skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Throwing an autocomplete at something is NOT always an upgrade. I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about country selectors, and I'll present my solution for two separate use cases here.

In the first case, a country selector allows a user to select a country as a component of their shipping address, a user profile, etc. The input method described in the aforementioned article suits that case decently; however, it's not immediately intuitive that a user can access some of its touted conveniences (such as the selection of a country by its short name), and in most cases, a user will not frequently return to the same country input field (i.e. they'll set up a saved shipping address ONCE, or set their home country on a social profile ONCE) which removes the possible avenue of training the user to expect the pattern.

In this case, the best possible user experience can be given by leveraging geo-location (either by using the JS API, or any of the myriad IP-based solutions) and making intelligent suggestions to the user. For example: If I'm a user, and I am required to enter my shipping information (including country) on a checkout page, the page's best GUESS as to where I am should be displayed first, and the user should be allowed to change that assumption quickly. For example, you might show the user a drop-down box with the page's best guess selected by the default, surrounded by nearby countries (depending upon geo-location accuracy). Secondly, flag icons actually have quite a bit of value -- many people think visually, first, and will be looking for their flag's colors. Even if the icons are minuscule, they're still incredibly helpful.

The second use case which I want to present is that in which a company (such as Range Rover) presents a page allowing you to select which localized version of their site you wish to visit. In Range Rover's case, this is a massive list of countries, with their respective flags. Let's be honest: part of the reason this page exists for most companies is because they wish to demonstrate how significant their global reach is, or the expenditure required to translate the site. On Range Rover's site, the US (my homeland) is buried deep on the bottom left-hand side -- to make this more usable, they could leverage the same geo-location technique discussed above, and simply provide visual differentiation between my home country, and the other countries! Everyone's goals are achieved here; usability is increased, the "global" feeling is imparted, and the business douches who insisted upon a massive list of countries in the first place are sated!

The guys who wrote this article don't understand what's possible with current technology, and therefore cannot successfully design for it.
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Neat, but this looks like something out of the 1980s. I would expect more from a laser projector in 2011.
From the Ars Technica article it sounds like this evidence was introduced in defense of Hotfile. You're most likely right -- hotfile doesn't have the resources to pursue this as a counterattack. However, it could be used as a successful defense in their current case, which could help establish it as part of case law.

"Hotfile has also tried to turn the tables by arguing that one of the studios, Warner Brothers, has itself violated the DMCA by issuing bogus takedown requests"

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/warner-admit...]
It says it's illegal to send requests that aren't in good faith. That's a big loophole there.

The question is whether the automated tool identifying them is enough to cause a good faith belief.
exactly and then there was that whole "we were taken advantage of/ it was fake" blog post which I think just made them look worse. I was always told when I was younger to remember "when you dance with the devil, it's ALWAYS to his tune." Best to focus on shipping your product and marketing. If you are doing it right, the right kind of press should come your way. Skip the theatrics.
> I am shocked.

Don’t you mean “Shocked, shocked to find shady business going on in here?”

Your winnings, sir.
It looks like a decent tablet and it's $200, what's not to like? I'd rather have an iPad but there is a good chance I'll pick up a Fire based on the "bang for your buck" factor.
I went to Startup School in 2009 and 2010, but not this year. In 2009, Mark Pincus was one of the speakers. In 2010, Andrew Mason was one of the speakers. It looks like Pincus spoke again this year.

If a seemingly honest man like pg can't arrange a nice little startup conference without having at least one speaker every year who turns out to be some sort of con man, then yes, I'd have to say tech is particularly sleazy right now. I'm not faulting the Startup School organizers for this, but it's an interesting observation.
Yeah. An armed society is a polite society.
How did you find out about his associations in the end? Is it something that, say, a hired private detective could have uncovered?
I'm a little surprised I haven't seen this on TechCrunch yet.
Cars can currently drive themselves in certain limited environments tracks at specially designated competitions. How long do you think it will be before the country has the physical and legal infrastructure to support general-purpose automated cars?

Two thought experiments: 1) Do you think the general public would support the use of self-driving cars on public streets as they operate today, even after seeing the DARPA results? 2) Do you think the general public would support the use of computers to diagnose cancer without involving human doctors anytime within the next 50 years?

Remember that when [specialized worker X] says their job can't be done by [new technology Y], they aren't just referring to the technology being unable to fulfill the task. There is a whole economic, political and sociological matrix on top of the job market that prevents technology from displacing workers, and certain regulated industries are more sheltered than others. The hospital is probably one of the most insulated working environments for technological advances (just take a poke at any of their EMR systems to see what I mean.)
Mac app development vs iPad app development
I have software that I'm trying to develop for iPad and Mac. I'm not well versed enough in Objective C to develop these myself, so I'm having to contract them out. The proposal for the two devs came back with the Mac app costing 50% more and taking 50% more in terms of time for development even though its the same exact app - literally looks and works the same. They say that things such as incorporating minimize/restore functionality and accounting for different screen sizes are what causes 50% more work. However, for the iPad development, they have to code for vertical/horizontal viewing.

