skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> I'm sure some customers are disappointed. But at some point it's not about the customers--it's about you. If you want to sell your company, you're going to do it no matter what customers want. Customers can't know whether a company is the "sell now" type a priori, and that sucks, but it's also the nature of business.

That's fine. And I'm not expecting companies to come out and say that. I'm also not against them selling out. What I am against is software companies not providing an upgrade path.

An easy solution would be to open source Sparrow. There. Done.

And don't think this is all about Sparrow. It's about indie developers in general. It's a warning. Sell your products! We'll buy! But understand that if we come to rely on your products that we've paid for, when you effectively stop development on it, you are doing your customers harm.

It's why I prefer open source tools (and yes, I've taken advantage of this fact). And the tools I do buy are from companies that have proven they will continue to invest in their products.

Hopefully that explains it more clearly. I'm not against them selling themselves. However, I feel like they slighted their customers. Especially since I know some of those customers had expectations based upon comments they'd made.
How this old school developer achieves a lot with a little
The blog author is very smart.

However, he is not very clever.

From my experience in the real world, I know that an unprotected egg will smash when dropped from one story, guaranteed. No need to go up 14 or 27 or even two stories.

(I also know that it is possible to devise protective enclosures to keep an egg from breaking when dropped from 6 stories. The Society of Women Engineers often sponsors competitions. Been there, got the T-shirt.)
I'm a bit disappointed that this rather useless post of mine has increased my karma points more than anything else I've written.
> These layers were built not just for differentiation but for
> base functionality/gloss that stock eclair/froyo/gingerbread lacked.

Certainly!

But then Android got awesome. 4.0 is good, and 4.1 is great. But manufacturers like Samsung and HTC continue to ship their phones with 4.0 upgrades that aren't upgrades! For example: my brother's Galaxy Note. He recently got the 4.0 upgrade from Samsung, which required him to download software (Kies) from Samsung and leash his phone to his laptop to upgrade. I have no idea why.

Then, we did the upgrade, but he's missing features: the 4.0 panoramic camera comes quickly to mind. The stock dialer and people apps, which are amazing, aren't there. The new in-call UI I believe also isn't there. Seriously, they're shipping 4.0 but holding some of the better UX upgrades back.

He even asked me what the hell was new about his phone. I said I didn't know. The menus look different, some of the UI controls are new, Face Unlock is a cool showoff feature, but besides that he's still running Samsung's diminished-experience crap.
Ask HN: what is the most inspiring entrepreneur story ever?
Hi HN,

I am wondering what do you think is most inspiring entrepreneur story ever?
Much of what is left of Quicksilver today is about fixing bugs and keeping it on life support which is why I used the term "fell apart" instead of "dead". This was an app that the developer stopped programming for in 2006 and the bug fixing didn't really start until last year. Th plug-ins to other apps are part of what made Quicksilver great and most still don't work and haven't been updated since that time.
Yeah. I dropped an egg from the kitchen counter and it broke. Ergo, first floor it would break.

Except of course, the article doesn't mention what the landing surface is, or whether it is what we think of as an egg, or some hypothetical super-egg. This would seem to be discounted by the "There are no tricks, gotchas or other devious ruses" clause, however. If the point of the article is to make it purely a mathematical problem, then pretty much anything except an egg would work, like "A strong box".

Otherwise, it's pretty much a "work out this problem but automatically disregard anything that I don't think should be part of the solution" interview question, that whilst I have no doubt are asked by many middle manager interviewers, would imagine is a little below microsoft or google.
"Imagine if someone patented the checkbox/toggle button."

Do you think it's not? My assumption is that that specific thing is patented, and is either expired or the owners don't enforce it or don't know they own it, or, that there is a broader patent whose owner may eventually decide to enforce in the context of a checkbox or similar thing.
Patches sent over email (yeah, please try doing a pull request to see what happens)

Interesting, since git is used by kernel devs this can't just be a convenience thing. Why are they so adamant about putting the patch in the email?
Scrum Log Jeff Sutherland: White House Issues New IT Contracting Guidance
Which is why you would set up a subsidiary LLC in the United States, and dissolve it if it's sued.
The first two are valid, but in the specific case of Sparrow, all the "state" is held in the mail provider(GMail via IMAP) or FB, which is nice.
...and the offending program was found and modified to pass Fourth Amendment scrutiny. To me that sounds like the revised FISA is working.

