skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Imho Android has been successful because, until recently, it had no competition. Android came around at a time when the increasing complexity of building and maintaining a proprietary software stack was forcing handset builders to essentially become software companies. Android gave them the option to return to doing what they did best. Nokia and RIM tried to maintain their own stuff and suffered heavily for it.

I think that Android's success is due to its business model, not the quality of the software itself. The Android team should take care to not become the next Netscape.
I implemented something similar here: https://github.com/joevennix/jScrollie

I agree that it is best to let the browser handle the scrolling mechanics. Then you simply hide the original scrollbar by having an embedded div hold the content with a width thats about 40px or so bigger than the outer, fixed width div ( and overflow: scroll-y ).
How 20 Popular Websites Looked When They Launched
@handler Thanks. We hacked this together pretty quickly and were surprised that nobody had done something like this simply using User IDs. We think it's pretty fun.
Not a straightforward scenario. Doubtful most other carriers were willing to make the same deal AT&T made at the time (no customization, etc.). People were waiting in line for iPhones to begin with, so they would have to have had different manufacturing, etc. Apple could have probably even released a Cocoa Stack or something to run the iOS ui on any Android phone out there and gobbled up a huge market, but Jobs wanted total control, and seeing Apple's current profitability, it's hard to realistically predict a better move than the ones he made.

FD: Until a couple of weeks ago I owned no Apple products except a very old ipod nano someone gave me years ago. I'm no fan of Apple, but it seems unrealistic to second-guess the success they had for the last decade.
I was wordpress hater for two reasons - messy templates and messy plugins. This hate came from my "consulting" days when I often had to fix and add more features to existing wordpress websites.

Nice to see someone investing time into building rigid structure for templates... (Although it looks like a bit too much for me :)) But probably it worth learning Ruby, Haml, Sasl, coffee-script, etc)

Now if someone could come up with something very defined for plugins and make somehow all "wordpress programmers" use it for both templates and plugins - word could be better :)
In case anyone's curious, the game concept is a sandbox (a bit Dwarf-fortress-like) in space. Instead of excavating Moria, you're constructing Niven rings, Dyson spheres, and other megastructures.
Song Dynasty Deal-Sourcing
"Just kidding, Grandpa!" Ha ha ha! Get off my lawn.
There's a superbly written piece by Xianhang Zhang on Quora, that talks about the same concept. It's titled "Disregard Ideas, Acquire Assets" and presents a really convincing case by citing examples of entrepreneurs that focused on building assets, until as he puts it "they couldn't not do a startup with them". (Leverage could qualify as one of the more important ones, or if you want to look at it another way, acquiring substantial assets equates to earning leverage).

http://www.quora.com/Xianhang-Zhang/Disregard-ideas-acquire-...

This notion runs contrary to the standard approach that most early stage entrepreneurs adopt, namely the "build a laundry list of ideas and filter the top ones out using a combination of a heuristic, common sense and (eventually) customer validation and keep at it until you have traction with a concept that matters" approach.

I'm going to stick my neck out here, and recommend the approach that Zhang proposes - "focus relentlessly on acquiring interesting assets and then execute on the startups that naturally fall out of them". This means you might be pursuing something for the longest time that doesn't remotely resemble a startup. I'd qualify this with one caveat - make sure whatever it is, it's something you love doing.

And I think this is an interesting way to go about becoming an entrepreneur. Maybe you shouldn't dive in the deep end straight away (if you haven't built sufficient leverage / assets). Maybe that's another way deferring gratification, what with how cool just 'being an entrepreneur' has recently become.
Would love feedback on what people think, features to add, etc. Link is at http://earlynerd.info
Yeah, Unity is one I intend to look at. It's not immediately obvious from their page what language(s) we'd be coding in, however.
Unlike in the US, in europe the central bank can't lend to euro zone countries. Countries must borrow money from the banks and banks (like Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, etc) lend money to countries at highly speculative rates. If you had taken the time to inform yourself before opening your mouth you'd have known that countries like Portugal and Spain had relativley low deficits (much lower then the US) before the financial crisis. Please stop with this 'northern european countries superior monkey' narrative.
I'd be interested in the link to that study, if you have it.
I'm telling the owners no such thing. I'm telling you shit happens.