Like I said, I don't know Objective C very well and I have very little experience with iOS/Mac dev, so I feel like I cannot make and intelligent determination on whether this seems right or not.

Could you please help me out? What are the differences between development for Mac vs iPad apps? Does one usually take a lot less time than the other?

Any insights at all would be really appreciated.
Is it ever that simple? How can you know a person's moral character just through a job interview? What about if you were Zynga employee #50 and Pincus didn't even interview you, but the company wasn't big enough for TC to post about it's shadiness? What if an honest man gets tempted by 9 figures in a once in a lifetime situation?
The term "expected value" has a technical meaning, and is not zero here.

Your point that people should not expect to make money from illiquid non-controlling stock is reasonable, though.
Sounds like he didn't "have what it takes."
> lost 3 girlfriends in 2 months

How do you even get 3 girlfriends in two months?

Surely anything shorter than a few months with someone is not considered a girlfriend!
Alright now, let's not oversimplify this. There are billion shades of gray in how truthful we are in our daily relationships. Most people hide stuff from those close to us on a daily basis. Does this render those relationships as fake or almost fake? I'd argue no.

Similarly, while some of the relationships formed from your pickup skills may be premised almost entirely on lies, that is not the norm. I'd actually say most relationships turn out to be much like normal relationships--and most certainly not a type where the other party is thinking you're a millionaire when in fact you are broke in reality.
This was really well written, thanks.
Wow! The medicalese description (abstract of the original paper) seems completely unrelated to the computerese description.

I need to learn medicalese ...

or train some ML algos.
"Applications can still send notifications via growl api, growl is just like "growl pro""

That is good. I support them for that.
I bought the original Asus Transformer about 6 months ago and have been using it almost daily ever since. At the time it was quite difficult to find one as it was sold out almost as it arrived in stores.
It is a fine product if not quite as good looking as the iPad 2. However it was cheaper, has IPS screen with gorilla glass, sdcard expandability and around an 8-10 hour battery life.
In the months since I bought it I've seen the number of quality apps in the appstore grow considerably. I now use the device at home about 90% of the time I need to use a computer.

If the Transformer Prime is along the same lines as the original transformer - with these better specs, I would say its a potential winner.
From what I understand it won't work for much longer due to the sandboxing requirements that'll be coming in Lion. So, probably best to uninstall eventually rather than have something there that won't work.

(Correct me if I'm wrong here but that was my understanding)
> It's not like Zynga will have another IPO in the future, or will need to promise future employees equity.

No, but they probably will be promising employees something - and now, everyone knows that unless that promise is in writing, in an iron-clad contract peered over by Hell's best lawyers, it's worthless at best.
I read that as one employee left after the threat was made, and the other stayed.
I rewrite the contract so that all options that have been granted but not vested, vest on termination. I was bite by this one and learned my lesson, I have also been bit by dilution, you pick these things up along the way. If they do not agree to vest on termination then we go back to salary negotiation or I walk. To me if they can terminate you and snatch back millions, it's just to big of a carrot to do so, as well that's all it is, is just a carrot if they can at any time deprive you of it.

So basicly I write it to secure what a good company wants, A pair of handcuffs chaining me to a position, but I ensure that once I have completed my time, they can't deprive me of that rightfully earned compensation, I do this by adding a clause that all awards vest on termination, nothing complex not a bunch of legalize just all options vest and the clause overrides any and all other verbiage related to the matter in any other section of the contract.
Or just learn a little bit of Elisp, and do this:

M-: (loop for i from ?a
for j below 12
do (insert (format "#define %c %d\n" i j)))
It took my husband a while to catch on to this, too, though he really was trying. He works 3 days a week (not that he works less, just that he does it all in 3 days). He's always respected the work I do, but it took him a while to adjust to the fact that I couldn't just rearrange my schedule at the drop of a hat to take the day off to go somewhere or go out to lunch or something.

I'm not so busy that I don't stop to eat lunch, so we would still go out on days where I didn't have quite so much to do and could afford the extra hour or so that eating somewhere other than my dining room requires, but then he would do things like remember he needed to stop somewhere else and could we just do that while we're out so he doesn't have to drive all the way back into town? (We live in a fairly rural area) So a trip out for lunch would turn into lunch, grocery store, his business (he owns a store here in town), bank, etc. and suddenly the hour and a half I'd planned to take off had turned into three or four.

