skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yet on iOS, if you do silly work in the main/UI thread (which is very easy to do, as that really is your main thread on which you handle all events, and is thereby something many/most applications you find actually do quite often), it will block all UI updates for that process; claiming that iOS is solving UI lag by having a dedicated UI thread that is marked "real-time priority" is, AFAIK, wrong.

In fact, it is this very property (that on iOS, all UI work must be done from the main thread) that often /causes/ UI lag, and yet somehow Android (where even this author admits using background threads for non-UI work "is the standard Android design pattern" in one of the comments on his post) is the one with the serious UI lag issues <- this mental contradiction is the key problem, and it would be awesome if someone (from Google or wherever) provides a strong explanation.
Despite having heard this meme (ie "fail more") a LOT of times before, I have to give Seth Godin thumbs up. It's easy to get stuck in an Internet self-help bubble where everyone says these things and you get blasé. But keep in mind that:

1) The reason "everyone" is saying it because he keeps hammering it into us. Yes, he is a bit repetitive sometimes but so what? The message is still good.

2) In the "real world", these kinds of things are far out. Try telling someone in Sweden that it's cool to fail and get rejected a few times in life and they just look at you with a look that says "death before dishonor!" (only less bad ass than it sounds in writing).
>Another important property of language is the arbitrariness of the symbols. Any symbol can be mapped onto any concept (or even onto one of the rules of the grammar). For instance, there is nothing about the Spanish word nada itself that forces Spanish speakers to use it to mean nothing.

How about "mother", "no" sounding so similar in multitude of completely different languages? Your quote mistakenly attributes a property of human's mind - the ability to separate meaning from symbol - as a property of language.
Shaka, when the walls fell.
You don't have to be a fan of miss rand to believe that politicians shouldn't live high while the people who make their food suffer.
How and why ProPublica built an adaptive website
Freeman Dyson: How to Dispel Your Illusions
Earth-like planet discovered in 'habitable' zone
We all know that [there is no racism]. This is a stoush between competitors, brothers in arms. This is why I want to check on any unintended escalation.
Different contexts, but that reminds me of a sort of "second class, taken after introductory programming" survey class of the CS domain, taught by another rather intense professor. I learned more in those 12 or so weeks than in most other classes. It was intense, but left one with a rather good, basic survey -- which is no mean feat, given the breadth of the domain (from boolean logic and gates up through higher level languages, discreet mathematics, statistics and O notation, etc.)

People who thought they were getting a typical "survey" class -- LOL! This professor wasn't having any of it.

Perhaps a bit unfair, if you were trying to balance an overall course load that was already heavy. But of itself, worth it.
He seems like a smart kid, but he's clearly not developed anything on iOS. One of the key things you learn as you're learning how to build an iOS app is that all UI code must be run on the main thread. It even says so right there in the [UIView class reference](http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/uikit/...):

> Threading Considerations
Manipulations to your application’s user interface must occur on the main thread. Thus, you should always call the methods of the UIView class from code running in the main thread of your application. The only time this may not be strictly necessary is when creating the view object itself but all other manipulations should occur on the main thread.
Company wide meetings are so that nobody can claim they didn't get the memo. It's not just about sharing information, it's the implicit threat that everyone knows the information has been shared with you. Lots of other ways to solve that problem, but apparently herding everyone in the same room is the accepted default.
Darpa wants smartphone app developers for super sensor program
I do not disagree, but the parent referred to data that shows Android vs. all iOS devices, so I am quite interested in reading it.
> in anticipation of RIM's collapse.

Is this really a stated reason? I would have thought it was to get Waterloo grads. Waterloo is literally one of the top CS and engineering schools in the world.
So, if a smart guy gets elected to the school board, he becomes stupid? Does he have to quit his job since he's too dumb to do it now?

Did you read the article? Sounded like a pretty smart guy. I've served in local office, there are plenty of idiots on school boards but there are smart people too.
What else would you call them?
There was a dark period in Android's existence where a very immature OS came together with underpowered hardware (the GPU in an iPhone 3G demolished the GPU in the Hero) and created a pretty bad experience.

That wasn't what I was talking about. I'm talking about almost imperceptible, frame-or-two jitters that is the current state of Android on virtually any contemporary device. The top selling Android devices are all "buttery smooth" in the perception of their users, even if relative to an iPhone it is herky jerky.
Sub-$100 Android tablet coming soon
Reloj con pulsometro: para que sirve
Is it just me or is the text really, really hard to read? Maybe just today I've finally gotten really old, but please: don't do that. If you have to write your text in a graphic, at least make it easily viewable.
The part about "team player" doesn't make much sense to me.

How do you decide if someone is an "average team player" or an "above average team player"? Hard overall, impossible from a LinkedIn profile. Unless of course, they base their decision from what the people have entered themselves. But then again, who would put "I'm an average team player"?

