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8 imaginary iPhone Apps that you might want, ot not...
A wealth of imaginary iPhone Apps found on Flickr and several blogs. Including images...
Cool idea + site. However, I think too much importance is placed on finding co-founders sometimes. There are a lot of good points about working alone. Obviously lots of bad ones as well, but it's certainly doable if you are determined enough.
Confirms my prejudice that studying maths and economics is much more worthwhile than philosophy. (Edit: I have only read chapter 23, which is concerned with choices and values - really, game theory and economics give you much better insights here, with fewer words).
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I've just created a similar site, cofounding.slinkset.com, the idea is similar, except its focus is on people who have already started creating or are nearly complete with their startup and want to share, get feedback, or join up with other people in a joint venture.

It's private so please send me an email (on my yhacker profile).
Yahoo's User Interface Library (YUI) - http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/ - is pretty good.
sleep fm would be better if they made a decent video (browser area only), removed the stylesheet (the interface is horrible) and lost the sleep fm 'loves you' type impression. Its a utility.

It could be useful if they streamlined it and marketed it without the corn :P
That's not really a fair argument. There are always what-ifs that are possible. I could say, for example, 'Sure, General Relativity is OK, but how do we know that it works for that little patch of reality that is within the Oval Office. Has anybody tested it?'.

I mean, technically you are right, but the a priori interpretation of the survey results is that Apple does a better job of satisfying it's customers than do the competitors. That interpretation should stand unless someone comes up with a survey providing more detailed results that indeed shows a selection bias amongst Apple customers...
However, Charles Leiserson is a pedantic douche.
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My first article on my blog was actually on a similar concept:

http://inter-sections.net/2007/09/05/it-doesn%E2%80%99t-matt...

The key ideas is: so long as you learn from your mistake and you have a way of gathering criticism so that you can keep improving, you can start at the very bottom and still end up at the very top. If you have no feedback mechanism, no criticism, no measurement that allows you to correct your course, however (or if you ignore all that), it almost doesn't matter how high you start, you'll always end up mediocre at best.
Enterprise 2.0: The Nature of the Firm
All your control are belong to us
A lot of the startups seemed to be “like FILL-IN-THE-BLANK-COMPANY, but easier,”

I'm glad someone finally said this.
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Whenever clever people work on new problem-spaces (ie. not yet mined-out), they have good chances of being the ones to have the fundamentally new insights; so your odds are good.

But the two kinds of technology-based businesses make me think of Google's technology: server implementation (fast results) and pagerank (relevant results).
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When I was growing up, we went to a small-chain video store. They always had some movie (recent, but not new releases) playing on a real-projection screen in the store -- no seats or anything, but people would cycle through, watch for a few minutes, and move on.

As far as I know, they didn't play public screening fees, but different jurisdictions have different laws.
Verizon’s FiOS: A Smart Bet or a Big Mistake?
The new age of OpenGL
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How fast is Java Volatile? or Atomic? or Synchronized?
In Sea of Similar Body Types, Nonconformists Can Succeed
Is your epic application being dragged down by green shoes?
If you are even thinking about debugging your OS then you are not a typical end user. In fact you could probably figure out and use almost any interface. So for the purpose of usability studies, you're not representative.
-1 off topic
So check out this user "smartdata" - created at the same time the article was posted, purely for the purpose it seems of linking back to their own site.

If that's not an argument for a karma threshold for article posting, I don't know what is.
No offence but most of these innovations are .. not innovations (atleast not in this day and age) and have been around for a long time.
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I can't disagree with any of that.

The best advice I can give about grad school: Know your adviser before accepting an offer. Non-tenured should be a big worry. No other students should be too. Use the beer night all schools feature to get honest assessments of potential advisers - after a few beers have set in. In a real sense, your adviser will be your venture partner with vast majority control even as you do the vast majority of the work. The decision of who to work with is therefore critical.
Not to sound like a bitter C# programmer (formerly Java) not "getting" the whole fascination with weak typing and scripting languages, but I thought this piece was pretty much junk. It very much felt like the underdog defending his position by attacking his perceived opponent. It's full of assertions of superiority and little to back it up.