I can't say I blame him. I enjoy spending the time with him and it's nice to get out and do some things together during the day while the kid's in school, but it just isn't practical most days. Now we very clearly plan what we're going to do when we go out on the days I'm working and he's not.
Thank you, Simon. I appreciate your positive remarks about my book.
This isn't the same thing as 1.3 is it? It's just the older 1.2 code that was updated by pmetzger to compile and function properly on Lion.

In other words, this != 1.3 right?
I'm all for prosecuting child molesters and other miscreants, but this legislation was wrong.

EMPs, silicon eating nanobots/microbes, or technology beyond that of human understanding may be able to truly shutdown our ability to internetwork freely in the future. But the government won't be able to with legislation, and that is ok. They are doing what they can to protect order and limit suffering, and I appreciate that, though. I just wouldn't vote for people that support insane laws.

Mesh, my friend. The future involves p2p networks.
On the other hand, equity compensation in a startup is also based on the riskiness of the equity. Even if an employee is not that "valuable", they should still not have the original terms of their agreements altered.

[I agree with all the points above, but wanted to add in the fact that early employees are rewarded for risk as well as production. Esp if they signed on for below market salaries, with stock calculated as deferred compensation.]
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The scrolling thing in the lower left is cool, but my eye is mostly drawn to a long line of "no reason given". Try de-emphasizing it somehow (e.g. graying out that particular reason?)

"Will anyone be reading...", in the FAQ, should be a header. "Contact us" should be a link.

I liked the panda (but then I like pandas). Who are you trying to target? I'd suspect that the typical free consumer app does better with pandas than with people in white coats. But A/B testing this may not be that hard.
I actually laughed at this. It's a total Canandian "in joke"
The cheapest iPad 2 is $499. Are you talking about the one year old iPad?
Ask HN: Is there an ethical approach to tracking users?
I've got an idea for an app that could provide value to the user but would require tracking their browsing history.

How do I do this without being a douche?
Well, it remains to be seen if this is going to be a sustainable thing, so don't get jealous just yet.

Japan would be great. I'll head there too if things go well enough that I can afford it. I'm on more of a Vietnam budget at the moment.
I nabbed the EY9K* one, thanks a lot! First time someone's ever posted a promo code that I actually got.
Congratulations. As a side question, how did you go about getting TC to cover the launch?
That added flexibility comes at the cost of standardization.

There are practical reasons that we're not all coding in IO. Allowing for the redefinition of control primitives is a slippery slope. In short order, we may have apps that read well to us but aren't clear to others.
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My question is, without Growl, how do I tell those apps to stop sending me notifications?
I agree. It is a bullshit situation, and you should be mad about it.

Employers have a responsibility to maximize the profits of their shareholders/investors.

They are not there to be your friend, take care of you, or compensate you beyond the minimum that they have to. Companies that offer bonuses/'benefits' are doing so as an incentive to retain you. The minute the market indicates that they can pull any of those benefits, they will.

MegaCorp does not give a holiday bonus out of the goodness of its heart. It doesn't have a heart, it is an inanimate object. It can not possibly feel a loyalty to you. It may bullshit you by telling you this, but that is really just to embiggen your feelings of loyalty towards it.

It has rules and structures, carefully laid out towards its goal... maximizing profits. An optimally designed corporation will fire you the minute that there is a cheaper alternative to your employment. If it were human, it would be a sociopath.
Indeed, they will only have one IPO. But the PR backlash can seriously affect it, if it's made clear to everyone that the execs are crooks, and that they'll never be able to hire talents again.
Zynga is aiming squarely at their feet and firing a cannon.

Would you invest in a company where management is obviously looking for a short term cashout at the expense of the future success of the company? The future success is precisely what the investor is buying. It's like buying a car while the seller is actively pulling parts out of it.

The results of this will be reduced share values combined with lawsuits eating up any potential gains.
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> I hope all this bad PR makes them reconsider it, if not anything else.

Even if they reconsider, I doubt any "top talent" will be joining them any time soon, if ever again. At least, not with a twelve-pound contract inked in blood.
There's the obvious J. P. Morgan quote:

Asked: "Is not commercial credit based primarily upon money or property?"
"No sir," replied Morgan. "The first thing is character."
"Before money or property?"
"Before money or anything else. Money cannot buy it...Because a man I do not trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in Christendom."
I do believe that is the case. I'm not questioning the reason for the uninstall. And, just to be clear, I'm not questioning his motives either. I think it's a really useful program and SDK.

