skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
One of the annoyances I've had with Android, from a new consumer's point of view, is that it's presented as this monolithic OS that's the same across every phone. But once you do the research, you find that it's really not. Except for the Nexus line, there really isn't a "Google Android" experience. When you buy an Android device, you're really buying HTC's, Samsung's, Amazon's or Motorola's Android. Every device has different capabilities. Some ship with different Google services out of the box, others ship with their own internal apps. Google's Android strategy is that every manufacturer can make their own Android shell, without placing any requirements on the vendors as to what version of Android they're using.

It's a great thing that there's all this choice for the devices. It's a great thing that Android allows this kind of freedom. But it's led to a lot of issues for Google and for developers.

The problem that Google has is that they've effectively lost control of Android. They can't force manufacturers to use the latest version of Android. So they're left with situations like this, where the vast majority of Android devices are running an old version of the OS, and will never be updated to the newest version, because the manufacturers just don't want to[1]. So the result is that they have to support around 4 different codelines at the same time(ICS, HC, Gingerbread, and Froyo).

It's a problem for developers because your display code might not look right on a new device with a weird screen resolution. Or you might need API calls that are only in 4.0, which would lock you out of 90% of the devices right now.

No, the alternative is for Google to exert control over the device manufacturers and state that if they're going to be using the Android OS, they need to support and update their devices to the latest version for at least 2 years after the phones are released.

[1] There is a good economic argument that patching phones that are 18 months old with 24 month contracts about to be up just doesn't make sense, but honestly, it comes down to that the manufacturers just aren't willing to do it.
It sounds to me like you're arguing less for programming and more for a) a basic algorithms class, b) an understanding of technology applicability to real-world problems, and c) the need for better tools to automate daily tasks.

You have to be a pretty good programmer to write a multi-page scraping script fast enough that it beats the tradeoff of just doing it by hand. Or you need to solve the problem another way. I guess that's what I'm getting at... the problems you're highlighting are real, but I don't think the solution is "learning about programming."
Spoken like someone who isn't an Android developer.

Take your analogy to the next step. Someone opens an online store that sells binary-only copies of applications targeted to just "Linux".. you would call them crazy, no? That's what the Google Market is. Or the Amazon Market, samsung apps, nook store, ...

I wrote a blog post to help you understand the pragmatic issues faced by an Android developer trying to write decent software.

http://burnsmod.com/development/2012/05/01/Android-Fragmenta...

Your analogy does not make me sleep better at night.
Poll: Do you think there is a technology bubble?
Viruses used to power tiny device
There's a funny juxtaposition between Zed Shaw's rather excellent books and what just comes across as nasty, personal, bullying comments and attacks on people.

In fact, around a year ago, amidst serious worries in my life, I read some typically Shaw-ian stuff which essentially utterly disuaded me from wanting to try and do things out in the public arena should he, or people like him, feel like attacking me for producing code that he/they didn't feel was all that good. It was quite depressing.

The irony is that I actually recently recommended LPtHW to a friend who I want to help out potentially get a new career. I love the idea of quality education being free for everyone via the web, and I love the idea that you don't have to be some elite programmer to do it. I think Zed's approach to this is so spot on.

But how about toning down some of the nastiness? You're a great programmer and now, author/educator Zed, but seriously man.
Who cares. Why is this at the top of Hacker News? Seriously. What the hell?
When you're close to an IPO you are very vulnerable to hard-ball negotiation tactics. This could easily be the endgame of 'reduce our rates or else'.
(229) M Entertainment and Devices

How did they lose money on Xbox?
If there were a TV network sponsored torrent site with a monthly subscription, and no DRM, I would throw my money at them so fast. I doubt this will happen, though.
The title is not a summary. THE TITLE IS NOT A SUMMARY.

