skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If the customer had to go to three different app stores
to get what they want or just one.

Personally I go to Google and type "best free iPhone apps", and I also ask friends for their preferences.

I also have one mall where I make all my shopping and one phone carrier that provides me with what I need.

BUT I CHANGED my phone carrier twice in the last 5 years, and I ended up with one that has better contractual terms and lower prices.
Agree with the above. The problem is that by the sounds of your description your product has one killer feature - an algorithm to rate peers' predictions - but the website itsef looks like a generic consumer portal/network

Marketing spend itself shouldn't be an issue - you can drive traffic organically through blogging and even banging on the doors of your friends' old contacts.
BioCurious, Sugru and Citizen Science
As I'd define things, if you're using something for query refinement, then it's part of your IR system. How would you use POS tagging for query refinement though? You can hardly expect to POS tag the user's query, since it's unlikely to be a sentence.

I suspect we have some miscommunication here.
I spent two and a half years in 2000 to 2002 developing some sort of global cloud computing platform 10 years too soon :) -see below.

Then I've spent another couple of years on and off, (re)developing an archive management system that may finally become a reality soon, at its 4th iteration and rewrite :)

Anyway these were years well spent; I've learnt a lot.

The first startup story: it ran out of cash, utter failure and sad ending. Basically we had glorious plans of world domination :) but we never had the money to actually make it. The CEO (who brought us 90% of the funding) ended completely broke after burning through € 15 millions in a couple of years. We went through quite a spectacular series of failures :

* we started the project 6 months to 1 year late. Real work started in
March 2000, just before the dotcom bust (Doh).
* we weren't actually technically qualified to make it through, though we
tried hard. The project was too complex and too ambitious from the start,
would have needed literally 100s of millions to build.
* our main partner and support (SGI) wasn't doing too well.
* our CEO never managed to get any additional funding. Instead of calling
a quit after the first year, he kept the sinking boat running, without
enough resources and people.
* he literally burnt money : we bought a huge stack of hardware, worth
more than half a million euros, without having any resources to even *turn
it on*, simply because he *promised to*. We had a huge colo with big iron
hardware not even in a runnable state. Sigh...
Using "Z" as a key makes it really hard for Germans to play the game since for us, y and z are switched on the keyboard.
Using x,c,v or 1,2,3 would be better in this case :)

Other than this: fun game
I agree, as I think Disney is the only other company on the planet that in many ways is a mirror of Apple.

Let us compare:
Founded by a charismatic visionary, check. Highly aesthetic products, check. Fulfilling dreams of fantasy and the future, check. Communities of cult followers, check. Popularity driven by youth culture, check. Spare no expense nor detail to achieve perfection in design, check. I could keep going...
In defense of the Bobs, I must say that some of us aren't programming just for the love of programming, and you have to be pragmatic.

I'm certain there are a lot of better solutions to what I'm doing, but I'll do them the way I know today, and try to learn a better way tomorrow.

The programmer that doesn't want to learn a new way, ever, yes, that's not a good programmer.
Just don't use it as an excuse to underpay your employees.
i so hope this is all jokes
25 Years of Mac: The Steve Jobs Playboy Interview
Well, what am I doing here?? Looks like it's time to get a job rounding up drunks in Arcata.
Steve is right. Correlate with this post at slashdot about Linux on the desktop http://linux.slashdot.org/story/10/10/18/1312214/Desktop-Lin... The reason cited is exactly what Android is aiming for; fragmentation
Desktop Linux Is Dead
Subcategories for the feature request page would help me see if my suggestion is already here for me to simply vote up.
Congressmen send Zuckerberg letter after UID issue
When I submit a story early in the morning on the east coast, I sometimes kill it. Hours later, long after it has rolled off the news page, California people submit the same story, but it has no chance of hitting the front page because it's "old". East-coast people should not be able to preemtively kill stories this way.
Writing code is such a small part of our jobs anyway. If it were everything, our jobs would be easy.

