skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> the average user is far less sophisticated, perhaps a 12-year-old girl

Argh. The author just had to specify that the unsophisticated 12-year-old is a girl. Because, hey, a 12-year-old boy might be a larval hacker, right?

> or a grandfather

Old people is another category of people who hopelessly "unlike" the presumed Linux Magazine reader. They certainly aren't interested in microkernels, but let's make sure they feel suitably old and marginalized if they ever try to change that.
Then how in the world do you ever expect to launch it in the first place? This kind of attitude always perplexes me - if your solution to a problem is excellent, there will be little incentive for others to copy it.
Then you didn't write good enough tests. I have deployed code that thousands of customers see without manually testing it. If my tests are green, I'm confident in deploying my code.
IOS 5 Application Development-How To Save Battery Life In iOS Devices
Due to lots of features iOS 5 devices facing battery drainage problem and in this post I have discussed it in brief.
If you're referring to lag on initial page load, a couple things I noticed:

It uses ipv6; if your host is ipv6 enabled, there are probably tunnels involved and it'll be slower.

It tries to load dozens of json files from api.sharedcount.com. Try turning on pipelining if it's not already (still off by default in FF), and set max pipeline requests to something a lot more than the default of 4.
I completed the course too. It wasn't a programming course, but a machine learning one, so I don't think it was bad they hand held us on the programming part.

The homework played an important part in assimilating the new concepts - even though I felt I understood right from the lecture, until I put it in code I wasn't quite there.
I know that is not a new concept, but it seems troubling because of its scope. It would be like saying "You may not shred credit card statements."

But more to the point, so man computers now expect password-protection. I don't see how this amounts to something other than a ban on general computing and for reasons that are not distinctly related to the offence.
> however, in smartphones and tablets, Apple is the company that releases best-of-class hardware year after year at retail prices that their competitors have a hard time matching, let alone beating.

Half-true. It is true that competitors who build equivalently high-end products as Apple have difficulty competing on price (Apple only sells high-end). But there are Android smart-phones that sell new for $100+ less than even an iPhone 4. (unlocked, non-contract prices!) Equally you can get a kindle fire for $200 less than an iPad 2.
Its slightly less annoying that clicking the ubuntu link leads to downloading a Debian package file

If it shouldn't lead to a .deb file what should it lead to? I take the Ubuntu logo to mean they tested it on Ubuntu.
Testing with front end javascript is more difficult due to different interpreters, much more variation in environment, etc. That doesn't mean you can't have tests for your core business logic at least in something like Vows or Mocha.
If there are 6 billion people on earth, that's 10 millon of them.
SSL Endpoint (Beta) | Heroku Dev Center
WOW! I must say that I am actually surprised how many people have replied that they do little or no testing.

Perhaps this is because I am in the enterprise development world as opposed to the start-up world.

The cost and frustration involved in delivering a critical bug into a QA or production environment is much higher than the cost and frustration of writing and maintaining tests.

Every action in business has a cost associated with it. The more people involved (customers, UAT, Managers, etc.) the higher the cost. The sooner you can discover the bugs and fix them the less people are impacted the lower the cost.

This is how you make yourself as a developer more valuable and justify your high salary/rate by ingraining habits into your daily routine that reduce costs for the business.

In this I also imply non monetary costs, like the personal costs involved in asking a VP to sign off on an off-cycle production release due to a bug that could have been identified by a test prior to the integration build.
And if you join an engineering company where the engineers pride themselves on data and accomplishments rather than speculations, it may be worthwhile to provide evidence to support your theory than just argue with everyone without anything to it up.

And if you join a company and someone more senior than you with ACTUAL accomplishments and that is respected in and outside of the company tries to take you under his wings and guide you through the corporate landscape, don't dismiss their actual accomplishments as "irrelevant" at the same time boasting about your success in a product for a "niche market that doesn't exist"

And if you join a company, you should not claim expertise in something unless you are an ACTUAL expert and have the knowledge, experience, and accomplishments to back that up. Saying that you're a T7-9 visionary doesn't make you a T7-9 visionary!

And if you join a company, don't dismiss your fellow colleagues and make a fool of yourself because even if you don't work with them now at the current company, you may encounter them again in the future.

I'm not speaking to any specific incident. Just general advice that any new junior employee to any company should follow.

For people skeptical of the other replies here, the reputation of OP is pretty well known... it has almost become a shibboleth of the people that were around during his tenure.
Partly they're hiding from people with guns and bombs.
That's okay :) It is a valid concern. I picked up the original during the Dennis Ritchie memorial sale and found it to be worth the time/money.
Could you name the apps you use?
(http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-03-14/goldman-stunned-...)

