skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Android has shipped a lot of handsets, but the users don't seem to like to pay for apps.

This may be true, but then look at the profitability of some free apps paid for by advertising: http://www.droidgamers.com/index.php/game-news/android-game-...

Given that this is recurring revenue and not dependent upon new sales (though, yes, dependent on new content packs), I'd say it's pretty well done. With the caveat that Angry Birds is the outlier, not the norm.
Also, this is of course over and above what my company pays in premiums. Altogether it is a significant amount of money for a family of four that has no major medical problems. For a small business, the overall burden is problematic.
That appreciation ought to be reciprocal though. Apple can't develop all the software users demand on their own.

There hasn't been a lot of push-back on the 30% cut that Apple gets on app sales because that's easy to scope to the App Store.

This same rigid structure doesn't make sense for a lot of subscription based businesses. That's Apple's prerogative, but we (the users) just lost Readability, and you can bet there will be a long line of other great apps that won't make it to the iOS platform because of that stance. I'm having a really hard time being thankful for that.
I agree. I think the title of the article is quite unrelated to what comes after.

What DHH is railing against is impatience and not about what comes next. After all, isn't Rails itself the result of DHH being fed up of the "now" and wanting to do the "next"?
Downside: if you include it as an HTML link you can use a PNG file, whereas the version in the root has to be an icon file. Chances are, that's the only time you'll ever use the icon format, and many image apps don't support it. It's a weird throwback to another era, like the web equivalent of a vestigial tail.
Jason Scott is a very vocal person. I do not really like his style nor that post in particular. But hey, participating in this is fun!
DST Is Going To Pour $100 Million Into Spotify
Why problem employees don't get fired
If you still use punch cards (this Lisp code was written in punch cards) to feed programs into your computer, then it is a good way. If not, you can use a text editor and format your code differently.
Wanted: Software Engineers. Reward: $12,000
Next Question: What’s A Publishing App?
The big point here, which the author doesn't mention, is that you can have absence of evidence without searching for evidence or you can have absence of evidence after rigorous searching.

I believe that the former situation is the one covered by the saying "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." For example, I personally haven't observed any evidence of gravitational time dilation, because I haven't looked. I would be a fool to interpret this lack of evidence as evidence that gravitational time dilation doesn't exist. The engineers of the Global Positioning System have evidence.

However, after a reasonably rigorous search, one may indeed reasonably conclude that something doesn't exist if no evidence of it has been found, especially when evidence would be easily visible if the thing did exist. The examples the author gave fall into this category: Most likely, given the distribution of humans on Earth, there would be evidence of dodo birds if they were extant.

Now, it's important to be careful when estimating the likelihood of stumbling upon evidence of something. Hundreds of new species (most only subtly different than known species) are discovered every year, and there are undoubtedly thousands of oceanic creatures that have never been seen by humans, much less captured and dissected. It would be foolish to deny that there aren't hundreds or thousands of yet-undiscovered species simply because as of now we have no evidence of them.
It is the s-expression variant with comma as whitespace.
Looks like a very useful site, thanks!

Questions:
Apart from the "Quoted by" section, is any of the content from SO or HN displayed on the site? E.g. are any comments incorporated in the book descriptions, or are those written by you/wife?
"...make it on my own..." implies otherwise.

Regardless of his intentions however, the point of this website and the project behind it is to convince them both to do new episodes. It's a long shot, sure, but that is precisely what they intend. See the FAQ.
Sadly, I share a Prime account with my parents, and it's giving me the "upgrade to full Prime" message. Odd.
I looked into a project like this a while back and my research came to the same conclusion: holding a modern insulated tank at temperature takes a minimal amount of energy compared to heating the water. Recovery time of hot water heaters isn't the same as something like air conditioning a house where it's useful to run your house at a higher temperature when the home isn't occupied.

Unless you radically change your consumption of hot water, you're gonna need the same amount of energy to heat it no matter what temperature control method you use.

Something that is possibly way more efficient is waste heat recovery from a shower/tub drain. There are devices that do it, but they aren't cheap (price of copper is the killer)
There's moonlight, which is a Silverlight alternative for linux. I just installed it for Ubuntu. Painless to install.

edit: You guys are right. Netflix doesn't work under linux. I just tried it under Ubuntu. No go. It's too bad since Silverlight does use less power and Netflix has impressed me so far.
Nope! I may have stumbled upon iconfinder once, but didn't use it as a model.

Do you mean you find the sites look similar ?

I wanted to keep the simplicity of Google if I could (hence the input/submit search). Otherwise no strict inspiration from any existing site afaik.

