skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> It's a brilliant, (albeit arguably evil), strategy by Apple to create a viscous circle where developers bind themselves to iPhone, which means the good apps wind up there and thus users buy the product

The only problem with your theory is the 'Android Sales Overtake iPhone in the U.S' part. Perhaps Android will need a bigger market share (double?) to really start stealing the higher quality developers from iOS but if the trend continues this will happen.
because a lot of these niche $100K/yr products...hit the ceiling at 150-200K. So you have no security like you do when you have 5-6 million in the bank. Anything can happen...Google might slap your adwords account, someone might release a competing product etc.

And starting a lifestyle business with FU money, means that you can tough it out as it grows from 1 sale every other day, to 1-2-3-4-5-6 sales a day.
The idea that natural intelligence will succeed on its own merit in a capitalistic society
The pursuit of 'free memory' is one of those things that make me laugh, same as people complaining about programs that are CPU hogs.

I mean, we're always after the best memory and the best CPU's only to end up running around feverishly making sure we use as little of it as possible.
My thinking is that a wedding on average is planned 6 months in advanced. So at $12.79/month (this is the pricing point I have in mind), the total will be $76.74 per user. Of course it doesn't make sense for users to pay after their wedding is over. My plan is to "freeze" the account if once user decided to stop paying, however, I'd still let users to login and visit their account page, they just can't make any changes (37Signals actually force you to pay to get back in once you stop the billing, which isn't very nice). And there will be a 14-day trial (instead of 30 as it said on the site at the moment), but I'll run A/B test on the trial time to see which one is better. 30 days maybe too long and I wouldn't get paid fast enough to survive.

But I can totally see that user will want to go with a prepaid package, say 3-month pass at $30 ($8.37 saved) and they don't have to worry about getting charged accidentally after this 3-month period is over. Or a 6-month package for $50, which is even more savings.

I still pretty open about the pricing at the moment, but I know I want to go with a price of $12.79/month (and this number is inline with the response from my survey). A/B split tests will probably tell me which direction to go in terms of the different pricing packages.

TheKnot.com monetize with advertising and affiliation, and in my opinion, despised being a really rich site, their user experience isn't as great. People who took my survey confirmed this, and a few people replied as "hated it" for having too much ads. Since I want to focus on delivering a solid app, I think having a price tag on the site will help me focus more on building quality software, rather than squeezing ads money out of the traffic.

And thanks for the feedback! I really appreciate it.
The population of Denmark is 5.5 million, which if it were a US state, would make it the 21st largest state.
There's actually a cottage industry that's popped up selling discount PPVs. They sell a low-quality internet stream for $5 or so. From an economic perspective, it's an interesting phenomenon. You can see the demand that fails to clear at the market price.

For a sport still struggling for a cultural foothold, the aggressive anti-piracy actions of the UFC may eventually do it more harm than good. The pay per views are an expensive product, and the free cable shows aren't available in as many homes as the internet. In the long run the promotion would almost certainly benefit from being more open with their footage, especially that of older fights, until Georges St. Pierre is as popular a name as Lebron James.
How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand.

It's about how the foundation you build something on top of determines its adaptability to change/new usage patterns
being able to say fuck you to anyone is more about what you've got on the inside than what you've got on the outside.

Sure, but the consequences will be different.
Multiplication is Easier When It's Complex
It always amazed me how a python implementation in python can be so much faster then the original python implementation in C. I didn't take a deep look at pypy, it's sounds like magic :P
Just FYI: It's actually very hard to get a McDonalds Franchise these days. McDonalds controls where their restaurants can be built and how far they have to be from other restaurants. Plus McDonalds Corp. makes most of its money of real estate so the company has to be able to acquire land to sell to you. When there is land available in the U.S. there's usually a bidding war between existing franchisees making it hard for an individual to get a foot hold.

Plus you have to sign up for a 20 year term or face a steep termination fee (I heard it was in the arena of $100 Million).

I'm not sure it goes to your point I just thought it might give perspective on how even easy money isn't all that easy to get.
I'd have no problem extracting 250,000 in annual income from 5 million, after it's been invested for a year. Whether or not that's enough t decide to go walkabout depends on the person.
Well, in this case it looks like they're competing with the government. Still, I'm not a fan of what they're trying to do. Of course, the Accountant's lobby and Congress have been conspiring to provide lifetime employment for tax preparers for decades, so it's really not anything new.

If we really wanted to save money, we'd reform the tax system, not provide band-aids like this program.
What I've noticed at Google is that there's really no comparison between teams. Different parts of the company might as well be entirely different companies, aside from a few common cultural attributes (flat hierarchy, data driven decision, and of course all the perks.)

