skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
We're in a transitional period. The vast majority of people who have iPads do have a PC of some kind also. For now it's the most practical way of doing backups, updates, and syncing large amounts of content. I do think Apple will move in the direction of not requiring a PC for these things but it's non-trival. How do you sync 16-64GB of data over 3G? Do you push 300MB+ updates to someone with a 150MB/month data cap? 2GB? How, and where, do you sync purchased content? How do you backup the device? This is a very important feature iTunes provides that most people won't even notice until they have some need to restore a device.

The newest iOS update has modified the way OS updates work by not erasing/re-syncing the device. I suspect this is one of the first steps towards moving to a more OTA existence for the iPad. They still need to trim down these updates so they're not killing people's caps. Everything on the content side is going to require a lot more work. If you look at Android for example that does just about everything OTA you realize that a) Google doesn't really sell content so they don't care how or if you get anything on your device. Figure it out yourself. b) Android doesn't backup automatically. Some of your data is synced to Google Services but if you flush your Android phone down the toilet by mistake you're going to lose all your application data and content you synced, or created, on the device. Again -- figure it out yourself if you want a good backup c) Google doesn't update all their devices at the same time. There will never be 100 million+ Android devices trying to download android3.0.tar.gz at the same time. It's a bigger challenge for Apple to do OTA updates given their strategy to update all compatible iOS devices at the same time. I'm not trying to bash Google, their system is fine, but people make it sound like this super trivial thing to divorce post-PC devices from the PC. It's not. Google has been able to do this through minimalism. They don't take any responsibility for updates/backups/syncing so it's a bit easier for them to pull this off right now. If you use Google Exchange with an iOS device you get most of the same benefits in-fact.

Apple could easily divorce the activation-via-PC step but it would set the expectation that you don't need to connect it to a PC ever for normal operation/update/syncing. When they do remove the activation-via-PC step you can be sure everything else won't require a PC connection. It will be all or nothing. That's how Apple tends to operate.
Thanks for your efforts, overall it looks awesome.

A small quick request: please can we have a loading bar on the load screens. It loaded relatively quickly, but it's still painful to be waiting for 10s and not knowing how long to wait for.
10 years to an 80 year old man is 1/8 of his life. 10 years to a 20 year old is 1/2 of their life.

As I get older, I find that time seems to pass faster (and right now, I don't see how it could perceptively pass any faster than it currently is).
That would be cool ;) Love the setup at HN.
OOP and MVC
I'm a strong believer in object oriented programming for too many reasons to enumerate here. Same for MVC, but mostly in web apps. Recently I realized that if I try to enforce OOP in an MVC framework, most of the logic moves away from the controller (C) to the model (M), since that is my main object that performs the actions. An alternative is to move this logic to helpers/utils, actions that come to help the models inside the controller, but put outside the model file (mainly because a lot of logic in the model files slows down the dev server restart).<p>I feel that something is not right in trying to mix MVC with too much OOP. Does anyone have other points of view?
Trolling aside, that's the only reason I chose hg over git for my projects -> sane approach to the UI. With both of them having more or less the same functionality, UI of git is... inconsistent at the very least.
Its a pretty interesting read. I've got to say i can see the similarities between his portrayal in the movie and his portrayal in the article and while both of those might be untrue, its still interesting. Personally though, i dont really think hes an asshole.
good questions.

However the first question "Who is your audience" should include implicitly - how will you reach and find your audience. Too often the market is there but very hard to reach economically and efficiently.
iTunes is, perhaps, the least intuitive piece of software I've used in the past decade. I have, on three separate occasions now, deleted my entire music collection on the PC while trying to get music from the machine onto the iPod or iPhone. It's happened once on a Mac and twice on the Windows version of iTunes. I no longer even install iTunes, because I'm afraid of it. (I use an Android phone now, don't have an iPad, and I never liked it for listening to music on the desktop, so I don't need it for anything.)

But, I find a lot of Apple software really hard to use and frustrating, including the OS itself, so I tend to refer to myself as Appletarded. I may be an outlier; just not wired up to understand Apple user interfaces.
I don't know, to me it seems like a legitimate observation and not trolling. It's not really an anti-ipad argument, but it's just a reminder that the iPad isn't a replacement for everything below a certain threshold.
Where I said "misleading" you seem to be interpreting me as saying "false". The comment is relevant, sure, but leaving out everything else changes the interpretation of the story significantly.
Great observation. Java requires masses of scaffolding just for Hello World and for this reason is not IMO a decent introductory teaching lesson. I taught an introductory programming course and I was required after several semesters of using Perl to switch to Java. It was awful to lose the ability to do one-liner scripts.