That being said, considering the similar setup for comparison, it's interesting that "good communication skills" rates so poorly comparatively to "team player". It's not completely surprising I guess for software development (though I might disagree), but it also means I might want to update my profile/resume…

On another note, even though I rarely take part in the "programmer/developer/engineer" discussions, I find the "Python/PHP/Java… engineer" titles to be odd. These people are probably "software engineers", but "Python/PHP/Java… developers". The specific language doesn't mean much to your ability to engineer software. (unless maybe, you actually work on the language itself)
Total devices in the field. At Apple's iPhone 4S launch event on October 4th, CEO Tim Cook said that the company had sold 250 million iOS devices to date--including iPhones, iPod Touches, iPads, and (I assume) current-generation Apple TVs. Shortly thereafter, Google CEO Larry Page said that 190 million Android devices had been "activated." (Google talks about units in terms of activations, not sales.) http://news.cnet.com/8301-33200_3-57323943-290/ios-vs-androi... Dated Nov 14, 2011.
IPhone Video Encoding
You're right, I wouldn't like people to speak other languages but English in HN, sorry.
I'm right there with you. I did terribly in school, I got 'B' grades but i'm sure I was a C or a D student. Class was frustrating. There was never a clear "goal". The focus was always on the process. I never understood why he was doing something, and why it worked. For me the understanding of the process didn't come until the end when I got to fully analyze everything, and let it sink in. Unfortunately that rarely happened. I had the same teacher for most of high school. He'd spend forever walking through a problem.. my mind would wander, I thought to myself "where is this going?" then he finally reached the end. This is where i'd start making connections. But before I could make any progress he'd erase everything and start on something new.

He never graded homework, so i'd just make it look like I put some effort in it. That was enough to get credit. When test time came I had no idea what anything was. Fortunately he would always have a few full example problems on top. I'd run through them trying to find a way to solve them. Inevitably i'd spend half the test time reverse engineering the problems, and most of the time I actually did well finding a solution. I would typically get the right answers (though we'd have to show our work, and he'd subtract points because i didn't use the process he taught.)

Khan academy is amazing. I've gone back to relearn the things I didn't get while in school. I love being able to go at my own pace, and re-watch things.
At least with the Google system you can set-up one time codes that you can keep in a safe place.
The great part about Android being open source is that you can go look at the source to see that the UI thread is not a "normal priority" thread [0]. There are very few things that run at higher priority (and they're listed right there): the threads related to audio and the hardware interaction (power buttons, etc.).

Last time I tried it, Android did not let you create a thread with higher priority than the UI thread.

[0] http://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/Process.ht...
Trondheim, Norway.
The Red Cross does focus on real-world issues. They have almost 100 million volunteers worldwide. This is a tiny portion of their overall humanitarian effort. And if their goal is a peaceful world, they are right to consider factors that could lead to violence. They are trying to find the disease instead of just treating the symptoms.
Is there any tangible proof for this? Is it just that they don't label it a tablet, smart phone or MP3 player? It might just as well be people who are angry that their products don't receive the same media attention.
I'm not saying the media are fair, but I don't buy that Apple's marketing is actively revisionist.
Ask HN: Validate this startup idea
The idea is to create a "Wikipedia for statistics", pulling a ton of statistics about everything and putting them in one place where they're easily searchable and filtered by tags/keywords. Content would be spidered as well as user-submitted, with sources needed to guarantee accuracy.

Is this a good idea? Who would be the main users? How could it be monetized? It seems like a pretty obvious product so the lack of existing alternatives concerns me.

I appreciate the input from the HN community!
Emagrecer Rapido
I agree...for the most part. I think the author's point is however inclined more towards the case where there is an audience as opposed to an intimate social circle.

When it comes to an audience type setting, I think it is responsibility of both, the producer and the consumer, to understand that certain knowledge/terminology/context is required. Then, the speaker must communicate in the "lowest common denominator" of that minimal set of expectations.
Hi guys, I'm one of the developers of Silkscreen. If you have any questions please go ahead and ask.

Btw, could a mod change the title? It's not about turning a .psd into an iOS App but just about previewing iPhone App mockups on your device.
Free Streaming Music On Demand
If that's because Android's interface is laggy, then why do people keep buying Androids?

IMHO, iOS users spend more on apps because iTunes is better than Android's Marketplace - this may have been a deliberate decision by Google nonetheless. Did you know that I am not allowed to sell Android apps in the Marketplace because my country is still not approved for registering a Google Merchant account? That's right, it's almost 2012 and while I can sell apps on iTunes, I can't on Android's Marketplace. However I have no problem integrating AdMob in those apps. So it's like Google wants ad-supported instead of paid apps, which considering their main business model it isn't that shocking.

