skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Angry Birds is a great example. I would gladly pay the piddly .99c they ask on iOS, if given the choice! The iOS version is paid only and ad free, while the Android version is free only, with intrusive ads.
It's worth pointing articles like this whenever the Apple haters berate Apple's "greedy" 30% cut. Particularly when you only spend, say, $1-3 at a time, the fees take up most of that.

The only way you could have a more efficient system without cutting the credit card companies entirely (which is a huge proposition with enormous barrier to entry) is to buy prepaid credit in larger blocks (say $20 minimum) rather than charging each transaction (or day's transactions) in one small lump.

Apple partially has this with it's retail cards but they probably lose 20% of that to the retailer.

Payments seems to me to be one of those areas like music (and really all digital content) where there are players that have cooperate who basically have no interest in cooperating. In music and digital content it's the labels, publishers and studios, all of whom are investing heavily into turning the clock back to 1997 (thank you, 30 Rock). In payments, it's banks and other financial institutions (including credit card companies).

One player that has huge potential in this space in coming years are the mobile telecommunication providers. They have the network for POS system, mobile payments is an area growing in leaps and bounds and they have a payments infrastructure already.

Carriers seem intent on fighting progress too (as really does any large incumbent). Apple totally changed this industry with one product release [1], something the Apple haters seem to conveniently forget. If it wasn't for the iPhone, none of what we currently take for granted (even on other platforms) would be possible.

Carriers (and other distributors like cable companies) are terrified of becoming dumb data pipes for which the only differentiators are price and service area. But that is (IMHO) their inescapable fate. What carriers could be however is the infrastructure for mobile payments, which has enormous potential.

But currently they're ceding that market to Apple and Google.

EDIT: let me be clear, I'm not advocating Apple's position on mandatory use of their system. Far from it. I think the move is arrogant and short-sighted beyond belief. But criticisms of them being "greedy" predate that move by years. Personally I think Apple's payment infrastructure makes sense if you're small and not if you're large (much like hosting actually). As such it should be voluntary. Let it stand on it's own merits. I for one am going to be extremely pissed off if Kindle disappears from my iPad.

[1]: http://cdixon.org/2010/06/06/steve-jobs-single-handedly-rest...
thanks jake!
It used to be that a dying person's confession was considered unvarnished truth in a court of law. More on "Dying Declaration" at the Wikipedia site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_declaration
Don't Leap When You Can Pivot
It just seems and sounds spammy/unprofessional to me. While I know that we all need to get over this as time goes on -- I don't think that having a .biz domain makes you look particularly savvy.

Personally, I try to think up domain names all the time and register them if they are remotely interesting and based on them I can think of a service based on that name that is unique.

I often look for derivatives of Latin words.

Can you give details about your idea? I'd be happy to try to come up with a name for you.
Most victims of prison rape abused by corrections staff, not other prisoners
You may wish to revisit your blog template at some point --- http://i.imgur.com/kUngf.png --- although it displays fine when I full screen the window.
Wow, what? I have an iPod Touch and how did I not know this! I'm always so out of touch. Please ignore the possible pun here.
And CISCO predicts that in 2011 30,864.50 Petabytes of data will be transmitted in the Internet, among which will be your 176-character message. Why are we discussing this again?
But I'm pretty damn sure that the Venezuelan model leads to rule-by-bandit

I think you should maybe re-read what I wrote. Most of my praise for Venezuela is in it's Bolivarian principles, but it's application has not been desirable. I agree that it has been totally mismanaged.

You'll notice, however, that my suggestion for Venezuela wasn't the Venezuelan model, but a mixture of Lulaism and the Norwegian model.

Venezuela ain't no Scandinavia.

And there's reasons for that. But that doesn't mean that Venezuela can't move towards a functional social democratic model.