I also taught an introduction to the Korn shell and Unix environment. Since shells have a REPL, you can make an easy shift from entering commands to putting a list of commands in a file and running it. Super helpful for learning. Not possible with Java.
You can activate an iPad without using iTunes. Try iDeviceActivate: https://github.com/posixninja/ideviceactivate/
Do I have to upload the file to dropbox.com in order to see it on my ipod?
No sweat, you're in the clear. On another topic, are you aware of a good leading indicator for storage increases? I can't believe that I am at the stage where 32GB doesn't seem like that much, but here I am.
Wha? EDRM has loops built into it..

I admit that my understanding may be off, but it seems like ECA is just using the same EDRM model and iterating faster upfront. I feel that it's more of a vendor buzzword than a new way of conducting electronic discovery.
Please give as much notice as possible, last minute plane tickets are prohibitively expensive.
Saying that until recently (meaning pre-wikileaks perhaps) Anonymous's main concerns was lulz culture and other paraphrenelia is not correct journalism, e.g. remember their efforts against Scientology.

Also, as was pointed on HN recently, to think of them as a well-defined group that can splinter is misunderstanding the emergent nature of the group's dynamics
What you're probably seeing there is tracks which are so new that we've not determined similar fingerprints for them yet

I don't think so. Look at Kanye West: http://www.last.fm/music/Kanye+West/+charts?rangetype=week&#...

Monster should be in place 3 with 14,757 listeners. Instead it's in places 12, 16, 27, and 61. It was a top 20 track for some number of weeks, but it didn't show up in the top 20.

In fact, checking the chart now it seems that that particular problem has cleared up.

I'm not sure what you're referring to. I've never seen this problem clear up.

Also, artist disambiguation is a _hard_ problem

I understand that, and I'm not criticizing that. I'm just pointing out that Pandora is making an effort to work on that hard problem while Last.fm ignores very easy problems. Specifically the easiest problem: albums in which all the track names are wrong because they all have "Explicit" or "Album Version" or some other string appended to their names.
If you ran ads with 500,000 displays and only 13 or so clicks, you did something horribly wrong. Facebook ads have a value because they can be ultra targeted. There are many ways ways you could have made a mistake, for instance, demographics that were too unspecific, bad images, not enough variations (i use 10+ sometimes), bad copy, etc.

I like to look at the comparison of google ads vs facebook ads as such: If you want to provide a service/product to people who are seeking that solution, use Google ads. And if you want to go to the targeted demographic directly and present your solution/product/message, use Facebook.

An example would be if you sold wedding services in miami. You could go on facebook and target women 25-35 who are engaged and live in miami. The ads would display only for the targeted demographic and would likely have a good click-through rate. Or you could go into google adwords and buy terms related to wedding services miami or zipcode+wedding service. The differences here are that a woman in the younger demographic is much more likely to be spending hours on facebook and only minutes on a google search.

In addition, google also has incredibly high competition for some of the more lucrative keywords and it is getting increasingly more competitive in local search, now requiring a top 7 ranking to really matter in the local listings.

Also, never underestimate the cpm (cost per thousand) displays of facebook ads to the targeted demographic. They work great for events like concerts and other events when simple awareness is key. A good image also helps a lot, as I run ads with the same text and different images and see dramatic differences in the number of clicks.

It's difficult for me to believe that "nobody cares about Facebook ads and no one clicks on them" because Facebook Ads (and Google Adwords/Adsense) operate as markets, with a bidding system on price. I almost don't want to post this because the more people who know about and use facebook ads, the higher the price rises. Their prices have been steadily rising over the last year as more and more business try them out. They do work, but not for every product and not for every demographic. But people wonder how facebook can have such a high valuation, because they underestimate the amount of direct access and data Facebook has to over 500 million people.

The ads do work, but to create a good campaign requires knowledge of the platform, and experience in marketing, advertising, and copywriting. Laypeople assume they don't need marketers and can do buys themselves, and more cheaply, but usually end up spending more. The true gold in online advertising though, comes from what happens after the person clicks.
Good call, I'll try this near the end of the month and post the results if I can get a big enough data set.
It's worth reading Phil Plait's article on this: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/03/05/ha...
The "some programmers are X times faster than others" phrase is extraordinarily strong and in my opinion destructive meme.

The reason believe this meme is destructive is because it mostly powers the approach of "if there's a problem with the development process, it's because we have the wrong people" rather than "we have the wrong methodology, we have a broken relationship between customer and programmer" or any approach that could get your existing people working smarter.

In any case, A computer science teacher should, at least, be well aware that a post like this is feeding the meme.

Concomitantly, anything that debunks the meme is worthwhile.
Engineering blueprints are the "code". They are intended to be read in a systematic manner by someone who can put the parts together. In software, we call that someone a compiler.