However, you can't say that Android and its UI is not a success.
Andrew Mason (Groupon CEO) presentation at Start-Up Chile HQ
I was also confused at first, and thought that this guy just re-invented LESS.

I think the source of confusion is that he calls his project "Knyle Style Sheets," whereas a more accurate name would be "Knyle markup for Preprocessed Style Sheets" (or Kml*SS).
Steve Jobs: From Garage to World’s Most Valuable Company
I think the point was that some organisms on earth exhibit traits of intelligence, like Dolphins, and that there could be Alien organisms that are like Dolphins that also show signs of intelligence. But just as humans and dolphins on earth cannot live together socially, that intelligence is either too primitive for them to travel to other planets to seek out life alien to them (have you ever seen a Dolphin craft material into a structure that could be used for interplanetary travel?), or is too complex for us to recognize that it is actual intelligence.

Although science fiction has been littered with thousands of stories of alien life visiting us, we humans only know of the fact that humans from Earth are the only organisms looking for life on other planets that we know of. I don't think anyone would doubt that any organism with the capacity to travel to other planets, let alone other solar systems and possibly other galaxies, is un-intelligent. Although we might be biased, we're a pretty intelligent species, as long as the metric is ourselves.
TR TeaM.NeT | Turkey's First Cracking Forum
TR TeaM.NeT | Turkey's First Cracking Forum
Unless there are big gains in reliability/uptime of IP versus conventional phone systems, I kinda doubt this.
In an Open-Source Society, Innovating by the Seat of Our Pants
> Kepler-22b is located 600 light-years away

So what we are seeing now are the light that came out the planet when Lorenzo Di Medici was inventing capitalism and financing the renaissance in Italy in 15th century.

Not very good chances we'll get there soon.
Integral fast reactors might be good but for green's 'weapons-grade woo'
I think you're wrong, and I think distaste with math is entirely due to poor teaching and/or poor/limited exposure.

If we were talking about music, would you let me get away with saying "The average student doesn't like music, in any form whatsoever"? Music is something human beings just like. We're wired to like it. Certainly there are forms of music we prefer, but I think you'd have a hard time finding someone who didn't like any music.

Math, numbers especially, can resonate in the soul in the same way that music does. It's more abstract and much less visceral, but just as beautiful, once you've really learned how to comprehend it.

I think your argument about math classes being tedious is orthogonal to whether or not math can be beautiful for everyone. Entry level music classes can be tedious, too. No one repeatedly hammering out "Frère Jacques" on the piano would say that it was beautiful, but they could hear someone playing some Chopin and easily acknowledge the beauty. Again, I maintain that this is due in large part to music being much more visceral -- you don't have to understand it to appreciate it, while in math you often do.
Ask HN: Reading comments on HN
When you come back to a thread, how can you tell which are the newly posted comments? For example, there is a post with around 180 comments now and yesterday it only had 165. I want to make sure to only read the 15 new comments and not have to go through all 180 and see which one is new! am i missing something here? the order doesn't show the most recent at the top specially if it's a sub-comment.
Collaborative Development for a Responsively Designed Web
Nortel's accounting problems were extremely bad by any standards and made a mediocre situation terminal. Nortel had the possibility to be at least as successful as Ericsson (which isn't saying much, but). I hope RIM isn't full of Nortel's old accounting people.
> sentience must (by sheer odds) be out there too.

... and your solution to the Fermi paradox is?
Sounds like another case of causation != correlation. Someone took a bunch of data and made pretty graphs from it.
There's some nice little study going around on the very same topic. In fact, they seem to agree with you. Check out "FastWords".

http://fastword.me/
IIRC, Linksys originally used a Linux variant for its firmware (I've forgotten the details of the transitions that the "L" model line went through.)

So... not entirely a "capitalist corporation" product.

Also, having spent a number of years in the seat at one of those corporations, I was not infrequently pissed at how often / how much they were taking a "free ride" on "free" software products without contributing back to the respective software projects, in code/support nor in dollars.

A "capitalist" is not infrequently a self-serving opportunist. Some of the more obnoxious of them thinking that "they" are the "magic factor", rather than all the shared wealth they rest upon.

EDIT: My mistake, it was the "G" line that was originally based on Linux:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linksys_WRT54G_series

The "GL" and similar are a subset of this line, that provided Linux support after they switched the "G" line to vxWorks. I don't recall and don't feel like digging up all the details, but I seem to recall there was some tension in their initial use of Linux that may have ultimately contributed to the "G" line being and staying as open, firmwarewise, as it has been.

Anyone, feel free to correct me on my deficiencies of memory and/or understanding.
Pure Javascript templates
I don't think companies are doing that. The causality just isn't being addressed properly.