$2.2Billion is, to me, a lot of money.
If you're interested in this, check out my lightning talk I gave at SXSW:
http://goo.gl/5wE3O

In the browser using WebGL, I animate through GPS trails of multiple cabs in the SF area, 1.1M points
Basically for the same reasons conservatives listen to Rush Limbaugh and liberals read Frank Rich.

There's a place for objective journalism but it's not the only way. What Gruber does is more of a specialized type of journalism. If you've already made up your mind you don't necessarily want to waste time with the other points of view. For example if you really like basketball you would probably prefer to read a blog that focuses on basketball instead of a blog that's comparing basketball to other sports in an objective way. It would really be a waste of your time since you've already decided you like basketball.

When it comes to relatively unimportant things like technology, sports, food, video games, your favorite brand of soda, etc there's a lot less value in objective journalism. I prefer specialized journalism in that context. I'm more interested in the opinions and thoughts of someone who shares my viewpoint because they are more likely to focus on the details that are important to me. We're also likely starting from a common point so not every tiny detail has to be explained verbosely. We all kind of 'get it' so there's no need to rehash it. His comparison of the iPhone 3GS->4 for example is something an Apple user going to understand immediately. He doesn't have to write 300 words describing the contrast using examples of a bunch of products I've never used because he has a reasonable expectation that I probably haven't used them. So why bother?

I don't quite understand why people are so hung up on objective journalism in this context. This isn't reporting on the Watergate scandal or something. It's a consumer product. It's Coke vs. Pepsi. I don't think Gruber needs to aspire to be Edward R. Murrow here. He can proudly write for the home-team if he wants to. Another blog that is anti/pro/objective/etc is only a click away. He certainly doesn't tout himself as being the authoritative beacon of objective journalism.
That sounds positive, and I hope you'll keep posting progress! On the design side, you need a pro - but I feel like start with photos and bolder fonts, brand yourself more assertively.
Our new product, cocaine, is a real life-changer! You'll lose weight, gain confidence, and feel more energetic! Feel awkward at parties, never knowing what to say? Cocaine will have you making deep conversation in no time! We're confident that once you try cocaine, you'll want to do it all the time!

Factual accuracy is not the be-all and end-all of what makes a marketing narrative a good thing on which to base your opinions and what you tell others.

>(which you readily admit)

I did no such thing. I said they make great products.
> I have never seen any half way decent developer write code for more then a few minutes without some sort of feedback, automated test suite or not

Reading that again, I'm sorry if it came off as sort of attacky, but I really meant that as a "from my personal experience with the people I have worked with over my career" type qualification :)

I can buy #1, but only when it is something you've done a bajillion times before. When you are getting feedback every few minutes, you know exactly what introduced the problem, and don't waste time tracking things down. If you do miss something fundamental and have several hours work behind you, you tend to be more inclined to hack out something to make it work, where if you catch it a few minutes in, you can adjust your design to take it into account. I also find I can keep in the flow pretty easily with constant feedback, and I use simple todo lists to make sure I don't lose track of things.

As for 2, at least for me, I don't think there is any comparison between thinking about how things should work, and knowing if things do work before writing. TDD is definitely not a replacement for deep thought and planning, but I think that is a different beast then working out the details as you are writing them, which is where it comes into play

> only the people out of college write code for multiple hours straight, then debug everything afterwards.

I sort of did it again there, I should have qualified it more :) In my experience, the better programmers I have worked with, paired with, and watched code in videos will get feedback as quickly and often as makes sense, be it with tests or without them. I know if I wrote TeX in a notebook, it would be a guaranteed unmitigated disaster :)
>He does original thinking. This includes analysis and synthesis. Additionally, he practices good journalism.

Really? Lets look at a recent example of such exemplary commentary:

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/03/12/xyboard

That's just one example, his constant hate of and sneering at not just anything Android but anything Google is what is exemplary and shows that he is a fanboy that like to play his fanbase for fun and profit, and his readers just lap it up.
Give 'em some link love and share their write-up!
"Idiot" is an ad hominem, but "has no sense of reality" isn't? Ad Hominem is an attack on the person, regardless of which specific attack it is. Being accurate or not has nothing to do with it.

If I say that you're wrong and a jew, I just made an ad hominem attack, regardless if you're actually a jew or not. That's completely uncalled for.
It's simple. To anybody who appreciates the pragmatic of "what works", suits look silly.

