skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I wonder if this is the common theme among many of us who try to put apps in the app store: figuring out what does not work. For our app: iEBT (which is an interface to a server allowing you to track your euro notes: eurobilltracker.com), we not only took a very tiny niche, but didn't think about marketing either.

What we did was this:
- picked a somewhat hight price point ($2)
This seemed to use like the sweetspot, with what we could live and what we would expect an
honest buyer to pay. (who knows?!)

- we wrote to the canonical forum, where we expected most of the potential users.
That resulted in an initial rush (two days after writing to the forum), but it wasn't
much at all.

- the domain iebtapp.com was registered prior to publishing, but contained nothing more
then a simple "Something's coming this december" string. Watching the server logs, there
seemed to be some who were trying to figure out where the link from the app pointed.

- after some time, we wrote the current, very limited text on iebtapp.com. Not even with images.
That seems to have resulted in a minor increase in sales.

- with some text on the website, we thought it was time to do some advertisement, and went with Google Ads.
This too seems to have resulted in a minor increase in sales.

And here's what we plan to do:
- add Appirater to the App. We have only a very few reviews, and they are not enough to get any star rating
on the AppStore. Maybe this helps, who knows. I will closely watch this.

Personal conclusion:
iOS development is really /a lot/ of fun. But I think we need to change two things:
- More marketing. But not all at once; results should be measurable.
- Niche markets, that are this tiny, can be a very high risk game. (Especially if someone
else, writes to the forum that he's going to release another iPhone app and lets people
sign up for the beta :-))

--
[1]: see iebtapp.com
I love how the ratings are all about being able to download it, but not use it.
Information security type here, and I would be interested in an invite to see the difference between Google+ and Facebook in regard to privacy and security.
> WHY?! WHY are they doing this again?

Maybe they want to work out the kinks before having 10 million users instantly. The privacy aspect of this will be very important, and the Buzz launch is an example of how opening up to everyone at the same time led to a large backlash.
I think OnSwipe on my iPad is an awful experience. I would do away with it wherever I see it, if I could. I am sorry the developers' feelings may be hurt but a bad UI/UX is bad regardless of the effort.
By default, Android phones store apps on an onboard storage location that is separate from the SD card. On some older phones there is not a whole lot of space here. For example it didn't take a whole lot at all for me to fill up my Nexus One's app partition.

It wasn't until 2.2 that the option to move apps to a encrypted location on the SD card was added, and even then it's an option that has to be enabled by the developer who released the app.

Newer phones these days have more onboard space and this shouldn't be nearly as big an issue. I upgraded to an HTC Thunderbolt on Saturday and it has roughly 2GB available for onboard apps.
I'm sure they'll allow private video chats. Hangouts is for when you are specifically "browsing". It'll be just as if you lived right down the street from your mother, siblings, aunts, coworkers, friends...

It currently is this way in the text world though. That annoying guy who argues with everything you post on Facebook or Twitter. And the worst part is you can't un-friend him because he's your weird uncle.
I totally agree. Wave died partially because when I got it, my friends didn't have it. And by the time the last of them got it, the rest of us didn't care any more.

Had we been able to all get on at once, we might have found a killer app for it and never given it up.
Can't even click +1. Gives me the error "Oops... you need a Google profile to use this feature. Google Profiles is not available for your organization." since I am logged into a Google Apps account. Google itself force-merged my personal account into the Apps account, so there's an indication of how well they get 'social' in people's lives. And yes I worked there for many years.
This is fantastic news! If I am on another unproductive cross-country flight watching mindless iTunes rental movies on my iPad instead of working (or reading HN) I'm going to go crazy.
That ship? Maybe not, but my 1.5 year old G1 is full and I'll have it for a while still.
Apologies; some of the documentation is outdated.

