skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A friend and I quit our jobs to start a mobile game company. The toughest things are we have to work like crazy to meet self-imposed deadlines and deal with a bunch of non-programming related issues like marketing and distribution.

Mobile games are the easiest to get into (since you can rely on the app distribution models from Apple, Google, and Microsoft) and you don't need to think too much about cramming your software into a box.

Our game is called Bouncy Mouse, and we're about to release our first major update with new content and new game modes. We've got over 1 million downloads on Android, but fewer on iOS since discoverability on iTunes is difficult due to major companies buying their way into the top spots through ads and promotions. Competing on iOS is hard primarily due to this reason, though Apple did feature us for a week or two, which was great.

The classic gaming market is still huge and healthy. I would like to branch out into that market once we have some more resources (e.g. once we're larger than two people and have a little cash to finance bigger budget art, music, design, etc.)

You can check out our website here. :) http://www.bouncymousegame.com/
Zynga's Profits down 95%
Mostly correct. Opera servers compress pages before passing them along to the mobile device. [0]

[0] http://www.opera.com/mobile/features/
Will advanced biometrics automate future war machines?
For those of us working on mobile browsers this means a whole new set of implementation quirks we have to deal with even without the server side assist they are including. Even if they choose webkit as the rendering engine god knows what the event system will behave like.
And Amazon knows that. They will still be selling the 'old' Kindle at the current price.
>> The Kindle Fire will have a 7-inch display and sell for $199, compared with $499 for Apple’s cheapest iPad, Amazon executives said in interviews with Bloomberg Businessweek.

I'm not sure that Amazon told Bloomberg "The Kindle Fire will have a 7-inch display and sell for $199, compared with $499 for Apple’s cheapest iPad". I understood that as "Amazon told us it was $200, now we're going to make a reference to the iPad, because we just can't not."
Everything you say seems to back up my point about scrum not empowering developers.

"If a product owner decides to bin a feature, it's because it has been weighed against the options available and decided that this feature is no longer valuable to the company."

And therefore the sweat a developer has put into creating this feature is not valued. Scrum pretty much ensures that developers will at some point create stuff that will never see the light of day. Hardly empowering.

"'Wasting' the developer time as you have stated it is a misnomer, as I would say developing a product you know wont be used by a customer is wasting time."

I would not necessarily disagree with you but it is hardly empowering for a developer.

Scrum is designed to empower the business, not the developer.
micro/SD slot?

I guess after xmas they wil introduce the 3G version with other subtle improvements - surprised they aren't going to use their whispernet.
It is. It redirects to wordpress from http://www.amazon.com/silk
Nurse-mental-health-Rn-MENTAL-HEALTH
Actually the ectaco jetbook, a cheap ebook reader I got over a year ago as superb PDF support. It automatically zooms in past margins, loads all graphics and text, turns pages quickly, even on monster sized textbook PDF files. This cheap piece of hardware handles PDFs better than my (albeit cheap) android tablet. If only they had a version with a decent screen size, it would be the killer device for textbook reading.
That is a fairly standard number for a tablet. iPad, Touchpad, Galaxy Tab, nook color are all in that neighborhood. Anything better means a bigger battery = more weight and thickness.
UniCredit Predicts Imminent End Of Eurozone & A Global Financial Apocalypse
So... from the sounds of it... they rebuilt what Opera Mobile does and what RIM does with Blackberry?

They offload some of the compositing and some of the fetching and asset flattening server side, and then serve up to the device with custom protocol the pre-rendered flattened data anything that can be done server side. That is exactly the same way those other accelerator products already work for mobile.

While it's a nice design, it's been done. The limitations and issues are well know as well, like having trouble with private intranet sites and VPNs or that because all the requests come from a few centralized IPs, geoip doesn't offer any benefit (GEOIP is a hack anyways but sites use it and users get confused when their pages think they are where ever some colo is). It also creates a single point of failure which, pedantically, is counter to the design of the internet.

I was a little inflamed by the video's first statement that browsers have been built pretty much the same as they were since the beginning without many innovations. Sounds like marketing spin. I can name several notable amazing advancements in browser design since the days of WordWideWeb at CERN and Mosaic. A good number of amazing achievements around security for sure.

