skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Used car salesmen, with their goods at least visible to the naked eye, are paragons of virtue compared to software salesmen."

I've known a few of both and have to say this really isn't true. Virtue pays off when there is a relationship and I can't imagine having a business relationship with a used car salesman.
REALLY Cool! How is rackspace cloud hosting? Reliable?
A classic play. If Jefferson were involved in product design, I suspect he would approve in full.
"Does that mean we can't attempt to understand his motivation without being called names?"

I think that's implicit and not really necessary to discuss, "sell more stuff".

However, if Jobs came out tomorrow and said, "look folks, I've been kinda sick and out of the loop recently, somebody else put those slides together and I didn't realize they weren't accurate, sorry 'bout that" that'd be a reasonable explanation.
Every comment has a flag button, but you have to go to it with the link link to see it.
Yes. All of the above. It's sick.
I would feel like replicating the site. The idea is too important to die.
It's not a soundbite, it's quoting Tim Bray. If you don't like it, go ahead and call it a strategic partnership, or a mutually beneficial symbiosis, or whatever else floats your boat. Meanwhile, Apple is yanking the rug out from under people.

Given that I'm using this term in the middle of a debate where the subject being debated is Apple's draconian behaviour towards iOS developers, I think that if you want a different analogy, the onus is on you to find one that is a better fit, not on me to defend it.
Demand for Android app developers has eclipsed demand for Apple app developers
I don't understand the Android alternative argument.

Android is an alternative for users, not developers. Users can go and buy an android phone (or tablet, sort of) if they want and use most of the same apps.

Developers need to go to where the buyers are. This probably means both platforms. It certainly means iOS. They are in the business of selling (or distributing) apps not developing them.
IMHO from a large-enterprise perspective:

1) A failure to execute. They were increasingly unable to compete in the high-end UNIX server market against IBM. The Rock processor was constantly delayed. Their machines fell behind in performance, Solaris was harder to manage and less stable than AIX.

2) Inability to capitalize on their inventions. IBM used Java as a common language across all of their enterprise platforms, they sold Websphere as a common application platform. NetApp was able to build a large business off NFS.

3) Linux/Intel got a lot better on the low end, Sun could not give a good reason why their platform was worth the additional cost. Usually when you are disrupted on the low end, you move upmarket, but due to 1) they were unable to take this path.

4) Muddled strategy: they dabbled in a lot of things-storage, office suites, mysql, etc. It was hard to tell if they loved or hated open source at times. They spent years battling Microsoft in the press. They had 2-3 different virtualization technologies. Some of the best Fake Steve Jobs posts are when he ripped into Sun.

5) Even if they were able to execute, their niche was becoming less viable. A mid-tier hardware manufacturer using a proprietary operating system is not a good position to be in. They did not have the deep enterprise roots and consulting business that IBM has, nor a massive install base like Linux or Windows.
Thanks for the feedback! I will try to get that stuff revved and submit for a update asap.

As for marketing this post is all I have done so far, and I do plan to do a follow up post when I have a little data.
Other than the Samsung quote, Jobs didn't lie.

Here's the ones you must have missed then, from the article:

"First dual core tablet to ship in volume."

">90% market share".
Have you really tried a recent Android device? Many highly technical people (ok, programmers/nerds) prefer it after they dig into it vs an iPhone.

Notifications, Google Nav, 3D + Vectorized Google Maps, Chrome-to-Phone, a real filesystem with SFTP/FTP/HTTP sync apps, widgets, python via SL4A, free dev tools for Windows/Linux/Mac, awesome 3rd party ROMs, swappable batteries, SDCard, bigger screens, tight Google voice integration, WiMax/LTE, Swype, better cameras, faster javascript, $30/mo cheaper plans, etc.. I feel sorry for iPhone4 users who think they're superior because the scrolling on their phone is a little smoother.
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That's a good question. I definitely recognize the dilemma it creates, but I think it also sets up a nice potential conversation along the lines of "opinionated compared to what?" Which can lead to what is meant by 'opinionated' in the first place, which, under the right circumstances, can be a really valuable conversation to have, especially if your team isn't on the same page with why you would want something like Sinatra vs Rails or anything else.

I've never found that it causes any problems, but since I have been primarily in the .NET world lately, it's pretty rare for people to be all that familiar with anything elsewhere, and if they are, they generally get what I am going for when I say it.
On [Mobile] Input
Are you screening submissions to eliminate poor quality newsletters? Or will you down the track?

You could sign up to newsletters and auto-post recently received issues as examples of what people could expect?
A popular multi-line BBS back in Colorado had one faulty modem and if you were to post that in chat the person on that line would get disconnected... good times, good times.
My homage to Biggie not withstanding, vc's are people, just like hackers, entrepreneurs, marketing folks, etc. Just trying to keep this shit real.
Speaking of Apple polish, why is the cover choice between "leather" (luxury car seats, fashionable gloves, sexy clothing) and "polyurethane" (chemical plant, medical inspection, man made, dystopia).