The owners will be compensated, and I'm sure there will be measures taken to avoid future incidents of this sort, but your blanket and aggressive condemnation of the actions of the crew are grossly out of touch with reality. Nothing short of absolute safety would satisfy you, and that is simply not possible in real life.
The sheer arrogance is amazing.

So since leaving digg I've heard the following phrase from many competent software dev managers - any good software engineer can learn a new language - but to Kevin - those same software engineers can't learn anything new, while he, of course, can easily learn from his mistakes.

Just to be clear - those engineers, dismissed as "PHP devs" have numerous degrees, decades of experience, and at least one published book. Kevin dropped out of a PC repair school that he likes to refer to as a "CS program."

Anyway he seems to be doing his best to expose his lack of competence.
Who would have thought? No Oauth for Aol....
That's accurate however the site is about as large / vanilla of a demographic as you can imagine.

EG - if you're selling to general population this is likely going to work.
Pshaw. I posted an ad for a lawnmower and only got a handful of penis photos.
The profits obviously aren't as simple as x widgets cost y dollars to produce and sell at price z (might change with the impending Motorola acquistion) and it is probably never going to be known strictly how much Android makes. But if you think Google can't convert half a million new Android phones a day into money, you haven't been paying attention to Google at all.
Infragistics NetAdvantage for Visual Studio Lightswitch 2011 Vol.2
I don't really see a problem? I think the point is you wanted to go to foobar.com/naughtygirls but it's actually foobar.com/naughty-girls. At the very least, the 404 brings you to the right website, presumably, ideally with a coherent enough sitemap/navigation to get you to your desired place.

Though, I wonder how often 404s actually happen outside of people not properly setting up redirects. I imagine 95% of people just type in domains or use bookmarks.
I've often wondered about the reasons for differences in home construction methods.

Do you have a lot of available forests? We have millions of acres of timber available and that makes framing houses with wood much cheaper. Especially when you consider how much airspace/insulation modern houses have.
"It’s all about leverage to him. He could write code, or he could help ten people write code. Or, he could help ten people manage ten people that write code. Or, he could help companies with ten engineering departments with ten people each that help ten people write code."

To me, this is apples and oranges. I write code. My goal is not "to be influential in the production of as much code as possible." My goal is "to personally build something cool and be able to say 'I built that.'"

Nothing wrong with either job, of course.
I appreciate the work that must have gone into this, and it looks like it has been done well technically. However: How many people are this deep in the world of Ruby and yet also enjoy writing WordPress themes? I run a forum devoted to WordPress, and I can not imagine any of the experts (who post there) wanting to switch over to Haml or Coffeescript. Most people who use WordPress are either designers or programmers who are looking to put up a somewhat quick-n-dirty CMS.

If you have the skills and resources to install a Ruby environment and a bunch of gems, why not use Rails plus some CMS built with Rails?
Perhaps "spiraling" in the sense of a football. If the cannon was rifled.
You're over-estimating Discovery. They could've done the same thing when an explosion with a low cloud cover caused a bunch of window damage to a nearby town and they didn't even mention it until a "behind the scenes" special a few years later.
He's being quite serious. Windows 7 Phone apps can easily ship with a trial mode, which, when activated, allows you to use the full app. This is in contrast to iOS applications, where the trial apps are inevitably their own, completely separate applications (e.g., Angry Birds Lite). On top of the annoyance of simply having two applications to deal with, the separate applications, plus iOS sandboxing rules, mean that data from the trial application cannot be transferred to the full application in most circumstances.

Gruber has actually been quite bullish on Windows 7 Phone, and I think he's being completely serious about this statement.
> Google have managed strumble into Microsoft's position in phones.