I'm in the middle of a revamping of the runtime and its libraries, which will hopefully be released in a few weeks.
I think that's true for small startups, but for someone like Google? Presumably, nearly everyone with a gmail address will already be a user, which means that there won't be any migration hassles - "I'd join, but Timmy and Jimbo aren't on GooBook yet!"
Maintaining consistency is an issue. In many cases, though, the external attributes are generally extractable from the file content itself, so you can do a rebuild if the data gets corrupted.

The BeOS mail application used the extended attributes extensively. Its mail store was basically a bunch of flat files containing the messages (perhaps in folders corresponding to the mail folders), and the extended attributes were used to index the date, sender, etc. These indices were then used to generate mail views, respond to searches, etc. - the mail app could effectively be a custom file system browser that used the extended attributes to speed itself up and quickly access and search mail metadata.
The challenges Google Plus faces are quite apparent from the end of the article page. Right next to the link to page 2 there is:

Connect with The New York Times on Facebook.
My Optimus V has a tiny amount of on-board space, so 8MBs is actually a big deal.

Some apps can't move to the SD card, moving there means things like notifications from that app won't work any more. It's a terrible architectural decision, but my understanding is that it is a limitation of the VM, so they're stuck with it now.
Doesn't work for people using an Apps account:

Oops... you need a Google profile to use this feature.
Google Profiles is not available for your organization.
I agree. Circles seem really well thought out. I also like the hangouts idea, especially auto-switching focus based on speaker volume, which is again similar to offline interactions.
I realize that for most FPS or RTS titles, Redis might not be a perfect fit because the dataset is small for each map and the number of players never exceeds some preset limit like 64, but I think Redis might really shine as a means of storing persistent world data - for example MMOs, without having to shard heavily. Most modern MMOs use heavy sharding and can really only support a couple hundred players in the same area or shard at the same time. With Redis, you might be able to handle many thousands of players in the same area without sharding. You don't need sub-millisecond response time - as long as you can do most operations in a few milliseconds, things will be fine, since most players are on ~100 millisecond WAN connections anyway.

You might finally be able to break the model that current large games like WoW use - heavily sharded with all persistent data stored in Oracle. Redis should allow you to shard less and use SQL less, resulting in a much better experience, especially when parts of the virtual world get crowded.
+100

I just hope that Google will see this and internally realize what's ACTUALLY broken in the Android Market and solve the real problems that exist.

I REALLY hope they see these comments and think "I sure wish there were a way to communicate with my users...." Which is a problem all of the Market publishers have been complaining about for over a year.
I think this has huge potential. The problem with Facebook, at least for me, is that I have a ton of friends that post pointless shit. < 10% Is stuff and people I actually care about.

Now with features like Circles I can put my REAL friends in one circle, family in another, and all the noise and acquaintances(networking etc.) in a spam filter circle.

This is going to be awesome.
Circles is very interesting, its could solve a work/life/parents social battle I fight, however the demo only allows you to add a person to one circle, I hope this is just a demo limitation, as my sister is also my 'friend'.
Creature & Castles - HTML5 Game converted from iOS (disclaimer: I wrote it)
The same people who use Facebook because they

a) don't know about the privacy issues, or

b) don't care, or

c) use it to promote their business (much like Pages on Facebook.)
I wonder how this All-You-Can-Watch model works with demand fluctuation. What happens if for some blockbuster movies they get more people than they can serve?
I mean "direct" as in as few abstractions as possible, and "raw" as in as close to the metal as possible.

I am used to writing native loops in Javascript, so taking your example I would usually write:

var length = list.length;
while (length--) sum += list[length].amount;

Here, the hand-tuned Javascript is 38% smaller than the compiled CoffeeScript, albeit a few more characters to type than the source CoffeeScript. The reverse while loop is also slightly faster to execute than the for loop in the compiled CoffeeScript.

