skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Why don't they just create the product and have me pay for it? The company is already funded, why should I go ahead and pre-order something now, knowing it might not work as advertised when it's ready. I'd much rather pay $300 when the product is on the shelf, when I can evaluate the pro's and con's. Sure, if this was a project that hasn't been started and looked very promising, I would give it some money, for a chance to get something great. In this case, it seems I don't have to risk, but rather just have to wait.
Indeed. It seems they treat every Mac/iOS app as "theirs", like the are the sole proprietors of the team/software/website and when someone other than Apple acquires/acquhires them they feel betrayed, as if the developers pledged allegiance to stay that way forever.

Just take a look at Instagram's wave of complains when they released an Android app.

EDIT: It looks like, to me, that there's almost some kind jealousy from high profile bloggers, but that's just me.
I remain unconvinced that anything would assuage his paranoia, unfortunately.
> To answer my own question the story might leave out an important detail. That the CEO had the right to the money but said "disburse to the employees instead". That's the same thing but lacks the tax implication as the money was never received. But it would lean more toward your "cynical" view.

If it was possible for him to do that, it would have been wise and there's nothing cynical about it at all. Those employees would be on the hook for income taxes regardless, so it's all the same to them. If the CEO gets the money first, the total going to employees is reduced by the fraction represented by the taxes he pays, or he pays the taxes out of pocket. None of the parties involved benefit from that.
Worse yet, say someone looked at sparrow dying and wanted to clone it, because it looks like there's a business there. Now they'll be pinched by people being cheap as shit on the upside and google migrating some of the best features into their presumably free iphone client on the low side. So I think google has now poisoned the well for better gmail clients on mac/ios.
That is ridiculous. Plenty of apps have existed for decades on those prices. Small, dedicated devs are the lifeblood of OS X and iOS contrary to what those who don't use the platforms believe.

I have had no reason to expect this to be the norm in the past and I have no reason to expect it now. You don't just get to abandon your users without repercussions, as easy as that would make things for you. You can comfort yourself with whatever free market BS makes you feel better, you still screwed over the userbase that gave you prominence.
River Network Found on Saturn's Largest Moon
if(x = 3)

if(3 = x)

If you make a habit of making the left side of == immutable, the compiler will let you know when you type = instead. Of course, gcc throws a warning unless you type
if((x = 3)) if you genuinely want to do the assignment inside the if, which works just as well but requires tool support.
Well yes, sort of http://cdixon.org/2012/05/18/the-default-state-of-a-startup-...

> The hard part is coming to terms with what is actually sustainable. It takes a while to figure that out.

Exactly. And if it takes longer to figure out than the money you have to burn, then why not at least try for some sort of exit before giving up completely?
You've just reiterated the value theory of labor, first expressed by Karl Marx.

I take it you're a Communist then, and follow Communist thinking in other economic thought as well.

The classical economic theory of pricing holds that goods (and labor) are exchanged at a point where the supply and demand curves cross. This, according to the principles of free markets as expressed first by Adam Smith and subsequently refined, and has certain prerequisites including low barrier to entry, equal access to information, fair and open competition (and a lack of collusion on the part of either buyers and sellers), and a clear understanding of value.

All of which undoubtedly hold true for the CEO employment market, I trust.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market
I don't mean to imply that you didn't author anything of value in the post. The meta was certainly of interest. I'd just hesitate to call a few paragraphs of discussion of the reasons behind SO's moderation your "best post ever."

Come to think of it, I wouldn't call an array of proposed/observed novel jargon that either, regardless of its source.
I disagree that the disappointment is purely political, I think it can be traced entirely to this change in the app description for Sparrow:

"Sparrow has been acquired by Google. As the team works on new projects, there will be no new features released for the Sparrow apps, other than minor maintenance and bug fixes."

If they had instead communicated that they would continue development, or that there would be a better version of the product in the future, not as many people would have been disappointed. And if Apple had done this acquihire and there was such an inflammatory message left on the app description, there'd probably be even more complaining, as people generally trust Apple much less than Google.

Both Google and Apple have some great examples of hiring a team and then that team going on to make an even better product. But when they hire a team specifically to shut down the product, it comes out looking pretty bad no matter who does it.
Fair enough. My numbers are of course based on an unsalted hash which has been stolen from a db or otherwise obtained by an attacker.

Further arguments include high overhead for learning (not to mention changing passwords) a given password, storage of passwords, and the idea that your password isn't summonable on demand.
550-mile range Hybrid
Ballet Dance Classes
They were invented to defend against a (mis)feature of C and some other programming languages, where you can use '=' in an expression when you meant to use '==', getting an assignment instead of a comparison. If there's a constant on the left, then this would be an error. However, most compilers now generate warnings in all of the cases where Yoda conditions would've helped, but conventions tend to outlast their purpose.
But unless the optimizations change the complexity, you're still going to be very limited: the constant factors may let you go from 1 cell in Matlab to 100 cells in C on the same hardware, but that's still just 100 cells and now you're stuck.
As someone who bought Sparrow on the day it was released - and is in love with it - this feels like a big middle finger to the customers who have been supporting them.