Why haven't they given it a pleasing, desirable, luxury name?
Devious automat like a giant iPad whose life goal is to sell delicious drinks
GroupOn implemented my suggestion today
Two weeks ago, I sent a suggestion in to GroupOn in regards of a direct referral model to compensate the user. Allowing the user to market directly within their own social circle and receiving compensation for their contributions.

Today, GroupOn implemented the Referral-A-Friend compensation type plan for a limited duration.

Original message (February 22, 2011):

"Social Peer Marketing --

For each GroupOn member, allow them to share today's deal with an incentive, users who purchase from their link result in the posting GroupOn member receiving compensation -- a % of the savings to cost ratio, etc. can be in the form of credits or GroupOn dollars.

This will allow GroupOn to tap in to a buyer market in which otherwise haven't heard of GroupOn (rare case these days) or a buyer in which originally would not have purchased.

Instead of allocating marketing funds towards another ppc/google campaign, this allows the GroupOn member to leverage their own social circle through Facebook, Twitter, or their personal blogs -- which can be very effective nowadays"

Message GroupOn sent out today --

"Hi [GroupOn Member Name],
It's always been easy to refer friends to Groupon. Now it's more rewarding, too.
For a limited time, refer friends and you'll earn $20 Groupon Bucks for each friend who buys their first Groupon.* That's twice the normal reward! Here's how it works: ...

Your personal referral link:
http://www.groupon.com/r/uu1500####"

It'd be naive to say this was implemented solely due to my suggestion, but I thought it was neat nevertheless.

However, the simple response with no follow up after "Hi Michael,

Thanks for the suggestion! If you'd be interested in sharing additional suggestions you can share them here: suggestions@groupon.com.

Regards,

Jordan-Leigh
support@groupon.com

Please, rate my reply here:
http://www.nicereply.com/groupon/6397436/###2849" is discouraging for further suggestion input.

If anyone is working on a group-buying type start up, knows someone who is, etc.. and would like suggestions, I have a couple which I believe would be cutting-edge in which the larger sites do not even have implemented yet.
Q: What has been the biggest surprise? What was one key assumption you made, perhaps even unconsciously, that has caused the most grief?

When we started Octopart, we were sure that within 6 months, we would have all the major distributors signed up and we would be overwhelmed with users. In fact everything takes longer than we expect it to. That includes building technology, building relationships and getting users. On the surface, it seems like the problems involved in part search are straigtforward: get the data, build a system to keep track of it, and build an intuitive frontend interface. But each of those problems have subproblems, and each subproblem needs to be iterated on quite a bit.
Prom Dresses 2011, Cheap Prom Dresses And Gowns
I'm sure it was rational feedback and criticism that changed Apple's mind about tools and languages. Adobe's complaint to the FTC (and the subsequent probe) had nothing to do with it, right?
Web Video Rivalry Sparks U.S. Probe
Why is it so hard to take a site about "Information Technology" seriously when the only four comments on an article are comment SPAM?
TrueReddit is pretty awesome: http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/ . It's explicitly for "...thought-provoking articles, reddiquette, reading before voting and the hope to generate intelligent discussion on the topics."
Er... why is it that developers for Android apps are making less? I would think that having a larger market share, chances is that we will make more from our Android apps.
Amazon does it and has for a couple years.
I buy that. Especially the muddled strategy and disappearing niche. Much better than the article.

They were losing money for years - it shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone.

In particular I never understood what their Java strategy was. Or rather, how they were expecting to make real money with it. I only saw one weak gesture after another, after all that massive hype.
Governments should not support open source
According to the article only 3 are dedicated to StackOverflow which sounds about right to me.
The Tyranny of Science
>> Beware people who tend to exaggerate or have a thing where they tell you outrageous and unverifiable stories.

10x this. Some investors with whom I had developed some strong relationships in the past were very secretive and never would give names or verifiable details as to deals they had done in the past; they were very cloak and dagger, which I suppose was partly why they were so interesting. They were insanely intelligent, so I had immense respect for them and considered one guy in particular a mentor. As I worked with him, turned out he had a lot of issues, verified by other people who mutually knew him. Those issues enabled me to see a side of him that caused me to lose all respect.

I felt a lot like a character in a Robert Ludlum novel, who described the way the CIA treated him. I can't write the exact quote, but it was something like, "Obfuscation, generalization, and manipulation. They give you enough details to help lead you to conclusions, but never anything concrete. Then when you finally come to the wrong conclusions and take incorrect actions, they say it's your fault because they never told you that in the first place and you're hung out to dry."