And I know that forEach loops incur additional overhead so I use them when it's convenient, when the arrays are small. I don't need to compile my Javascript just to keep from accidentally using forEach in situations where native loops would be better. I usually try to think about these things when I code and I enjoy being able to decide when to use a forEach loop, when to use a reverse while or a vanilla for loop etc. Sometimes, it's good to be specific in how you write code.

Furthermore, I would write for loops more succinctly than the compiled CoffeeScript in your example. You can use a for loop to declare the "item", "_i" and "_len" variables inside the loop itself without writing them twice. There's no need for the temporary item variable and the for loop is then short enough to be on one line:

for (var _i = 0, _len = list.length; _i < _len; _i++) sum += list[_i].amount;

Here, the hand-tuned Javascript is 32% smaller than the compiled CoffeeScript.

I don't mind typing a few more characters if it means I can get closer to the code and serve smaller, faster code to users (or servers). If it means just one less deployment step, or one less 3rd party dependency, or one less leaky abstraction, it's worth it. I think this proves true in the cases above, where CoffeeScript certainly makes the compiled code longer, slower than it needs to be.
Open source software is also copyrighted
Thanks, I use the same combination, but haven't needed to make any new parses in a while. I'll read up on lxml for the next time.
What was FB's initial college roll out? Tens of thousands of users? I suspect Google would have several times that many in the few minutes of a full roll out.
Start Where You Are With What You Have
There are several reasons I am hopeful for this.

1. It looks CLEAN
While in my opinion one major reason Facebook ended up beating out Myspace was its wonderful interface, I feel like recent renditions have just lost that simplicity. I want connecting with my friends to be simple, not a bombardment of Farmville updates and a poorly designed messaging system.

2. Sparks
Hopefully Google will succeed where Facebook has failed in actually making keeping track of your interests, well...interesting.

3. Circles
Friend management in Facebook has always been one of my biggest complaints, Circles seems to be a legitimate approach to making organizing your friends a little bit more intuitive.

I am very excited to see Google+ roll out to the masses, and I do hope it is successful. Not because I want it to take Facebook down, but I think it wouldn't hurt to make them break a little sweat and think about their users a bit more.
Wow, why do they make the user manage this at all? The distinction sounds like an enormous misfeature to me.
When I look at this demo, I just think about sporks.

Sporks are so cool! They are a spoon AND a fork! But they never replaced actual spoons and forks. Because while sporks are an improvement over the old design, they just weren't better enough for people to bother to switch.

People moved from myspace to facebook because myspace got too slow and spammy. Also facebook was "cool" because initially only kids in prestigious colleges could get an account.

Google+ needs either some killer feature that is so much better than facebook that it compels people to switch (if they have one they haven't shown it yet) or facebook needs to become unusable in the same way myspace became unusable.
There's also Steam, which makes a bunch of sales off gamers, the notorious pirates they are.
Ya, this is one of the things that bugs me most about Bitcoin… And there isn't really any way to “fix” it apart from accepting a transaction after a smaller number of confirmations.
The sad thing about Turntable.fm
You can create friend lists on Facebook. I don't use them (I just hide people who spam) but they seem to do what you want..
On Facebook, why don't you just hide the people you're not interested in?
Agreed. It's become nothing more than another line item to point to clients (or to the C-suite if you're in-house) to say how much progress an SEO campaign has supposedly made. But that's important to a lot of folks, particularly clients who're trying to measure the ROI of SEO efforts in the same manner as their paid program(s). Finding out it has little importance for them would be like finding out Santa Claus isn't real.
I think Google's unending efforts to enter social networking space might become successful this time. Big hurrah to circles and hangouts!
Is Google+ being advertised that way? I see that in the news articles about Google+, but not in Google's own materials.
It's the feature I hear the most people complain about Facebook and Twitter lacking, that's for sure.
Elephants can do collaborative work; why do we wonder?
Corner desk (if private office is not an option), large dual monitors, whiteboard, Aeron chair, height-adjustable desk, little lounger for PM naps...
Reality check: like it says, it converts a subset of Flash 8 content.

