skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The Verizon iPhone story is both my favourite and most hated tech story.

It's my most hated because I'm sick of hearing it. Every month it pops up.

It's my favourite because it's a classic example of rumourmongering becoming "news" perpetuated by people who don't really understand Apple at all.

See, it doesn't matter what % increase in revenue or market size Verizon would deliver to Apple, there is still one huge problem: CDMA technically doesn't support simultaneous voice and data. There is no getting around that (beyond the inevitable transition to LTE).

Anyone who thinks that Apple will release a CDMA version of the phone and then try to explain to consumers that version A can do this but version B can't is, well, off their rocker.

A CDMA iPad however is a completely different matter, but I digress...

Just like Apple could make more money--at least in the short term--by releasing a new phone more often than every year. The fact is though that people don't like the instant obsolescence of tech products. You buy an iPhone 4 today and you know it's as good as an iPhone will get til mid next year.

Compare that to the anarchic shotgun world of Android handsets.

Apple is driven by product and user experience not market research ("market data" isn't quite the same thing).
I've made working out a habit for a short while now and it really has done a lot for my attitude and energy levels. If you aren't already doing some regular physical activity I also recommend making a hobby out of something that keeps you moving.
Absolutely. The biggest factor in Apple's current success is their past failure. Apple's willingness to completely redo their OS is a result of their OS struggling, both in the market and technologically.

The other thing that their failure also helped solidify is their base. Being the perpetual underdog they had a very strong enthusiastic core fan base. This allows them to get decent sales on even their worst sellings products. And for products with public displays (think iPod and iPhone) it helps them create early viral marketing. This base is much less effective for non-publicly displayed items (think their new touchpad or AppleTV).

I think these two things have allowed Apple to do bolder moves, yet actually have less risk associated with it.

The only other tech company I could think of that would have been able to do something similar was Commodore. But they self-imploded before publicly displayed technology devices were very viable.
For the most part it is the registrars that enable this, the domain authorities are not actively stopping foreigners from buying these domains but you can't take that as an encouragement from their end. The simple fact that the terms of service are not available in English is quite a hint imo.

And they bothered because they like money, but if the downsides are too much for their sensibilities (with which you are free to disagree, as do I) they can make your life miserable. Just like you're not going to be mooning anybody in downtown Singapore it probably isn't smart to host an adult site on a predominantly Muslim country TLD.
> most users wrongly assume that Facebook Contact Sync only syncs user pictures.

Why would you think that an app called "Contact Sync" would only sync pictures, and not your contacts?
SEO: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners
It's not about un-open sourcing anything. Apache, Oracle _wanted_ Sun to open source the Java testing kit etc. but Sun never did and placed restrictions on usage on mobiles.

So Google is claiming that Oracle is acting hypocritically depending on which side of the aisle it is, but that does not carry any legal weight.

The registrations you talk about in the beginning are to do with copyright claims and have nothing to do with the patent claims.
One thing: A reliable host/server?
I don't know how many of you guys have ever actually contacted RMS, but whenever I did, his answers were quick, polite and to the point. Anecdotal, I know...
Ok. I've never hired a designer before so I don't know much about how this sort of thing might be done on iPad (or in general for that matter) myself.

I'm still not clear on what your work flow would be. Would you be making a sort of "prototype" in tools that you know that I have to then translate to the actual GUI or would you be working inside the Mac Xcode environment making the GUI files themselves that I can then plug into my program and use?
Match the Tool to the Problem
"I think this is a neat little algorithm."

Especially in the corporate world where A would be cc'd on all the emails... And they still won't understand what happened...
Not yet. I bought a copy over a year ago, but it's still in my queue. My only real exposure to Eastern thought, Buddhism, etc. have been the books "Introduction to Zen Buddhism" and "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind."
If you primarily do Rails or Django applications (i.e., complex web applications including database design) do you still call yourself a "web developer"?