I can come up with a lot of plausible reasons why you're more likely to find "good" engineers focusing on Python or Java, and why Ruby developers might be more cross-disciplined, and none of them are because the engineers are defined by the language.

This "study" is laughably poor in presentation, and their interpretation of the results they got is almost certainly unforgivably flawed.
Ask HN: What information would you like to know around mobile appstores?
.NET doesn't even make the cut for consideration? Am I wrong in thinking that there are still plenty of opportunities for Microsoft developers?
Be careful what you put in an email
Correct. I don't think people talk to their friends on engadget or reddit. Why would anybody do that?

You have email, telephones and facebook for talking to people. Why would you expect somebody you know to sift through threads on reddit to find out if you've said something to them?

Can you honestly say that you've done that? I never have, so it doesn't bother me whether you can guess my password to one of those sites. And if I ever ask to you wire some money to me in a comment on an engadget post, feel free to give me a call to confirm.
There's nothing gender-specific about that. Men also have personality conflicts at work and are subject to being called out for over-reacting or displays of bad temper. Sometimes such conflicts are isolated and quickly resolved, other times they fester and create a headache for the team's supervisor. I've been in all these situations during my career, as have most people I know. The writer seems to think that men never need or want to consult their friends about how to handle problems in the workplace, which is just nonsense.
Barcelona vs Batty borisov live stream online UEFA 6-12-2011
Another way to look at it is "Am I burning effectively?". If you're being honest, the answer is usually no. Unless your money is free, a lot can be achieved with no new burn. I like to keep tinder (cash) dry until we've found a way to be effective and then invest in it heavily.

Put another way, it doesn't matter what your burn is if you've got your rockets pointed in the wrong directions.
and to think that is best use of downvoting, because you disagree or you spot a typo.
> Is Mixtent wrong?

Their raw data may or may not be accurate, it's impossible to say because they fail to present the raw data or detail their methodology.

Their interpretation of the results is at best simplistic and incomplete, and their post title is absolutely wrong.
I had this idea 10 years ago and even had a beta..but scrapped the whole project after a few months.

I'm curious how you plan on making money. College students are notoriously cheap especially when the idea is that they are going to swap books as opposed to buy them.
I believe the author wants to let us know that the phenomena of Proof by Intimidation is catching up with most of us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_intimidation
Backing your statement, I'd further observe of all the terms in the Drake equation, the second term "fraction of stars that have planets" is the second least contentious, only behind the first term "average rate of star formation in the galaxy". I don't think I've ever seen someone claim that life on other planets is rare because planets are rare! It's only the later ones that are contentious. As someone who is so skeptical, showing a huge number of planets doesn't cause me to update my probabilities any, as I already anticipated such a huge number of planets.
The problem is you can not learn math from public school teachers because almost all of them are not able to do math themselves, the very few you meet who can are usually teaching the top level honors classes in high school, so at best you are only getting exposed to it for your last few years. The problem is the kind of skill required to do math usually leads you somewhere else besides public school, and if you are going to teach its going to be college level.

Most of the time anyone who really learns math ends up teaching it to themselves. It can be tough to find self motivation if you are struggling at all so the only kids who like math are usually the ones that instantly grasp concepts, they can do the rote busy work in a few minutes and spend the rest of class day dreaming about math ideas or reading ahead in the textbook to sections they find interesting. This is where the love of math comes from.
I'm not saying these and other business phrases aren't widely misused or used as a way to sound smart while saying nothing. But in case anyone is interested:

Synergy

The term comes from M&A and refers to scenarios where the whole (after a merger or acquisition) is worth more than the sum of the parts. For example, a steel foundry which acquires a competitor and can now buy iron at a lower price because it buys in higher volume. The increase in profitability of both foundries from the decreased cost of iron is a "synergy".

Value-add

Comes from Michael Porter (I think) and refers to the idea that each of the activities a company performs on their inputs before the final output should add value to the final product. If the company is unable to add value through one of those activities it's something they should pass to another party. This leads to phrases like "is our customer service call centre a value-add or should we outsource it?"
Using Google Analytics to Out Anonymous Bloggers
For some reason the site is down and the cache link on google takes a while to load. For everyone that wants to read it I created a public Google Docs file with the article. You can access it here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yL1659zNXQ7M9uXIcRrcu9dJ...
I think he meant that he should be able to customize the output using special comments, instead of needing to write Ruby.
I am not sure where the scandal is here. Playbooks were selling for $499 in Q1 and Q2, and that was for the basic model. Now they get marked down to $199, so the $485M writedown represents about 1.5-1.6 million Playbooks written down by $300 a piece.

This is an inventory writedown so probably RIM ordered from the manufacturer way more Playbooks than they actually ended up selling (no news here) and whatever inventory was in the "warehouses" so to speak got written down.