The title is a highlight of his article. Presenting the title of his article as a summary, as you do in your article and repeatedly in your comments, is disingenuous and misleading.
I work in a team that does Android and mobile website development. We NEED 20+ devices versus 4 for Apple

Just to be clear, you're the guy who "researched" Android by looking at the public, everyone-knows-about-it Platform Versions breakdown this morning. And you're schooling me on Android. Delightful.

I have actual public apps. The only real issue are a small number of devices where the HAL essentially lies (which leads to the blacklisting of the handset), and understanding the different GPU architectures and their limitations / benefits (#1 issue people have is when they commit to a proprietary vendor texture format and then try to do runtime conversions. Bad idea. Just use ETC1 and shader transparency). Big deal. I get paid for my development so I suck it up.
I love toronto and I'm more than happy to see a group of people in this start-up mania... however why not take the same among of people and focus on 2 hard problems. Right now there is a huge fragmentation to solve small and almost ridiculous problems.... just my 2 cents ...it's maybe time to stop this whole fragmentation of great talent .....
LAMP Developer and Designer
We are looking for a great web developer that will be an excellent addition to our in-house dedicated team of professionals. A passionate, top notch developer, who is ready to learn, contribute, research and develop with us a Software-As-A-Service platform leveraging the latest open source frameworks, working in an agile environment.
It is a great opportunity for a personal and professional growth; you will be involved in writing a large scale web application, architecture, design, optimizing and scaling the solution. The position offers an opportunity for a leading role in creating the next generation technology solution for the philanthropic market.
Location:
Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Desired Skills & Experience
•	In-depth knowledge, extensive experience with PHP (4+ years of experience)

•	Experience working with PHP frameworks (Symfony, Cakephp or Other)

•	Great OOP Background (Java, C# ) (3+ years of experience)

•	Extensive knowledge of LAMP including Shell Scripting

•	Java Script, JQuery, HTML/CSS

•	Experience with building and consuming APIs / Web Services

•	Ability to write clean, salable code
A Plus:

•	Start-up experience

•	Experience with Content Management system (Drupal)

•	Experience with caching frameworks (Memcached)

Company Description
A technology and services company focused solely on the philanthropic market.

The company is constantly improving and expanding the products and now at the stage of a major upgrade of the platform using the latest open source technologies (e.g. php 5, Symfony 2.0, JQuery,Mysql).
A mature start-up which successfully converted its vision to a product with happy clients.

You will join a “non-corporate” culture that also provides good set of employment benefits:
•	Health and dental insurance (spouse/family included)
•	Short and long term disability protection
•	Life insurance component
•	401K administration
•	Free snacks and drinks and much more
•	You will also enjoy private conditions that will enhance creativity flexibility.

Please send CV and cover letter to ella@thetalentsolution.com
> Except that isn't a good analogy.

Why is that? If an API can be copyrighted why not a protocol?
I can see where that would be ambiguous. I think he mentioned using shift once or twice per sentence as a baseline for comparing how often we should have to use the shift key when coding. As for the underlining issue, the other reply already mentioned that many editors will underline code.
Under the first sale doctrine, he has a right to do whatever he wants to the bytes that he has purchased. The underlying content (i.e., the "book"), however, remains subject to stuff like copyright, etc.

But in all seriousness, the DMCA does authorize DRM-cracking if necessary to allow the customer to enjoy the full private use of media they have purchased
Thanks for the reply! Good luck with reaching the funding goal - interested to hear how things go and if you do work out a way to get the build script working as well.
Definitely grabbing a copy of that, I had no idea.

Incidentally, I'm one of those developers who hate intellisense and prefer to memorise the code structure, I guess that's where the priming is happening.

Thanks for expanding my awareness.
Wow, thanks for that read.

As I was graduating, I started off with your final paragraph internalized. I see it a lot on HN. But due to my limited success, the amount I believed it slowly started evaporating to the point where my confidence is now running on fumes. That's for helping me invigorate it.

A large source of pressure has been my parents. They think I've been wasting my time learning Rails on the side and have presented me with this ultimatum of (A) find a Rails job or (B) get one of this oil company CIS jobs in Houston.