Oh, please. Unless you're sending these devs money on a regular basis then you're not supporting them, and it's completely foolish to think otherwise. Your continued use of their software does not put any food on their table.

You paid money one time for a piece of software and that's exactly what you got. You deserve nothing more.

This attitude that a one-time payment of a few dollars somehow entitles users to a lifetime of free software, free features, and free updates is utterly irrational; as of a few dollars would grant someone license to a lifetime of a developer's work.
Every time I see something like this, I think about what the general benefit would have been if it had been an open source project.

What if a company made & supported their software, selling it as a GPL-based system? Then if they went under (or any other sorts of terminating conditions), the software would still be usable and available.
Can you explain in more detail what taking notes has to do with Zen? It seems like kind of the opposite, in a way — feeding the monkey mind instead of digging the experience.
I've used it on a couple myself, paired with Sencha Touch, and I have to say it has been overall a very good experience. We were able to put out an Android and iOS version of our app in 2 months. Performance on older Android devices wasn't great, but on newer phones like the iPhone 4+ and Androids shipped within the last year, performance was damn close to native.
My take on this is: 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

If you use and love a product, then the developers get acuihired and the product dies, getting upset about it is kind of childish. Get some perspective. You had X months with that product that you loved, it's better than 0 months.

If you built your own product that relied on theirs, well you knew the risks going in. Fare better next time.
That's one of the big arguments in favour of Free Software.
If you're arguing that $4.99 is a small enough amount that users should be happy at getting a product that would be abandoned a week later, then they should have disclosed that at the time of the sale and let the customers decide.
What Does Space Smell Like?
Luckily it's going to be W3C standard, and Apple and MS won't be able to use their lame excuses to avoid implementing it in their browsers, like they did for Vorbis, VP8 and etc.
What impact, if any, does this have on the companies, such as Microsoft, that previously settled and agreed to pay the licensing fees? Can they ride the coattails of this success?
Like a raku tea bowl, or a haiku, or a Japanese rock garden? Those actually are Zen.
Nothing jumps out at me as significant to bump the version to 0.9. Can someone explain what makes certain changes worthy of the version change?
Gee, people, let's chill out for a bit. There's so much anger here that I think my eyebrows were scorched by all the comments. If the previous comments are any indication, you might not want to read my comment if this email client means the world to you. I'm afraid to say that I really don't see the big deal.

Let me repeat that: it's an email client. People's days were ruined by this news? Google is stupid and evil and-I-don't-know-what-else because they acquired Sparrow? The developers of Sparrow are evil because they didn't do what you unreasonably expected them to do? You people need a serious reality check if these were your thoughts. Heck, the app didn't even stop working.

Now, with all that being said, I can understand a little frustration about knowing for certain that your apparently-favorite app will not be updated anymore. Fine. I get it. But can we cut out approximately 90% of the fury?
Watch an Asteroid Fly by Earth Live on Sunday
Who are you talking about when you say "the tech industry," who is "all about FYM?"
Of course, this applies to most languages where the concept of "equality" can be extended, from C++ to Haskell. You just have to rely on the implementer of the interface to obey the appropriate laws.

This is part of why dependent typing (as seen in Idris and co.) is so interesting: you can actually require, for example, that implementations of the equality interface are commutative, and this will be statically checked by the compiler.
I went into the article thinking why isn't OGG good enough, and the xkcd joke about 15 different standards.

I left pleased about this new standard (from an advert, any downsides?) but need some patent assurances. If Mozilla are happy will everyone be?
I worked on the first USA test of White Space WiFi up till last year. Pretty cool stuff, smart engineers. Right now it's being utilized for public services (cops, firemen, highway cams... a few other things that were a little more interesting but... NDA'd)

It's great to see more initiative on rolling out this technology.
The power of super fans
The Ouya Will Be Around The Size of a Rubik’s Cube
6 Ways To Use Pinterest As A Community Building Tool
Doesn't Apple's lame excuse of unknown patents apply to all technologies?
Hee hee, I'm a fan of #8:

8. Heisenbug
Source: Unknown
A computer bug that disappears or alters its characteristics when an attempt is made to study it.

On the other note - I personally think most online communities tend to get more lenient overtime. I'd be interested in any further reading on that matter.
Does it support Bluetooth yet?
Why in the world would you put a ferrari into a _Kickstarter_ video?
Sparrow is an iOS app. The App Store does not allow GPL'd applications.