Most of my time is actually spent answering these questions:

* Why isn't this working?
* How could the user fuck this up?
* How could another programmer fuck this up?
* What do I want this thing to do?
* What's the best/fastest/safest way to do it?

No amount of abstraction will ever fully eradicate these questions while leaving a sufficiently general framework to work in - they characterise programming. And they are by no means "stupid".
I'm getting a consistent 11Mbit/s down and 0.94Mbit/s up.

I pay £10 per month for a plan that has no download cap and boasts speeds of 'up to 25Mbit/s' but apparently there is no upload cap. I found that last part interesting as my upload speed is almost constantly 0.9Mbit/s and not once has it reached 1Mbit/s or further.

To be fair, the UK consumer is generally ignorant so providers get away with it. Virgin is my biggest bug bear, offering 'fibre optic' broadband when in fact it's delivered via co-ax cable. Quiz one of their sales advisors about this and you hit a wall, try a tech support staff member and they appear equally clueless.
You are not answering the question.

It's not about finding iphone apps but about having to have your credit card info in one store (iphone) vs. having it a different app stores (android)

With regards to changing your phone carrier that actually just proves my point.

With apple telcos can't make their own app store with android they can.

In other words, androids ecosystem will be fragmented, I will have to be a verizon customer or a Amazon customer or a t-mobile customer.

You don't have that problem with Apples app store. And that is the reason why it's better for the customer.
> it doesn't work, doesn't know what repo is.

I think that should have said "git" instead of "repo"
Thanks for the tip. I should have noticed this myself, as I live in Berlin (but have my keyboard set to English). Will be changing the controls to try and support Dvorak, Qwerty and Germans.
Hopefully they refunded the state their salary, realizing how excessive and improper it was. A guy can dream, right?
This is "Enterprise"!. It's a very nice collection indeed.
Officers at 2008 pay levels (around $150K) are not "low paid." That's a lot of money. $250K is just insane.
MakerLegoBot: A Lego Mindstorms NXT 3D Lego Printer
I don't understand your reasoning here.

If I have an android I have to go to different app stores to get different apps.

With apple I just have one store where I can get all my apps no matter what telco I am on. That is the benefit of the integrated approach.

I have yet to see how apple is exploiting customers. They aren't setting the price, they are allowing free apps.

Aren't you confusing being a developer with being a customer?
but to really make a compelling Android phone, you'd also need the google apps (even if it's just for the Android Market, or now the c2d services and who knows what other features will require the google tools later on).

To get these, you have to agree to some licensing terms with Google. The terms are not publically disclosed and for what we know, it's Google forcing these security-features into these devices.

Android is all but open.
A golden pony is worth about $440M, maybe he should have offered a golden dragon.
Let's get straight on what we are discussing here.

We are talking normal consumers no hackers.

No one beside a small fraction of this world cares what operating system they have or can have. They change OS when they buy a new computer.
- pizara.com
- spotdish.com
This only works if you know the future. After you've heard the rumors, and the news have been reported, you're already too late. Buy solid companies over time and keep them, that's what works.
I'm one of the people who posted a list of failed startups ("10 web start-ups (all mine) ... and why they failed").

I've been fortunate to always have a day job that I enjoy, and I've never really sunk big money into any of my side projects, so I'm not in debt.

I look at much of the time I've spent on my projects as time that I would have "wasted" some other way, if I weren't working on them.

Although none of my projects brought me fortune or fame, here's what I got out of them:

* Better coding skills, which has certainly helped me in my day job.

* An assortment of functions and classes that I can re-use in future projects.

* A lot of fun.
Using ff 3.6.10 on a mac, I always get the (-) marker next to the silhouette without any names associated there. However, there are people attached to the project when I click on the project itself...that's why I was confused - I expected to see the people, but didn't!

