skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Your graph directly supports my assertion:

Android had a 34% market share lead in Q4 2010 and a 22% lead in the iP4 launch quarter prior.

After opening on Verizon at highest tier only in Feb 2011, that lead "eroded" immediately to 24% and 23% for the following quarters.

Q3 and Q4 2011 it's well known that iphone sales lagged waiting the new phone and then surged but taking these quarters together you get a gap around 19-20%.

How is that "really not true" to say that Android's lead eroded when that's exactly what your chart shows?
didn't know that. what do they have instead of SATA?
I don't live in the US, and the city I live in is plastered with posters advertising parties. They all advertise with attractive women on the cover. Not that different from a Hackathon advertising with attractive female waiters, if you think about it. I think it was poor style, but I also don't like the mobbing aspect of the "apologize or die" movement.
OMGPOP’s Sale to Zynga Is One of Y Combinator’s Biggest Exits To Date
Today's UX design is a drop in the [interface] ocean
Because it's not the falling, it's the jolt of landing. When in free fall, you are not actually accelerating. In terms of landing, though, it doesn't matter if you hit the ground or if, say, the bottom of an elevator hits you.
You say "electronic version of Pictionary that was released six weeks ago." I say "#1 paid, free, and top grossing iOS app, 12 million active users"."
I understand this is a challenging area for Google, but establishing deeper ties with the carriers, and strengthening consumer dependence in them makes me sad.
...I deal with jerks all of the damn time. But luckily no more or less than all of my peers. This would be very different if I was a woman.

Indeed. Jerks like this often associate in groups. As a result, women sometimes find themselves in a bizarro social context where their inferiority is just a good joke and the resulting humiliation is considered something like a blow for truth and "good clean fun."

That way if someone is being a jerk, many people can all confirm he's being a jerk.

Since women are such a minority in tech, they are sometimes subject to this sort of mob scene. Unless you've been in those shoes, it would be difficult to understand.
Maukdaddy says that "it depends on the type of personality you're dealing with," and I think that's very true with regards to immediate-and-public versus later-and-in-private. With many people, an embarrassing confrontation in front of the whole team will cause them to dig deeper, because their pride is on the line. The same person might respond more thoughtfully to a private expression of disapproval.
> I think it's part of the current social code/contract

Eh. For the purposes of what I said, these are about the same. Laws are indirectly derived from the social code, so just move my statement up a level. You still can't answer the question of how the social code ought to view bits from how it currently views them.

Sometimes the social code is wrong, and those who believe that copyright piracy is bad for society are making the case that this is one of those times. Simply observing the current state of the social code in no way counters those arguments -- although some of them can be countered other ways.
Zencoder is looking for a Sales Engineer who understands video
No exact date yet, but you should expect the first talks (most likely to include Rich's) to be available in about 3 weeks.
Only thing is, this would not be coming to partners defense, but pointless chest-thumping. Now, I think I know what he meant by writing that, and I doubt he'd actually do anything other than being nice to her and supporting her in whatever she chooses to do with it, but the expression still matters.

The brainwashing gets us all. It's sad when it gets us while we're trying to be supportive. The proper expression is "I was horrified and angered by it," not "I will respond to this by aggressive behavior not that much unlike what the other dude did". And proper response to someone noticing it is, probably, "oh... um, I didn't think about it like that, thanks, sorry", not "but I had good intentions!!!"
re :
"What would happen if creators couldn’t charge for their creations? The same as if you couldn’t charge for lines of computer code: there’d be less of it. Some people would keep on producing for the public good, just for the joy of it – in the same way that people contribute to open source software. But plenty of people wouldn’t be able to do it anymore."

so what if there's less of it?? .. necessity is the primal driver - if society as a whole really needs your shitty music (or whatever widget you want), it will get made by some avenue of support. PERIOD. we don't _need_ most of this bullshit anyhow .. so boo f'ing hoo.

if you distribute something outside of your garden, it has gone wild and you have no right to restrict how anyone can then play with it. .. imho
That doesn't mean the market values such effort. They have no right to demand to be paid just because something takes skill. Lots of skilled activities are of no value to the market. And I say this as a musician who's very aware of the effort involved.
I am literally saying that you are right. The easiest thing for her to do, the thing with the best personal outcome, is to lighten up and get on with her life.

The problem is that is also the response with the worst outcome for the field in general.

So, what I'm saying is, she's taking a hit (for instance, by being told to "stop victimizing herself" and to just work harder) in order to stand up against this stuff.

And I'm also saying that as a husband and the father of a little girl who could god-help-me end up in this field, she's standing up for my family too. And so I personally have an issue with belittling her for doing that.