It means it converts a subset of content that was made for a version of Flash that is 6 years old (Flash 8 was released in 2005; Adobe is about to release Flash Player 11).

Sorry, this is not the "Flash killer" you're looking for.
AFAIK you can put people in several circles.
If G+ knows individuals, then search results served to other known (or unknown) individuals could reflect the subject individual's 'circles' settings. Ergo, individuals in general have a significant, possibly material, incentive to take part in G+ to the greatest extent possible.

search > social
I definitely tried to sign up and after submitting the form on the "Keep me Posted" page, I got a 500 internal server error. Good job google
Um, I think all of the Google people interviewed have gone out of their way to say it isn't a "Facebook competitor". I assume this is just a copy-editor at the NYTimes who sees it that way.
Also, I believe that if you've got port forwarding setup correct/your Bitcoin client isn't behind a firewall the confirmations will get out faster because you'll be able to connect to a larger number of peers (eg, without port forwarding setup I usually have ~8 connections, while with port forwarding I get ~100).
Flash instead of HTML5.......
LeapFrog's LeapPad Explorer - a $99 tablet for kids
Its probably more likely google buys Facebook! So don't hold your breath on facebook letting any of there data slip into google+.
Thats not how its works. For me the problem is the content, not the people behind it.
I bet your App Admin can set this up for you to allow it access. I don't know 100%, but I'd recommend checking it out.
I didn't say anything about the ratio, the male/female distribution is irrelevant and would posit that anyone harboring feelings of self doubt or insecurity about their skills will find tech conferences or workshops intimidating, irregardless of their sex. My first GoogleI/O, for instance, was nerve wracking and I barely spoke with anyone on technical matters - even armed with a CS degree and (admittedly miniscule) male genitalia. Feelings are not fact, a little courage and interaction can go a long way.
For example, I prefer not to see stuff like Pope Benedict's twitter posts. This may be put in the "random shit" category where people who like that stuff can go and see what they want to see. Maybe another category for acquisitions. Even using tags would be beneficial. This is HN! shouldn't it be improving? You can always maintain the current look by having the front page using the same ranking algo, just at least add other categories/tags. Maybe this exists. If it does, sorry for posting.
I find it hard to think this is a "start" when two other similar tools already exist that do the same thing (forgot the names, sorry).

A "subset of Flash 8" seems to be easy but that's not even close to what Flash can currently do (Flash 8 is 6 years old already). It means the rest just seems to be impossible.
Then remove him from the circle.
From the blog post:

That’s the Google+ project so far: Circles, Sparks, Hangouts and mobile. We’re beginning in Field Trial, so you may find some rough edges, and the project is by invitation only
My apologies! I had to rip out js-bidirectional-input out, and didn't update the documentation to reflect that. The documentation linked from the "API" link there is unfortunately stale, and I haven't had the time to update it. (Most of my time right now is dedicated to a new version of the evaluator, discussed at the bottom of this post.)

The Wescheme environment is meant to pair with the curriculum of the Bootstrap project (http://www.bootstrapworld.org/)

Here are some examples that highlight the features in WeScheme. Each includes both a runner and a live editor link to the source code.

A simple game:

http://www.wescheme.org/view?publicId=messy-humor-truck-adopt-outdo

A sierpenski triangle program:

http://www.wescheme.org/view?publicId=pasty-brawl-frank-vomit-would

A more substantial demo of the image libraries:

http://www.wescheme.org/view?publicId=haste-foggy-grief-hatch-gloom

A simple 1-tick-per-section counter that resets when you press the button:

http://www.wescheme.org/view?publicId=queer-decay-slush-speck-stage

I'm in the middle of a rewrite of the underlying evaluator and libraries during this summer (http://hashcollision.org/whalesong), and hope to deliver in the next few weeks so that people can play with it.
The demo wasn't that smooth for me, my mouse would slow up considerably on a friend which I assume wasn't intentional. Like hitting some grass on your bike!