It may simply be a matter of taste, but I prefer a strictly typed environment. Code which can be compiled, and errors which can be caught before a single line is executed. I like making classes which abstracts the underlying work, hence improving (local) code readability.

Granted, quite a few of the popular scripting languages does support OOP these days, but the usage among the hackers out there seem to vary greatly.

Ofcourse, the degree of abstraction needed will vary from problem to problem. If you can fit your solution into one page of code (like he mentions), the problem probably isn't that big to begin with. If you are working on a more complex project, spanning thousands of lines of code, the benefits touted here seems less credible.

Also, for a guy advocating that the main benefit of so called scripting languages are that they allow short, concise and straight to the point code: He might try to transfer that to his writing. That piece was anything but short, concise or straight to the point.
Be unafraid to die, and you will live! Reminds me of "9 out of 10 businesses die":

If you start 10 startups, you have near-certainty of making it (yeah, I know 1-.9^10<1), assuming you learn a lot from each attempt.

What can stop you: giving up OR being unable/unwilling to learn some particular lesson that is crucial. The article is about making yourself vulnerable to learning.
Scientists grow blood in a lab
DARPA's mission isn't science, although their relative autonomy (based on budgetary reasons) allows it to be.

Of course, the bit about this administration was extreme. But their funding priorities are less about basic science, relatively speaking.
Although I am currently running on WordPress, I tend to agree. I find I haven't really tweaked my blog to my liking very much, simply because I am not very proficient in PHP and I have no interest in learning it or the WP specific aspects. Also, I am hindered by the security apsects of hosting WP and the multiblog problems, so I still haven't added the ability to even upload images (currently using the debian hack for multiblogs, but it doesn't provide for per blog content directories). The task to redesign my blog gets delayed indefinitely.

Also, when I think about cool things a blog could do, it is an even greater hurdle to get into WP plugin development. Would be much easier to do it with my own framework. Also, the WYIWYG editor of WP seems to suck anyway.

The only rationale for learning to write WP plugins would be to create something that could become wildly popular (similar to "you have to have a Facebook app", maybe you also have to have a WP plugin).
I watched these for one of my classes but I sould of just bought the book instead.
I want to add to this a question, because I truly don't know: who are the kids picking up running 100m distances as their main sport? What is their motivation? I can imagine why people get into team sports, for example, but I can't imagine a huge number of people go into 100m running out of intrinsic self motivation, simply because it is so much fun to run 100m?

So maybe the "system" matters much more for 100m running than for most other sports. The system being things like "scholarships in exchange for sports", the way talent gets identified and promoted, and so on. Just saying that this would be another aspect that might distort the statistics.

I recently heard the quote "Jamaica is too small to have their own drug testing agency"...
> Ofcourse, the degree of abstraction needed will vary from problem to problem. If you can fit your solution into one page of code (like he mentions), the problem probably isn't that big to begin with. If you are working on a more complex project, spanning thousands of lines of code, the benefits touted here seems less credible.

For one value of 'better', the better a language is, the wider range of possibilities it will afford you, handling both the quick task and the Big Complex Program well.
TOP Article Directories Article Marketers Should Focus On First
Last week Anik Singal launched his aricle directory called AffSphere. Today, I’m adding to that list of article directories with the TOP article directories ALL article publishers should submit their articles to first before going off submitting to other article directories with less credibility and traffic.
Why would I need a second survey? I already distrust the conclusion.
I personally don't jailbreak because

1) It's my main form of communication
2) Apple killed jailbroken iPhones once, they could do it again
3) I can't afford to buy an un-subsidized 3G iPhone yet.

When any of those three changes, I'll jailbreak; 'til then, I'd rather pay a few bucks and keep warranteed reliability.
Drill sharpener cuts tooling costs, inventory
Gear manufacturer reported that by reclaiming used drills using a Darex Sharpener the machine has paid for itself ’several times over’ by sharpening drills to ‘new’ condition.
S.P.E.C. Technologies Becomes Newest Gama Distributor
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Creating stories that resonate
I posted this because it has something clear to say about marketing in general - it's not just politics. Negative marketing usually fails for businesses for precisely the reasons that are set out here - it takes very little for someone to detect flaws in a negative message - and then you have lost.
Except with the rate of text messages (20c to send, 20c to receive a reply saying "ok"), it's even better/cheaper to just call the person to tell them you'll be late. I've never understood why texting is so popular when it's so expensive, slow, and inconvenient. Why not just dial the number and talk?
> If something goes wrong with your Dell laptop, they will send a technician out to you the next day and repair it on-site.