I guess that'll get ironed out in testing.
It's not about theoretical openness, but whether the manufacturer you bought your phone from passes Android's openness on to you, their customer. Most (all?) of the successful ones (HTC, Samsung, Motorola) don't.

Since Android is Apache-licensed, the openness isn't enforced to all users of the software.
Wish there was a "refresh" link that would reload the "tip" via XHR, so I wouldn't have to hit F5 (wasn't even sure there are more the first time)
You can absolutely do that today by purchasing an unlocked handset. I think the problem is your expectation of being able to do that on a subsidized handset, where you've traded certain contract terms for a heavily discounted device.
It doesn't change the way you seem to be assuming.

Big enterprise havs cash cows and until those cash cows are gone they will be making all sorts of ego driven decisions.

You would be surprised how much is driven by individuals and how little is driven by rationality.

There are states within the states with their own motives.

It is my experience that besides with the cash cows, it's anything but rational decisions that are being made in most cases.
Apple criticism is going the same way as the "three topics to avoid" (religion, politics, global warming).

I mean, I am an Apple fan, but some of the blind fanboyism you see in other fans is... well... insane!
Wow, that's the most inspirational thing I've heard for a long time.
> If I have an android I have to go to different app stores to get different apps.

No. On Android, you can get most apps in most stores. Some stores are more popular than other (have more customers and more apps). As for now, the most popular is Google Market.

On Apple, you must go through store. Even if you have .ipa on you harddrive, you must go through store.

Apple sets conditions, what an app can and cannot do. Would you accept similar scheme for your computer?

In most businesses, sole supplier is a no-no (if you ever forget, your risk auditors will remind you). There is a reason for that, believing in benevolent dictatorship will get you nowhere.
I second that. I run my entire SaaS business through PayPal, dozens of transactions each day, and while I've had a few problems with large payments being flagged as "suspicious" they've not resulted in me losing any money (as far as I'm aware... ;-).
Is the title alluding to Barthes' book of the same name?
What? Your comment would seem to imply that it is normal and acceptable for a single med prof to earn $1.5m. Are you really that out of touch to think that this is sustainable?

Let me guess - you were one of those complaining about how the education bubble is just terrible a few months ago?
Just played a similar game today also in javascript/html5: http://www.phoboslab.org/biolab/
Yeah, after re-reading my comment it comes off a lot more rude than was my intention. The point was to say that Scala is a really nice modernized "Java" (I know it is not but for simplicity, that is what I am going to call it) and that even the creator of Groovy thinks it has one of the most elegant designs out of the pack of Java replacements.
With regard to scaling coroutines, I guess this is basically the problem that Erlang tackles. Having zero shared state obviously solves the migration problem. (but raises other challenges)
Yes. Barthes discerns between texte lisibles (readable) and texte scriptible (writable). Which was one of the inspirations to switch our focus from readablity to writability and create Writer. In Barthes' theory things are a little bit different, though ("readable" and "writable" indicate different kinds of written texts, not text in and post creation).
Sure, and I don't claim to be a great programmer by any stretch, rather it's the willingness to improve and to be open to things, within practicality.

'Smart and Gets Things Done' :)

Although I do like 'Done and Gets Things Smart' - http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-and-gets-things...
Truyoo reminds me of this idea I had for making a document signing service.

Anyone else ever get pissed of that the only reason you need a printer and a fax machine and/or scanner REALLY is because twice a year you have to sign a document?

I wanted to have a similar idea where a minimal transaction on a credit card was used to authenticate - ie. as a digital signature. So each time you digitally sign a document you get charged 1 cent or something and it verifies the name you're putting on the document is the same as on the card you're using.

With the others on this list, though, would you really call all of these "startups"? Throwing something together and putting it on the web doesn't qualify it as a "startup" surely ... if so I have several "startups" that no-one has ever looked at or used (smsmyride.com whatwhere.com.au smscard.com.au 8centsms.com)

I think if you're going to call something a "web startup" you need a little more than a domain name registration and a couple of stock photographs.
Shhh!!!