Distinguishing between communications end points inside and outside the U.S. will never be easy, and will only get harder as technology becomes more advanced and adversaries learn to better exploit it to cover their tracks. You can either give up on (100% Constitutional!) cross-border intercepts, or you can have oversight to minimize "collateral" data collection on citizens.

If you think there's evidence that U.S. citizen-only private communication is being monitored and retained deliberately, spell it out, because that's huge news.
That's a really nice comparison. Never thought about it that way. It doesn't apply to all situations, but you're right in that many, many jobs could just as well be done during the night so that people can spend the day enjoying sunlight.
"if a bunch of them head over to Scala because they like the look of {{{}}} instead of ((())), so be it"

Unnecessary (if slight) nastiness directed towards (developers choosing) Scala. Unworthy of you (imo). There are significant differences between Scala and Clojure (other than {} vs ()) and trivializing a valid choice of one over another by ascribing it to fear of parantheses (or whatever) isn't a particularly compelling argument.

I've never really noticed Scala devs (leave alone book authors!) throwing darts at Clojure, but have seen the reverse (and at Haskell, on the Clojure mailing list but Rich Hickey shut that down hard and fast, good for him). Sad, and unnecessary (imo).

Scala and Clojure are both awesome and (totally imo) evangelizers of both languages should realize we are all on the same side (again totally imo, feel free to ignore).

Yes there are trolls in all language communities, but I think the expectations about the top developers in each community are (and should be) much higher.

Otherwise, solid comment. And hey, your book is awesome.
IAmA Patent Examiner on reddit
Or, maybe, the chance to have a huge influence on one of the major Google products.
I'm curious, what did you replace Google Docs with? Google Docs is what keeps me from moving away from Google.
I have no idea of us law but I think they still have a case because they wrote "the unauthorized use of said application, including, but not limited to, Mindcraft." and not only "Mindcraft".
Why would you take it a lot more seriously?
I don't know why everyone keeps referring to sparrow as 'indie' developers. They took funding. When you take funding you're no longer independent.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/09/sparrow-mac-mail-app/
What we are complaining about is the killing of discussion that promotes learning.

You have to ignore your users sometimes, and maybe this is one of those times. But if you are getting a consistent message from your users that they're unhappy, I hope you're at least listening.

Characterizing the people who want more reasonable^H^H^H^H^H lenient moderation on SO as wanting a frat house atmosphere makes me think you're not really listening.
Was Sparrow profitable?
They were in the workstation business, and couldn't raise their head up out of that rut.
A Business Plan is for You First, Then for Investors
You can, I am on my phone right now so i can't give specifc examples, but there are apps I paid for through the OS X App Store that are open-source. It was easier to get it through the app store and I got to support the developers. I prefer this model because anyone can contribute back to the collective whole and abandonware is less of a problem.
Not to mention that github's foundation is git which is very much open source so your repos are moveable.
I wasn't claiming a macbook can't scroll. I was just claiming that Lenovo has a lot of features that don't necessarily look pretty, but which make it easy to actually use the damn thing on an everyday basis.

Fewer buttons isn't necessarily better nor is it even simpler. The simplest thing in the world is a "do exactly what I want" button for every common value of "what I want". It's not pretty or as easy to market or as pretty, but it's highly usable.