Truly good investors are happy to talk verifiable details as to what they've done. They have nothing to hide and are proud of their integrity, track record, mistakes, failures, and successes.
Noteleaf (YC W11) Takes Mobile Meeting Notifications To A Whole New Level
One Website that is Changing the African Music Market
This is probably Apple having trouble adjusting their world-view.

With the iPhone & iPad, Apple might have expected a level of success and market-share equal to the iPod.

And without Android, they might well have gotten there!

But with Android, Apple is looking at a market more like Desktop OS, than iPod.
If it's so transparent, and provokes such outrage, why does it make Apple look better?

I don't think it's so clear. I've noticed Jobs attacking the competition more and more - gradually increasing since the launch of the original iPhone - and, as I've said elsewhere it makes me think less and less of him.

At the same time, I'm curious as to why he feels he needs to do it given what a strong position they appear to be in. Wouldn't magnanimity serve them better? If not, why not? And if as you suggest, Jobs doing is serving Apple's best interests by doing this, how should we avoid getting into that position if we become successful ourselves?

I'd be interested to discuss this, but that means speculating about his motivations, which according to you, is off-limits in this community and must be policed with personal attacks and rudeness.
That's a bit like saying the only people who should wash their hands after using the john are those who work in food service. Just because the duty exists in a profession doesn't mean it doesn't also exist elsewhere.

The duty to disclose happens any time you want to maintain the trust of others in your objectivity.

Example: Say I'm having a beef with my girlfriend. My fictional co-worker Billy really wants to date her. If he gives me advice to break up with her while keeping his desire a secret, he commits a breach of trust. His interest in advising me soundly has now conflicted with his interest in hooking up. When I later discover this breach, the trust is eroded.

He doesn't have to disclose anything. But if he wants people to continue reading his blog while trusting his position comes from ideals instead of self-interest, it might be a good idea.
The leaky corporation - are there any bullet-proof CMS-s out there?
IMO, do not do this. To me (opinion), this seems like asking your mom to write you a note excusing something for school.

You're a big boy (or girl); take responsibility for the issue, because even though the most proximate cause of the outage wasn't within your control, the choice of host and choice of architecture are under your control.

If you tell the clients that there was a rare downtime event, that you are working with your technical team to understand and prevent a recurrence, they are less likely to think that's what they should expect if they host with you.

As a potential client, I'd rather hear that you take responsibility for ANY issue that happens to my site; passing blame to a third party ISP to make yourself look better today actually makes you look a little weasely IMO.
JSLint: The Bad Part
Flask (which calls itself a microframework) is built on top of Werkzeug (which calls itself a WSGI utility library).

When I hear utility library, I think more low level than microframework.
Fun and profit from a game still unreleased
Ask HN: Anyone have a sample software development contract?
Olark as a networking tool
Hey, if you want to gain people's trust by disclosing your investments whenever you write a blog post, tweet, or comment on HN, go wild. I never said don't do it.

However, I reject the suggestion that failing to do so is like serving unclean food. If writing is like food, it is clean or it isn't and washing your hands is like spell-checking or fact-checking, not like disclosing your personal interests.

Otherwise, I accept the analogy that writing a blog post is like using the john. Or at least, looking at my writing, I see the comparison is apt.
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The point is that mum and neice will look good -- you don't need a 12MP camera to do that.
Not sure what you mean by this, but in my opinion differing UI and RSS feeds are pretty much the opposite of "fundamental differences".
Part of it is pushing back on fanboyism. Neither are logical or sensible, but I believe one begets the other.

If you don't overly care about Apple and the only news you hear is either "Apple did this" and "I WANT APPLES BABIES", you will start to form an overly critical view, because the news seems to always tend towards hype.

And then some people (with the same fanboyish mindset as the fanboys) will start to take it too far, still as a backlash, but still just as ridiculous. You only get raging haters by either spectacular failure of delivery OR by having raging fans. People seek to balance by becoming unbalanced. I am guilty of this. I suspect a great many people are.

People don't like being told that someone else is better then they are, especially when it's something they hold dear. Geeks, therefore, do not like being told that they are a poorer person for making different technology choices. This is not news, see Vim VS Emacs. As fanboyism can be quite judgmental, this gets on people's nerves, and they become defensive, lashing out at the "Cause" (being Apple). The fanboys feel that their identity is being attacked, and they fight back with equal fervor.

None of this is rational or even useful, but it's just a product of social human nature.

(You're right, they big enough to fight their own battles, and they're big enough to toot their own horn, but people will do it for them, so people will do it against them.)
Seems like a great idea. Just submitted my Hacker Newsletter project (http://www.hackernewsletter.com).
Really? Huffington Post is the most leftist/socialist site on the planet? Maybe in the eyes of Fox News viewers. Arianna Huffington herself (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianna_Huffington) is very, very far from being affiliated with socialism.

Here are a few (well worth reading) sites that are actually closer to your description:

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet

http://monthlyreview.org/

http://links.org.au/
>Also, it's ridiculous that people are voting raganwald's comment down.