I think I should get a temporary job so I'm not just coming from a place of desperation in interviews.
Keen Listings: Craigslist made easy.
Even if the gem compatibility problem was solved, there's still the question of performance. Ruby on Rails? Ruby on Snails more like. Making Rails easy to install on Windows a-la railsinstaller is all very well, but until it's usable for even basic development there's really no point.
PeopleBrowsr API Restructures to Deliver More Meaning for Developers
Say hi to Devise 2.1.0
Open Compute: 1 Year Later - Bigger, Badder and Less Disruptive Than We Thought
Could you please provide some evidence?

A glance at your comment history reveals a pattern: anecdotal examples of wildly low salaries ($40k-$50k), and unsubstantiated claims that every possible source of salary data (aside from your examples) is inaccurate.

Just a couple of examples:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3978058

>That's worse than the OP's link.

>If any company paid that much there'd be a line at the front door every single day of people wanting to be hired.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3953590

>You're "facts" are far from that.

>The developers we have onsite with the customer (Department of Defense with Top Secret clearances) are paid roughly $40-50K/yr USD.

>If there were companies that actually paid the salaries you're quoting there would be a line of people at the front door every morning wanting to get hired.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3959410

>Your reference is like citing Ms Cleo - pathetic actually.

>If companies actually paid those amounts listed there'd be a line of applicants at the front door every single morning wanted the job.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3344467

>If there were developer jobs paying that much, there'd be a line of people at the front door every day wanting to get hired.

>Quality people are easy to find, a quality company is not.
I said capable, not awesome, or cutting edge, or the only thing you'll ever need, or the best thing since sliced bread. Capable is very different from your obviously flawed analogy. Windows 3.1 and the original Macintosh were successful at the time because they were capable products at the time which have evolved into the good, but not flawless products that exist today.

The groupthink MySQL/PHP hate here implies these are terrible products which only a moron with bad taste would use, which is demonstrably false when you look at the choices made by those using them.
> I would no more urge everyone to learn programming than I would urge everyone to learn plumbing. That'd be ridiculous, right?

I would whole-heartedly disagree. I think that everybody should at be proficient in as many practical skills as possible - an in depth knowledge is not required, simply a level of competency and an understanding of good practices and standards.

This applies to coding, plumbing, cooking, construction/DIY, auto repair, soldering and practically any skill that may come in handy.
Harrison did tweet that he knew Josh:

"You're seeing one side @scherrymomin. @endtwist is/was a friend of mine. He found cool facts, I wrote about it & credited 2x, then a 3rd"

Also of note, thenextweb pointed out a much less obvious (in the text) case of plagiarism a month ago today:

http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/04/15/netflix-amazon-apple-...

'And finally…

Nobody likes plagiarism, but an interesting nugget emerged this week. Poynter reported on a Fast Company blogger who said that he meant to steal from someone else when he was accused of plagiarism.

"Author Josh Linkner was busted for stealing the opening lines of a blog post by Chris Dixon. Now, Linkner did respond on Twitter and moves were made to amend the ‘mistake’, but the comment he posted to explain/justify the non-attributed use of someone else’s text sounded a little…schoolboy-ish – he said a friend had sent him the excerpt. So let’s assume a friend did send him the excerpt…why wasn’t it attributed to him?

We’ll let you decide what really happened…'
Your impression of Facebook's user base is about five years out of date. Facebook is closing in on having ~1,000,000,000 members. I would suspect millions of those members are looking for a new car right this second. Facebook needs to find better a way, like Google did, of matching those members with advertisers.
Although, I'm still with Jeff regarding the importance of coding, I want to thank you for clarifying your position and the order of events. Happy hacking.
Using buildpacks to deploy Java apps to Stackato
At least, in this article the TNW writer seems to know how to properly use quotes:

The creator of Hopper, Joshua Gross, tells TNW why he built it:

<blockquote>I found that I emailed myself links and pictures
constantly—whether I’m at another computer, at work, or
mobile. I’d always lose these items in my inbox, amongst
other new mail. Rather than continue to suffer with this
really poor solution, I wanted a quick place to drop any
temporary snippet of content quickly, but still be able to
go back and search for it afterwards.