Also, on top of that, you know what happens when Silk touches Fire? It's not pretty.
Amazon Kindle Fire hands-on
On the page I link to, Amazon says "We've refactored and rebuilt the browser software stack to push pieces of the computation into the AWS cloud. This lets Silk do more work, more quickly, and all at once. We call this “split browser” architecture."

Computation (in the context of webpages) indicates JS to me, though they concievably could mean DOM construction. I'm fairly skeptical that transmitting a serialized DOM and unpacking it could be more efficient over mobile network connections that is using our time-honored DOM serialization, HTML.

I do hope I'm wrong, as I can't see how this sort of proxy can be healthy for the web, but I don't think my speculations are out if the realm of reasonable given the information.
It's powered by a WebKit engine. Amazon Silk jobs are asking for Webkit engineers [1]. Presumably, they've modded the underlying Android browser.

[1] https://us-amazon.icims.com/jobs/152694/job?in_iframe=1
Amazon Bundles Amazon Prime with Kindle Fire: BRILLIANT.
This is about an OS-layer API, not a windowing toolkit API. Tying the window to a thread at this layer makes it impossible to have a single-threaded UI application. It is inflexible.
'Flavor Tripping' Explained: How Miracle Fruit Turns Sour Into Sweet
New Apple Iphone 5 image Gallery
What I want to see is how the app market will pan out. I can only assume (and didn't previously consider) that this will not carry Google branding at all - that means the Android Market, Gmail, Maps, etc, apps will all be missing.

The Android Market would be the big loss here. Amazon seems to take more control over the selling of your product than you do once you submit to their Appstore, but if you want to show up on their tablets, you won't have a choice.
Reading can be passive or active. As an active reader I highlight and annotate my books, so the keyboard is invaluable for me.
> It's amazing how quick Google picks up changes to Wordpress.com blogs.

Via PubSubHubBub, right? http://mashable.com/2010/03/03/wordpress-pubsubhubbub/
The price increase is because Amazon don't have an ad-supported network for non-US territories; so the $79 Kindle becomes the $109 Kindle.

The UK store is selling this Kindle for £89.

Are you really that surprised that Amazon add $50 for shipping and import duties on this product? I don't think this particular case is an example of Amazon screwing the international market.

Not releasing the Fire or Touch on the international markets whatsoever is them screwing us ^.^
Currently on Opera Mini, yes. Personally I think it's a good idea, and can't wait for it to expand to pre-compiling Javascript.
What is success? Game companies are easy to start and frequent to close down.

Recommendation: Contract iPhone development or Android development. Get a decent but minimal app in the App Store using Unity or Cocos2d, and recruiters / devs will be falling over themselves to hire you.

Consoles are a really crappy market. The CEO of the console company I used to work for really wanted to get into mobile. That was before the company tanked due to publisher shenanigans.
Amazon Kindle is on Fire - Jeff Bezos declared war on the iPad
Trader on the BBC Says Eurozone Market Will Crash
.vspii {
display: none !important;
}

Will hide the buttons that display the "preview" thing when you mouse over them.
Kindle Fire: Amazon as a B2B Service Provider
Really very nice, and I appreciate the time and effort you put into this. Have to say, though, that the Facebook association leaves a bad taste.
Funny how all of the e-ink kindles have 4:3 aspect ratio screens but the Fire is widescreen. It lends credibility to reports that it's based on a previously existing Android tablet design.

Amazon must realise it's sub-optimal, but now developers will be stuck supporting it even if they later release a 4:3 device.
Same. But I know others (like my brother, a student) who use it a ton.