Let's break a suit down:

jacket: why? are you cold? there are better garments, made of better material that can keep you warm in a variety of colder than comfortable climates.

vest (optional): why? it makes you look like a poker dealer, but you forgot your green rimmed sunshade.

tie: supposedly to add some color, but looks like a noose, or a lead rope used to guide livestock around (the signal I always get from a tie), may as well just wear a shirt with some color. Predecessors to the tie are generally regarded as silly looking today. Nobody takes an ascot seriously today, bolos look ridiculous, bow ties instantly turn somebody into a fussy professor, and nobody would be caught dead these days in a cravat http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Louis1667...

oxford or similar shirt: oh where to start....buttons, from a time when fabrics couldn't be manufactured with the properties of jersey. Collar, to catch sweat from...all the sweating you're doing from the 3 layers of unnecessary clothing you're wearing. Sleeves, long to be proper, even if it's hot, buttons on the end, because again another vestigial holdover from primitive fabrics, or french cuffs, because who doesn't like to assemble their sleeves when they get dressed? Oh, and it has to be tucked in, leading to constant retucks throughout the day, or embarrassing shirt stays clipped to your socks or looped under your feet looking like some kind of lingerie reject.

Toss out that mess and we're left with ridiculous, overly expensive uncomfortable shoes that need constant maintenance, black socks and what are essentially just expensive slacks.

(edit: I'm frequently caught wearing suits for various work reasons, and I feel like an idiot every time I "suit up")
Very valid point. Brands are built by third party validation, not by your own claims. If there is incongruity between your message and your product, you wont be able to get over the initial hump of credibility. Without credibility, it doesn't matter how well you try to position yourself, no one will believe you.

Nobody believes what you claim about yourself, but they believe what others say about you. This is why PR is such an important element of building a strong brand.
FITC x MAMZELLE - submission for Women at FITC
I'm pretty far into the extremist side of TDD, and I'll say that there is a thing as TOO many tests. Your test suite needs to run fast to be really useful.

If you have thousands of full stack integration tests that takes an hour to run, you're not going to run them as often as you should be, if at all, ad might as well delete them.
Ps3 Controller
ISPs aren't common carriers now, so they can't lose it.
When I was writing that I thought of North Korea and Iran. Maybe any entity (human, gang, corporation, or leviathan [the state]), when it doesn't feel like it's an accepted part of a larger group, degenerates into displaying that sort of behavior?
And so the apartheid security state begins. Here's the endgame: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_checkpoint
Awesome! The URL seems similar to other Coursera courses. Will this course be offered online through Coursera?
Lots of back and forth over the nomenclature as usual. I hope not to obfuscate further by adding my definition.

I'm currently a BI consultant aspiring to the title of data scientist and here's my motivation...

Traditional business intelligence skills basically refer to people who are 'IT guys that have finance knowledge' ...so generally you'll find yourself doing pretty general reporting along with some financial performance management (FPM) albeit at the data modeling/ metadata modeling level (you're building metadata models and cubes/reports dashboards with drill down not just flat reports.)
All of this is done at the whim of some exec/BA/line manager all of whom (in my experience)seldom understand the subject well enough to actually pose sensible strategic questions.

Data science implies several levels of creativity expressed through solid technical skills along with a dash of journalism. Maybe it is just a rebranding but what it represents to those in the field is a total paradigm shift in terms of where and how the skills are applied. This is key because all too often my work as a BI consultant boils down to churning out x number of meaningless reports by a certain date so that some head of department can get his bonus and justify the Oracle purchase that incidentally resulted in a 3 day trip to Paris funded by a stunningly sophisticated sales team.

If I come off cynical it's because I am passionate about data. I believe that data science and the paradigm shift it represents has the power to really change human lives and I believe that it has a key role to play in the future of the evolution of our species.
Here's a hint: http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=1SockChuck
Given what it takes to be admitted to the firm, let alone stay in it for 12 years, I wouldn't consider him "pissant". That time guarantees he's survived and gone above probably 100K other bright hires over the years. Can't say that for most companies.
My take, it's just the press milking the point/counterpoint style of argument to attract more eyeballs and ad dollars.
All three are of the same ilk in my book. Having been a very early follower of cringley, and previous married to Dvorak's niece - I do feel I have some context here...

Personally - I find them all to be the same; Opportunistic writers (Yes, they all have skill - I was not disputing this fact) who have found a niche in hte market where they can fill it.

I think ANY successful technology writer must be a fan boi to certain extent -- If all they ever did was shit on everything, then why read them?

I think that fan boi, as a term, is just a modern (hipster, even) way of saying that we have a product evangelist.

I do think that both cringley and dvorak were very much in this role early on - maybe they were much better writers, though, in their prime.
As a developer, it's fantastic to read your perspective on this: I am glad there are entrepreneurs out there who don't buy into the cargo-cult of startup geek burnout.

