skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I am going to go off-topic a little bit and comment on the application of CC and similar licenses to TEXT specifically.

Although I am a big fan of open-source licenses for code and open to the possibility that they will do good when applied to photographs, animations and videos, I doubt that applying Creative Commons licenses to TEXT has done more good than harm.

Despite efforts by Google to counteract them, I still waste a little time every week or so exploring Google hits that turn out to be SEO spammers re-using Wikipedia's CC-licensed text. And I do not see enough benefits to offset that sort of harm. In general, it seems to me that it harms readers when readers are subjected to text that has been re-used for some purpose that might differ drastically from the purpose or context of the original author of the text. I would prefer it if people who did not make the effort to put something in their own words did not even have the ability to put text onto my computer screen. Of course, there is no way to achieve that, but stopping the CC-licensing of text would cut down on it.

Certainly, there needed to be some way to assure contributors to, e.g., Wikipedia that Wikipedia would not monopolize their contributions for selfish or stupid ends, but I do not think a CC license (or the GFDL used before that) was anywhere near the optimal way to do that.

Maybe I should not state my opinion without having taken a close look at the effect of CC and similar licenses on textbooks and technical manuals, but I tend to think it is time to stop imploring WRITERS to CC-license their TEXT.
The standard answer to programming noobs is "What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-point Arithmetic".

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.ht...
One trend I've noticed is that my best posts (which normally take 10-20 minutes to write) get much less of a response than witty one-liners.
Unable to duplicate. I'm using Google Chrome as well.

Is reddit blocked?

> Hacker Reads

> This is a simple app that brings in popular articles into a single digest. Currently the sources are

> r/programming, r/science, r/technology, and r/webdev.
Top tips for designing user onboarding flows
The toughest problem that they need to learn how to solve is how to make that $$.
nitpick: Background repeats in y, so footer background is the top (hair) when window is long, which doesn't flow and makes the footer unreadable.
Ever tried dealing with vertical column text (e.g. Japanese?). I haven't myself, but the fact Microsoft made fonts on Japanese versions of Windows have special "@"-prefixed versions rotated 90 degrees, so if a document is written in it, then changed to that font and rotated, it's the right way up, makes me suspect it's pretty difficult.
Well for a long time folks have built robots by putting a laptop on to a powered set of wheels. Some folks are more comfortable with Windows, others more comfortable with Linux. Recently there has been a surge of 'android' robots as well with folks re-purposing phones and tablets to the task of controller.

The 'style' of this programming is often very much event driven. Seems like a common base would be useful.
Rocketships and Shotguns
For the record, I totally got what is supposed to happen. I wonder if you should have a list of apps that can be configured to be ignored. For instance, I always have emacs open and would never want it closed (even for gaming configurations). I would rather say that once than for every configuration I have.
I first design a scrap concept, then I build all the back-end and finally I design de full appearance
Dusk approaches when Twitter sheds its desire to leave a mark on humanity

Look, I understand the sentiment, but here's the thing.

Twitter only exists as we know it today because a lot of people have poured a lot of money into it. Without that money, Twitter would be an impossibility. It simply would not exist, at least not at anywhere near the scale it exists at today.

My guess is that, for the people who poured in all that money, "leaving a mark on humanity" was not the primary reason they opened their wallets. They opened their wallets because they expected to make more money by doing so. They were making investments, not charitable contributions. And at some increasingly near point, those people are going to want to see a return on their investments. That means that, barring an acquisition, Twitter needs to find a way to turn a (hopefully large, from the investors' viewpoint) profit -- and sooner rather than later.

Why would you ever have thought things would be otherwise? Twitter is a company. Companies that don't make money usually don't survive. The best case scenario is that they get bought out and operated as a vanity project by a deep-pocketed patron, the way a lot of magazines are. But a magazine is a much smaller and cheaper-to-run enterprise than a centralized, global real-time communications network. Whose pockets are deep enough to run Twitter at a loss indefinitely?