You put a little smiley face after your comment because you thought it was amusing. It's not funny.
You have to divorce the existence of piracy from the viability of the industry. What should matter to those running the companies in question is not how many people are getting something for nothing, but rather how much they're making off those who are paying, and how they can convince more people to pay. For some people, cost will be the overriding factor and they will always pirate, even if it's a worse experience. Others are willing to pay for an improved service. Focus on the latter, not the former. You will never squeeze money from the people who aren't willing to pay; they simply won't consume instead. Focus on making your money from those who are wiling to pay, and everyone will be better off.
I tried this approach and it's clearly attractive, but it also has some disadvantages. I decided to switch back to rendering static HTML in Django (not a Rails guy), with just a little JS on top for now. These are my main reasons:

- Debugging on every browser was quite painful. I tried to support IE7+ as well. If a server-side code works, it works for everyone.

- Frameworks on the client-side are not as developed as the server-side ones. Also I am reluctant to introduce more client-side libraries than necessarily, so I will end up coding a lot of stuff, that I can get for free in Django otherwise.

- The user will need to wait for the JS to load and execute until they see something on the first pageload (at least in my implementation).

- If there is a bug in the JS it's harder to get it logged.
I was thinking that I would be reluctant too, but then I realised that I have given plenty of SaaS companys my CC up front - sometimes not even for a free trial (but usually with a moneyback guarantee). E.g Linode and JungleDisk.
*will
Oh.

Your proposed solution to sexual harassment or racial harassment or harassment in general was to tell the victim to "grow a thicker skin"

That was what you wanted us to learn from your contributions to the thread.

Thanks. It's pretty clear exactly who has the problem.
Really nice, smart team to work with too
I'm not disputing that it is a wildly successful game. I am stating that a $200mm valuation of a single game is insane. I know the argument will be made that they bought the whole company, but this acquisition would not have happened if not for Draw Something.

Given the number of developers working on producing the next big hit in games, there will be a Words With Friends or Draw Something released on an ongoing basis. Why would Zynga get in the business of buying up these companies after the hits have been produced? Seems like a losing business model.
Water is free but it is still illegal to shoplift bottled water from the 7/11. Just like it is illegal to infringe copyright by redistributing songs without permission. And for the same reason.
Once everyone uses OSM, won't it be prohibitively expensive for a non-profit to serve it?

Yes. The problem is that Google has started charging now as well- at least, once you hit a certain threshold. They might have a deal available for non-profits, I'm not sure. It's certainly something I'd hope MapBox are working on, because non-profit mapping seems like a large (and worthwhile area).

No doubt, the bandwidth costs are expensive, though. I made my own custom map tiles (you can see a demo of them in use at http://www.taxono.my) and put them behind an Amazon CloudFront server, which makes it about as cheap as possible. But still, if my traffic gets huge, it could be an issue.
It's not a matter of being open source or not. I think his argument is that you can make money without copyright. Regardless if you open source your software or not. And not only you "can", but it's also the most profitable choice of today. You pointed to the gaming industry, which is an interesting example because our industry is moving toward free to play exactly because copyright haven't been paying off recently. Although I'd argue companies are doing this extremely slow because of their own bureaucracy and incompetence.

So my answer to your question of "do you think they would be making as much money without copyright" is that they would be making much more without copyright.
That's an unsubstantiated claim. I don't think it's true. From what I've heard about the YC interview and decision-making process I think they place a high value on maturity. The ones I've met have fun but don't have rockstar attitudes.

Also the awkwardness she's talking about doesn't come only from having a big ego. It's from constantly saying a single asinine statement. The person saying it often doesn't mean for it to have the effect it does.
You are a fine demagogue. You recognize exactly what I meant.

> There may be need for additional software to solve a new problem and in that sense, you provide a service.

And then assume I meant something else.

> But I certainly don't want software that I need to keep going back to the vendor for fixes for or new documentation or for training on how to use it.

Shame on you, sir.

> I think that's very much the wrong way to do software, despite your emphatic use of italics.

I think this is very much the wrong way to have a civilized discussion, despite your wit.
What's the unique proposition with this? In NZ this is already very common with Universities, Dominos etc. Is it just a market that SendHub wants to contest in or does SendHub bring something new to the table (or is this difficult in the US?)
Finally, someone with experience in the real world. Comments about "staying in the kitchen" or talking about a co-worker's breasts (which is what the "low-cut dress" comment is really about) will get you fired on the spot in many or most jobs in America.