(I'll skip the rant about my iPhone, and how it forces me to waste screen real estate on buttons that come built into Android.)
I noticed that too, but Steve Russell wrote the first LISP interpreter on the IBM 704 in 1959 (http://www.iwriteiam.nl/HaCAR_CDR.html#Steve). The IBM 7094 came out in 1962 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_7090). So I'm betting that our russell isn't Steve. He's a perfectly good russell nonetheless :)
What if it doesn't?
تحميل برنامج ebuddy 
تحميل برنامج ebuddy تحميل برنامج ebuddy تحميل برنامج ebuddy تحميل برنامج ebuddy تحميل برنامج ebuddy تحميل برنامج ebuddy تحميل برنامج ebuddy
Wouldn't the absolute best way (assuming you have never seen an egg before and do not know anything about eggs) would be to try and crush one egg in a vice grip to determine the strength of the outer structure and then infer a fuzzy-ish height/speed limit from that?
In some sense they are less "ambitious" I guess.

Risk/Reward scale:

Selling your labour -> Selling your skills -> Selling your product -> Selling your vision
"legally obliged" as per which country's law? Also, depending on how one views it, it's not them exporting, but rather their customers importing bought software.
The code may be open source but the format/spec is 100% controlled by Google. Forking the code won't help you change the direction of format development. If anyone besides Google wants to make changes, they'd have to fork the entire spec under a different standards body.
Right. huhtenberg's analogy was flawed. His analogy to selling liquor only works if you remote-access a computer in Sweden and then buy Minecraft from that computer. Then when you copy Minecraft from the remote to your home system, you're the importer. If you buy from a US-based computer then it's Mojang acting as an importer to the US.

The liquor analogy would be if you ordered a bottle of liquor to be shipped to the US and the liquor store would be expected to comply with US import rules.
Eastgate systems publish Storyspace and Tinderbox. Tinderbox is sold with 'a year of free upgrades', and after that there is an upgrade fee. Sort of subscription based.
All it would take to remove the real-world problem would be to change the object from an egg to a ball made of a material of unknown strength and toughness.

Poor specifications lie at the root of many a programming problem.
Dvorak doesn't support the Alt-<type unicode number on number block> trick?
First Thunderbird, Now Sparrow [Postbox blog]
Plasma TV, asteroid mining and the Kindle: predictions from a 1979 interview
Not surprising; most don't even realize the impacts of basic web technology. But indeed, the obvious fact that Americans have far less privacy than they realize is interesting and important.

I am repeatedly reminded of Brin's "The Transparent Society" [0]. Given the breadth and depth of privacy violations that continue to progress in the US and elsewhere, it seems more and more likely that we will eventually face a choice "between privacy and freedom" as Brin predicts. Sadly, people do indeed remain unaware, and even the savvy aren't taking the issue seriously (read: radically) enough. I count myself among the lazy, but I'm happy to preach doom like the rest.

[0] http://www.davidbrin.com/transparentsociety1.html
"There are no tricks, gotchas or other devious ruses. Don’t rat-hole with issues related to terminal velocity, potential energy or wind resistance. This is a math puzzle plain and simple."

Not within the rules!
> Need more battery life? Buy a second battery and swap them when the first runs out. Need more ram? Just open it up and put it in. Same thing if you want a new HD/etc.

This is one of the biggest factors for me in getting a PC laptop over a MacBook. When I buy a ThinkPad, I intend to keep it for 5 years. My friends with MacBooks all replace them every 2-3 years.

> Combine this with great linux support [1] and Lenovo is a clear win for me.

This is another big factor. I tell anyone who's interested in Linux that the best laptop for Linux is a ThinkPad. Everything works flawlessly out of the box.
Google+? Is that the thing that spams my Google calendar and is only good for instant upload?
Startups Asking “Why Buy When You Can Rent, Share and Borrow?”
Sparrow Flies To Google and Acrylic Software Paints With Facebook
Because you can directly review and discuss the changes inline without the need to leave your mua. There is also no need to setup a public git repository and check all your changes in your repository before pulling.

git format-patch, git send-email as well as git am work also really well and simplify the patch creation/integration. This is basically the send a pull request from github but without the need to depend on github.
> I prefer the Lenovo "nipple" over a touchpad but most people hate it

The problem is that no one gives the TrackPoint a chance. I've seen people who've used ThinkPads for years and have never even touched the TrackPoint. But if you spend about 30 minutes working with it, you'll find that it's superior to both mice and trackpads for 99% of tasks (gaming being the one exception, for which I keep a mouse on hand).
Deniers, Skeptics and Mavericks
"And, for better or worse, people judge you if you can't tell the difference between their, there, and they're."