In fact, there's no better example than Rwanda, a country that 15 years ago, was hacking itself apart, and has been able to move in very different direction in that time.
You can re-download things you've paid for, can't you? Or hmm.. they limit the times? Given that I have 800 GB of space I have of which 10% is in use, I've never deleted any purchased music, so I don't know from personal experience.
"But let's assume JoC is a crackpot journal. Why is a NASA scientist publishing there?"

He's publishing there because he couldn't publish it in a reputable journal, indicating its quality is rather low. I agree that this article doesn't take the most mature tone ever, but it breaks down what's wrong with the article itself further into it. It's unnecessary to rely on credibility at all; of the journal itself OR the fact that the guy worked at NASA.
Gruber said that's what Apple thinks the iOS ecosystem is.

Arguably, it's the right attitude to have when you're riding a wave that is now over 60% of your revenues...
Weird. I have a memory of when I was about 12, attempting to code BASIC on a VTech PreComputer Prestige (not a 'real' computer!):

http://ttggallery.blogspot.com/2010/01/vtech-pre-computer-pr...

The manual had some instructions for learning BASIC. I messed around with it for a few days, but never stuck with it long enough with it to have an epiphany. It was only when I got to college in my late teens that my eyes were opened to the possibilities of programming. Wish I taught myself to code instead of wasting time moping around during my school years!
Safari on Windows is somewhat lousy, too.
Enh, his motives may not be what they seem:

"I was one of the first to outsource software development to Russia in the early '90s. I was one of the first to use H-1B visas to bring workers to the U.S.A.," Wadhwa says. "Why did I do that? Because it was cheaper."

from here:

http://www.cio.co.uk/article/527/the-next-wave-of-globalisat...
But the US Is Bad, what don't you understand?!

(Seriously, I was expecting some relativist argument, but this is not even that. I'm surprised there's no mention of obesity rates as well, while we're at it)
It's March - Time for TechStars' Startup Madness
MapReduce and Parallel DBMSs: Friends or Foes? [2010]
Would you pay $.99 per month for the same twitter everything you have now?
Yes. Go for a .com, even if it's a worse name.
From what I've read, CI chondrites are extremely fragile and don't last very long on exposure to liquid water, which is why about half of the recovered CI chondrites on Earth have been witnessed falls (with the other half found in Antarctica). The two he analyzed for the paper were witnessed falls from 1864 and 1938.

I'm not saying this isn't just a case of pareidolia (it probably is), but the meteorites haven't been sitting in a stew of microorganisms for "thousands of years".
The most interesting point to me was the fact that one of the people mentioned had a finance job with the government and still has to squat in this tower.
Interesting graphic. I never realized that small pox was the biggest plague.
Years back, before Vista was released, people were very concerned that MS might move to do in Windows what Apple has done - lock down Windows so that any software requires digital signing to execute.

They did introduce that dialog which warns you when software is not signed, but of course MS didn't take this to the degree that Apple has. While it's a great way to take care of malware, I really don't think Apple's vision of the future is one I want to compute in.
Minimum Viable Market
It has a lot of potential, but it's not quite as exciting as it sounds in reality - each app that wants to use the external display has to support it.
Ask HN: Should I go for a PhD in CS at GeorgiaTech or Rice U.?
I got admitted to PhD programs at Georgia Tech and Rice University. The research area is Computer Systems. Both universities offered me similar amounts for RA/TA, and there are equally interesting projects I would like to work on in both places. From what I can tell, I'd enjoy life more in Houston (Rice U.) -- bigger city, warmer weather, closer to interesting places -- than Atlanta (GaTech), but GaTech is better ranked in university tops.

What do you think I should do?
Ohad's background is in risk so he's inclined to view the hurdles as being more related to what he's familiar with. I agree with you though, there are much more important factors at play.
Of course, if you point this out to "progressives" they'll call you a racist, as successful revolutions against "the man" are considered sacred.

Only in strawman world, apparently.

I find your comment to lack nuance. I'm opposed to Chavez, I think he's a failure as a leader. However, there's a false dichotomy that's often created in discussions such as these.