No one is supposed to talk about the plantation system in the ivory tower. Some of them do get compensation like, tuition, room & board, tutoring and free jerseys. The ones that don't are supposed to do it for the love of the game!

But life-altering injuries and head trauma are totally worth it. /s
From what I've seen Google doesn't contact people :) My guess is they also have a policy of not sharing reasons for getting blacklisted, to ensure they're not giving spammers an easy way to fix their website.

They claim they respond to all "Site reconsideration" requests. I had to file one once, they did respond, but with a very non-informative and unhelpful response.
Entrevista sobre SEO e marketing com Melanie Mitchell
IDE WTF
> You would be surprised how much is driven by individuals and how little is driven by rationality.

Oh, I wouldn't, I see it every day. Thank god for consultants, you can bring them in, and they will say the obvious/rational thing.
It's very rare when I get an easy day as the author put it. On the odd days they do happen, I get a strange uncomfortable feeling, presumably because I 'should' be permanently busy.

Does anyone else get that?
Pad Tie - iPad prices across Europe
This one is best:
http://enterprise-js.com/16
I'm bothered that when I saw the code on http://enterprise-html.com for rounded corners, the first thing I thought was "You forget to set cell spacing, padding, and borders..."
> davidw's statement that Android is the most free smartphone

davidw didn't say that. What I said is that overall, I think Android is our best bet for something that's free, but also "matters". OpenMoko is quite free, for instance, but doesn't really matter - no one will ever use it. I honestly don't have a good idea about what's in MeeGo, how free it is, how much it's possible to tweak the installation on the phone, and so on.

> I'm not going to play the semantics game, I'm relying on the reader to not be dense.

You are the one who brought the zoo into it. The rest of us were talking about mobile phone software.

Also, in terms of their DNA, a donkey is far closer to a horse than a manatee is, if you really want to get into comparisons of animals...
I recently switched to using a mac after a long time of pc+linux, the most jarring part of the change was dealing with the community.

Every time I asked a question I could split the difference of replies fairly easily, one group would almost be offended that I asked the question, told me "I just learn how its done the mac way", and offer me their sub standard solution, these were often fairly rude.

The others were would point me towards an app here or an app there, I got help writing my first objc and SIMBL plugin, even the authors of a lot of cool applications, witch / sizeup / alfred etc were easily contactable for questions about their apps or just in general.

While intellectual snobbery has always been somewhat of a problem in computing, I think the class snobbery I have seen in a small set of mac users is a particularly bad trend.
Seasonal Model for Web Perspectives
There's at least one project that aims to make Android completely free software and thus 100% RMS approved.

Free software is cooler, open source is only kinda sorta cool ;p
A Chip Is Born: Inside a State-of-the-Art Clean Room
I see this from Android fanboys too, though. Apple vs. Google (or iPhone vs. Android) looks to me like those endless religion wars on the best programming language, Vim vs. Emacs and so on.

Blind fanboyism has always been there, on any side of any competition. Could be that it is just natural (which does not mean it has to be forgiven).
> A simpler question is, why doesn't Microsoft have people like you working for them?

> Supposedly Windows usability is tested up the yin yang, but I (as could millions of other people) could easily come up with a list of 100+ items that could make a real, tangible improvement in the windows user experience.

I'm not even saying that my particular ideas are very good...I think you hit the nail on the head...that these ideas are pretty universal and obvious. Microsoft is floundering in almost every area it's in. Why doesn't the board also see these obvious ideas and question why they aren't happening?

Lots of people are lamenting Ozzie leaving, but I think he's just as much part of the problem. Nobody at all cares about Microsoft's cloud computing initiative. Yet he's credited as the architect and a major force for good within MS. I'd be hesitant to lavish all that much praise on him, I mean, this is the guy that was the brain behind the wretched Lotus suite (I've yet to meet anybody who's ever liked using it) and Groove, which sits largely unused on most people's systems, and was a major force for the endless money hole for many of Microsoft's distracting web initiatives. I'm focusing on these because these are the things that he's touted for by Microsoft...yet I'd call none of those things major successes.