EDIT: I did a closer analysis out of curiosity and the common points are:

- the dual-color name

- a google-y search input+button

- the tagline with the number of items

- a similar green

Note that I definitely didn't use iconfinder as a model. I guess these are quite common characteristics.
How hundreds of ants accidentally kill themselves and evolution won't correct it
Yes, that was the problem. Thanks for the clarification. It indeed sounded very strange to me, since I am not familiar with the topic.
Archiving data from the Web is a cool thing -- it would be fun to participate. I'm personally a fan of textfiles.com. They have some text files I wrote back in '97 or '98 still stored away somewhere. One thing I like about the ArchiveTeam's wiki are these pages:

http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Deathwatch

http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Fire_Drill
Subscription $X, and Subscription-plus-iOS 1.43*$X
Aren't web to fax gateways a 'bridge technology' as recently discussed (interms of avoiding investment) on HN?

Ie, immediate use, dwindling long term prospects?
Ask HN: When is HN most busy?
In truth, I want to know what is the best time to post something, to maximize visibility.
That is odd. Is the account trial or paid?
I was referring to the statement in the title, yes - it makes it seem as if those countries are now finally having the revolutions we had a long time ago, which is not what's going on (clearly).
Yeah, I caught the 'tort reform' misdirection as well. Also, I think earns north of $170,000 a year, which made his turning down the insurance 'on principle' a bit ridiculous.
Cool ideas. We're just now moving from a 1 machine deployment to a 4 (and probably more) machine deployment at work and I can already see the value in this.
The turkey comment reminds me of black swan investing. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't in fact for certain things, it actually increases the odds that it will happen the more time passes without it occurring, like Volcanic eruptions.
This looks cool, but it really needs an option for uploading in real time, in case the device gets confiscated.
this reminds me of the worst band name of all-time: !!!

they're actually fairly popular for those that aren't familiar, but i can only imagine how many potential fans they've lost because you can't readily find their online presences.
There are lots of hottest web startups out there that use LAMP as their primary stack. Even more, first version of Mint.com was written (horror!) in Java.

The technology stack has absolutely nothing to do with your ability to keep the pace with competition.
2 Inspirational Interviews With The Creative Directors Of Poke London
Minor bug report: I did a search on xbox (hoping to see Hacking the Xbox) and the Kinect system came up -- you are probably scrubbing against Amazon and it came up.
"there are not that many examples in the history of revolutions spreading from one country to the next like wildfire. (I can actually only think of 1848 and 1989/1990. Does anyone know more?)"

I don't know to what extent these really classify as either revolutions or spreading from one country to the next, but the collapse of Empires after WWI (notable the Hapsburgs) and WWII (the British) may qualify.

The Reformation away from the Roman Church was also similar in spreading. Not as ostensibly political, but the Church and State were much more intertwined at that point so I'd slip it in.

Much prior to that (say, the fall of the Roman Empire, though that was invasion more than revolution) and I think communication happened too slowly for a cascading revolutionary effect to generate, or at least it gets lost in a lot of other historic noise.
If you want a definition that tight then I'm not sure that you'll find a first world country with a free market for healthcare, working or not.
No question they are thinking about it. I went to a meetup last week in which they explained how moving to the cloud was extremely important to them, and how they transitioned to SimpleDB and Cassandra.

http://www.meetup.com/cloudcomputing/events/16395288/ (link to paper about their experience).

I have both Netflix and Amazon Prime and would probably drop Netflix if Amazon had a better selection. If most users are like me, this means that Netflix has to increase their catalog, which has both technical and licensing implications. On the technical side it's caching and long-tail inefficiencies which will increase their infrastructure costs. If they are still using AWS (the Mercedes Benz of cloud hosting), I'm sure it's because their margins are high. Given their size they could get a much better deal with another provider.
Not really. I find I very rarely write functions with explicit loops, because there is usually a higher-level function that encompasses what I want to do.

For example, in Clojure I'd write the flatten function as:

(defn flatten [x]
(remove sequential? (tree-seq sequential? seq x)))

Other lisps probably have similar functions.
What we have is everything that is bad about a private healthcare system combined with everything that is bad about socialized medicine.

Over-regulation, high cost, and impossible to get without an employer or some other kind of large group.

The American system benefits only one group: insurance companies.
You could say the invisible people are rude. I've had people who always set themselves to be invisible, but will still talk to you and ask you for stuff. But since they are invisible you can't initiate.
Sound Recording in Windows Phone 7
For me, Hipmunk's search results are the major selling point. Seeing the departure times of similarly-priced flights is important to me. I'm willing to spring for an extra $50 to get to my destination earlier, or leave later, in most cases.
You still need to show offline contacts, and if that list is big it can be annoying.
Low-flow showerheads could have a decent impact as well. So would other ways of reducing hot-water use (turn the shower off when soaping & shampooing, etc), though I doubt they'd see widespread adoption.
I knew Steve Jobs was doing it all wrong!
Iranian Cyber Army Attacks Voice of America Website
I read that as only referring to the "embarassed themselves" part, which makes the analogy false as well as tasteless.
Glad you like it!