There are economic and social principles that I find to be positive for countries like Venezuela. If I say that I support those principles, many people (such as yourself) have a hard time not reading that as support for Chavez as a steward of those principles. Even though nothing I said in my comment about Chavez was positive in any way.

On the other side, if I state that I'm opposed to Chavez, that doesn't mean that I would support things like privatization of their oil reserves, or a dismantling of the social welfare programs or a move away from neighorhood democracy, all of which I think are important programs for pulling a country like Venezuela out of poverty and disarray and into a state of social health and prosperity.
I had a CS Professor who was convinced that he had cheaters in the class(1), so he decided we should all be graded on performance of our programs. This resulted in a lot of stress for a lot of students (C code only, most students taught only Pascal/Modula-2) and some seriously nasty things done in the programs. I rate it a big fail for what we were doing.

I can actually kind of see this for embedded / small device programming. Embedded systems that can't meet their performance goals are useless and buying faster hardware is very costly option.

(1) he also believed not one of us submitted a C program to print "Hello, World!" that worked. It was a 8AM class and I had just driven 120miles (home visiting) through a blizzard to make it to class when he announced this fact in a dramatic fashion. I required calming down.
Startups make mistakes... I'm pretty surprised that Twitter is responding with "It's a feature, not a bug. This is something you WANT-- trust us!"

http://twitter.com/#!/dickc/status/43500398450982912
http://twitter.com/#!/dickc/status/44302983839756288

Bummer.
I'd pay way, way more than that.
It seems that no one is interested in the model where subscribers pay for no ads. Look at Hulu. You can buy Hulu Plus and... still get ads. If Hulu Plus was ad free I would sign up immediately.

So why is that? There are several potential reasons:

1. Those providing such services like advertising or, rather, they like the relationships they have with advertisers. Consider [1] (second time quoted this today!):

> Since the carriers had all the power, getting any distribution (which usually meant getting on the handset “deck”) meant doing a business development deal with the carriers. Business development in this case meant finding the right people at those companies, sending them iPods, taking them to baseball games, and basically figuring out ways to convince them to work with you instead of the 5,000 other people sending them iPods and baseball tickets. The basis of competition was salesmanship and capital, not innovation or quality.

Companies, and particularly sales guys, like having something to sell (being ad inventory). They like the perks this gets them (and the commissions of course).

2. Subscribers aren't willing to pay what the advertising brings in. I'm curious about this but haven't seen any numbers. Take an episode of The Big Bang Theory. How much does each episode cost to produce? How much does each ad bring in? How much does the national network earn in affiliate fees? How much of the advertising revenue is product placement? If you had these numbers, you could calculate what each viewer is worth. I suspect it's a lot less than what such companies charge on iTunes and elsewhere;

3. A correlation between the people willing to pay for no ads and being the target of those ads, which means if you're willing to pay for no ads, you need to pay higher than what ad revenue / viewers might otherwise suggest; and

4. Lack of metrics in broadcast and print media. Sales guys are known to exaggerate (and basically just make up) conversion numbers on ad campaigns. The reality I'm sure is a lot less but there's no real way to tell. With online advertising, you can tell, which possibly explains it's lower cost/value compared to traditional advertising;

5. Related to (4), people pay for broadcast and print advertising what they do, largely because that's what it's always cost; and

6. Limited inventory drives up the cost. Inventory is not a problem online.

As for Twitter, I suspect they haven't done anything interesting with advertising (and monetization) because that's a hard problem to solve. I mean, people need to see ads for them to be ads right? At that point, how exactly are you going to advertise to people who mostly use an API, other than through their Twitter stream?

[1]: http://cdixon.org/2010/06/06/steve-jobs-single-handedly-rest...
> It's worth pointing articles like this whenever the Apple haters berate Apple's "greedy" 30% cut. Particularly when you only spend, say, $1-3 at a time, the fees take up most of that.