I associate "web developer" with graphic design or dinky brochure sites. I've been calling myself a freelance programmer. Thoughts?
The iFound application also requires a membership, which is invite only. It was removed for a while but has since returned.
SEO is a business based on fear and confusion. The only thing that matters is high authority backlinks pointing into your site. All the on-page stuff matters, just not as much. And we throw the on-page stuff in for free. We build backlinks to your site using our proprietary algorithm developed by studying the google patent filing and extensive trial and error. All sites hosting your link are PageRank 4+. Give me a shout and I'll send you our two-pager on who we are, what we do, how we do it, and expected results (we've ranked for the keyword "diet" before). Holla! :)
During the Great Depression, Japan, Britain, Germany, the US, and France all went off the gold standard, in that order. The countries that abandoned the gold standard sooner were also the ones whose economies recovered sooner. (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/modified-goldbug...) It’s not that the devaluation itself caused the recovery, but tying your currency to the gold standard makes certain recovery-stimulating activity difficult or impossible.
Down for me too, was able to find this cached version of the page: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cac...

EDIT: I'm having trouble getting the cached page to load now, but here's the text from another tab I opened previously. If I can, I'll edit it out once the article's back up.

EDIT 2: Looks like it's back up.
I went into the game again and now it behaves properly! Very strange.. perhaps it was due to a bug in the game?
Germany's privacy laws are known and probably available in multiple languages. The concern here is that you might not know the law either because you can't read it, or it only exists when the government wants it to.
Do you ever get work through recruiters? Do you find their rates to be less? Whenever I get contacted by a recruiter and I tell them my rate they freak out. They say "The customer has a stretch budget of $40/hour for this contract" like that's some huge amount.
eprintweb: http://eprintweb.org/S/rss/cs in google reader. There are a few of the math/ and q-bio/q-fin feeds that are usually interesting reading.

I'm not sure why I didn't use the arXiv RSS feeds directly.
I guess I never considered people passionate about TV sports/shows. Shouldn't write people off just because they don't have my preferences.
Blockbuster's problem was that it was indifferent to its users and it got lazy. They optimized for their short-term goals, not the long term relationship with the people they needed most. Any user focused company stays busy trying to obsolete its current business with the next big thing, because that's what the user wants. It didn't kill itself on late fees or inventory myopia alone — it just painted the target on its back.

If Blockbuster were genuinely interested in making their users happy toward the end, they could have bought Netflix for a cheap $50 million and moved forward. They didn't care, and their user hostile approaches to making cash were evidence this was true.
His ideas seem to be scaling pretty well. The GNU ecosystem is as big as ever.
It's not about un-GPLing anything. The GPLed code was given a patent grant _only_ if it was compatible with existing Java. And the code to test the compatibility(TCK) was never GPL'ed and had restrictions.

Engadget has good breakdown:

