skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Define worse. When I got an iPhone, my iPod went into complete disuse, and I ended up giving it to a friend. The iPhone/iPod touch interface is, to me, far and away better than the original iPod interface. This was then bolstered with the new earbuds that added volume control to the pre-existing track control on the mic/clicker.

It certainly has less drive space than older iPods, but I have yet to fill up my iPhone. I understand using the old iPod as a portable hard drive, but storing your entire music collection on it never made sense to me - which is why I gladly traded the smaller drive space for the better interface.
I think the battery will be a big drawback of Fire compared to E-ink "traditional" kindle.
Well actually they don't mention what version of Android because they have modified it so much it probably doesn't matter. On the other hand, they DO mention how much ram and internal storage it has.
I happen to like what I find at the Clark's outlet. The one I go to holds a yearly sale where you can get shoes from $20-$40 (at up to a 70% discount). So I got some pretty awesome leather dress shoes for $20. And the sneakers that I bought last year look like they'll last another several years.

Even at retail / discounted retail they're a good price for the quality.
"You’ve got nothing to lose, save for some “geek cred.”"

Maybe you underestimate the importance of feeling like you fit in. Being ostracized from your group is painful and can even lead to being left out of new information, like the up-and-coming programming languages, etc. It can lead to people saying, "He's not a team player" and it actually affecting your job.

Another problem is that you've defined 'better' as you see it, and not as your peers see it. You think you're better than them, but you aren't really. It's all an ego trip for you.
Seeking input on the next round of fightaging.org site changes
>Even better, it doesn't cost Amazon a dime to keep Target stores open.

Since vendors often pay retailers for prime shelf space, Amazon might in fact contribute to keeping Target stores open. Still, I get what you mean.
Forget about desktop. Its really hard make money if you are novice. Start from from mobile(cocos2d as already suggested is good helper in your way)
somehow, i doubt it. samsung doesn't currently sell a whole lot of non-android smartphones.
I read your post but I still don't know why I must care about fashion? I try to develop my programming skills, I try to educate myself, I try to be a kind person, I go to gym frequently and I eat well. But the fashion sense is not something I'm interested, I just want to be comfortable.
I checked Put This On and I didn't like the style.
I never really understood why pagination links expire. Most sites don't expire, you just have to deal with knowing that content that WAS on page 3 when you loaded page 2 might have changed.
Capes make their way to the boardroom
No. No they are not. People don't buy samsung phones, they buy android phones made by samsung. Now, may they drop android in the future? possibly. but thats a lot less likely than bada overtaking android in the us, or intel being able to brand its own OS successfully.
Sure ultimately it was the publisher's decision to go to the agency model but if Apple and Amazon held firm it would have been a win for the consumer. Apple decided to take a swipe at one of its competitors which in the end hurt consumers by allowing for ebooks to be priced artificially.
>> It is no coincidence that technically inept business types are known as "suits."

I thought that term originated back when working people had to wear uniforms, and that it was more of a class separation thing.
Curiously, the iPhone 4 works in both modes with polarized glasses.
Does anyone have much experience with the browser? I've been thinking about buying a kindle 3 3G, with one of the major motivations being the free worldwide web access. I know it is limited and slow, but it would at least allow for email access / chatting / google voice.
Developer culture is a meritocracy, and if you're putting out good code you can wear whatever the fuck you want.

My favorite part of the Zucks mythos is the flip-flops. What he wore didn't matter, because what he and Facebook were doing was so amazing.

Most people just happen to want to wear t-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops.
I've been considering getting into rock-climbing, but I'm concerned that reliance on a partner will make it hard to go. Has this been a problem for you? If so, what have you done to deal with it? You can boulder by yourself, yes?
I'm glad there are other developers out there who have decided that they want to look smart. My usual work attire is: shirt, jumper, smart trousers, and smart shoes while the rest of the team tend to turn up in t-shirts, jeans and trainers.