The best piece of advice in there (I think) is to pick your team carefully, and more importantly, don't feel shy about switching if you aren't making headway.
I agree, screenshots or visual guide will be a very good addition. Get some popcorn and enjoy, i found this lecture pretty good! -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW4MwvgW_ww&feature=chann...
Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman

Also, as a good counterpoint (sort of)...

Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by E.F. Schumacher

I personally don't think the whole book is that great, but the chapter, "Buddhist Economics", is really good and reprinted here: http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.h...
There are surely some people using the free services. Presumably with time, the user satisfaction with these programs will increase as bugs get ironed out and word of mouth helps spread them.

You seem to believe that just because you will not use the states tax software that no one will, which seems to be a error in generalization.

From a profit maximization perspective, I completely understand how Intuit's rent seeking behavior is justified. On the other hand, it almost certainly socially suboptimal.
Jailbreakers provide patch for critical iOS security hole
I don't think it is what he's saying. He specifically says "give up on F@#$ You Money." Not "Go for a billion dollars because a million isn't enough F@#$ You Money"

What he's saying is influence is a better strategy than money and I'm disagreeing with the truth of that statement.
Are you using OSX? What key combo is your middle button mapped to?
Can you think of anything that would help you relax so you could be your true self?
This is the way I think about the difference between Marrily and TheKnot too. And it's my goal to build Marrily to be really simple and useful, but I'll gradually add more and more resources to help users get inspirations as well.

I will implement more mobile features as well so that will be another differentiating factor. So far I haven't seen any iPhone app for wedding planning that combines a solid web app and a mobile app together. Marrily will fill in this gap nicely.
This is, as far as I know, code directly related to a learning to rank work by some googlers, not at all a generic library blessed by google.
Slightly myopic given that we're still very much in a recession, but good points nonetheless.

I would have to disagree, though, because fame and influence fades. You still have to work hard to maintain it.
Maybe if Apple had more people they could make Mobile Me work like it should, release a new Mac Pro more frequently than once every two years, have a 64bit completely multithreaded Final Cut Pro written in Cocoa APIs, or something something antenna something…
Rumors in Astrophysics Spread at Light Speed
A People's History of the United States (Zinn) [http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-Present/...]

There's so much history that isn't taught in school (politically covered up) and Zinn presents many of these little-known history gems. Be warned, there is a light liberal swing.
Maybe because of this exchange in one of the pages he posted?

AH: Where did the concept of driverless trains come from and how will it enhance efficiency at the Pilbara mines?

GG: Automated trains have been around for some time in airports but they are not used on a heavy-oil long-haul railway network of this scale. We believe the network at the Pilbara mines to be one of the largest private railways in the world, so although the technology is not new, the scale is.

The railway stretches from our Pilbara ports to the mines, which covers roughly 330km. It's a long stretch and train drivers can only physically drive so far before being replaced. We only have a single driver per train, with each train stretching over 2.5km long usually consisting of 230 carriages. We cannot find enough train drivers to maintain our expansion forward and the ones we are hiring are getting older and harder to replace.
Yeah but that's mostly irrelevant. As I said, the problem isn't size, it's state and federal law.
Fascinating.

"At 2 a.m. on Dec. 29, 1999, an active stock market trading day, the audio alert on a UPS system alarmed a security guard on his first day on the job. He pressed the emergency power-off switch, taking down the entire datacenter. Because a disaster-tolerant OpenVMS cluster was in place, the cluster continued to run at the opposite site, with no disruption. The brokerage ran through that stock-trading day on the one site alone, and performed a shadow full-copy operation to restore redundancy in the evening, after trading hours. They procured a replacement for the failed security guard by the next day."

The last sentence.
A Game of Thrones by George R R Martin. Fiction. Fantasy, but not _too_ fantasy; it's almost the same as the world we live in. But Martin is a genius. His world is deep and it seems like he's lived there for years. His characters are fascinating and unique, to a level I've never seen before. His writing style is subtly distinct, enough that you don't notice it initially but you gradually pick up on small changes that he made and appreciate it more. Last, his plot writing is truly masterful. If you're familiar with it, this is sort of "The Wire" of fantasy books.
Android Beats RIM – Becomes Market Share Leader in USA
What will RIM do now when Android is breathing on its neck and threatens to enter its enterprise market?
Amazon.com: Learn You a Haskell for Great Good
The Master and Margarita is very good, but you have to take care with which translation you pick up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita#Englis...
If only everyone could use logic like you rather than just bashing around everywhere.
Summary: Because he forgot.
I didn't know Microsoft had a problem, they seem to be doing pretty well.

In the mobile market? How about anything next-generation web? Social media? Microsoft doesn't seem to be doing well anywhere except the increasingly unimportant desktop and Office suite space.
Ask HN: I'm a Linux guy. Tell me about all those BSDs
I use Linux and I have for nearly all of my teenage and adult life. I had a short foray into Solaris; ZFS was nice, and so were the raid tools. Otherwise I found it to be rather tedious.