And it also happens to be the correct response.
In my region, a fine for "stealing electricity" has a fine starting at like $30,000. This is normally aimed at grow ops, which tap into the service lines before the meter (usually by an interior cut below grade so it goes unnoticed), however when the government is already abusing its power, I don't think it's a wise idea to actually get into a position where you could be facing a massive fine. So I certainly wouldn't suggest going anywhere near power lines.

I'd suggest solar-cells. If you get the right efficiency-weight ratio, they might actually add to the flight duration of the craft, and when the battery starts dying simply have the UAV target a south-facing roof and ditch. As the UAV would likely already have motion-sensors, simply program it so that any abnormal shakes in this 'sleep mode' and it takes off so no one goes up on a ladder and tries to grab it.

Also using this latter method, they could collect data on how long it takes before they get disturbed to find friendly zones for if they are disturbed in sleep mode.
> Stop blaming the victim.

First of all, stop putting words in my mouth. This villainization of everyone who doesn't instantly white-knight is insane.

> But if you behave in a sexist or racist way in the work environment you can expect to be gone. Gone. Period.

Great, maybe you should run the company she works at. Or maybe you should put your money where your mouth is and go try to stir up a lawsuit for her. Or you can just posture and puff up your chest in the comments.
It did happen quite often in the past. See much of the research done over the last hundred or so years in public universities.

I didn't say we should arbitrarily limit the amount of profit one can make by investing capital, but the current copyright law and patent law is very stifling to innovation.

Apple employs some people, sure. Monopolies (not implying apple is a monopoly to be hit by anti-trust laws, btw, but copyright and patent are monopoly powers) are very, very profitable for the few people that hold them.

I don't have my copy of Wealth of Nations in front of me (out of copyright, but I purchased the penguin classics paperback anyways, go figure), but Adam Smith made a very compelling argument that things like entertainment are not acretive to the capital of a country. At the time of publication (1776), Smith noted actors and musicians expected no more compensation than what they received for peformances. They produced no lasting product that could be added to the 'capital' of the company. Recordings you might say add this value because of copyright, but if you cannot sell your copy that would mean it's not a capital good.

So, yes, creative works existed before the current distribution model.

I'm not arguing people cannot profit from their works, far be it. I'm arguing that the current model for profit favors a very few at the expense of very many, and does not meet the needs of either creators or consumers as well as it does the distributors!

Movies are perhaps the most dependent on the current model, as yes, it takes significant capital to make most movies. However, is it truly more creative to see the 3D version of Star Wars Episode I? Or would it be better to see "Star Wars Episode I: As written By Kickstarter Member XYZ". I'm fairly certain Option B would be more creative at this point. Lucas and everyone involved with Star Wars has already made plenty of money, but you can't expand on those works just because you have a great idea, you'd need Lucas' permission.

Anyways, copyright/patents are a very complex thing right now. I can't tell you exactly how the Ipad came to be (although it wasn't the first tablet), so I can't really say if Apple had the best idea, or just the right polish at the right time. All the patent infringement lawsuits surrounding the ipad seem to support my view that they stifle innovation more than they support the "It required this closed model" argument, if you ask me. Apple is almost assuredly infringing a lot of patents (which many may be invalid), and I would argue they are really so successful because they have deep enough pockets to fight all those legal wars.

I could write a lot and end up saying very little, it is very hard for me to boil down all my thoughts on copyright and patents into a HN comment.
There seems to be a pervasive misunderstanding that downvoting is for what you disagree with, rather than for comments that do not add to the discussion. That is, downvotes are for noise, upvotes are for signals, and "signal" includes things you disagree with.

My new hobby (in the XKCD sense) is upvoting every well-reasoned argument that I disagree with on HN. :)
I don't know about most companies, but every single person who would have been in a position to buy software on the companies behalf could have easily pulled out their company credit card or the sheet of the paper that each department had with the credit card info on it and bought the software.

These companies ranged from 2 people to 400+ people. Most SaaS offerings are under $50, which seems to be something that most business people won't hesitate about spending money on and certainly wouldn't require someone to go to someone else to approve.

If this is the case in your company you're wasting a lot of time!
You see, I have problem with posts like this.

First I'm like - "Woah, I can't imagine someone would be so insensitive to make joke like this!" and get all fed up and upset.

But then... then I freeze, because next example is something that I can imagine myself saying.

"Oop, Katie's got the low cut dress on today! I know where I'm sitting!"

I... I'm at loss of words. I was trained during my teenage years, that it's cool to say things like that. As I'm getting older, I see how sexist and demeaning this is. But it's really hard to break this habit, and this "Hey, it's just meaningless joke, right?!" line of thought. I try, I really try, but sometimes I forget myself.