Also, it's conceivable that Google wants to incorporate Sparrow into their own iOS client offering, so keeping the source to themselves makes sense.
The problem with non-recurring revenue is that it's difficult to justify further investment once you saturate the market.

If you want them to keep working on your product year in, year out, you have to pay for it year in, year out.

The alternative is selling upgrades, but that doesn't work on iOS at all.
That's JSUT what they want you to think!
I don't think anyone is annoyed they were acquired. I'm annoyed that I paid for their Mac and iOS apps and now development is discontinued. I also find it shady that they had a highly publicised half price sale last weekend just before they shut down development. This isn't a service we pay for month-to-month. It's something we paid a higher than average price for (based on App Store prices) and expected continued development. It sets a very bad precedent.
As a person that likes to DIY, I feel your pain. I really wish auto companies would put their repair manuals online for free!

It's still pretty sparse, but one option is the Stack Exchange site for mechanics: http://mechanics.stackexchange.com/
Unfortunately, according to Wikipedia, Skype holds software patents on parts of
the algorithm. Even though they said they'd make them avaiable royalty-free, this
still means it isn't completely free.
"It's awesome, and 100% the right direction for the field"

Awesome, maybe. But "100% the right direction for the field" is a stretch. This is press-release bait. What hypothesis did it address? What theory is it advancing? (other than "we theorize that we can simulate a cell in a computer...ohlook, we did it!", of course.)

This is interesting from a technology perspective, perhaps, but it's hard to call it science.
A Taste of Solar Maximum
No, there is no problem. People looking for problems where are none are problem though.
If Apple gave a shit about their developers' businesses they wouldn't be taking 30% off the top of every transaction.
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers...
Evaluating New Top-Level Domains — Opportunity or Threat [pdf]
What if I love ads?
The tech "community", insofar as it can be generalized, in SF, SV, NYC, and beyond. People seem to have little interest in businesses that generate healthy revenues that will make a few people wealthy - people want to cash out like Sergey and Larry, and there's a stigma for settling for anything less.

Note that I'm not saying this is a good thing, it probably isn't, but it's certainly the trend.
It's a matter of economic. If the Sparrow devs were paid adequately to stay independently, they won't agree to be acquired. How much are you willing to pay an app to make it stayed independent?
I'm with you on that. I'm doing a start-up just so I can enjoy the sun during the day, and work at night when I can't do anything outside anyways! I feel like now that we've got it backwards. We're not farmers, we don't need to work in daylight anymore...
> The App Store does not allow GPL'd applications.

I don't think so, Wordpress for iOS is GPL licensed:

http://ios.wordpress.org/development/
You consider the position of the hirers, but you fail to consider the position of the investors and the founders. Why would they be incentivized to accept this offer?

First: why would the investors of a company allow the team to be bought out from under them? A good investor will align the incentives so that the founders are incentivized to exit at the same time as the investor.

Second: why would a founder of a successful company accept a hiring deal? Most founders (heck, most developers) turn down several job offers before the second cup of coffee. And even if the $ paid to founders for acquisition vs pure hire is identical, there is an important psychological distinction between being bought and being hired that affects both the negotiations and the status and authority of the "employee" at the acquiring company and thus their wellbeing and autonomy. These factors matter.
This question is meaningless without (a few) details about the product you are making.
re his suggestions:

#1, is doable, but Apple probably will never do it. Why buy the cow when developer will submit updates for free?

#2, link tracking, will never happen. That's a whole can of worms (privacy advocates, etc) they don't want to open.

And so the cycle will only continue: developers build up product/skillset to a certain point, get bought out. The users complain, believing that by spending a few bucks on an app they should get ponies for life. Sorry, it doesn't work that way.
I meant "not even possible" to encompass that.
Review: My Sordid Fling With The Nexus 7
(2010) Some discussion about CELT / Opus from the author of x264: http://pbox.ca/16cbg
I think someone else pointed it out, it's a cultural affinity test. The shit about grammar indicating code quality is just rationalization for wanting someone who is culturally similar to you - has the same values as you. That is, someone who holds arbitrary things like grammar, facial hair, etc. in the same value as you do.

Some of my coworkers are from India and China. I could make up similar things about how chewing with your mouth open and not wearing deodorant indicates a lack of awareness of manners and means they are unaware of memory leaks and race conditions in their code.