Tell me, why would I ever want to use one of those BSDs over Linux of some sort? What's the allure?
Seconded. Certainly isn't making me want to leave my current startup before it's run its course.
Client Invoice Photoshop Template (downloadable PSD)
I think the key issue here is that when a government imposes administrative procedures on its citizens (e.g. tax returns), it should be entirely logical for said government to provide free software that reduces the administrative load. In fact, this should be the norm. You can't accuse the state of anti-competitive behaviour in this case, because the market you're serving wouldn't even exist if they hadn't created tax filing procedures to begin with.

Or, as I like to think of it, governments, by necessity, introduce a certain amount of friction into our lives, and have every right to try and reduce that friction. If your business is built on reducing that friction, you simply need to ensure that your service stays ahead of the free service, because your profits are not a right.
@volski: "Apple being successful doesn't necessarily translate to Microsoft sucking."

Completely true, and as Steve Jobs famously said in 1997:
"If we want to move forward and see Apple healthy and prospering again, we have to let go of a few things here. We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. We have to embrace a notion that for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really good job."

@volski: "I didn't know Microsoft had a problem, they seem to be doing pretty well. They have some good products."

Personally, I use Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Exchange, and I feel they are best in class. For every other product they offer, I feel there are better alternatives.

The notion that Microsoft has a problem stems from the fact that most of the new product lines that Microsoft has put to market in the last 10 years, few have been a success. Microsoft's profit comes mostly from licensing and servicing Windows and Office.

Meanwhile, in the last 10 years Apple has introduced iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad -- all mega hits. What makes it a sad sight to see is that every time Apple comes up with another iDevice, Microsoft tries to compete, and it simply hasn't worked out for them. Windows Marketplace, MSN Music, Zune, Kin, Windows Mobile 6.5, Courier -- the list goes on.
It seems like Windows Phone 7 should take away market share from Android, but there's one key problem that I think will prevent Windows Phone 7 from doing that: Internet Explorer.

IE is a resource hog, and has horrible standards support. Most mobile sites won't work with it unless Microsoft manages to get IE9 ready for production use with Windows Phone 7. From all the stories I've seen, they seem to think they can restrict users to using IE7 and still have a good mobile experience. The mobile web is Webkit, and I don't see IE standing a chance.
They're merging into CPython 3K right now. http://groups.google.com/group/unladen-swallow/browse_thread...
Diversify across geographies, e.g. always hold positions in America, Europe, and China.
And it isn't a gradual realization. It comes to you rather suddenly. AND THEN you have kids and it accelerates even faster.

When I'm hanging out with my father-in-law, who is in his mid-60s, often reflects on how his fast life flew. Seemed like he "was only 40 a couple years ago".

Mortality is sobering, ain't it?
Getting 700,000 users in one weekend is nothing to be ashamed of. And quite likely enough to pull the gap much closer, or reverse it to put the iPhone back at top.
Does he really think that getting 67k people to sign up makes his proposal more significant than the tea party?

If so, he's too clueless to be allowed to vote. If not, he's another con man.
Some Bizarre Cigarette Packages
Let's see some weird examples of cigarette packages.
So, what's the jest of it? Someone told me that if you finish it, the joke is on you ;)
"although we suspect the Gmail ads aren't making that much revenue anyway."

If that were true, I'm pretty sure Google would have either 'fixed it' so that they do make revenue, or removed them.

Personally, I'd expect those ads on GMail certainly make a few million.
You just got yourself another sale...
However you will also note that budget restrictions are self-imposed by state law or state constitutions, which would likely be rewritten as the states took over more social services.

Another reason that I like the idea of states and local governments handling more services is that it is politically more difficult to waste money on stupid projects. For Example: a road near my house was recently repaved using money from the stimulus. It was in fine shape before and didn't need work done but most people were not upset because the federal government payed for most, if not all, of it. However if my village said that sales taxes would be raised .25% for 6 mos. to pay for the project most of these same people would have immediately decided that repaving the road wasn't worth the cost.
Yes, I'd be interested in seeing higher mag pictures if they become available. An email to <any address>@<the domain in my HN profile> will reach me.
Off-topic but don't you think that the owners of that debt have a slightly vested interest in avoiding complete collapse/keeping the system going, even if it is barely functional to get some of their ongoing interest payments?

Or will the environment rapidly devolve to:
http://ferfal.blogspot.com/
It's a little disturbing that a security guard had the ability to shut the whole thing down. Is that normal?