Yes and no: they have a similar marketshare, but Microsoft had marketshare and money. Google only has the marketshare (and in a limited fashion at that, since implementors "improve the experience" pretty drastically) and get little to no money out of it (likewise for a number of their implementors, too).

And implementors are anything but locked in, as Android holds little software primacy. It does have a lively store, catching onto iOS's, but Android is not "essential", and so far I've not seen any critical software running on android and android only. This means with a little business acumen and some software investment (note that they usually fail at both, but...) most Android implementors can get away from Android pretty fast. And in fact most seem to keep hedging their bets (apart from Moto anyway), either by having WP handsets as well (HTC) or by keeping a ready and used "internal" OS (Samsung's bada)
Justin.tv/TwitchTV is hiring paid interns. We treat our interns almost exactly the same as we treat a lot of our fulltime engineers, and expect them to actually add tangible value to our product, not just give them one-off projects. Visit http://www.twitch.tv/jobs?j=ozARVfwF&s=Ask_HN to apply.
Story of Facebook in Zuckerberg's own words - BBC [60 min video]
They haven't kept it open source, strictly speaking (ref. Honeycomb). Their naivety has left them dangerously exposed on patents, the recent CarrierIQ debacle is an example of the dangers of Android's openness, and any worthwhile app in the Android Market is hacked and re-submitted as a free app before you can blink an eye. Google's not making money from Android, and neither are developers*. That's not even starting on the security vulnerabilities, or the fact that Google's business model is based on a premise of invasive personal data-slurpage to sell more ads.

Granted, that's a generalization. But it makes the point.
This cuts both directions, though: I am loath to spend more than $1 on an iOS application, without piles of good reviews, because there is no easy way to return it. I'd happily pay double on average for an iOS application if I got to use it for a day in exchange.
No option for "Used to but not anymore?"

It gives interesting insights and idea about do's and don'ts.
Armin mentioned JS as an example of a language that could come and be favorable to developers contra Python.

Like clojure, or something else. Indeed, as a newcomer to Python I wanted to pick up python 3 from the start, but went back to python 2 becuase of poor library support.

If in the future people still decide to go with what works, they might as well go with a completley different language, that just works, not becuase it is the correct way.
Android is crushing Nokia not because of the cheap phones - but because it can scale from cheap to expensive, from featured to luxury. A cheap Android phone, like LG Optimus One gives you partly the look and feel of an expensive smartphone.

In contrast, Nokia's featured phones with Symbian on them are great for their cost, but they do feel cheap. And an expensive smartphone with Symbian on it still feels cheap.

I don't think that Android's success is
relative to the iPhone

I disagree. The iPhone is probably the biggest reason for Android's success. It first started when Apple decided that an AT&T monopoly was worth it. And it happened in Europe too - in my country only Orange was originally selling iPhones, until iPhone 4 came out.

Like in a bad movie when an old dude sitting on its porch says "a storm is coming" ... carriers and phone makers began freaking out and saw in Android THE alternative. It is a good alternative. And while Apple may have a huge network of stores, it cannot compete with the distribution network of multiple vendors.

(EDIT: rephrased the last paragraph)
New 3-D transistors promising future chips, lighter laptops
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churnalism

I'm not sure if the same term is used in the U.S., but few British journalists have spoken out about what you've mentioned - the race to get the story out first without applying strict fact-checking standards, all happening in an industry where resources are being cut all over the place and making matters worse.
100% certain I prefer dogs based on browser height and region? Not likely.
Multiple payment engines to me is a miss and not a hit. Creating an account and giving credit card info to get one more online merchant is a total pain.

With iTunes payments I am way up on my spend. I used to spend about $40/mo. With the apple handling magazine apps and all kinds of other payments for games like smurf village I spend easily $180 a month. Maybe the other way is good for developers but it blows for the consumer. Make it easy for me to give you money and I will.
Looks like it was a problem from MailChimp:
http://j0e.co/gk
I think this is driven by the rejection of political correctness. In an ironic twist, I get the sense that more people are put off by politically correct language than are accomodated.