Currently, no content from HN/SO is displayed apart from the Quoted by area.

We're not editing anything manually; what I will do is display the actual conversations in the "Quoted by" area, either when you click on a conversation.

I may ove the quotes above to make them stand out more.

Did I properly answer your question ?
The modern version of this function, from On Lisp:

(defun flatten (x)
(labels ((rec (x acc)
(cond ((null x) acc)
((atom x) (cons x acc))
(t (rec (car x) (rec (cdr x) acc))))))
(rec x nil)))
Before-and-after interactive photos from the Christchurch quake
I think that Apple will feel pressure when their web store is completely overrun with $.99 games and low value apps

This argument makes no sense to me. Apple's 30% cut is too high, and therefore app developers are going to tend to cut their prices? What sense does that make?

I thought the whole "problem" here was that the 30% cut was going to force publishers to raise their prices (across the board) to cover the additional distribution cost. And to sell product at those higher prices they will need to provide more value. Perhaps more value than they can provide.
I get that too - my wife is the primary prime account holder, and I'm invited under her amazon account. I'm not surprised that I can't get streaming from my account, seeing as my membership is technically free.
>"Isn't Readability an edge case?"

Assuming it is an edge case, then Apple clearly pushed the edge further out to include more apps under the policy rather than interpreting the grey area in the developer's favor. Edge cases set precedent and the one set by Readability may raise reasonable concerns among developers.
It's hard to compare Asana, which still hasn't outgrown beta, to a product like Basecamp that has serviced millions of users.

I agree that Basecamp feels a bit stale, but I don't think it's as much about technology as it is about their design and development philosophy.
Are the particular army ants walking in a circle even able to breed? Or are the mating ants safely tucked away in the colony? If it's the latter, than the only way evolutionary pressure can be applied is to threaten the reproductive success of the breeders. So unless the whole colony decides to pirouette...
Chrome 9 for Mac. Standard install, not a dev build.

The error I see is:
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot call method 'init' of undefined
I like the gist of these two suggestions. Though they seem a bit salesman like. Like something you might see on a product package. Maybe that's OK though. What do others think?
This post seems inspired from a discussion DHH had on twitter with @obie (founder of hashrocket) yesterday about people in their positions moving on to new ventures or staying for the long term of what they helped start.

Obie's position was primarily that it's better to get out of your comfort zone and continue to create new things.

(Discussion starting from http://twitter.com/#!/obie/status/39778057610997760)
The phrase "market elasticity" is meaningless.

Elasticity in economics describes the relationship between two variables (normally price and demand which is price elasticity [of demand] but by no means exclusively).

But unless you define your variables (or state what sort of elasticity) it's not a useful term and certainly not something I'd be bandying about while suggesting that someone else didn't have a clue.
QapTcha – Draggable jQuery Captcha
Well, first on payday loans, I can go either way. Depending on my mood I might call it either an economic service that wouldn't be available under nicer terms, or usury. But I'm pretty sure they're not new, and finance companies aren't making a significant sum off of them (how much money could they possibly be making off of poor people compared to the billions in trading).

RE: prop trading and market making.. now you're getting there. That's where they make all their money, right? Is the economy, say, twice as well off from a financial allocation standpoint compared to 25 years ago? If not, how are the trading desks pulling in twice as much money without being extractors?
What Tommy Douglas did was revolutionary, but Canada's healthcare system is no longer something to be proud of. We have some of the highest wait times for Cancer patients in the industrialized world, hurried appointments, cuts in coverage. I don't blame the government, I blame us Canadians. If you've seen the Micheal Moore movie, SICKO, you've seen the average Canadian's view on our system, which is, that it is truly great.

The government is getting a pat on the back for removing essential services because the masses aren't taking notice; we've fanboy-ed our system while ignoring its degradation of the fundamentals. Our current system is not a positive guideline to success.

A Macleans article about the state of our system: http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/01/25/our-health-care-delusion/
That might be the result of my recent marketing class in college :)
>We're part of the greatest time in the history of the world IMO

That's quite a claim. Technology must be advancing fast if you already have Muad'Dib's ability to perceive all of human history simultaneously as one infinite structure extending in both directions. How did I miss Steve Jobs getting the Arrakis fiefdom?

Or could it be that Now is always the greatest part of history because it's by definition the only part that you can ever inhabit? Like how your headaches will always be so much worse than everyone else's because they're happening in your head.
I have all that where I live.
Is that really the shape of the case? It looks ridiculous!