I think the greedy part is more based on Apple's requirement that you use their system (and thus pay their 30% vig). If it was voluntary I don't think people would care too much about how big of a cut they took because you could always try and do better on your own.
"They have the network for POS system"

Carriers have no advantage with regard to POS systems just because they own the network.

Carriers also have enormous regulatory problems. Currently most of them are regulated by the FCC, but when payments start showing up on phone bills the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department start getting curious. This leads to two dynamics that are bad for everyone: delay between each carrier and the government, and delay between each agency within the government as they fight out who gets to be in charge.
Ask HN: Promoting your idea
Hey,

I know there have been talks, blog posts about what I'm about to ask but I've been ignoring them until now so there is a lot I don't know.

Here's what I want to ask you HN, if you have an idea, how do you promote it?

Say Twitter does not exist and you invent it, how do you promote it?

How do you find people who are good at promoting a website?

If I want to tell a forum about my website, I have to compose the text in a manner that will make my product appealing to the potential user and all sorts of things at which I'm bad at.
Ask HN:  App that notifies you of HN Responses?
I want to get notified every time a post receives a comment or a comment gets a reply. Is there "an app for that"?
I think your sarcasm detector might be a little faulty...
>The major challenge is convincing people (vendors and sellers) as to why they should use your system.

See, that is the /first/ challenge; but as you start overcoming that barrier, you start hitting the problem the author starts talking about. E-gold, for instance, did pretty well solving the "convince people to use us" problem, but choosing to ignore the fraud issue killed them (and almost landed them in jail)
majority of the prison population in the US comprise only 2.4% of the UK.

I'll point out another statistic which doesn't look good for our incarceration rates, regardless of the racial demographic argument you're making:

Half of all persons incarcerated under state jurisdiction are for non-violent offenses, and 20% are incarcerated for drug offenses, in State prisons. Federal prison percentages are higher.
Joining the Seattle Tech Startups mailing list can't hurt. You'll meet some interesting folks on there, and should be able to get some leads on jobs.
Unfortunately, that isn't possible in the AppStore, afaik. You can sell to everyone, or give away for free, but not to a limited group (beyond the 100 promo codes thing.)
Can you give more details on how twitter has been so valuable to you?
Help Key: 3G, 4G, HSPA+, LTE, WiMax – What Do They Mean To You? [2010]
Designer Love themepack for Windows 7
>I waited 11 years, if it makes you feel better. And yes, I do know the difference between then and now. And you know why it's worse now? Because the demand is much higher! So, despite the INS's dickitude and the so-called "broken" immigration policies, MORE people are wanting to come here.

>You need to comprehend before responding. The immigration system was as broken 20 years ago as it is today. During boom times it's broken; during bust times it is broken. During the dot-com boom, it was broken, and yet the dot-com boom still happened. It is a constant; you just route around it.

Were startups so easy to found 20 years ago? Were there mobile apps that one can develop in part time?

Vivek is trying to lobby for a better future. Just because people used to walk uphill both ways in snow to school in the past then doesn't mean you shouldn't try to fix it atleast now.
If the Dickbar annoys you as much as it annoys me and your phone is jailbroken, install the Twizzler package to remove it. Makes the new Twitter actually a quite nice upgrade.
Show HN: My revolutionary app
Yes, but a cleaning service in St Louis can't afford to only target barbers.

My point is that the number of business that actually engage in very-narrow-targeting are small. And the target groups tend be overwhelmed by this token. What percentage of the population makes major purchases very specific to their demographic? Is it not high (weddings, college, funerals? Anniversaries? You start to run out after a short time). The rich can also be target and are targeted and you are again back in the "not-a-slam-dunk" range.

A San Francisco dominatrix still buys a car and a washing machine in the same fashion as a mid-western minister.

If you look at the idea behind Facebook advertising, you'll see it's actually the old model of brand advertising - somehow injecting an irrational connection between the customer and the product. It's just that brand advertising rightly imagine they can get more traction if they know the exact demographic someone is one. They might indeed do so but it's still in the same realm. The goal is to sway someone's purchase decision when that someone is at a store and has to decide ten different otherwise identical whats-its. The smallest prejudice you can insert will be worth a lot to you here.