It's on me to come to terms with people chewing with their mouth open, not fire them because of subconscious cultural supremacy issues.
There as a similar reaction > 10 years when Hotline was released for Windows after being Mac-only for a number of years.
Monthly subscriptions would've done zilch for Sparrow. Moreover I don't see what sort of apps (apps, not just native frontends for the services) could actually adopt a subscription model and not loose most of their user base.
Couldn't this be handled via in-app purchases unlocking new features or later "versions"? It's not optimal, but it seems like it might be workable.
Couldn't agree more. At the company I work for, we tried both Phonegap and Appcelerator Titanium and it both was a total disaster. We're back developing native apps and both the development and user experience is just so much better.
I think all this is fair, actually. I was similarly peeved last week when Mozilla pulled the plug on Thunderbird. But the ire there, and yours, is aimed at the developers who killed it. And that sounds correct.

What I find weird are the people who thing that somehow Google's behavior (hiring talented iOS developers with huge hiring bonuses -- the horror) is in bad faith, or that (per the OP) Apple should be responsible for "fixing" it.
meh, just a hoax..pbttt
They protect against accidental assignment. They also protect against unexpect classes having the compare/equality method begin overridden.

So, no, not that important. But i actually think it looks nice.
Crafty POSTBOX Jump On Sparrow Opportunity
Are we still talking about Sybil attacks?
> It's something we paid a higher than average price for (based on App Store prices) and expected continued development.

I think the lesson here is that you buy a thing as it is today, not for how it could be in the future. If you are not happy with a thing as it is, do not buy it.

See, for example: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mattbuchanan/it-never-gets-better
Oh jeez. Either I should have thought through my last sentence better, or followed my instinct by not participating in this discussion. You are correct on the supply & demand explanation. And no, I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the communist party. :)
But CEOs don't have times when they're 'not on a project.'
I was talking with a friend and I realized what bugged me so much, and how to sum it up:

It feels like the Sparrow team stopped on first base, when the ball is sailing out of the park.
Indeed, you run into diminishing returns fairly quickly. I wish the various app stores had ways to allow upgrade functionality, as it would mitigate that issue.

In-App purchases don't really work for a lot of situations and can make your users feel like you are nickel-and-diming them. Just releasing a new app doesn't reward or encourage existing users to upgrade, and as an end-user, it kind of sucks to have a bunch of copies of the same app lying around.
The app store for ios has exerted massive negative price pressure on apps, including creating a norm of free or $1 apps. I know it's basic psychology, but it still amazes me that tons of people using a $200 phone that costs on the order of $80/mo to use bitch endlessly in reviews and negatively rate apps for charging the ginormous price of $3. Or something equally out of line. This is exacerbated by shitty discovery in the app store. There's massive returns to being on the top app in category X list, and that's very difficult to do at higher prices. Plus you can't create paid upgrades without creating a new product in the app store, forcing you to start from zero with marketing and list rank. I predict the mac app store will likewise exert downward price pressure on app prices.

Sparrow is really really cheap. A generation ago I used eudora, which cost $50 to $100, for email. So between the mid to late 90s and 2012, the price fell something like 80 to 90 percent to $10 for the mac program. The above is worsened by the rise of decent free email clients since it diminishes the audience.

If you do the math, you have to sell a fuckton of $2.10 cent apps to afford salaries for good developers: say four people at $200k/year fully loaded (salary, health insurance, ss, medicare, office space, internet, diet coke, coffee, macbooks). That's 380k sales just to tread water. And we didn't deduct marketing expenses which are probably significant: you'll have someone fulltime doing seo / sem / banging on blogs and reviewers to get organic / etc. Plus, again, Apple has created a norm where apps get updated forever for free. So that $2.10 is close to being a lifetime value for a user. That means you probably can't use sem for user acquisition: a wildly optimistic 10 percent clickthrough and purchase rate (an order of magnitude high for most things) and 20 cents per click (also wildly cheap) puts you at $2.00.

I presume Apple does this because of classic economics: increase demand by decreasing the price of complements. But if developers can't get paid, users can't have nice things. And I'm not an ios or mac dev, but looking at the interactions in their apps, they seem super custom. That means you have to go to the bottom of frameworks, increasing development costs.
Apparently it wasn't enough lot of money to not make Google's offer interesting.
Java also allows currency symbols (e.g. £€$) as identifiers.

I know this because I had a colleague who was quite proud of having switched to Dvorak, and another colleague who immediately wrote a code-generation tool that emitted € characters in variable names...which are untypeable on a Dvorak keyboard. :)
No. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines)
(I found another error in my post, but I can no longer edit it: I don't dislike design. I misread that on proofreading and edited it, silly me.)
How about: everyone has a price. Sparrow obviously got their price and as a result sold out :)

Kudos to them, as much as it pains the rest of us in the interim we'll get over it. Back to thunderbird! :)
And yet again the media gave him all the attention he was seeking. Also with that very article.

As a German it is always disturbing for me to read their full names (we cencor them here). Since this is one of the problems (media coverage of such events causing ever more copycats) I think the cencoring is a good thing in this case.

Boy, never thought I'd ever write that sentence.