I just didn't like finding out it was a paid app after I innocently clicked on update and uninstalled. I trusted that I was actually getting an update. I was left without my notifications and a bad taste.
Doesn't work if you're traveling abroad. I hate getting country-specific versions of a site even after logging in with my US credentials. It should remember that I'm from the US.
It may be more simple than you guess!

If dishonesty has infused a company's DNA, that's often something you can feel. Values cluster people together, so a founder with... shall we say, ethical flexibilities, will often surround him or herself with others of similar persuasions.

So I'd say it trickles down. You get a vibe. I've met people who I'd never want to work with only because of the spidey sense tingling, you know? Nothing I could put my finger on. But unsettling enough to be a deal breaker. You gotta trust these things.

I'm not saying it's easy, or even fair. Plenty of these guys are honest folk getting screwed, I'm sure. But you must be vigilant to work with those who share your values.

On the other hand, anyone who joined Zynga after their dishonesty was laid bare should not be surprised at the outcome. Again, still not right or fair. But there was the warning.
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I don't think it's supposed to be exposed in this way, rather it's very good for internal wiring between trusted systems.
Yes but you can go from seeing to blind in under a second with these lasers - and anyone else unfortunate enough to be hit with one of these.

It's not only unsafe but possibly criminally negligent to operate this as is shown on that page.
The employees that get their shares stolen can sue for extortion, which is exactly how I and most people would describe this situation. Unfortunately the law generally favors those with more money and resources.
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You should look into the history of the post office. It didn't revolutionize much. There have been competing businesses throughout history and a few of them were shut down by the government after out competing USPS.
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It's surely a testament to the quality of Casablanca's writing that its resulting cliches are still so satisfying after all this time.
Unit Test Statically Typed Programs
I've helped some younger guys (who use Python and Ruby almost exclusively) write some C++ code. They do lots of unit testing on their Ruby/Python code. They complain that I don't unit test C++.

My C++ code is small and works as expected. It's compiled with all the compiler checks enabled (-Wall -Wextra -Weffc++) so any slight error is caught and fixed at compile time. I don't do any casting and I use a const wherever I can and all the data structures are STL.

So my question to HN... do you guys unit check C and C++ code? In my mind, the compiler (written by a lot of super smart guys) is my unit tester and the only reason the young guys need to do this sort of thing is because they're using dynamically typed (thus more error prone) languages.

I wanted to do a sanity check with HN though. What do you guys think?
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"With the unvested shares, the executives believed they could attract more top talent with the promise of stock"

I suppose that would be "top programming talent" but not so much "top economics and common sense talent".
Right, I am fine with the part that hey we think you are overpaid and we want to renegotiate the option awards that have not been granted, but they are walking a fine line renegotiation the ones that have already been awarded but have not vested. Many companies will award a certain amount of options and those options come with a vesting schedule so for example I get awarded 4 shares that vest in one year. My contract would say that I get 4 awards of 4 shared over 4 years and those awards vest in 1 year. They are going to run into trouble if they try to claw back the awarded shared because technically I have put in the work for those shares. Now if the contract says all stocks will be awarded in 4 years then yes technically they have not earned them yet, but I would have walked from that contract the moment I saw it.
I'm not willing to go into specifics, but I will say that I saw worse things in the biotech industry. Having something in the pipeline for human clinical trials really boosts the IPO, even if maybe it doesn't belong there.
Can you help me understand the contempt you have for the Zynga games? I don't play, myself, but I do understand that the games exploit (negative? compulsive?) psychology, and they've used unethical business strategies.

But who cares? After all, it's unlikely the next Vonnegut is going to spend his time playing MafiaWars instead of writing "Slaughterhouse Five" or anything.

I am reminded of the aphorism, "Time you've enjoyed wasting is not wasted time."
I think SketchUp is too important for getting 3d buildings into Maps. Picnik is being used for photo editing in Google+. Desktop has already been killed. Orkut...No idea. My guess is Orkut will be around in the short term but will get replaced with Google+ in the next couple years.
Did you work in Arizona? This is the standard business mentality there.
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"zhong" becomes "china", but 中 and 中国 does not.
Just playing some of Zyngas games might provide a hint.
I agree. Let me put it a little differently. I think that the order of the letters and how soon they appear in the list of potentials should impact the ranking of the results.

Basically it should work like Command-T in Textmate (or the vim plugin based off of it). So if there's a Congo and a Republic of Congo in your potentials, then typing "con" should list Congo first as being a more likely result (even though in this case it may not be).

In this demo, when I type "ca" the first three results are "United States, American Samoa, and Antartica". I would argue that this is less intuitive to the user than a simple alphabetical dropdown.
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Good idea. I'll be digging into this topic, and making a post on it soon