I used to make that judgment. I've since been humbled by many brilliant people who commit that and other common errors. I would be poorer, possibly impoverished, if I had dismissed those people from my circle.

As Peopleware pointed out many years ago, most people have something important to contribute, even if they don't contribute much in one specific area.
Would this be a viable way to escape some frivolous patent lawsuit? I've often wondered about this, and even tried to research it somewhat, but I'm still unsure about it.

Suppose I have an LLC for my small (one-man) business in the U.S., and then I get targeted by a patent troll with some ridiculous claims. Can I simply start up another LLC in another country (one with saner patent laws), transfer my domains/hosting/whatever else to it, and dissolve the U.S. LLC? It seems too easy.
What about the users of your software?
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/buying-guide-subscri...
Obviously, those arguments are somewhat metaphorical. Paying $2.99 (or even $2,999) for software doesn't guarantee its sustainability. It doesn't move the needle. It's more like voting where your individual vote doesn't count but you still feel that its important to vote. Especially if you voice an opinion and try to convince others (something that probably has more effect than voting).

I think we are talking about more abstract things. We want this software to exist. We want these business models (small, profitable development companies) to exist. It's not just "I want to use this software."

I think a reason for these kind of reactions to acquisitions is that we feel or suspect that they are destroying rather than creating value. But, it's kind of hard to tell so we don't usually make that claim. For small companies, we know what they make and how many people use it so its easy to get a feel for the value they create. When Google acquires a great team, its hard to know what, if any value they create. Google obviously create enormous amounts of value but its hard to tell what a new team ads or subtracts from that. Much more nebulous are the effects that the existence of such acquisitions have on founder and investor motivation to start and fund these companies in the first place.

I think thats it at the core. A suspicion that such acquisitions are value destroying activities resulting in less/worse software being available to the world.
So the HN crowd is... human? How disgusting.
The Bravest Man in the Universe
From the hacking perspective, I sometimes mindlessly play at a REPL. Tweak a function a little, see what it does, another tweak . . .

I feel guilty about it - it's almost like being a monkey at the keyboard. "Will this push give me a pellet?"

But occasionally I do get the damn pellet . . .
Sync the Mail.app settings to multiple Macs?
Java JVM internals – what does the JVM do? [video]
I agree that the practical steps the article proposes aren't mind-blowing.

On the other hand, if you look at the title of the post and the way the issue is framed:

>In fact, it was painfully difficult. And I was struck with a flood of emotions: fear, anxiety, despair, etc.

I just wanted to sleep and not deal with it.

I think it's pretty clear that what you're "hacking" isn't the task, its the anxiety. Sure, there are people out there who don't get overwhelmed by the challenges that they face.

But if you've ever spent time tutoring, you know that it is remarkable how often your charge has not presented his or herself with the facts of the matter at hand and reviewed what they already know. If you're in a frame of mind where you are procrastinating out of anxiety, telling yourself "just look at it" can lower the bar and make it possible to move forward.
It's a fake egg made up of a material of unknown strength and toughness. Alternatively, it is made up of the brain of a thousand people who find irrelevant questions about logic puzzles - they are made of similar material!
It's my impression that Sparrow is intended primarily as a GMail client. I don't have data, but I'd be surprised if a significant portion of its users didn't have GMail.
If it is the case that the space race was a byproduct of the cold war, then there isn't much reason to feel nostalgic.
Forrst Is Dead, Long Live The...
"There are no tricks, gotchas or other devious ruses. Don’t rat-hole with issues related to terminal velocity, potential energy or wind resistance. This is a math puzzle plain and simple."

Not out of the rules either (according to what you just posted). At some point you need to crush an egg.