I would think they'd keep the power systems under lock and key, or at least under the control of someone who knew what to do when a UPS starts making noise.
I can't stand it either and I think Kindle has a better e-Book reader than Apple. Amazon did a good job at thinking, "this is not a book... this is not a book" where-as Apple brought all of the physical things from a book into an electronic application.
Money sitting in the bank makes a good insurance policy for many things, better than the loophole-laden policies your typical insurance outfit flogs off. Plus interest earned is better than premiums paid.
So that brings me to my original question -- what kind of sensing do you use on these trams, both to follow the walls and to detect obstacles?
Feature this!! :)
> One need only look at Tea Party donor records to see who the Tea Party truly represents.

How about a link?
> While it's true that a handful of states have health plans, it would be advantageous to have a federal health plan, due to economies of scale.

Umm, the federal govt already runs a couple of massive health care systems. They don't do what single payer advocates promise, so why do you think that obamacare will?

I think that we should have given obama free reign wrt the healthcare of folks who currently get their healthcare from govt. Yes, military, state, local, and federal employees, Indian Health Service, Medicare, Medicaid, and so on.

We give him 2 years at the current budget then we cut 5% per covered person in the next four years. That's just over 20% which should be trivial given the promises of 30% savings.

If the covered population is better off at the end of that time, we can talk about expanding it.
How does crazy paranoid stuff get up-voted here? Very Sad.

Cheaper countries can be fun, but there's lots of downsides as well. If you are asocial, it could be your dream to live there. I'll always want a vacation there, but not to live there.
I'm a cufon fan. I'm not sure what areas are blocked but as long as it's not tons of paragraphs, cufon should be instant and is a lot crisper than Google's font directory.
A small note, these slides are the ones as delivered at PyOhio (which was also recorded), which are slightly updated from the ChiPy talk.
Berlin is pretty social ;)
Well, if someone wants to discriminate, they can do so regardless. I think it's much more insidious how people unconsciously can disregard people based on first impression. It's sort of the case of "anchoring" -- if you form an initial impression, maybe just based on someone's clothes or mannerisms, it's likely to bias your final impression. (See lesswrong.com for many discussions about this.) Without the video, the first impression is more likely to be based on actual facts as opposed to personal judgment.
What would your strategy be to get that 5%?
How is it driven? It looks like it would be a disaster if the bus weaved left or right by a few millionths of an inch.
I love how Wufoo takes a really boring-sounding task, making forms, and manages to act downright giddy about it.
The state of PHP frameworks
Repost but a quote from George Foreman about longshoremen. What is real wealth?:

Mr. Foreman, who stared down financial collapse as an adult despite a troubled, impoverished childhood, said he knew real wealth when he saw it. “If you’re confident, you’re wealthy,” he says. “I’ve seen guys who work on a ship channel and they get to a certain point and they’re confident. You can look in their faces, they’re longshoremen, and they have this confidence about them...I’ve seen a lot of guys with millions and they don’t have any confidence,” he says. “So they’re not wealthy.”
I would provide some pointers and a variety of example videos. Offer a few great videos, with some explanation of why each is good, and do the same with some less-than-spectacular specimens.

Also, things like lighting and sound can make a pretty big difference, so providing basic info on optimizing your setup might help.

I also like the idea of having each company do an intro video that sets the mood.

Good luck!
Yes. I read the article and I agree with the author. I still think I have a relevant point.
I find it interesting that despite all the buzz about Android surpassing iPhone in sales, the users of the iPhone is still much more loyal than the Android users. A considerably higher percentage of Android users were considering moving to iPhone or another platform, than were iPhone users.
The relevant issue in this article is that this will definitely alter the mindshare aspect of the platforms.
I'm sorry, I didn't realize it was necessary to make it so convenient for you. I expect the readers of HN are capable of doing Google searches or browsing through http://www.opensecrets.org/.

Next time I'll be sure to include a complete list of references.
Well, there must be some correlation between money and influence. If Paul Graham is right, then the guy who has $5M at 30 by virtue of a startup exit has created enough value to be compensated as such. Which of course, leads to influence.

FYM in it's old-world sense (retirement) is probably getting more obsolete anyway. As Tim Ferriss put it, "The goal isn't to work less. It is to live more."
> And you as an owner don't need to do anything...just hire a good manager...and it'll more or less run on autopilot(from your perspective)

Actually, it won't.

Good managers are very expensive and they leave to make their own FU money. Okay managers require constant supervision.
The part that made me smile was when he said "In all, between one and TERAbytes of data would generated!!!!" [exaggerated emphasis mine]

I've got 3-4 terabytes of storage within a dozen feet of me as I type this; it really drives home the pace of change in computing.
The State of Haskell 2010: a survey.
A patent wouldn't have helped the startup...
I learnt Perl and used it on projects long before I learnt C.