I was asked recently why I always choose to come to work dressed smartly and my answer? "Look smart, think smart"
Why do you want a Kindle DX? Reading PDFs in the sunlight? I've always wonder who's buying the DX, because at price, you might as well get an iPad.
I want to buy one, but I now have no idea which one to buy. Is the only difference between the Kindle and the touch the fact that you can touch it? What about the keyboard...is that useful or no?

Buying a Fire so I can develop on it, but would also like something with e-ink, now that they are priced affordably.
I know I'm getting a jump on posting the October 2011 Ask, but sooner or later October will be upon us all!

Selfish plug:

Although Know Your Financial Advisor isn't one of those cool YC startups we're all reading about, we're growing like weeds here in Vancouver, Canada.

We need (yet another) front-end designer/developer to join our awesome team in Vancouver.

Unfortunately this is a local position to work side-by-side our internal tech team and UX lead, but we do have other openings for the right "remote person" - in back-end PHP development (1-2 positions).

http://www.techvibes.com/job/senior-designer-front-end-devel...
> Look at the pictures of the Great Depression: every man on the street waiting in line wore a suit.

I think in the '30s a suit was just what men owned - a durable, practical, all purpose set of clothing. They'd wear the same to the beach, because that's what they had. It probably cost them a lot of money, and owning any more clothes would cost a lot more. It didn't mean the same thing it does now.
Isn't Opera Mini just a "web" client that always connects through Opera Turbo? Opera Mobile and Desktop, on the other hand let you switch Turbo on or off.
Sorry mate, flagged this for two reasons:

- It's not October

- There is a username that automatically posts these posts every month http://hackerne.ws/user?id=whoishiring that was made a few months ago http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2391828
There is a signalling mechanism involved in dressing like a slob, every bit as loud as the signal you are trying to send out by dressing well.

In some contexts, putting on "whatever" sends the signal that I'm a slob, in other contexts it sends the signal that I have better / more important things to think about. In some contexts, dressing well sends out the signal that you are conscientious and trust-worthy, in other contexts it sends the signal that you are a vapid tool.

Your job is to tailor your message for the audience you are trying to reach.
The only thing that comes to mind is if you turn off css, you'll end up with just the text header, rather than both the image header and the text header.
I believe they're talking about the Facebook required to signup for Spotify which is causing a lot of controversy lately.
Maybe it’s the New York City in me speaking

Got it in one.
Europe gets the ad-free version, which costs $109 in the US. Add 20% UK VAT and that becomes $131 or £84. Amazon's price is pretty reasonable.
'We didn't mean to track you' says Facebook
what I do when exploring any game concept is to quickly prototype a playable version, and try to "find the fun" in the game. Once a certain fun level is reached, iterate, and build the game around that.

to see if people actually want to play the game, you need to test the waters. Ghetto-like testing (Zynga's much publicized way of using FB game ads to gauge user interest ) is one option.

Fun = addicting game mechanic.
same situation counts for the other kindles, too. I bought one last year, using an extra shipping service.
Really?

Really.

This complaining about facebook is getting ridiculous.

No, it's not. What's ridiculous is the way Facebook treats privacy. If you're OK with that, and are happy to see it promoted by propagating Facebook bugs, that's your choice.

People who find it offensive, though, need to speak up and let site owners know that they do not approve of Facebook's behavior.

I assume that any site with a FB "like" button is OK with Facebook's "privacy" policy.