Design documents, such as sketches, artists renderings, specifications of performance, etc., may or may not be useful to the engineer producing the blueprint. The discussion of UML is at the level of these artifacts. If UML is useful, I want to look at it and have an idea of what the software is going to do. Some parts, like event-state diagrams, activity diagrams, and use cases, are pretty good at capturing that design in a way that I can talk about it with someone who doesn't understand code. I would not pay someone for completing a document like that, though, not until it was reflected in code.

Another way of capturing design is through functional tests. Look at projects like Fit for examples of how that might work.
Unfortunately, since your phone has an SDHC slot, you're going to be limited to the 32GB card. Hopefully phones will begin supporting the SDXC standard, which goes to 2TB cards, but the largest I've seen so far have been 128GB and they're unbelievably expensive. I suspect that those prices will drop soon, but I have no insight as to what indicates price drops for them and such.
There was one professor I had to deal with that required a UML for every assignment, sometimes the UML was to be turned in before you got assigned the code. In either case points would be docked if your UML didn't match your code.

Solution? I coded all my projects before the UML deadline and turned in a screenshot from XCode's UML generator.

(I had him for 4 classes using Java and C++)
Looking at Dell's price for the last 10 years (http://yhoo.it/fCdFBo), that doesn't seem to be a great business to be in. The upgrade cycle is slowing, margins are falling and the mainstream consumer just don't care much about the "latest and greatest" any more when it comes to computers.

The reality is that for most users (non-gamers) the power of computers long ago exceeded what they need. Does is really matter if a computer is 3X or 10X faster than you need?

This is a classic market transition where once performance hits some level, other product attributes become important to consumers because they no longer see any material benefit from marginal performance increases.

If you're mostly using your computer to check email and facebook, you don't need a quad core.

(This applies to even fairly tech-heavy folks - I used to replace my desktop like clockwork every two years for almost 15 years, but I'm typing on this on a 4+-year-old MacBook black that's still plenty fast for coding, image processing and web browsing. I expect I'll use it at least another year and I only paid $1500 for it to start with. I'll prob replace it with a 13" MacBook Air, which won't be much of a performance bump - it will be a form factor bump.)

I remember the days when it was all about having the 386/33 or whatever the latest top-of-the-line Mhz was. Now I doubt if you asked most folks, they could even tell you how fast the processor is in their system. It just doesn't matter much any more, same as only car folks really care what BHP their engine delivers these days.
+1 re the black-on-blue text. I found myself reading the "How It Works" before the "Build and measure your blog".
any yc alums up for a weekend dinner in nyc?
Backing up data and upgrading the OS.
Would love to see an example on how you use state charts to document web applications. Thks!
Architecture: What are the most beautiful buildings in the world?
I had teachers who were not great. But I never had one out and out bad teacher. Never saw a teacher sleeping (in class) or wetting themselves (wow). And no teacher I had ever stood for any student being assaulted. Maybe there are benefits to growing up in the middle-of-nowhere Missouri.
Because they both have widespread adoption?
> Wikipedia says absolutely nothing about how much money Apple has donated and I know for a fact that it has aided progressive causes

For instance, Apple does tie-in promotions such as the Product(RED) iPods that support the Global Fund to Fight AIDS: http://www.apple.com/ipod/red/

They also provide grants and recognition to teachers and schools:
http://www.apple.com/education/apple-distinguished-educator/
What makes education in Finland so good?
Just joined the group and am looking forward to this (I'm a 4 hour drive from SF).

Are there any tentative dates or thoughts on what day of the week this might happen?
Poor Google, using up their favors at the DOJ to go after MPEG-LA, when this is a more direct threat to their business, and also more likely to bear fruit in an antitrust probe.
Air pollution is also huge in China, which is a confounding variable.
I think the main thing it could use now is general UX polish. The Freeciv server messages are "noisy" and many of them could be hidden or represented in more graphical ways. Actually playing the game is pretty good if you already know how to play Civ, but I felt some unclarity about how many starting units I actually had, and it's the kind of game that demands plenty of tutorials for new players.
Sounds awesome, just joined. Would appreciate a few days notice if possible since I'd be coming to SF from NYC. If any YC alums are up for doing something similar in NYC please let me know too. Thanks again
Wish I could upvote this several times!

Guys, don't let the length and links scare you off, excellent summary! And nice website, too!
Addictive Type Racing Game ~ Interesting Concept
Testing does work, it's just that the results are of lesser quality. The simpler the testing procedure the less it's error-prone.

Edit: However, there are edge cases where testing could provide more accurate results - for example, a socially-inept person, may be too nervous to talk in person, but could pass the test with a good results.
Even small-scale stuff that nobody writes articles about like putting a personal guarantee on a 2-year commercial office lease or a line of credit qualifies as sacrifice and is actually quite risky.

I'd offer a small edit on the premise and say that it isn't necessarily a willingness to be poor, but a willingness to go broke for your convictions that is important. Being poor/impoverished is a mindset, being broke is a temporary condition.