If anything, I'd be wary of someone who is too into their craft - they might consider actual results a lower priority. Nobody likes a "star programmer".
Related: Data-Driven modeling course by Jake Hofman (Yahoo Research): http://jakehofman.com/ddm/recent-posts/

lots of practical exercises, playing with real data and APIs
Tau in Python: http://bugs.python.org/issue12345
(rejected)

Tau in Ruby: http://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/4897
(ignored)

:(
Kind of makes me wish I had held on to Hashrocket a bit longer :)
And scoped styles (including only optionally inheriting styles from the parents) and events, which seem like they could be phenomenally helpful for widget libraries. You have to be careful with site-wide CSS to avoid styling, for example, a jQueryUI widget. With this, there would be zero conflicts, unless you explicitly allow them.
Rubber O-Rings Manufacturer
Rishabh Elastomers is the leading manufacturer and supplier of Rubber O-Rings, Rubber Seals, Rubber Gaskets, Rubber Washers, Rubber Sleeves, Rubber Diaphragms, Rubber Pads, Rubber Bushes, Rubber Adapters and Rubber Cots Delhi, India.
I do strict TDD when I can, and I consider spiking out things part of the process. If I need to approach a problem that I don't know how I'd solve just yet, I create some sample code I later trash and do a lot of work in the Ruby console.

Then, once I've gotten an idea of the problem, I can start writing out some pending tests that help me figure out structure, and then I'll start into the strict TDD loop of write a bit of test, watch it fail, make it pass, write more test, etc.
CineXPlayer is a good one: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cinexplayer-best-way-to-enjoy...
I always get tonic water. Nobody else gets tonic water, so once the steward offered me the entire can. Now I get tonic water and ask for the entire can. They always give it to me.

Here I thought it was because I was so clever for drinking tonic water, and they're giving out entire cans of Coke.
This is brilliant news. As more people get molested by TSA and watch others getting to breeze through just because they paid some money (that will be how most people look at it), there will be more uproar about how ridiculous these policies are.
He has also supported a BSD license for Ogg Vorbis: https://lwn.net/2001/0301/a/rms-ov-license.php3
You can use your music if it's in MP3 or AAC (which are pretty much the standard these days), you can play AVI and WMV. You will always have to repurchase your apps no matter which platform you jump to.

It sounds like such an old wife tale that people kept saying they can't play video formats. There are a number of ways of doing this. I have numerous friends who thinks this is the case, but it really is just a myth. There are even so many apps that pretends to be like a USB drive.
What I don't like about Arch is that it doesn't provide debug symbol packages, which makes it useless for providing crash bug reports for programs written in compiled languages unless the user is willing to recompile them. IMHO general-purpose distros have moral (or at least pragmatic) imperative to support the development of the software that they ship, and making sure users can file decent bug reports easily is an important part of that.

Meanwhile, other distros have gotten to the point of automatically installing the right debug symbol packages right from the crash reporter built into app suites like KDE's to generate useful backtraces.
How Image Shape Affected Facebook Ads Performance (Case Study)
You couldn't have written it any better. Mark Bowden, the writer of the article, is superficially looking at the situation and not telling us Don's methods of success. I'm more interested in what tactics Don is doing rather then the romanticized story behind it all. That's just me though.
My point is, there is no shortage of communication and collaboration tools on the internet.

Regarding your need for community or social learning, there is nothing preventing you from watching these lectures with a group of actual people.
This makes no sense whatsoever. "Plum Pudding"? and a b/w picture of some guy?
How Dwolla Sells It Before They Build It
Er, this is the age of technology. Why write a NYT article when you've already got a copy of the virtual rolodex at home?
"Personally I don't get get why not more people wear suits, you have lots of pockets for your gear"

Or just wear cargo pants.
The World's First Gesture-based Calculator
Ashley Isham Fall/Winter 2012-13, London
I was about to go "Yeah but the prices in Australia are so much higher than in America, rah rah rah" but the base price is $539 here.

Honestly I'm shocked.
Everything through unit tests

All important features through functional tests

All critical path features through endurance tests

Ad Hoc + user feedback for the rest
Unless you're Jason Bourne, what's the point of going through security with a fake boarding pass if you also have a real one? The No-Fly List isn't parameterized by destination.
OTOH, wasn't the iPad 1 the cheapest 10-inch tablet? So either all 10-inch tablets are luxuries or Apple is actually selling bargain-priced hardware compared to the competition.
"We can reduce the size of the haystack when we are looking for that one-in-a-billion terrorist," said TSA Administrator John Pistole.
he whole idea of Milk was to try lots of things and see which stuck.

Maybe it's because most HN'ers don't have that kind of luxury of scope with their own startup endeavors, which understandably causes a level of resentment?

Sure, as a founder you can pivot, but that's not the same as launching discrete apps/businesses, being able to test them out and then shut them down if they are not popular.

Most people only get one bite of the cherry.
Because that's what happened. They've bought up all the current stock afaik. The other tablet makers will be behind the curve by at least 6 months, maybe a year.