Whatever your thoughts I can't understand encouraging acquiescence through silence. That's also ridiculous,

James has done a great job with Hacker Things, but if he wants to put a Facebook tracking item on the site for whatever promotional gain then he should be doing so with true deliberation, knowing that it will put off some number of users.
Most days, I wear a t-shirt, basketball shorts, and Rainbow sandals to work. I'm a strong believer in wearing what's appropriate for the job. If I'm sitting in the office all day just coding, I don't need to be dressed nicely would rather be in something comfortable. If I'm meeting a client or going to an important business meeting, I damn well better be dressed well.
I just got these (http://www.dsw.com/shoe/sandro+moscoloni+pierce+oxford?prodI...) and will happily sing praise to their comfort. Previously I've done Clark's and Rockport and they simply don't compare.
This reminds me of a quote from Eric Schmidt (disclaimer: I work for Google) from last year. The full quote [1] is:

> I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines -- including Google -- do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.

which is entirely reasonable, yet he gets lambasted in the press as being "creepy" [2] based on a sensationalist snippet.

If you really want something to remain hidden, you have to remember that any services you use are subject to law enforcement, security breaches, bankruptcy procedures (there was a case not too long ago where a bankruptcy court judge ruled that the creditors' interests overruled the TOS and allowed the sale of information otherwise prohibited by the TOS; I can't find a link right now), etc.

With the ever-decreasing cost of mass computing, you will increasingly see just what an illusion online privacy really is.

Another example: some sites use shared avatar sites like Gravatar. I've often thought it would be trivial to crawl the Web and link identities from various forums based on using the exact same Gravatar image. In fact, someone's probably already done this.

Facial recognition is just one obvious way this will manifest itself. Another that I don't think has even been explored yet is what I would probably call "textual fingerprinting" meaning that the more you write in one post the more likely you can extract some identifiable style, choice of words and so on and that can be linked to other things you've written.

[1]: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/12/my_reaction_to...

[2]: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/01/animation...
I've been a fan of Llamasoft for years. They're an indie shop of two coders, releasing games since the early-1980's. More recently they created Neon, the music light-synth on the Xbox 360, Space Giraffe on XBLA, Gridrunner Revolution on Windows, and are currently making iOS games (GoatUp, Deflex, Minotron: 2112, and Minotaur Rescue).

They were not pleased with XBLA. Their game, Space Giraffe, got hammered by a particularly bad reviewer (employed at the official Xbox Mag, no less). The game is actually quite good, albeit extremely hard, and has been praised by the creator of Braid. Microsoft did't seem to care about them at all (at least that's what I think happened), so they went elsewhere.

What they've done is focused on a niche. Most of Llamasoft's games are mash-ups of games from the 1980's, usually with lots of crazy graphical effects, and lots of goats, sheep, llama's, oxen, and various other beasties. Gameplay design is among the best I've ever experienced in twitch-based games. There's a loyal following of customers who love their games and support them, helping Llamasoft sustain themselves.

They're not super-rich, but have been chugging along for a while. I think they're excited about iOS because they're indie, and it's very easy for them to release games on it. Marketing and getting the word out is definitely their biggest challenge. Currently, it seems their goal is to release a new iOS game every 2-3 months, and build up a catalog of games. Once one of them is a hit, it'll bring in more customers, who will be interested in their back-catelog.

GoatUp, which just released to great reviews, might be that ticket (check it out: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/goatup/id462286820?mt=8).

You can always ask them directly about their experiences. They've been on XBLA, Steam, iTunes, and a lot of other platforms in the past. Sign up at www.yakyak.org, and ask Yak or gilesgoat a question.
My point is not over whether Scrum delivers better software than other methods (in my experience, it delivers average software consistently, which may be a good or bad thing depending on your point of view).

My interest is in how the role of the developer has changed over the years, and how developers have been increasingly stripped of power over what they do. I believe Scrum is simply the latest step in this direction.

Now, it may be that stripping developers of power is the best way to create good software (we've all seen the god awful usability of some developer-created software). But let's not pretend that this is empowering for the developer, as the author suggests Scrum is.

"Most often, a feature is binned BEFORE any development occurs. In fact, I've only ever seen a feature binned after development started once. It was a feature that we decided was being introduced too early, required too much re-architecting, and wouldn't offer any compelling benefits to our customers. And it saved a LOT of effort and pain to cut the rope early."