Only if you paid extra for that service option. The default phone-support and ship-it-back-for-service warranties that you get with most Dell machines by default is likely no better than Apple.

However, I must say that if you get the upgraded support from Dell, especially the type that comes with their XPS line, they certainly have the best support service in the consumer PC industry. And turnaround time is fantastic; they paid to ship my XPS laptop to the service center and back, and I literally had it fixed and back in my hands in less than a week.
I think that's a great idea.

...

Okay, I'm joking. A bot which votes automatically is a bad idea. But, in all seriousness: Perhaps every single article should come with a tiny button to press, with a label: "I believe this article is offtopic for HN".

This suggestion has been made thousands of times by now. The counter-argument -- a good one -- is that enabling the downvoting of articles empowers gangs of organized downvoters to kill content from the site for arbitrary reasons. Everyone knows the kind of trouble that causes.

But that presumes that the downvote button is hooked up to something in the site's software. It doesn't need to be. Just display a tiny number that is the number of accumulated downvotes. Let the people who read each article, and decide whether to upvote it or not, choose whether or not to ignore that number.

In the absence of this feature, the users reinvent it for themselves, as we have seen again and again.

You may ask why the people who wish to express disapproval of an article can't just write a thoughtful post that explains why, instead of clicking a little DOWNVOTE button. The short answer is that to acknowledge a troll is to feed the troll. The longer answer is that some trolls are much more subtle than others: The ones who use rude one-liners are easy to spot, but there are others who will suck you into endlessly circling, long-winded, bad-faith arguments filled with chaff. You'll refute something, and they'll respond with a mixture of inaccurate and irrelevant bullet points; and you'll introduce good points of your own, and they'll be ignored in future posts; and if by some miracle you create a really compelling counter-argument, the troll will go away for two days and then come back, advancing the same argument that he did two days ago, as if the counter-argument had never existed. You can't avoid such people by engaging them -- engagement is what they want. You have to learn their reputations and politely but firmly avoid them.

Which I do. But that doesn't mean I want to sit idly by while effluvia overflows the front page of HN. The site could really use a "cold shoulder" button.

[EDIT: Okay, I promoted this crazy idea to its own submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=281431 ]
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20c texts are generally only for people who have NO text messaging plan. I have a BB (vzw) and iPhone (att obviously). Both have text messaging plans that for some trivial amount per month (like $5 or $10) I get more text message allotments than what I would ever reasonably use (a few hundred at least).

99% of the time, SMS messages arrive within 30 seconds of the sender hitting "Send". When you are going to be delayed by 5+ minutes, 30 seconds rounds down to "instant".

As for the inconvenient, I personally HATE getting a call when I am either in a very quiet business lobby, or very loud social event for someone to deliver an essentially 1-sided trivial message ("I am running 15 minutes late"). SMS's are PERFECT for this. They are, IMO, cheap quick and convenient.

Perhaps it is all in the eye of the beholder.

The "killer app" for this situation would be (IMO) to use a GPS-enabled phone with some rudimentary mapping capabilities that would auto-text SMS ETA messages once you are >5 minutes away from the meeting start time and your travel time is also >7 minutes (ie: when it predicts that you're going to be late by more than a couple of minutes). You would have an "app" on your phone that sent SMS messages to your co-attendees (they would NOT have to install, download or use any sort of application just to get this trivial text info). This would increase the viability and adoption rate, as suddenly your friends do not all need smartphones to get some benefit from the app.
I suggested this back in march: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=144580

Apparently there's a real company doing this, written up in HBR, NPR, etc.
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Although I'm generally leaning this way I don't think it is for everyone. I'm currently using serendipity with a whole block of custom code duck taped on for the non-blog areas of my personal site.