(running chrome on an i5)
Here's a quick (15 minute) mockup of what I'm talking about:

http://imgur.com/o5sp1

The iPhone graphic is swiped from a Kotaku article about iPhone motion controls, and the arrows are kind of terrible, but this is the basic idea. Frankly, the "Gryroscope Controls" is probably too techy for a screenshot ad like this, the text "Motion Controls" would probably sell better with mention of the gyroscope in the app description for those who realize what that is and why it's better than what was available pre-gyroscope:

http://imgur.com/7T9T5

EDIT: Here's the PSD file if you want to copy the styles or anything: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6692701/gyroscope.psd
I'm afraid it might not be... and that's a deal-killer. You can't mess up the most important feature of your social network like this. Now faced with having to choose one particular bucket people will just throw everyone into one big bucket or not use the site at all.
Maybe I haven't been paying enough attention, but Flash circa 2011 doesn't seem all that much better than Flash circa 2005. If it gets them on iPhones, I think most people would happily take Flash 8 and possibly not even notice the downgrade.
Google Yawn
Apparently there are many good arguments for Mercurial, and many bad arguments for mercurial. The author says:

"These questions matter. And they’ve been answered, very eloquently, many times."

I've used CVS, svn, bzr, and git - I'm still a newbie on those last two and therefore persuadable - so where do I read these Hg answers? Seriously, I'm not doubting that they exist, but I'm getting the impression that google results will be polluted, and I'm not sure even the most beatific tweet stream is going to pull me in; but I will peruse the tweet recommended http://hginit.com/

Seriously, where are the issues carefully explained and addressed?
You must have only seen this phrase in places where it was used in the bright, sparkling, professorial manner assumed by your comment. I take no offense when it appears in a textbook, where the intent is to have me practice a skill. I do object to its appearance in a journal article, however; that is a context where you are supposed to communicate findings as clearly and concisely as possible. In particular, I've come across its use more and more often where one of the following likely applies:

1. it is doubtful that the author has actually done the work to prove his own assertion, and uses the phrase to cast his own burden on the reader,

2. the author has possibly done the work, but can't be bothered to condense it to the quality required for publication,

3. showing the work would clearly be useful for the target audience, but the author is more concerned with making the material appear difficult, or

4. the author is being ironic, because the assertion is either superfluous, outright incorrect, or known to be unprovable.

In fact, all these bad use-cases are common sources of humor among math nerds (http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/e/exerciseleftasan.html), (http://abstrusegoose.com/12), (http://fasterdonuts.tumblr.com/post/4516834904/the-proof-is-...) ... so I think I'm being fair in calling this phrase a trope. As in, its overuse is well-known, tolerated, and occasionally ridiculed.

tldr: I am indeed complaining about bad writing, not the subject--specifically that "left as an exercise" has become a common idiom behind which bad writers in math and CS hide, and its inappropriate use is now all too common.
Seems like they're trying to avoid the "NYT problem" - the minute they open a new product, the NYT and other pubs write it up, everyone floods it and sees if they like it... gives them no ability to tweak / improve the service iteratively with real life users (which is so important for social services, where alternative agendas are a huge issue) before the world rushes in. So I think a limited-access launch is totally understandable, if a bit frustrating for those of us who expect we should be able to see everything on day one.
While I mostly agree with you, I hope this makes Facebook sweat a little bit. They have been doing a lot of things lately that a lot of people have not been happy with. But if Google is willing to throw their full weight behind + and improve upon where Facebook has fallen short, I don't think Facebook is too big to fall.
Google Buzz is a good example of how forcing an active account on everyone at the same time led to a large backlash.

There's a pretty wide gulf between opening up and forcing it on people. You can't build a social networking sites if it isn't open to people in your users' social networks. But you also can't build a site people trust and want to use by forcing it on them.