But isn't Agile (of which scrum is part) partly about putting a product out there and seeing how users or customers respond. There is a built in acceptance that some new features are not going to work but you never know until they have been tested out by the end users.

"It's a question of priorities. Are you working to make a good customer experience or are you working to stroke your own ego? If you're not customer focused, you shouldn't be writing software for other people."

That is kind of my point. Developers don't get the chance to write software for other people. They don't have any say how the software actually works, by which I mean the user journeys, the feature set etc because they have been reduced to simply turning the fickle ideas of product owners into a reality.

I now work on my own products because that is the only way I can turn my own ideas for user-centric software into a reality.
I hate ties and collared shirts in general. Any wedding or other formal event where I have to wear a suit, I'm constantly tugging at my neck and ripping off my tie within 5 seconds of getting back in my car to drive home after the event. I have no idea why Steve Jobs wore his ubiquitous turtleneck, but I'd like to think the fact that it was a lot more comfortable than a shirt and tie was one of the reasons.

Also if I'm at any sort of business or social event and someone is comes up to me and says something like: "Hey bro, I've been sitting on this great idea for a startup that I came with when I got my MBA at Oswego College, and I need a cofounder. Here, sign this NDA and I can tell you about it. Okay fine, don't sign the NDA, bro. It's called 'Fratastic.com,' it's like frat-oriented humor videos. It's gonna totally be the next youtube, it's ridiculous how much money it's gonna make, bro. I have the domain name and everything, I just need someone to actually do all the coding and I'll do the marketing, bro. How does 4% equity sound to you?"

... well, that person is almost always wearing a shirt, coat, and tie.

So why would I want to dress up beyond a t-shirt and jeans? It makes me uncomfortable, it has nothing to do with my production, technical or otherwise, and I'm less likely to be associated with the expensively educated clueless douchebag I described above.

Also, I know a lot of hackers who do go to the gym or otherwise keep active and look just fine in a t-shirt.
Dressing better is not necessarily dressing up.

Dress for the situation but wear high quality clothes with the right fit. Just because its business attire doesn't mean its good clothing or that you're dressed well. Stand outside the local courthouse at lunch time and watch all the dumpy ill-fitting suits pour out and you'll see what I mean.

Fit and Quality are far more important than type of clothing.
:( my mistake...
Yeah Steve Job's famous line was, "To get to the heart of the customer, you don't talk about Mips and Megahertz." Finally another company that gets it.
"Girls like guys in ties"
Absofuckinglutely.
Attracts goldiggers like flies flocking to a pile of shit.
In the minds of most people, Apple is sexy. They make stylish products that are easy to use. They have sexy stores and enjoyable ads on TV. The high price makes them status symbols. They are massively entrenched and can take advantage of network effects ("all my friends are ipad owners and they love it").

In the face of that, the only rational area to compete in is offering a functionally similar product at a much lower price. But instead of attacking from below and, as the OP said, making consumers question the price tag, Samsung chose to attack from above by matching specs and price point. Riskier move that has now spectacularly failed.
Depending on your budget, Allen Edmonds.

You can sometimes get lucky and pick up a nice pair for cheap at Nordstrom Rack.
Amazon's Kindle Fire just nuked the tablet market: Winners and losers
I actually enjoy fashion and try to dress well when the time is right, but coming from a farming background, you dress like a slob because you're going to come home covered in dirt, grease and who knows what else. As such, dressing up for work, even if it is in an office, seems pretty silly to me. Work is about getting stuff done, not looking pretty. Save the dress up for social occasions outside of the workplace.
I'm having trouble putting into words the kind of inspiration that Ward Cunningham gives me. His original Wiki (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiWeb) might seem really outdated and a bit obtuse at first, but then you realize how good it really is, and can get lost in it for hours.