If only they had done the same in yesterday's article, they would have saved everyone a lot of trouble. They only thing they kept is the semicolon (:), which is not quite enough to indicate a direct quote.
A commentor on that page notes that it might not be malware, just an evil ISP. If that notion comforts you at all.
While I didn’t like Jeff Atwood’s post, I didn’t take the title literally. To me it seems obvious that it can also be read as "Please don't >learn to code<", meaning that we (people who understand and write code) might be wrong in assuming that it’s a skill on par with algebra or cooking in importance and are therefore in no position to lure people into learning programming as if it were the one big roadblock separating them from enlightenment. Or something like that.

Natural languages are ambiguous. One of the reasons why they’re more fun than programming languages.
Rails on Windows, Why??
Great post. I especially like the last two paragraphs.
Stop stoping them from telling me to code or not to code
I often wonder how much of the controversy we read about here on HN is completely manufactured by some clever individuals. NOTE: I am not saying the Joshua-Gross-Next-Web-situation is obviously manufactured. I have no idea.

I am saying controversy is a great way to drive page views and links. In some cases, those links are valuable to SEO. I like to imagine Michael Arrington, Dan Lyons, and MG Siegler sitting around a room and saying "Ok, what can we come up with as a good excuse to really yell at each other?" ... which is then followed by posts like these (and hey, they're getting another link now):

http://www.realdanlyons.com/blog/2012/02/13/hit-men-click-wh...

I may be way off. Maybe Arrington is always writing his honest opinion. But it surely happens somewhere on the web. Is anyone keeping track? Is there a website that has a list of all the seemingly-manufactured controversies? That would be interesting.
Perhaps your firm has found Facebook effective because of its altruistic nature. People want to share great things that they are involved in: nonprofit work, political activism, etc. Advocacy for such issues and causes are something FB users probably want to share with their friends.

Meanwhile, I imagine that people don't really share things like "I really like the new model of the Cadillac XYZ!". Maybe they think that their friends will view it as shallow gloating; maybe you don't want to reveal the fact that you bought a new car.

Facebook revolves around "Sharing of information". Brands that have values that users want to share with their friends will do well. Those that can make users think twice about sharing (even if they really do like the brand) may fare worse.
Beautiful animation, which almost perfectly reflects Google's transformation from a engineering-driven tech company with a flair for beautiful solutions to a advertising-driven "ideas" company with a penchant for meaningless marketspeak. Wow, their servers are 93% efficient!

I was sort of hoping it would be an explanation of why they thought it was a good idea to have the Send button in one spot for new messages and in another when you reply. Double tricky bonus points for putting the Spam button in the same place as the send button when it moves!
Sunny Leone’s Condom Advertisement
This tool looks really cool. I see what you mean about the spurious underscores... think I'll try it out for a day and see whether or not I can live with it. Thanks!
FB may be amassing that database today, but the OpenGraph metadata is publicly available to anyone who crawls that same page no? So what's stopping anyone else who crawls the web from using that same data (G+)?
The Onion's Director of Digital Steps Down
A Reply to Please Don't Learn to Code
I'd imagine that they're doing a form of A/B testing geographically. All other things equal, its easy enough to only do an ad campaign within a certain radius of a dealership and measure the change in that dealership to others in the state.
Small Chevrolet Trax: Another Chevy SUV U.S. won't get
Actually, the real solution is a pledge that customers should make:

"If you do not support my Android phone for at least 2 years, with timely updates, I will never buy another phone from you, ever again."
Although they don't appear to use it, there is a project out there which does pathing like this: http://joelb.me/scrollpath/
Yahoo sends CEO packing without severance package
Direct follow up with people is expensive. From the WSJ:

> GM spends about $40 million on its Facebook presence. About $10 million of that is paid to Facebook for advertising, the rest covers content created for the site, agencies that manage the content and daily maintenance of GM's pages, people familiar with the figures said.
Protocols are processes and need to be patented. An API is literally a description and therefore should be copyrightable.