When I put that code together it did everything I wanted and seemed to be fairly flexible. That was over a year ago now and I'm again considering a complete rewrite because making even small changes is just too painful.

If you can clearly see how you'll be using your site a year from now then rolling your own may work well for you. If not then you may come to regret not taking the time to leverage an existing project.
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Because not everyone wants to jailbreak their phone and risk bricking it when Apple pushes volatile updates? Personally, this is why I have an Openmoko, so I can change what I want whenever I want, and when the phone bricks, not only is it my fault, but it has a failsafe bootloader that allows me to reflash the phone over USB as much as I want...
I don't agree. I'm not a fan of bloated software (i.e. features I don't use, etc.), but one thing that Wordpress and Typepad have going for them is a large user base that helps to uncover bugs like security flaws.

Rolling your own, while a good exercise, will most likely lead to problems.
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I'd like to hear more about the projects this guy works on. I recall he wrote a command line tool for navigating HN.
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A year old fun conversation
Apple passes the buck on iPod fiasco
Does the Yale philosophy department have a "Taxes" course, as well?
Any happiness related to interpersonal human relationships have not likely changed much over time.

Did Hamlet's unhappiness have anything to do with his standard of living?

If someone asked me why people today aren't happier, then, after pointing out the hidden presumption that is at best a huge oversimplification and at worst completely wrong (are "people" really not any happier now than in 17th century France?), I'd say it's probably because people are still selfish and cruel to each other.
"But most of them will also make exceptions (and in writing) on a case-by-case basis once you prove you're a valuable employee."

The way you've phrased that implies that policy is reasonable. It isn't. Why should anybody have to prove that he is a valuable employee before he gets freedom to do what he wants (on a case-by-base basis) in his free time?
You gotta figure something's gone horribly wrong if you're still reading Plato for anything.

Anyone got some decent resources to wash away the taste of fail?
I don't think this is necessarily true, but in this case I'd agree with you. This link utterly fails to convince me that it's on topic.
For anyone else interested in downloading MIT lectures, I wrote a way to do it without using realplayer.

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Proposed HN Feature: The Cold Shoulder Button
So I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed a pattern on this site: Attached to many submissions is a one-sentence comment of the form "This is not for HN" with a certain number of upvotes. I confess to having posted a few such comments myself.

I'm wondering whether this pattern might be a site feature struggling to be born.

Perhaps every single article should come with a tiny button to press, with a label: "I believe this article is offtopic for HN".

I'm not talking about a downvote option, exactly. The downvote button on submissions has been suggested thousands of times by now, and a counter-argument -- a good one, IMHO -- is that enabling the downvoting of articles empowers gangs of organized downvoters to kill content from the site for arbitrary reasons. Everyone knows the kind of trouble that causes.

But that presumes that the downvote button is hooked up to something in the site's software. It doesn't need to be. Just display a tiny number that is the number of accumulated downvotes. Let the people who read each article, and decide whether to upvote it or not, choose whether or not to ignore that number.

In the absence of this feature, the users reinvent it for themselves, as we have seen again and again.

You may ask why the people who wish to express disapproval of an article can't just write a thoughtful post that explains why, instead of clicking a little DOWNVOTE button. The short answer is that to acknowledge a troll is to feed the troll. The longer answer is that some trolls are much more subtle than others: The ones who use rude one-liners are easy to spot, but there are others who will suck you into endlessly circling, long-winded, bad-faith arguments filled with chaff. You'll refute something, and they'll respond with a mixture of inaccurate and irrelevant bullet points; and you'll introduce good points of your own, and they'll be ignored in future posts; and if by some miracle you create a really compelling counter-argument, the troll will go away for two days and then come back, advancing the same argument that he did two days ago, as if the counter-argument had never existed. You can't avoid such people by engaging them -- engagement is what they want. You have to learn their reputations and politely but firmly avoid them.

Which I do. But that doesn't mean I want to sit idly by while effluvia overflows the front page of HN. The site could really use a "cold shoulder" button.
maintaining understandability, the feeling of control, and the pleasure of accomplishment.

There's also complexity of interactions between features.
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