Google uses a subset of the Apache Harmony Java implementation in Android.
Sun open-sourced Java Standard Edition under the GPL in 2006 and 2007, but didn't include a patent or copyright license with the code. In order to get that license, developers have to demonstrate compatibility with the Java specification.
The only way to demonstrate compatibility with the Java specification is to use Sun's Technology Compatibility Kit, or TCK, and Sun / Oracle and Apache have been bickering about the license for the Java TCK, or JCK, for years. (That's putting it lightly, actually. It's been more like a war.)
The only license Sun ever offered Apache for the JCK included significant "field of use" restrictions, including a restriction on mobile phones.
Because of these restrictions, Apache's never taken a JCK license to test Harmony.
Oracle used to be on Apache's side in demanding Sun loosen up the JCK licensing restrictions, but that changed as soon as it bought Sun out.
Google thinks this is very bad, and that Oracle and Sun are just big bullies who don't want Java to be open, even though being open is super amazing.
That's where Google stops, right at the part where unchecked corporate greed threatens to destroy a open-source project and your heart swells with sympathy. It's a good place to stop! But the logical and unstated endpoint to this narrative isn't quite as good:
Because Apache doesn't have a license to test Harmony with the JCK, it doesn't have a license for Sun's Java patents and copyrights either.
Part of the reason Apache wants a JCK license is to assure its users they have the necessary IP rights.
Google knew all this and used parts of Harmony in Android anyway.
Try #ipaddev on Freenode, there are a ton of devs there.
The server is running on EC2. As far as I can tell, EC2 does not have a virtual console interface or any other way to rescue a server that blocks all network connections with a firewall.
No, that's wrong. The claim is that the bred U-233 will be contaminated with U-232, which is very hard to get rid of, and has the hard gamma emitter Thallium-208 in its decay chain.
Not bad. You should add the title of the thread along with the user's comment to give context. Also please position the user's name to the left. Most HN users are in the U.S. where people read left to right. That way I can glance at the stream and recognize who said what faster.
Google is using a clean-room re-implementation of the JRE, not a fork of the JRE so calling 'OpenSource' doesn't really apply here. Oracle wouldn't have a leg to stand on (iirc) if Google had just forked the JRE.
"I bet they could find a Basque, Lapp, or Chukchi speaker if they needed one quicker than most universities."

That's probably where they get them.
Developers should absolutely push back and make sure that the person requesting the change has all the information needed to make a good decision, however they also need to understand that they, the developer, may only have part of the story and that they need to respect that the decision is coming from someone who may understand things that the developer does not.

Yes too often developers are ridden over roughshod, but I think it's important to put the other side of things.

In the same way that person may not understand the consequences of the dirty hack, the developer frequently will not understand the consequences of delaying the change. Unless the developer can honestly say that they understand the relevant part of the business better than person making the request, some humility and willingness to compromise and discuss is likely to be appropriate.

For me the issue is not with doing the hack, it's getting the agreement that we'll do the quick hack, but only if we're then allowed, in the very short term, to make the fix properly.

That way everyone gets what they want - the fix is made in the timescales the business deem necessary and the developer isn't leaving a mess for future developers to have to clear up.

Being a professional programmer in a commercial environment isn't about sticking rigidly to some definition of what's "right" (which will often vary from one developer to another anyway), it's about using code to fix real problems and provide real benefits in ways which are appropriate to the situation and balance all the variables.

It's a variant of the old "good coders code, great coders ship". Being a great coder is about finding ways to meet everyone's needs.
"Anyone who thinks that Apple will release a CDMA version of the phone and then try to explain to consumers that version A can do this but version B can't is, well, off their rocker."

Apple does this with every product they ship. And in some cases they have even more extreme cases.

For example, upgrade to the latest iPod Nano and whoa, no camera. So wait, if I get the old version I get a camera and now I completely lose it. But if I go up to the iPod touch I get the camera, but the classic line never had one?

I seriously doubt Apple is not moving to CDMA because of the issue you site. If anything its because CDMAs life is a relatively short one now. Further, my point wasn't that they go to CDMA, it was that I suspect that they have analyzed that market up and down. I bet they've gotten data from ATT to know what percent of their users use voice/data concurrently. I think Apple knows more about the market then they let on.
Full Page Previews Spotted Alongside Google Search Results
MD 'becoming the Delaware of benefit corporations'
People do pay for these "free" sites. Not with their money, but with their time. If people weren't putting time into the sites, the sites would be worthless.

It's not unreasonable for people who are giving companies all this free labor to expect to get benefits for that labor -- like constantly having access.
You don't need 5 nines uptime. Just copy the photos to Dropbox and they'll get shared when everything is up. You can either use Dropbox's built-in photo sharing feature, or use the one and only full-featured photo site that lets you upload via Dropbox. That photo site, incidentally, can feed Facebook via FriendFeed.
Favorite quotes:
"$37 bucks for a bus ticket to the park, our profit margins are 47,000%"

Tell me about the team
"I have 3 Phds, wrote 4 books and passed the bar exam while running a marathon. My cofounder graduated from stanford at 14, can smash bricks apart on his forehead, and can father a child just by looking at a woman"
Nice idea, and I can see myself using it but...