EDIT: I used boxee about 6 - 9 months ago an old XP machine and it was nice, but still enough rough edges to be annoying at times. As anyone used it recently on say, a mac mini and apple remote?
Free 'Video Book' From MIT Press Challenges Limits of Scholarship
Perhaps I don't understand GWT correctly, but it seems like it would be very difficult to layout and design a web front-end from within Java code alone.
I like the 'in truth', since it's possibly two separate questions.

As I understand it, HN is most busy in the afternoon US time on a weekday. This is borne out by the rate at which new submissions move off the 'New' page (http://news.ycombinator.com/newest) - in the morning London time (ie, the wee hours in the US), that takes a little over an hour; by afternoon US time it's usually under 30 minutes. (I believe this is borne out by other data as well - that's just the one I've witnessed over time.)

So, the largest number of people are on here in that time slot. However, that doesn't mean your visibility is maximised. You want to be on the front page across that time, which is harder to achieve if you submit at that time - after all, your submission will have less than half the time to be seen on the New page before disappearing. So it may be that you want to post mid-morning US Time, having more of a chance to be upgraded to the front page in time for the US afternoon, where hopefully your front page status will maintain enough traction to remain there.

Of course, front page success is lightning in a bottle. There's never any guarantee that you will make it there, or stay there for long - AND success in doing so is far more dependent on quality and relevance of your content, than it is about time.
Great! I'll be there next week.
I wrote about this last week: http://zerogov.com/?p=1538
Amazon has been doing streaming for a while (September 2006), this isn't dipping their toe in the space. They actually beat Netflix to it (January 2007).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Video_on_Demand

http://netflix.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=201
Not in the desktop client...
I think GWT would be most useful to data-driven apps/services that need a web interface. All of your heavy data mining can be done in highly optimized Java, and then you won't need to context switch in order to implement your web frontend. It's a win-win.

That's not to say that it can't be used in a more "social" context (Rypple uses GWT for their app, and I have yet to see problems there), but I'd imagine that it has greater use for data miners and enterprise applications.
Actually currently the search takes both the title and the description into account. The Kinect book has "Xbox" in its description.

Two conclusions:

- how the search works needs some explanation a bit!

- I will probably add an advanced search so you can specify exactly how you want the search to occur (eg: ignore the description....)

Thanks for your feedback!
I dunno, 99% of the people I talk to (the rest of the world) is less worried about what new technology is next than when current technology will work right. What's next, according to them:

- When will the website work for any browser?
- When will the website talk to the fulfillment system?
- When will I be able to log in with less than 14 passwords?
- When will we be able to use our mouse on the Report Writer?
- When will credit cards go through without problems?
- When will my phone not drop calls?
- When will Ticket # 15429 be done?
- When will my email tell me I have voicemail?
- When will it take less than 5 minutes to power up?
- When can I stop worrying about viruses?
- When will someone stop spam?
- When will someone in IT listen to my problems, even if they're not cool?
first version of Mint.com was written (horror!) in Java

You're implying that it was entirely rewritten in something else later...
Jailbreaking comes with all sorts of downsides. You may have gotten lucky, but also observe that every jailbreaking tutorial on the web has hundreds of comments from people who didn't get everything to work right and pleading for advice from others that will never come.

From my experience, it turns older iPhones into a stuttering laggy mess and breaks visual voicemail, and makes you paranoid about every iTunes update.
DHH is talking about ADD.
I've been using it for 4 months now on my linux HTPC. It's been fantastic. I control it using the boxee remote app for iPhone.

I'm thinking of getting a boxee box just for the added netflix support, dedicated remote, and increased reliability. But I heard the UI is different from the PC version, does anyone know if that's true?
Good point. I over-simplified. There are many causes to the current state of the healthcare market, only one of which is the problem I described.
Blind gamer completes video game Abe's Exodus
If you allow Readability to be 'different' because it's just a gateway, then everyone from Murdoch on down will create a similar gateway to their subscription content, no-one will pay Apple anything and users will continue to have to run through hassle of buying content outside the store and become disillusioned with the store.

Apple's core, recurring problem is that they're writing rules intended for well-defined software and services, but they simply can not account for all the software that doesn't neatly fit into those buckets.

There is almost nothing they can do with the store without running afoul of some well-meaning edge case.
Yes, but those people usually annoy you with questions from nowhere. But if you need them, you can't tell if they are online. A lot of people are really abusing this feature this way.

My method is to remove people who are offline most of the time, so that they don't get to see my online status in return. I think that online status should be mutual, if I can't see them, they shouldn't be able to see me.
Why 2014 Won’t Be Like 1984
That's fair. I suppose the real point is that it's easy for a product get stale, even if it's constantly evolving.