If you organize yourself as a for-profit corporation, and take on investors, at some point you have to bring in more money than you burn. Otherwise you will at some point have to scale back your ambitions, because you simply will not be able to afford them anymore.

Twitter, in other words, is meeting its destiny. Maybe that destiny is not to make as big a "mark on humanity" as people wish. But without all the money they took from those investors who are breathing down their necks now, Twitter would never have been able to scale up to where it is today at all. And that money came with the condition that Twitter would at some point figure out a way to pay it back, with interest.

That point is now.
The number of users is irrelevant when measuring user engagement, at least when it is defined as the article describes. (But comparing early app.net versus a more mature Twitter may be relevant.)

To calculate user engagement they should take the number of daily posts and divide by the number of users (so with these numbers, for Twitter it is 350 million/150 million = 2.33 and for app.net it is 10,000/[# of app.net users...20,000 according to the study linked to by diego] = 0.5. This isn't necessarily the best metric since somebody could easily write a bot that makes several posts per second, which could skew things considerably. (I don't think anyone cares about how active peoples' bots are.)

It is quite possible that Twitter has a similar situation where most tweets come from a smaller number of users.
Agreed on the bulk of your points, however:

As a percentage of revenue, Apple makes less from the iTunes Store today than they did six years ago. They operate it close to break-even as a means of selling more hardware.

http://i-cdn.phonearena.com/images/articles/63878-image/Appl...

Running the store means:

- Employing god knows how many app reviewers

- Employing dev relations, marketing, design and other support roles

- Paying for credit card transaction fees

- Maintaining server infrastructure at extraordinary scale with ridiculous uptime requirements

None of this is cheap. And none of the resulting revenue, in the hundreds of millions, comes anywhere close to the juice of hardware revenue, in the tens of billions.
In fact, it's something that should be pounded into the skulls of programmers at every opportunity. It's something we tend to forget often enough (if we learned it) that we should be reminded of it frequently.
I was going to comment along these lines, but you summed it up very well.

This could possibly be A/B tested, i.e. have one job that's described as looking for 'awesome' vs 'good' developers for the same job and see what type of candidates it attracts at various levels of the interview process.
That's your interpretation based on your use. I do not browse that way. I pick one maybe two that look interesting and read them. I find the autoplay useful.

See that? Two different interpretations of the same feature. Just because you hate autoplay doesn't mean everyone does. Certainly one or the other does not "sour my opinion" of an article. The fact that the video starts playing when the page loads has exactly nothing to do with the content in the article. That's what's wrong with the opinion.
New Relic for the free t-shirts!
Agreed the toolchain is a requirement. But you raise the problem, what LFS teaches you Linux or 'From Scratch' ? I[1] didn't learn about the kernel nor the operating system there. Only about package building. The OS remain a mystery to me for most of its part. See my example about elinks problems.

[1] I probably read LFS with the wrong mindset ..
Indeed. I keep seeing these sorts of posts all over the place today... "Ohnoes, App.Net doesn't have millions of users yet - it's a failure." Rubbish. It's been around a month or so, and is only really known in tech-circles at the moment. They have managed to convince a significant number of people to sign up for a service when they can access a larger competitor for _free_. That in itself is a pretty big success.

It's too early to call App.Net a success or failure. Maybe it got too much press too early, and that has given people unrealistic expectations? I say come back and look at the numbers in 12-18 months. Then we'll be looking at a mature service, and will know how many users they added, or convinced to renew their subscription.
Facebook is the Jurassic Park of startups.