How often do you see a comment on hn with positive votes that tells people to "Cry me a fucking river"?
Corporate tyranny or personal justice?
Intro to Hacking - Real Hacker Stories Are Even Better than the Movies
Just spent about 10 minutes searching for how to get the source code for a project and I'm utterly unable to find it. Care to enlighten us all? Do you need to be logged in?
How Recent Changes to Twitter's Terms of Service Might Hurt Academic Research
That's how it was reported but if you listen to the actual call it was about 1-2 minutes squarely aimed at the Samsung Galaxy Tab which had just been released.
Unless you're asking for something a bit more specific, Google is your friend: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=software+development+contract
I saw nothing that constituted a "lie."

Here's the list from the article since you must have skipped over them:

1) A mistranslation from Korean that puts a competitor in a bad light.

2) "First dual core tablet to ship in volume."

3) ">90% market share".

#1 could arguably just a rehash of old stuff, "sorry guys I'm a bit out of date". #2 and #3 are complete fabrications.

The rest of the article was just nitpicking.
Maybe it can be done with manager intervention.
>Remember when Apple reversed its decision on 3rd-party developer tools and languages?

This is essentially comparing apples and oranges, though. That decision was (presumably) based on maximizing application performance for users - but plenty of non-obj-C applications can perform quickly enough, so they went back and allowed them. And more applications means more sales means more money for Apple.

It's equivalent to sharecroppers first preventing use of externally-developed tools, then discovering that they could make more money if they allowed them. I don't see a comparable situation in Apple pulling 30% from subscriptions.

I do think that 30% is a bit high, as they're recurring sources of revenue and people tend to decide "$1/month? sure. It's cheaper than that $10 app." and then keep it for two years rather than switch to the $10 and waste a buck. People are pretty predictable in this manner - just look at WoW.
When that's not all there is to the comment, and it has legitimate content and value to the discussion, possibly-dissenting opinions aside?

Often.

And he was quoting from his own article, at a particularly identifiable and primary point of inflection.
Your opinion isn't the one that counts. Apple's is. A loophole is whatever Apple says it is.

Yesterday, an ebook reader tied to your store wasn't a loophole, today it is. Today, SaaS may not be a loophole, but who knows about tomorrow? Today non-Apple ads aren't a loophole, but some have speculated that iAds may be required in the future. And so on.
congrats jake and wil! this solves a problem i have nearly every time i meet with someone new. i'll look them up on facebook and linkedin, i'll try to figure out more about them or at least get a picture so i know who i'm looking for. noteleaf makes this a lot faster and easier. it's one of those problems that's not excruciating, but it's so repetitive that it becomes very annoying to do manually.

i'm not sure how much you've thought about making it easy to remember things about people but that's still a pain point for me.
Anyone have any luck with alibaba?
The other option is they knew the quote was wrong but the substance was accurate. The Galaxy Tab hasn't really taken off has it?
At the end of the day, none of Jobs' points or of Weintraub's rebuttals have any bearing on how the quality of the product. It's really just a bunch of bickering. I just want to see the new gadgets and what they're capable of, not how much one company can one-up each other.
Ah! That's just like a side project my old startup and I had called "Fready." Basically Fready gives you news on the people you are meeting with before you meet with them. It uses NLP to pull out any names/companies/locations from a google calendar event to give you pretty relevant news. Here is an old blog post about it: http://blog.getfready.com/ Perhaps we should have pitched it at our YC interview...

Unfortunately I took it down recently but it might be a good time to bring it back.
Less Plates, More Flipcha: The Moment Every Startup Eventually Faces
You start to think they are on your side....

Remember VCs are like the guy who wants to play pool for money in a bar - right after he loses the first couple of games.

Except of course for the pool hustlers basic honesty....
I would really like this on top gear and compare it to the other drivers on their closed course. I wonder how well it would do in their celebrity challenge that they do every episode?
did you use a particular ranking function for information retrieval or text analysis like bm25? i'd be curious
Fair enough. The comments here bring up some excellent points; my background in journalism probably colored my perspective a bit. Also, I appreciate your rephrasing your original comment, much better :)

I noticed your account is fairly new, if you haven't seen the guidelines for HN yet, I suggest checking them out here: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Welcome to HN!
Perhaps the best and the worst thing for the app are interdependencies on other apps/service like Gmail and LinkedIN.

I am sure they will be adding other email services as well as Outlook support. Let's face it a lot many people are still stuck to Outlook/MS Exchange servers for office emails.
If your peak hours exceed average by an order of magnitude then you have oddly shaped traffic. Most sites follow a bell curve where regular peak hours range around factor 2-3 above average.

Either way I didn't mean to discount their efforts. Was just trying to point out that their architecture is not very interesting from a performance point of view, yet.