They can keep selling the Kindle3 with keyboard for those who want it.
I want to see a minimal solution in APL.
Unfortunately Kindle Fire is only available for shipping in the US. I think the Amazon account linked to it might also need a credit card with a US billing address
no-no, they mean that these are special offer prices. Normal pricing will be more expensive.
I think this may be much more than Operas method. Note that it includes formatting, layout and display. This makes me think they essentially run a clone of the browser on ec2 and could literally swap in the completed Dom, and layout. Or even a a memory diff.
Having a persistent connection would also allow local events (clicks etc) to be sent back to mirror the state as you interact with the page.
Interesting! The mention of the NYSE wasn't in the article when I read it. Good to see they updated it.
Touchable e-ink has existed for a while. See for example Kobo Touch.
A bit late to the party, but... I'm the single founder behind Jitbit Software (website: http://www.jitbit.com/) tho, I'm in the process of bringing in a co-founder, since it's really getting out of control, I can't live like that any more.

I do both web-based apps (bestselling one is "Jitbit Helpdesk") and traditional apps for Windows (bestselling is Macro Recorder), just look at the web-site.

I started almost 6 years ago and WORKED REALLY FREAKING HARD, no secret here. I literally had no sleep for weeks. After 3 years I quit my job and went full time. Last year (2010) was $210k in profits. Also, 2010 was the first year I brought in more remote devs and support people since it was getting really hard...

We have kids so no continuous travelling for us (every kid needs a home, with his own room, his own bed + teddybear)... But we can choose to live in any place we want (we chose London).
In Canada, spottify is illegal. So I had to "hack the system" to get an "illegal" software in order to get music legally. (Had to register and download the app from a us proxy and asked a friend living in us to pay with his credit card.)
> Also, it's disingenuous. Of course a 7" "tablet" is cheaper than Apple's 10" tablet. Film at 11.

It isn't obvious that the screen size is really the sticking point on price for tablets. The iPod touch retails for $229 and is much smaller than 7".

They are just comparing tablet products. If Apple had a 7" iPad and Amazon were comparing their prices to a 10" iPad, then it would be disingenuous. As it is, Apple only has a 10" tablet, so that is really the only comparison that can be made on price.
You decide whats good
You argue for more control, but tying windows to threads at the OS layer is actually enforcing less control.
Your tablet can never be a replacement for your laptop. Period.
This is precisely what you want the consumer thinking, and it's amazing that a simple fact like that eluded the likes of Samsung, etc.
Weirdly enough, last night I posted a project skeleton up on GH: https://github.com/wickedchicken/ocaml_skeleton

While the core OCaml language is fun to play around in, a lot of the build tools are scattered across the web and hard to decipher (4 year old blog posts with only half-working code don't help). This aims to remedy that, and I'd appreciate any feedback :).
Do they really need a special browser for this? Why not use a proxy like Google's web accelerator?
I bet everybody who was a stakeholder in the release of this project had a long talk about messaging this a'la Steve Jobs.
http://www.google.com/search?q=test&nota=1 seems to trigger the 'classic' layout when visiting with an iPad user agent. When visiting with an iPhone user agent 'nota' is replaced with 'nomo' to get the classic layout. Both offer the cache links (they appear to be the same page, at a glance).

Sadly they are doing user agent sniffing and those parameters do nothing when I revert my user-agent back to the desktop Safari default. It seems that nearly all Google sites do user agent sniffing to determine what version of the site to serve, sometimes even going as far as to prevent you logging in at all if you aren't using an approved browser [1].

[1] https://plus.google.com/not-supported/
To be fair, Amazon is doing what our ISPs do already: cache sites to deliver it faster.

Also, Amazon's privacy statement says you can make Silk a normal browser by selecting the "off-cloud" mode [1]. Off-cloud mode allows web pages to go directly to the device rather than pass through their servers. I'm sure most users won't know of this option but at least it is an option.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=...
And again, all of this is US only. I don't understand this, they are able to ship a standard Kindle to Europe, why not a Kindle Touch?
Amazon Silk FAQ
It's true that Google is able to crawl and index content that's contained within a hidden div. Obviously don't use this to hide a load of text on a page to manipulate search results - you'll get caught if it wouldn't pass a manual review - but it's useful to know this if you've got a legitimate reason to do so (e.g. you've got a navigation that isn't revealed until a link is clicked, or a box that displays the contents of the hidden dev when a "More Info" link is clicked, etc).
I'm pretty disappointed that they didn't update the DX. I was hoping for a DX with touch and decent PDF support, and would have payed $400+ for it. As it stands, it looks like they have orphaned it instead.
Meanwhile, in non-fiction...