Founded by a hacker-idealist who wanted to bring people and technology together like never before. The experiment worked wonderfully at first as millions of people flocked to Facebook's revolutionary platform from around the world. Soon, questions of profitability came into the picture, forcing executives to compromise ethics for additional revenue. Chaos erupted and millions began to question their loyalty and wonder about their safety/privacy. Over time, the platform has become overgrown with ads (that are rarely clicked), spam (that embarrasses it's victims), and scandals (that frighten even the most loyal users). Fear of extinction due to unexpected competition has pushed Facebook to become even more aggressive by inflating the value of the company to astronomical proportions, acquihiring dozens of startups, and raising billions in an IPO. Today, the future of Facebook is in the air. No one knows how the variables will compound and what this corporate gene sequence will evolve into...﻿
and I only know one (proprietary) language

Sorry to be so pedantic, but C# is absolutely not a proprietary language. Yes, it's predominantly used in a proprietary context (OS and tooling), but the language itself isn't proprietary.
HN disapproves of linkbait, the subject should stand on it's own without sensationalism.

http://www.blueglass.com/blog/how-to-compose-a-compelling-li...
A different question is, who would want to buy them? Twitter, who should know their network better than everyone else, is still trying to figure out how to best monetize it. Who would want to take that task on?

In the old days, I'd guess Yahoo! would be in the running, but since they have a history of buying popular sites and then letting them wither, I hope Meyer isn't going to fall for that again.
Italics and other text modifiers are essential for clear communication using only text. However, as a new user myself I was frustrated by a lack of documentation for comment markup. As far as I can tell, the only text modifier for HN comments is italics which are specified by surrounding a word with asterisks.

I wish there where more text modifiers (like bold and underline), as well as some kind of documentation for them.
"with the iPad 3 possibly having a slight edge on graphics performance"

Here's how the OMAP 4470 actually compares to the A5X in the iPad "3":

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6158/the-archos-101-xs-review/...

tl;dc: beaten by iPad 2 on many benchmarks. A5X >> A5 >= OMAP 4470 > Tegra 3
> claiming that Scala doesn't support module-level functions implies to me that you feel this is a deficiency

It's not a deficiency, but it emphasizes the fact that Scala is object-oriented, not functional. Scala supports first-class objects, and you get more functional features than Java because, unlike Java functions, Scala functions are objects.

In other words, Scala's support for certain functional features is a corollary of its support for first-class objects, not because of its support for first-class functions.

> the exact implementation of namespacing (module-level vs module/object-level) is irrelevant to me

Which probably means that most of this discussion may be irrelevant to your interests too. :-)

That's not meant to be rude - I'm being a bit facetious, but I'll readily admit that the OO 'vs.' FP is far too subtle for most people to care about... and that's fine. Beyond a certain point, it's a discussion with more academic value than practical value.

But if you really care, let me try and explain the following:

> If module-level functions are important to the question I would like to know why. :)

Lack of module-level functions is a hint (though not proof) that Scala is 'OO first, and FP by coincidence'. Objects are just classes that are automatically created and instantiated with a singleton. Scala permits nesting of objects (objects within objects). The nested objects may themselves be function objects or non-function objects. However, at the root, you must have a non-function object.

In other words, picture Scala code as a tree: functions may appear as inner nodes or leaf nodes, but they may not be the root node, which is reserved for a non-function object. Inner/leaf nodes are of type

psuedocode:

type Object

type ScalaFunction extends Object

type NonFunctionObject extends Object

We can have ChildNode[NoneFunctionObject] and ChildNode[ScalaFunction], but we can't have RootNode[ScalaFunction] - we must have RootNode[NonFunctionObject]

Furthermore, if Scala functions are implemented as internal methods on variables (which are objects), that means that there is no way in Scala to write a function that is not eventually compiled to a method - ie, an object-bound function. If we can't break this binding, it's hard to make the case that functions are truly first-class. Objects are first-class, and because Scala provides first-class object support (unlike Java), many features of first-class functions can be simulated by using first-class objects, but that's subtly different from treating the function itself as the first-class citizen.