If the rules are implying that you can only do X and we are only looking for solution Y then why are we even talking about this? We may as well have a discussion about trains leaving from Chicago and New York and debate what city they will intersect from on a given day.
2013 Kia Sorento Release Date
Sounder: a natural amplifier for the iPhone and iPad
Reddited, lwn-ed and News.YComb-ed, on a 128MB VPS
What are chances of getting the funding
If i approach angel investors with a huge concept having great potential, but i don't have any past experience in developing a company, i.e its my first startup. So what would be the response from the investors? And what are chances of getting the funding.
This article hit the nail on the head. It doesn't matter if G+ hasn't "beaten" Facebook yet (or ever). Google are clearly playing the long game here, and they have deep pockets... they will continue to integrate G+ into their other products, continue to iterate and improve and continue to grow G+.

There are some things G+ desperately needs to make it as useful as it could be, such as a complete API and support for OpenSocial apps. But I expect they'll get it all nailed over time.
> Why should Mojang be enforcing US e-com restrictions?

They wouldn't be expected to enforce any restrictions. The US will simply demand that all US financial branches refuse Majong business---that is VISA/Mastercard and your bank will not send money into his account or process payments for transactiosn related to him.

In addition, if he has a .us or .com name, they may try to seize it.

It'll be a headache for Mojang to try and fight it, so might as well 'self regulate' rather than have the government and use the only tool it knows 'the club'.
> My issue is if you're unable to delineate between "it's" and "its" and it's the language you've been speaking natively for the past 25 years,

I know the difference, and when I make a mistake I've found that every time it's been a mistake of my "finger muscle memory" when typing it rather than using the wrong word. In other words, I used the correct word, but I typed it incorrectly.

That is impossible to detect on any test where the answer is typed. Perhaps a followup to these sorts of tests are, "Here are all the places you used `its` and `it's`. Do you think they are all correct, and if not, which would you change?"
> Hmm, the page of counterexamples you listed seems to be about making women feel "sexy" (it's on the ad for many of them), so it makes sense they would show "sexy" women, just like selling clothes and other items that would make men feel masculine would show buff men.

That's true. Many of those examples are for products designed to make women more sexy, but I'd argue that advertisements like this are much more common than advertisements with buff men that are supposed to make men feel more sexy. I think many people would agree that, at least in American culture, there's more pressure on women to be sexy than there is on men. This is part of the problem, if you ask me.

> Hmm, which other media is it prevalent in that could display other qualities of a woman for the same purpose instead?

You see this in pretty much any sort of pop culture. Music videos (whether the performers are male or female) are generally littered with imagery of young women as sex objects. Even 24-hour news stations have been criticized for using news anchors in risque clothing—something that doesn't happen with male anchors. Several tabloids employ the concept of the "Page 3 girl." I'm not aware of such a thing with men (certainly not with the same prevalence).

Outside of media, you see the same issues reflected in culture. I'm having difficulty finding statistics on these, but stripping and prostitution are at least perceived (and portrayed in media) as predominantly female industries with male clientele. The concept of the woman as a sex object is practically everywhere.

> I am not sure about this. "It's right and you shouldn't be offended" isn't the same as "it's wrong for different reasons and isn't a big deal anyway".

True. That said, there do seem to be some comments here that imply no offense should be taken as well as many that merely downplay the issue as not a big deal.

> I think this is the crux of the issue. I think women wouldn't have a problem with it, so that's why I don't have a problem with it. Maybe it's societal, though, as we can't assume the US technology sector culture is universal and the same as in other countries (I live in Greece).

I agree: this is the crux of the issue. I plead total ignorance on Greek culture and can only make guesses as to the hypothetical reactions of American women. Nevertheless, I think it's best to err on the side of sensitivity, especially in a field so criticized for its gender gap.
This TED talk by the author of Eat, Pray, Love addresses the very question at hand: "Who/What is responsible for creativity?". It approaches the question from a very subjective point of view. I haven't read her book, but she is humble and relatable in the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86x-u-tz0MA