The "come up with a secret phrase" thing is a nice idea, but I must've sat for 10 seconds trying to work out what was actually being asked for, and then I had no idea what phrase I could use that I wouldn't forget, but that nobody else would have chosen.
I have a very similar problem, especially where you said "my body would simply run out of fuel ... I'd get this spacey, apathetic, faded feeling and have trouble focusing".

Somehow a doctor figured out I was mildly hypoglycemic, basically you have to eat consistently and everything, but if you haven't eaten in too long you get that long crash where you end up just being almost exhausted for no reason. I always make sure I eat at least something for breakfast lunch and dinner and grab a small snack in the afternoon, an it helps a lot.
Am I the only person hoping that a high profile URL shortener liky bit.ly get taken offline so people learn quickly that redirecting their content's URLs through a 3rd party is a bad idea?
19. Although software applications for the Android platform may be written in the Java programming language, the Dalvik bytecode is distinct and different from Java bytecode. The Dalvik VM is not a Java VM.

Wait, all they've made is a phone that runs a VM that Java can compile to? What exactly is Snoracle suing for, the use of Java syntax as a source language?
I'll elaborate more in part two, but briefly:

What is the sales cycle like? Do you take on more than one client at a time? If so, on average, how many? Are you looking for new gigs even while in the midst of implementing something for a given client?

2-4 weeks to land new gigs. 1-3 clients at a time. Yes (see sales cycle answer).

Should my blog be about tech-related stuff only?

Only if you want it to be. My clients say they feel like they know me better after reading my blog.

Do you always sign a contract before taking a gig?

Usually, but not always. Probably always should, but there's really little recourse if a client in Kansas stiffs you for a $5k job. A contract won't help.

Is fixed-price or hourly-rate work harder to get? I always see professional freelance devs using hourly rates, but I really prefer to take fixed price gigs (with payment milestones if I don't know the client well).

Most clients seem to prefer fixed-price. Just make sure you have it spec'ed out well and you are clear that scope creep isn't going to happen.

I occasionally see contractors complain that they have to much work. I'd love to be subcontracted for some of that work (seems like a pretty straightforward proposition - I'll do your extra work for a bit cheaper and you can keep the difference), but would that hurt me long-term because I wouldn't develop relationships with end-clients? Is this even a reasonable strategy for getting work?

I think it's a fine strategy, but I'm personally wary of giving work to someone because if they fall through, I'm on the hook. I might make an extra couple thousand a month doing that, but if I have to do the work and end up jeopardizing my other clients because I don't have time to focus on them, I lose more than I gain. Plus, I think the time managing that subcontracting process is a lot more than you think. I did teach my little brother to program over the last couple years and he's paying his way through private university by doing subcontracting for me. Family is a little different, though.
It doesn't 'flicker' in firefox at all, it just shows a steady image with a message that I should use chrome.
Hack JavaScript the Language
Banshee 1.8 Brings Amazon MP3 Support Back to Linux
Would love to see the source for this on the server side - really slick!
I've actually heard the same for fashion. There is usually one fashion house that basically dictates style for a few years. All other highend designers are basically lockstep behind this and then it trickles down through ready to wear, and finally consumer brands (like H&M).

You also see this in consumer electronics where bezels alternate between glossy black, flat black, silver, gold, white. If you go back further you'll find woodgrain, yellows, greens, etc. But it would never be one manufacturer. They all did it around the same time.

Today, Apple has decided a keyboard isn't necessary on a smartphone. 3 years ago that wasn't that case. Nintendo has decided that motion was how to play games. 3 years ago that wasn't the case. Ford decided that 4 wheels on a chassis is what makes a car. Why not 3 wheels, 5 wheels, or 6 wheels?