http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/facelook-coca-colas-facial-re...
Xerox PARC Philosophy was to dismantle the wall between developers and users
See if my comment elsewhere here is of use to you http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3048411

I find the smaller E-ink screens a great fit for comfortable reading of fiction, or non-fiction prose like biography or history, where one doesn't need to skip around much, and the font size adjustment may come in handy.
Regarding the Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire
How much does their Android experience differ from the norm? How wide is my app selection?
However: Current technological trends suggest that most current limitations will keep fading over time

I'd say that is pretty unsettling, but then I worry about privacy. Given how facial recognition has advanced in the last 5 years, it's plausible that you could have an Android app to do their SSN trick with, say, 50% accuracy in the next couple of years - certainly 5.
They do:

"You can also choose to operate Amazon Silk in basic or 'off-cloud' mode. Off-cloud mode allows web pages generally to go directly to your computer rather than pass through our servers. As such, it does not take advantage of Amazon’s cloud computing services to speed-up web content delivery." [1]

[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=...
Hrm, DDG's Privacy Policy http://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html is enough reason to move over, methinks! Now to move muscle memory from g to d. ;)
that works, but probably a better technique is to put in a normal h1 and assign the image to background of that element. then use text-indent to thow the display of the text off screen (as is commonly done). like this:

h1 { background-image: url(foo.png); text-indent: -999em; }

of course, you then have to give dimensions to the h1 to show the whole picture, but i leave that as an exercise for the reader.
That was the only way to get the music legally?
They do claim they're going to monitor browsing patterns. More food for their recommendation engines.
Indeed. However, it's probably worth pointing out that Schelling's approach didn't work very well for the US in Vietnam. That old bastard McNamara, reflecting on the same period in The Fog of War, suggests that understanding your opponent's feelings is a lot more important than understanding the negotiation in a game-theoretic way.
Accurate results for technical topics brought me to Google, and all the extra query formatting that's required these days is somewhat irritating.

Another peeve is that the search box on the results page (with Instant disabled) routinely drops input or moves the insertion point.
Some sort of stylus would be a more natural fit for that. A keyboard would just slow you down (selecting text, marking it, annotating)
That's a pretty good summary I think. I'm sure he's a nice guy, but he comes across as an arrogant prick on his podcast and it seems to be boiling over into his blog as well.

I just can't enjoy reading or listening to him anymore.
I'm annoyed because Amazon added a big banner on the US website that the kindle was available in my country but neglected to mention what the price was going to be. In order to find out I had to go through the checkout process and type in my CC number (even though my CC is already on file) just to get to the point where they tell me what it's going to cost.

I expect the number on the site to roughly correspond to the amount I actually have to pay. I don't expect there to be nearly a $100 difference. That's a hostile sales tactic and I don't appreciate it.

After I select my country (on the kindle page itself) the price should immediately change to $109 (+$28 shipping + $28 duties). Then I wouldn't be complaining.
I’d like to hear more about what “facilitate” means.

Is the connection from the device right through EC2 out to the site secure, even from Amazon?

Or, is the connection from the device to Amazon secure, and the connection from Amazon to the site secure, but Amazon is acting as a man-in-the-middle?

Or, is the connection from the device to Amazon insecure, Amazon is acting as a man-in-the-middle, but the connection from Amazon to the site is secure?

I may be having a slow neuron day, but the wording of the FAQ doesn’t seem to definitively state which of these three cases holds?
This is a common media strategy. It is a win-win situation:

a) Amazon rep. unofficially approves a "leaky" article just before the press conference.
b) Bloomberg journalist guarantees a front page story on their web page.
c) Amazon reaps the benefits of more coverage

You are forgetting that Amazon Press Conferences, without these advance buzz giving messages would not be even 10% of what Apple conferences are. Now they get at least a half of that.

Everybody in America is waking up. Everybody in Europe is bored at work. Everybody in Asia is enjoying their evening.