If there's a flaw in this strategy, it is that minorities are marginalized. You might avoid offending a Jewish (just an example) minority by using the term "Christmas", but you'll engender an emotional reaction in a larger number of people. By the numbers, this is a positive result. The question is whether or not you're ok with offending the minority, and to what degree?
Hey, for obvious reasons, they had to capture his "amore" side. I'm sure he'll make some hipster girl very happy.
Lots of worthless Market share

Every user having their searches funneled through your search engine. Tight integration with your e-mail service, your video sharing service and your VOIP service. Much, much more.

Millions of people conducting their lives through your product is definitely not 'worthless'.
On the contrary. Taking your analogy further:

In economy, you find out that whenever "Gentleman Jim" bets, he tends to win 70% of the time, rather than the 49% everyone else gets. Now, depending on policy, you either:

a) forbid jim to play
b) readjust jim's token-to-money conversion ratio so he is on par with other players
c) invest your money with jim

Note, though, that this being a zero sum game, anything other than (a) will bankrupt the house....
I'd be more interested to know what would have happened had Apple not built a phone.
Poll: How much did you earn from your stock options during exit?
Just want to see how much people earn actual cash from their employee stock options. If you joined a startup as an employee and had some stock options, how much did you earn during exit or IPO?
None - my stock option vanished and don't own any
None - but still own stock option.
less $10k
$11K - $30K
$31K - $60K
$61K - $150K
$151K - $200K
$201K - $500K
$501K - $900K
$900K - $1.2M
$1.2M - $2M
$2M - $5M
$5M - $8M
$8M - $11M
greater than $11M
What a strange thing to say. It is irrelevant from the myopic point of view of a patient receiving care, at the moment they are receiving the care. It is far from irrelevant as a matter of social policy, because society has to pay the cost even if a particular individual gets off free. Cf. negative externality [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative].
Ask HN: New to Web Developement
Hey,

Next week, i am going to start to work in startup that do Web Development. I'm new to it, i never did professional web development before, all that i did was some php/css/html but for a personal level and ofcourse i did have some courses in my school.

What do i need to learn more ? Do you guys have any advice or some resources ?

Thanks.

(Sorry for my bad English, i am not a native speaker.)
Fibonacci Pigeons
Best? I get voting for favorite language.. but a Best programming language contest is flamebait and silly.

(I say this as a passionate Python programmer, in case anyone's suspecting envy)
AOL in this list would make a lot more sense if it could track how long it's been since you deleted your account.
This is a nice PR piece: timed for a specific holiday on the calender (timely), hooks into larger discussion around manners and the "best way" to greet somebody (social hook), and ends up with real-world data on conversion ratios. (Give us the numbers!). Very nicely done.

Interesting trivia point: originally the phrase was "Happy Christmas," see "The Night Before Christmas" for a source. Can't help but wonder how "Happy Christmas" compares to the others?
I've just recently discovered maratis3d.org .. It's very fun, check it out! Lua-based, open source, cross platform ..
So it's basically meaningless?
What does that article have to do with the standardization of form/presentation?
So every week there's a pool asking if people block ads?
Using Email Yak To Provide Bidirectional Email In Your WebApp
Just google: is android legal?
If it was easy to contact the developer would you have tried that first? I ask because one of my biggest complaints with the App store is that it's nearly impossible to get user feedback without checking the comments everyday.

I have a low volume app and unless I check the comments I never know if someone had a problem. This is after putting my website in the app and on the app description screen on the store. Basically, if a user finds a bug I'd like to help them through it and/or fix it prior to them leaving a 1 star review that I may or may not see.
In what sense is this a zero sum game?