Perhaps reading this: http://www.scripting.com/disruption/ozzie/theinternetservice... I'm lamenting how little of this actually has come to fruition and it's not materially all that different from what I've said.
Another solution for white=35.

1

2 jar1:1

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While I can't speak for the parent comment, one reason people try to keep clean commit histories in git is that you can easily undo, cherry pick, etc. individual commits.

If all of the changes necessary to add a feature / fix a major bug are in one commit, backporting that commit becomes much easier. If those changes are broken up in multiple commits ("fix this issue" + "oops, forgot that file (and unrelated changes in the same file)"), then it's more trouble. It usually doesn't make sense to have the repository in those intermediate states anyway, once the primary commit is done. History rewriting can make those commits atomic.

Generally speaking, "clean" git histories have relevant history combined, but no significant information lost.
This is not an appropriate Ask HN. This is a misplaced Craigslist posting. If there is no discussion to be had, this probably isn't the appropriate avenue (save the YC company job postings, but note those have comments disabled).
Can you elaborate what you mean? I think I'm trying to say that they are in too many markets and need to refocus.
The customer has been able to install "apps" on ANY pre-iPhone device from ANYWHERE. They know how that works and they didn't mind the freedom at all. Sure J2ME apps sometimes suck, but you could get them anywhere, not from a single app store.
I wish they included the right way to do the stuff. Then it would be fun and useful too, and that would be a great way to teach best practices and coding techniques.
Could this be related to what happened few days ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1801727

and HN be the source?
Great pics!

But what about:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/10/inside-a-state-of-the...

She's not wearing her mask properly!
Apple's Steve Jobs takes shots at competitors
For the macro side of things you may find these two old HN posts of interest:

* Why Lisp macros are cool, a Perl perspective (2005) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=795344

* Can a language have Lisp's powerful macros without the parentheses? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9172
Intel, Microsoft, and the curious case of the iPad
From the guidelines:

If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."
Custom Mouth Guards 
Fortress Mouthguards - the custom-fitted, high-protection mouth guard solution for players of all types of Australian sport.
How Facebook Decides What to Put in Your News Feed
Bank of America Reports $7.3 Billion Loss, Citing Charges
In-App Purchases Generate More Revenue than Ads
We didn't find any results for stuxnet
It wouldn't be enterprise if they did that.
I don't disagree with you to a point. But Microsoft already pretty much owns the IDE space on PCs. Outside of Eclipse and maybe the authoring tools for Flash, there really isn't much else out there.

Anti-virus is even more interesting because Microsoft actually does make a pretty decent anti-virus software but it's almost not advertised at all.

https://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/
Viagra May Help Muscular Dystrophy Patients
Ask HN: How problematic is Android device fragmentation?
In Apple's recent earnings announcement, Steve made the point that Android's many form factors and software flavors create a meaningful challenge for developers. Yet, the very company he used in his example - TweetDeck - joined the debate in a public tweet saying "Did we at any point say it was a nightmare developing on Android? Errr nope, no we didn't. It wasn't."

All that in mind, I'm curious what the HN community thinks: is it substantially more difficult to develop for Android relative to iOS? Are there any particular techniques or software packages that ease the burden?
You get the same chaff from internet dorks if you talk about anything that people are likely to attach their identity to: video game systems, programming languages, bands, whatever. There's nothing special about Apple fanboys. They're just fanboys who like Apple.

Picking Apple fanboys to complain about tells us more about the author of this blog post than about Apple fanboys. He had already decided to find something before he went looking for it.
Happy 25th Birthday, Classic 8-bit Nintendo NES
I don't really see how this snobbery helps anyone. Just serves to alienate those who aren't "in the know" without offering any resources to help them.