[edit: iphone typo]
Javascript + maria = MVC Browser Apps done right
Find News Sale
Find News Sale Lowest prices guaranteed Free shipping over $25 save now Click Find News Sale
Farewell, Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson, Ousted for a Résumé Lie
Facebook has a imminent IPO.
It really depends on what you are trying to sell. It's pretty obvious that car ads would work better on Google: when you are in the market for a new car, you'll definitely google review sites. A perfect hint to start showing car ads.

I don't think Facebook has the data yet to detect that you are about to buy a car. If you start liking car reviews, maybe, but that's not a typical behavior.

For other products (especially the ones you didn't know you needed), Facebook beats Google hands down. So don't pass judgment one way or another too quickly.
Show HN: SaaS deployments made easy
The government encourages overproduction of foodstuffs because it is better to have food and not need it (and consequently sell or store the unused food) then to need food and be without. That is, and always has been, the government's purpose in subsidizing agricultural production (even if that purpose is not shared by any of market participants).
I think we need no more a concise declaration of your bias than this.
DRM or not, this seems like a great way to distribute content.
See, that is a thoughtful, reasonable argument. No ad hominem attack, suggesting someone "[gets] off on making beginners feel like they're worthless for attempting something".

Consider writing a blog post that actually responds to Jeff Atwood's post, rather than a straw man constructed from his title?
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
HR makes the sell that "after a few years the candidate -could- be making that kind of money". The few years never really come, so the employee moves on. Except that the next company makes the same commitment.
Yeah, if you're not GM, and not like GM, and not approaching Facebook like GM, then it's not clear you'll have GM's problems reaching out to people on Facebook.

Problems like Republicans attempting to take advantage of your presence to poke fun of you as "government motors". :)
"Hack fist" is what a "brogrammer" uses to pound out some code.
For a Future-Friendly Web (Mobilism 2012)
Correct. It isn't just programming. You actually summarized it well when you wrote that people need to do other things (besides programming or besides whatever it is they identify so closely with) so that they don't resent others for "sliding" into their world.

People with more than one passion will generally find less time to resent and more time to educate :)
I've been booting with old USB sticks for years, not to mention cheap microSD cards. I'm still waiting for one to stop working. What sticks are you using? Are you booting with the stick mounted rw? Are you mounting your userland in RAM?
I'm confused by the term "starting" - do they mean starting fresh out of college? or a newly hired employee starting in that company (might have 5 yrs experience)? or starting out of high school?
It depends on what's considered an API, and that would be a question settled by courts. If a judge decides that someone owns RESTful APIs, every Rails app on the planet will infringe that.

Even if you're right, and the copyright applied only to a specific list of API endpoints and actions, it would still be a nightmare for startups. You couldn't release anything without legal vetting.
My GMail is consistently faster than my corporate Outlook, on the LAN, in a company with ~200 employees. This has been true of every company I've worked at.
Any thoughts on better choices for advertising B2B offerings? Has anybody here tried LinkedIn for that, for example?
Valve has what they call a 'T-shaped model employee'. One who is 'broad range generalist' good at a wide swath of things, then really an expert at a few key skills with 'deep expertise in one area'.

http://i.imgur.com/SAg9a.png

There is nothing wrong with someone learning to code but that might not become their deep expertise. However people understanding abstractions and the skill it takes to code is a good thing.

To take Atwood's analogy, people might use coding the way I use plumbing, I did it just enough to know I need to call someone when I need some plumbing, others might become plumbers.

I actually think that is what he was trying to say. Programming will not become everyone's 'deep expertise'.