Ideal.
Your game looks really nice ! Maybe the next angry birds ? :-)
Amazing Transparent Screen Optical Illusion..
I don't think there should be a redirect. That's unexpected behavior. It wouldn't be bad to have the "Unknown or expired link" actually link to the home page--or better, have all or part of the navigation header on the page as an escape hatch.
OneSky: translation management platform
He said he used `display:hidden` which isn't valid CSS (and doesn't hide anything) Might be a typo but regardless I think this deserves more investigation.
Yes, it does take into account text that is hidden from view. This used to be (still is in some places) a deceptive tactic to rank a page higher in the search results. You could hide a massive block of keywords out of site of your visitor, or hide links to sites that you want ranking higher. Alternatively, more malicious people would (and still do) hack into a website in order to hide links in this same manner. The website owner isn't likely to notice them if they aren't visible on a page.

Google is pretty good at figuring out what is there for legitimate reasons versus spam.
I can't help but think of the Kindle commercial on the beach where the iPad owner asks the Kindle owner, "It works in sunlight?"
Eric Ries Digs Below the Surface of Lean Startup
The invoice for the install was 34K. You get back 33% from the fed. ~25% from the MA rebate, and another $1K back from MA taxes. I only had to write a check for the 34K minus the MA rebate (which MA writes a check to the installer before the work starts) so ~25K, but with the other tax rebates (already modified my W4 so "getting back" the fed 33% right now and not waiting until next April) the total I have to invest will be ~15K.

More notes on the whole install

http://benjamin-meyer-home.blogspot.com/2011/08/solar-panels...

http://benjamin-meyer-home.blogspot.com/2011/08/solar-panel-...
That'd be important if they were positioning this as an Android device, but other than a brief one-word mention, they're not.

Amazon is clearly trying to create their own Apple-esque eco-system around this. And they'll probably do rather well.
Agreed. This might be ex post rationalization, but the keyboard helps me form thoughts. I've got no problem with it (but we definitely agree on the stylus).
Ways to become an Expert of seo
Object Oriented Concurrency: A Deep Dive into Celluloid
7.5 hours of continuous video playback is pretty good I think. And for my average reading time per day, it's plenty. You will have to recharge this thing daily but whatever. I already do that with my phone.
A Practical Guide to API Security and OAuth for the Enterprise
Over the past half year I've been exploring Haskell and so naturally my interest has recently piqued at OCaml. Thank you for this, it couldn't have come at a better time. I wonder if you think it would be worth including camlp4/p5 in the skeleton?
You might suffer from decision fatigue - without even knowing it
The difference between Amazon and the other manufacturers is that Amazon isn't selling this as Android. They are selling it as a proprietary tablet that they support as such.

The other manufacturers sell "Android" devices, and when it doesn't work, they point fingers in all directions.
Funny tip: It was only last weekend I discovered than an iPad works with polarized sunglasses on, IF you use it in landscape mode.

That was a major d'oh realization. I hope for Amazon's sake, the Fire works in sunlight.
All 3 of your examples are viable; and you're right, Obj-C isn't that hard to read once you understand the syntax.
8 hours reading :(

(vs 3 weeks for e-ink)
Sorry about that, I suppose I should'nt lay true faith on the HN dup detector. I typically delete a dup, but for some reason the conversation on this thread has been hot.
This guy assumed responsibility at least. The Wall Street guys in 2008 demanded retention bonuses instead. I don't propose suicide but I would like to see CEOs being a bit more shocked when their actions turn out to be a total disaster. I think it would be better for the country.
Amazon Prime is available from Amazon UK.
Hmm I'm not so sure... My iPad can replace my laptop for basically everything but work. Web browsing, listening/browsing/buying music, twitter et al, emails, games, books, movies/tv shows, etc, etc.
This was hilarious, I was working for a company that supplied software to hedge funds at the the time. I was laughing my ass off that the hedge fund guys got taken so badly by a bunch of car makers. Looks like German financial engineering is as highly regarded as German automotive engineering.
The people who made the stupid decisions were rewarded pretty well. Weideking still sits on a few hundred million euros. This seems to be the new "free market".