The fact that he's an old-school hacker and is still building innovative things is really cool. I kind of want to call him a living fossil, but I think that might have some connotations. He contributes new ideas in a timeless way.
Dressing differently is not necessarily dressing worse. Personally, when I see someone that obviously spent an extra 30-60 minutes getting ready in the morning to make themselves appear to be a professional, my first impression isn't "This guy is really professional". Instead, it is "what is this guy trying to hide?", or "does this guy think appearances are more important than results?" You really shouldn't assume you're making a good first impression because you're wearing a tie. It all depends on what the atmosphere of the workplace is.
I usually wear button-up shirts (and sometimes a sport coat) when going out or meeting with clients, but I am a firm believer that neckties cut off blood flow to the brain.

Also, slacks are just not comfortable. I much prefer a nice pair of dark, well-fitting, ironed jeans.
I have the keyboard version (i.e. Kindle 3). The keyboard is hardly ever used. If I were to buy a new Kindle, I'd probably get the one with the 5-way controller. I don't think multitouch would really be that useful for reading books; your most common action will be "turn the page", which a physical button is just fine for.
It's an alright browser that will do in a pinch. It's fine for google mail, hacker news and simple sites like that. What's great is that you don't need to recharge it every night with moderate use, so it's great while travelling.
>> Developer culture is a meritocracy, and if you're putting out good code you can wear whatever the fuck you want.

Yeah. My problem with what you're saying is that if you're putting out great code, you can probably wear whatever the f you want.

But if "good" represents average, and you tell any competent employer that you can wear whatever the f you want, you're just telling him/her that you've got an attitude problem.
Behind the scenes of the boston globe responsive redesign
"my talent supersedes my necessity to follow the guidelines of society" is a fairly mindless observation.

90% of the "guidelines of society" is cargo cult thinking. The best developers are wired to avoid this kind of thinking. With respect to clothing, they optimize for comfort and individuality rather than looks. There's no big political statement going on here (and I'd argue that dressing casually is a practical choice rather than a sign that one is misinformed, sloppy or lazy).

I'm writing code this morning in my pajamas. This evening I'll go out to a mixer and I'll throw on a nice sport coat. Clothes are tools, and you need the right tools for the job. This is why electricians and plumbers don't wear neckties.
Isn't this a bit of a misnomer? Wouldn't "one instruction computer" be more fitting? I mean, every computer has one instruction set...
I read _Put This On_ (not because I aspire to "dress better", whichbelievemeanyonewhoknowsme &c &c but because it's well written and enthusiastic and I'd read a blog about Hummel figurines if it was graceful and engaging) and I think "ego trip" is the wrong word here.

I think for these "dressing up when their social situation doesn't really demand it" people, dressing up is a hobby. They'd (a) like it people shared their hobby, because that's more fun, and they'd (b) like not to be judged based on that hobby, which is what happens to developers who show up in ties.
Facebook keeps files on users that can run to 780 printed pages
This has major implications for loss prevention as well. External theft counts for about .5% of total revenue for the average retailer, which translates directly to a large percent of profit lost since margins are so low for many of them.

There is a lot of money to be made for someone who perfects a machine learning technology to detect shoplifters.
I had a pair of HS Trask Trophy Oxfords that were my favorite pair of shoes, both for style and comfort, however they proved a failure in the longevity department - they wore out after a year, and by that time, HS Trask had discontinued that model, and I wasn't impressed with the replacement. I would have happily bought a new pair a year.

I eventually replaced them with Doc Marten Javan Kurts, which are larger, about as comfortable, and hopefully a bit more durable.
I think he's not necessarily arguing against t-shirt and jeans (despite his claim that the "days of t-shirt and hoodies are over" - this may be an east coast thing?), but that fit matters. Just because you're writing code doesn't mean you have to wear the ratty black t-shirt that you haven't washed in weeks and the ripped jeans that you bought in high school.

I know that, like with the "frat boy" you described, there are also stereotypes with the stereotypical programmer in the black shirt with the stupid text on it. How do those people make you feel?