But the Google model is the opposite - informational advertising. The model of offering an honest argument for a product that the person is actively seeking.

A Facebook ad is essentially about hijacking attention. Hoping you'll get some free-floating interest from someone who isn't otherwise thinking about your offer.

A web page gets you the chance to make your case to those who are interested in your case. What objectively makes your service better.

Does a cleaning service want barbers? It wants customer in the million-person city of St. Louis but that's a big group. It mostly wants anyone who actually needs a cleaning service. And then there are a lot of things to say but this basic is pretty simple.
Ask HN: Social News Startup Feedback (v2)?
This is my second time asking for feedback for http://www.colorwarfare.com.

Last time (just a few days ago), I got some awesome advice, and I tried to really put that into action.

Simply put, my primary goal for this site is to provide people with a sense of camaraderie online. The actual implementation entails joining teams and posting social news for points, which (theoretically) leads to some good content that is fun to read.

Background:

People were saying that it felt really cluttered and confusing, with the suggestion of a landing page for new visitors. I tried to space things out more, clearly delineate between the left and right content columns, and I put a whole bunch of info at the top for when people are not logged in to help figure out what to do.

There was also some feedback address how to get people using the site, and how to maintain the value of the points.

This Time:

I'm looking for more insight into user impressions. What's cool? What's annoying? I'm stuck in the perspective of creating it, and so I come to you, HN.

*A big thank you to everyone who took time to share their insights with me a few days ago here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2286973
The facebook application allows you to schedule your facebook status update and wall posts on your friends' walls.
I would love to hear what you guys think and if you guys want any additions to the app.
Sure it is. The article was written by a US media corporation; that post I responded to advocated overthrowing Venezuela's government; and since many of us are citzens of the US, we should maybe deal with the real problems that we can affect, rather than go around attacking others.
#2 in santo domingo
Teachers unions haven't seem to hurt Finland (#1 in education), and auto unions haven't seem to hurt Germany. Theirs are much stronger than our respective unions.
At least for me, this is absolutely the case. I'm perfectly hapy to pay 30% to a payment processor for small-ticket items, and consider it a good deal.

But the problem comes in when I don't have a choice to run big-ticket items through Braintree, and there's no way for another company to provide a competing small-ticket gateway. In the long-run, that looks too much like a distributor model, which never worked out well for musicians.
Sledgehammer-operated Keyboard
Wow. I'm surprised this got downvoted. There is no better way to network with developers than to learn to program. First you will eventually find your way into the natural habitats of us developers (HN, StackOverflow, IRC). From there you'll end up learning about developer events like hacker dojos and superhappydevhouse

The problem is that if you show up in these hacker habitats as a business person with no programming knowledge, you are just going to derail the conversations instead of participating. You will also connect better with hackers if you speak their lingo.

Which would work better:

"I'm a business person with an idea that I want you to build"

or

"I'm learning to program because I'm a business person with an idea that I'm learning to prototype and I'm looking for someone to build it with me."

I'm a business person myself learning to program and I pretty much dismiss all other almost all other business people that come to me with ideas. Part of being a good business person is about being able to sell your idea and speak in the language of the customer. Until you found a technical co-founder, your only customer is a developer. You need to sell them your idea before you sell it to anyone else. If you want to sell you idea to a developer, then learn to program.
Specifically to Switzerland, having lived there it has a problem more extreme than the US: it's very hard to work there. It's become easier for EU residents but harder for everyone else.

Well, if you're in the EU it's not just "easier", it's completely brainless. You just move there and start working. No visas, no nothing.

Which doesn't really take away from the misguided nature of this "venture".
Well, maybe freedom is worth something ([ http://www.freeexistence.org/freedom.shtml?Property=4&Dr... ]).