The market likes to be given new options, but not too many options. People are willing to take a chance but they won't accomadate everything. For now motion controllers are where it's at. Nintendo decided it, MS and Sony have to follow suit. In a few years it might be brainwave controllers. While those controllers exist they aren't marketable. The public isn't ready for it, yet.
Agreed on general point, however the sad truth is that Internet is soon to become Chinese (with their ipv6 progress and economic status), so we better be ready to translate .com rules into chinese to be good citizens ;)
Yes, this is the "act of production" privilege. The Fisher decision established that content is not protected as 'testimonial'.

"but the Court has never on any ground, personal privacy included,
applied the Fifth Amendment to prevent the otherwise proper
acquisition or use of evidence which, in the Court's view, did not
involve compelled testimonial self-incrimination of some sort."

"The taxpayer cannot avoid compliance with the subpoena merely by
asserting that the item of evidence which he is required to pro-
duce contains incriminating writing, whether his own or that of
someone else"

"The existence and location of the papers are a foregone conclu-
sion and the taxpayer adds little or nothing to the sum total of
the Government's information by conceding that he in fact has the
papers. Under these circumstances by enforcement of the summons
'no constitutional rights are touched. The question is not of
testimony but of surrender.'"

Fisher largely overturned the earlier (1886) Boyd decision. The court did not expand the Fisher limits until 2000, when the Hubbell decision expanded the testimonial aspect of production and limited the scope of the "foregone conclusion" rationale. For more on the act of production privilege, see http://www.georgemasonlawreview.org/doc/17-3_Cowen.pdf

But this all relies on a particularly narrow reading of the role of the password in these questions. You have no right (Boyd being long overturned) to withhold physical evidence that may incriminates you.

Anyway, this is an interesting area of law and definitely worth watching.
Industry Standards and Trusting the Cloud
Just so you know, clicking on Signout gives me this:

Message:	MySQL Query fail: SELECT * FROM follow WHERE user_id =
MySQL Error:	You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '' at line 1
Date:	Wednesday, October 6, 2010 at 8:53:41 AM
Script:	/index.php
Referer:	http://hackerfollow.com/

Great idea, though!
To be honest, I wasn't surprised at all as soon as I saw "It's written using (...) Ruby on Rails (...) and (...) MySQL (...)" - seriously, for a project where pretty much the only requirement is security, why go with such a complicated stack?

Just run a couple hundred lines of code on a high-security processor (or a custom-made hardened chip); if you really must allow internet voting, you could at least take a highly-secure OS and wire up a trusted HTTP server to a well-audited hundred-line CGI program.
I don't make any money from my blog, but I appreciate the well-wishes. I also didn't submit to Reddit. Think I should?

If you think the attributes are random, you've missed the point entirely. Companies in the first set are focused on short term thinking entirely, at the expense of the relationship with their end users. They make money at the expense of a great user experience, because overall, the user experience has no value to them, or much less value than quick, easy money.

The second set establish that short term money is much less important than the long view. They make sacrifices in the short term (expensive product development, slipped release dates while products mature, expensive customer service ops, foregoing revenue opportunities that would alienate loyal users) because the overall long term relationship with the user is more important to them.

Many random symptoms, two core philosophies. The one where you don't sacrifice your customers to make money right now lets you do some impressive things in the long term.

Edit: Also, where in the south of Germany? Some of my favorite memories of Europe are in Augsburg and Munich. I took the best nap of my life in the English Garden.
Google starts showing full page previews in search results
Except he kind of was an asshole.
I've got an SSD in my macbook, and would recommend it to anyone who wants a faster machine. While expensive, SSDs are still worth it in my opinion - in many cases, putting an SSD in an existing machine makes a bigger difference than replacing the machine, and is cheaper.
this is awesome! would love to see it on github :)

edit: oh and FYI works great in Safari too