch to use that term here, I still stand by it.
As opposed to a handful of wolves ruling a nation of sheep (which I think we really have)?
No apologies needed. That's is a solid summary. It also confirms my research. I appreciate it.
How could he not know that this is what is going to happen when you develop for the Apple store? I mean the first few times, one could understand it - we assume others are reasonable - but this is story number, what 30?
Freedom and capability are not the same. People have freedoms by default, and they can be taken away, but people lack capability by default, and they must be provided (in the context of software). The GPL preserves capability by removing a bit of freedom, while the BSD license preserves more freedom at the expense of the possibility to remove capability from downstream users.