For contrast, the inverse would be a functional languages with first-class functions and no first-class objects. All objects are constructed from functions (ie, 'bound to functions' in some sense), and there's no way to create an 'unbound' object, whereas there is in Scala.
Better yet, use Express and focus on mastering one single language for the client-side and the server-side: either JavaScript or CoffeeScript.
I've had a completely different experience. The first few times I tried to write code, I learned only what I needed to know for the specific app. I hated it. It seemed like I was just learning a bunch of random syntax and beating them into shape.

Later, I actually tried the textbook first approach, and this worked much better for me. By learning the framework and being able to observe the patterns, learning new commands was much easier and I could often guess at exactly what I'd need to do. I also remembered commands for much longer than I did with the first approach.

YMMV, but some people have more theory-centric learning styles and some have more application-centric. Test and figure out what works for you.
But 1px is rarely the difference between confusion and delight for a user.
>let me give you a few examples of what usually gets thrown out in a mobile first design:

Ah, but you aren't throwing them out. You're using a constrained UI to identify your MVP, then adding those very features in to the full web site where it makes sense. We're looking at the exact same behavior and using almost opposite language to describe it :)

>I honestly believe that having separate approaches will allow for better UX, time and cost permitting.

Fair enough.

>Commenting system - still yet to see a decent one that I would one on a mobile interface

On a side note, I passionately agree with this. I think there is a tremendous opportunity out there for anybody that can solve this problem elegantly. Group communication is a fundamental human behavior, and so much of it is happening via our mobile devices. There's a much better mousetrap to be built here.
Good call, yes, reddit is probably blocked.

Thanks!
Mass does matter with this type of product - they're engineered at the gram level. Ounces are relatively immense.
Another way to save app-switching sanity: Get 9 or 10 work spaces. Set up command+number keyboard shortcuts to switch to that number. Use a single app on every workspace. Scales well to 10 or so apps open simultaneously.

Basically, I configured OSX to imitate XMonad to some extent. It's not as good, but it works and is a lot better than using the mouse or command-tab.
1. About 33% of my revenue is from sales. 67% is ad revenue.

2. Yes, it is very competitive. My app has dropped from the #8 spot in iPad/Free/Music to the #41, and it's hurting. :-) It has done very well in east Asian markets though.

3. Not sure. I might try to add some viral channels in the app. Otherwise, I'll have to slog it out, and get to 10M+ the slow way.

4. Specific goals is more or less a hack / dangling carrot. It's hard to say, "I'll succeed when I succeed." Two years ago, my specific goal was to launch a single app. This January, my goal was to make revenue. Now that I'm making some revenue, my goal is higher. Maybe when I hit 10M, I'll want to hit 100M? :-)

5. No, I'm not a musician. That's why I built the easiest piano on the App Store. :-) If you have an iOS device, download it and let me know what you think! http://itunes.apple.com/app/id477014214
it's probably too hopeful to think they haven't already done that.
Thanks, I'll fix it.

I'm not a developer; I knew there'd be mistakes creeping in all over.

(Out of interest: what's your screen resolution? The image is 1180px tall.)
I completely agree with everything you've written except your "but here's the thing" should have been an "and here's the thing". We're all on the same page here.

Yes, that's reality. Yes, it's unfortunate and we wish it wasn't so.

I love Twitter the medium. I wish Twitter the company would find a way to monetize without taking this route. I like to think that I would have done something different in their position, but who knows.
How to Acquire A Company, Technically
Hardening the webpage would still decimate the amount of people with the skill/motivation to pry out tweets. HTML scraping is much more accessible than poking around native, source-less apps. (And if it was still a problem, the same tactics as above would work equally well in native apps.)
Part of the benefit is the PRESENCE of that Wikipedia text.

I haven't contributed much to Wikipedia, but what little I DO contribute wouldn't be there if Jimmy Wales owned it all. Instead, it is available for anyone to reuse... for good OR for bad.