Sure if economics could be reduced to gambling it is zero-sum but betting in economics is betting on those who will create value(ideally).
Javascript UI framework Qooxdoo 1.6 released with new features
Give it a chance, it only has a small dataset to work with so-far.
I knew about adblock from the very beginning but I only broke down and installed it last week. The reason was one particular forum where while I didn't have problems with the ads themselves (I simply don't visit sites that have intrusive ads) they were just loading extremely slow. My eyes have been opened after that. I knew I could speed up my surfing a little bit by using adblock but I didn't know that the difference was so huge.

I decided to keep using adblock but with an empty filter to which I will add offending sites instead of just disabling everything.
From their Engine programming area: http://unity3d.com/unity/engine/programming

Since it's .NET based via Mono i'd assume C# but it also says it supports scripting languages: JavaScript and Boo, a dialect of Python.
The comment you're replying to isn't making fun of WordPress. The WordPress community has this bizarre obsession with getting people to capitalize it the way they want them to.

http://www.wptavern.com/automatically-correcting-the-wordpre...
Agreed. I actually want less leverage because it means I'm directly in control of my work. I think that's necessary to build high quality stuff. I recognize that I'm working inside a larger framework in which someone is using me as a lever, but to me, the making is the glory.
College is important. I've been reading an ever increasing stack of articles suggesting it's not nearly as important as we once thought it was. Perhaps that's true, though i'd suggest that it's a matter of confusion. College is expensive, too expensive. This is the point we should be focusing on, not on the matter of whether or not to attend.

In my opinion the reason it is expensive is because the market is not operating properly. And the reason the market is incorrect is because the role of higher education changed, but the business model hasn't. The labor market is the only market where the supply pays for the privilege of fulfilling the demand. In my opinion the demand consists of companies demanding people with advanced skill sets. The supply is you and me, the future employees. College used to be a service to finely prep a pupil for an aristocratic life. Today I view it as an institution to develop new skills for the benefit of industry.

For this purpose I think the solution to the education bubble is to move higher education into the public education system. In my opinion that would result in a series of policies that would both increase the presence of higher education, and decrease the lifetime cost to the student.
Facebook's user id system is not linear (although it used to be so on a per-school basis)

http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-history-of-Facebooks-user-I...
Did you try clicking it? you might be surprised.
Ok, maybe I phrased that a little too strongly. How about this: you can't count on print journalism not to be shockingly inaccurate, same as TV journalism.
Gloria Carvajal
I whant to learn Spanish
I block the shit out of everything. This includes the facebook API crap.
Agen vs Sale Sharks live stream Rugby
Human errors will proliferate until they run up against consequences. That is why there must always be consequences.
On my netbook* in particular. Those ads are expensive to render.

* Lenovo x120. It's not technically a netbook as it's more powerful than one, but it's still weak in the grand scheme of personal computers.
Adam from Ghostery/Evidon here.

First:Thanks very much to everyone that uses Ghostery here! This thread has been a great read for us.

Aaron is correct.. Ghostery works in the same way NPR works, only with data. Users can opt into data collection in Ghostery's options. Also, even if they do, we go to great lengths to make sure that all of the data are anonymous and only used in aggregate.

The extension will never collect anything if you don't volunteer it. The data are used in all sorts of ways to make the internet a better place, and to help us make money. For instance, website owners can use the data to see what 3rd party scripts are running on their sites and eliminate them. This saves load time, prevents data leakage to leeches, and - most importantly - allows them to provide a layer of privacy for their users.

The BBB also uses aggregated Ghostery data to monitor self-regulatory efforts - thanks to our awesome panel volunteers we can literally "track the trackers."

More info: http://mygho.st/D

My contact if you have any questions: adam _ at ghostery _dotcom
Socialcam hits 3M downloads
Hi, I am a developer of Ghostery. Ghostery does not track its users; Ghostery tracks third-party page elements. The GhostRank panel is strictly opt-in.

For an example of what GhostRank makes possible, see http://www.knowyourelements.com/

For more information on Ghostery, Evidon and GhostRank, see http://www.ghostery.com/faq