On a similar note - I have exact same problem with how I perceive woman and man having multiple sexual partners.
"Good key opens many locks, but good lock is opened by only one key" and all that bullshit - I know that it's ridiculous to hold woman and men to different standard in this regard, and I mostly learned to don't do that, but my... instinct that was ingrained in me by society tells me otherwise.

I find myself struggling to suppress my subconscious mind in this regard, and frankly, I don't know how I can help it.

Edit for clarity: I don't have problem with such posts being written and upvoted, quite opposite actually, I'm glad they are written and read. I have problem with how posts like this make me feel.
Include a sppelling mistake so people react to your post more, bringing in more traffic.
Maybe you don't, but others do. That's why Red Hat is a billion-dollar-a-year company.
There is PhoneGap...
Great. Would you pay $200mm for a game that was released a little over a month ago? It seems to me that money has no value in Silicon Valley. We've seen this story play out before, but I guess we'll need another bubble to clean out the rest of the suckers.
And indeed - by declaring yourself mature enough to handle a startup at a young age, you're also declaring yourself mature enough to act like a human being. Young people in prominent settings shouldn't get a free pass - if you want to be in the "big leagues", you've got to act like you belong there.
I'm not assuming anything - you are the one who is assuming.

I made a support or mutt as a more than first class email client.
I like the bizarro social context expression. It's a great way to describe how I work with female programmers and both my project managers are female and nothing like the described behavior would ever be tolerated for a second, and yet each female programmer I know has such horror stories.

I guess the best advice is when you find yourself in a situation like that, get the hell out. But even I as a top notch experienced white male coder can't change jobs at the drop of a hat.
The second is simply that any high technology civilization will eventually travel to the moon, which allows for a much more undisturbed record.

If we didn't already know where the lunar landers touched down, do we really think we'd be able to find them again with just a telescope? That's a lot of area to search.
Curious here: I assume a “thumper” is short for a “Bible thumper”?

And what do you mean by “his only saving grace from being shown the door is that he falls into a different category”?
Let's say you have a website and let's say that website serves a lot of traffic. Now let's say you relegate Rails to act as just your API because clients are fast now and you want to do some new cool stuff with Javascript also, you're convinced your site is more like an "application". So you build this system and it works really well, except for one thing. The first time you load the page it takes a second or two minimum to get the page loaded. That's ok at first, but really soon it becomes annoying. So you do everything you can with your client, caching whatever possible. You get the load time down to something like 1s. That's better but still not great. Some static sites can spit back pages in like 200ms (across the network!!) and that 800ms difference is crucial to the overall feel and snappiness of your "application". Eventually you give up, you keep the parts of the site that work well as a client-side app, push the rendering back to the server because even though the server is a long ways away from the client and even though clients are fast, you can directly control how quickly the server builds a page and you can optimize that to your heart's content. Now you've gotten your page loads way way down to like 400ms. You're doing great, people love you and you've saved the day. I've fabricated the numbers, but this story is based on truth, because you know who you are? Twitter, Alex's employer.

That's not to say that Rails doesn't make a great API and that Alex doesn't have a point. There certainly is a place for frontend applications out there built on frameworks like Spine, Backbone or Ember (all great projects). Those types of applications have their advantages in some cases. But, it's prudent to be pragmatic and to recognize that the times where you truly need to build a client driven application are few and for the other times Rails is still great at serving up HTML.
Considering the outlandish fines being levied for something on the order of ten unlicensed copies of a song, being caught with a drone carrying hundreds or thousands would seem to overshadow electricity stealing fines. I like the solar-cell idea though.
My biggest problem is that the joke wasn't particularly funny.

I grew up on Hara-Kiri, Reiser, Vuillemin and co, and later Derek and Clive. They are all way, way more offensive, but they are really funny and also quite aware that they are going to piss people off.

What I find disturbing in both the joke and the apology is the surprise that people would get upset. Basically that's it's perfectly normal.
Wife: 'Kony 2012' director suffers from psychosis
An advantage of doing it in public is that others can see that it's been done. This could include victims of the oppressive joke who will now see justice previal and might stand a smidge taller, and possible future (or past) 'offendors' who will see that that they should be more professional and not make the same mistake as the other person.
Integrating Peecho's Cloud Print Button into your mobile app
I think calling it an "optimization" is unfair. You don't call while loops that run in constant space an optimization, do you?

Without support for proper tail calls, a large range of otherwise valid recursive programs does not work. So, in a very real sense, supporting proper tail recursion changes the semantics of the language, letting you certain programs more easily.