For instance, although I think Conservapedia is a stupid idea done by stupid people, the fact that they CAN fork it and create their own is important. In the (unlikely) event that Wikipedia is "taken over" by malign influences (for instance: sells out to the largest bidder, who starts exercising editorial control), I would want to make my own "Conservapedia"-like copy.

I completely disagree with you that rewriting is so easy. I couldn't rewrite Wikipedia, could you? Could any 1000 people in the world?

Forking an open-source project is quite rare, and usually a sign that the community has failed. But sometimes it is the only means to save the project; LibreOffice stands out as an example. The EXISTENCE of that option (even if almost never exercised) is a powerful force of its own, and the same is true of text as is true of code.
Ah, good point. I stand corrected!
Introduction to k-nearest-neighbor (ML in Javascript series)
I found it insightful. Why can't you write down 1/10 in binary? What is 1/10 in binary? OP calculates it, and then explains that any fraction in reduced form in which the denominator is a power of 2 will terminate in binary. (Powers of 5 and 2 for decimal). These are interesting bits of trivia.
http://wtop.com/64/3025740/Speed-cam-shooter-Dont-do-what-I-...
For a straight-forward Django hack: One view at a time, starting with models and finishing with the UI. Core views first. Iterate until complete.
It 'only' costs four cents per use, thanks to Twilio. (1c per inbound/outbound text message and 2c for the call.)

I'm fortunate to be able to put a bit of cash into a slush fund for giving away things like this for free. (I have other free apps that are costing me a LOT more to run, though still in Beta.)
You can't do it on a tablet right now, but it's a software problem, not a hardware one.

The Galaxy Note 10.1 ships with 2GB RAM and a good SoC. It's more powerful in every way than the PC I was using 5 years ago to write media player UIs.

I don't know when we'll start seeing things like Eclipse running on Android tablets, or if instead app development will trend to HTML and we'll see web-based tooling around that, but I do think that it is on the cards.

I also can't imagine that the Surface tablets (ARM or x86) are going to sell well at all. Not as good as an iPad for tablet things, not as good as a laptop for Office things.
> HN is not the objectivist echo chamber it used to be

As long as 2-3 years ago, I still got massively upvoted at times for (thoughtful) criticisms of Ayn Rand. The real problem used to be the transhumanists.
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Since no-one puts up adverts saying

"wanted - crap developer, poor time-keeping,
rude attitude and bad test coverage a must"

then we are just going to have to put up with this.

It's just like job title inflation or real estate agent descriptions of property (You also never see "pokey little hovel for sale, noisy neighbours")

Just ignore the fluff, read the actual job and decide.
I must +1 this bit - nice idea, where self-selection actually works:

Instead, try expressing a piece of your culture or
mission: dog-loving hacker, activist developer,
foodie web developer

Or something about your development process:
generalist software engineer, creator of performant &
maintainable code, quick-and-dirty hacker
That is a valid point. I would still certainly suggest having an open and honest discussion before spending company resources on something other than what was specified, though.
At the same time it has received a ton of press up-front, in exactly the circles early adopters of the service would frequent. I think there is a feeling (right or wrong) that if the problems App.net purports to solve were really as bad as claimed, people would have been jumping on in droves, at least to give it a good spin around the block.
> only about 2% of open source developers

I am guessing, but could the part time nature of most of open source jobs be a reason for this as well? More conservative/sexist societies generally assign the role of managing home to the female in a family, even if she is a working woman. So while the males have the time and freedom to go for hobby/low-returns open source projects, the females might be left with the responsibility of taking care of the children. I am from an eastern culture and this is definitely something I could see happening here, I am curious if similar conditions exists in western cultures.
Also: there's a great business model here....

I sell advertising space in the outbound phone calls to someone like a dating site.
"Hi, here's your excuse to leave if you want. But next time, use SomeOtherDatingSite.com to find a better match!"

See, it's a foolproof plan.
Why I wear the same shirt every day