Somewhat tangentially related is the derivatives trader mindset which I have been reading about recently.
What a weirdo
"The actual teachers probably lean left, as they're educated (who generally tend to lean left)"

Nope: http://dabacon.org/pontiff/?p=539
What iOS updates have required erasing/resyncing? I can't remember ever having to do that.
Not enough to justify the recent valuation.
Same with me...I had to take my laptop in to an apple store so they could show me how to copy some mp3's to my iPhone.
Are you their boss? No principal is going to bad-mouth an employee that they're obligated to work with to anyone who just asks. That'd poison the workplace. They'd be incompetent if they told you their private thoughts!

The evaluation numbers are not public data. But once in the public school district I attended years ago, I got to see the raw teacher scores from in-room evaluations. Because all teachers seemed to put on a 'dog and pony' show the days that evaluators sat in, I was afraid they'd have no correlation with my perceptions the rest of the year.

And yet, while I did not have enough access to perform a detailed analysis, the teachers I thought bad had low evaluations, from both their immediate supervisors and the 'neutral' observers from the district. The ones I thought good had high evaluations.

K-12 teacher competence is not a complicated matter, imperceptible to all but the finest measurements and highly-trained observers. If you're really curious and have the time, ask your district if you can observe the teachers you're most interested in knowing about.

My impression that the quality of services provided by public employees has stagnated or declined is more general than just 'teaching quality'. It's whole-system outputs.

In the school sphere my impression is driven by how the exact same problems and anguish are being expressed today as 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and 30 years ago (which is as far back as I've been paying attention). And roughly all the same quantifiable complaints are being advanced.

Dropout rates remain high – even with rampant under-reporting by state educational departments. When there are occasionally slight improvements in test scores, it's often shown to be due to manipulation of the comparison pools, or nasty tradeoffs to meet hollow numerical targets. And yet, if schools are to be run by large state-oriented (or even worse nation-oriented) bureaucracies, then managing by crude numerical targets are all that's possible.

In the past 30 years, teacher's unions (and other public employees' unions) have risen to become some of the most powerful political groups in each state. Have schools wildly improved over this same period? Are we now in a golden era of public services? Are civil servants now more respected than ever before?

Or perhaps, the 50-year experiment in public-sector unionism has maximized things other than positive results – like off-budget pension obligations and partisanship.
The iPad - A post-freedom device
Erlang, Testing and TDD
I read 'Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman' few years back. I can recall bits and pieces of this prose, but after two not-so-popular android apps - made in part time, the ideas for the next app were drying out, partially due to the fear of failure.

I think I needed this more than any other time, thank-you for posting this.
Once you release your work under an open source license, you've pretty much declared that "free-riding" is ok, to a certain extent.

I mean, if you look at it, Red hat itself gets a lot of free input. Although they also do contribute a lot themselves, I'm sure they receive more open source software than they create.
Fair enough. I don't think that's what post-PC is intended to mean though. Really I think it's just a comment about where the growth is.
git rebase -i, git reset --hard, git checkout <any-refspec>
TechStars Doubling Down on NYC
It was hard for the skunk works teams to use UML for a long time since it was only published in the late 90's, but what makes you so sure they are not using it now? or do you have a survey of which "good things" are not designed in this fashion?

And besides what is the relative share of skunk works type teams from the overall software development market?
Codeplex, which is Microsoft's open source site, supports Mercurial, SVN and TFS.
Because both are commonly perceived as a step backwards from the current state of the art, but more importantly because it's good sport to make cheap jabs at both of them :P
Honest question: What is the battle? Facebook is well within it's right not to sell space on it's website. But what sort of battle do you see Google and Facebook engaged in? Sure, they both want users to spend time on their websites (which translates into more ads served), but they go about this by offering different services.
I am about two hours south of Chicago and am really looking forward to this opportunity. If you have any tentative dates, the information would be most welcome.
It's a good idea to ask yourself what your goal is. Do you actually want to make a billion dollars? At what expense? Some things correlate much better with happiness than cash.
That's how you should read it. That you think otherwise means they already managed to indoctrinate you that far...

What doctrine are you beholden to that gives you the right to declare someone "indoctrinated" if they don't interpret things exactly as you do? Is no man free to think for himself?
I purchased Civ 5 like a week ago. I haven't played it besides checking out the tutorial, because I know my startup success is inversely correlated with my Civilization's success.
It's a standard deduction, not taxable income. Having a salary less than that is only favorable to you as a tax payer.

Once you shelter into a corporation, how do you un-shelter? Assumption being that you do want to spend a little of it. You can pay it yourself via salary, or dividends. However, from income tax perspective it's all income anyways.
Why just track YC? Why not open it up to all the tech incubators or the entire startup scene and have something really useful and a competitor to crunchbase.