skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How re-usable is it really? The bulk of the work is being done at the server in this case, and the app is mostly UI code. UI code is very platform dependant. I think that HTML5 is probably the future, particularly if things like Firefox OS take off, and it's probably fine for a MVP mobile app (possibly combined with something like PhoneGap). Currently though, native apps definitely provide a better experience, and you should probably do it if you have the resources... and this is from someone who really enjoys web dev and dislikes iOS dev.
Big Business is rather influenced by Big Brother in this case.

I don't think Big Brother would be pushing so hard against copyright infringers if it weren't for Big Business lobbying, particularly Big Media. Big Brother is the accomplice, Big Media is the culprit.
It depends on how you formulate your risk model.

The industry titans can afford to develop "any" amount of custom tech, subject to schedule constraints, since the art and marketing budgets tend to vastly outweigh the engineering now. But in the last decade, they've tended to shy away from really ambitious tech projects, favoring incremental improvements to a general world-simulation model that applies across all the typical AAA genres. In their risk assessments, they've decided what kind of product and technology is being made early on, so that the bigger expenses aren't in danger. As well, sticking with the same toolset allows it to be further refined.

Indies, on the other hand, have a lot to gain by taking on ambitious technology and de-emphasizing the costly assets - and usually, the technology itself isn't risky, so much as it is just an "unknown engineering challenge" - something that could be a few days or a few months. Something like Braid or Minecraft can be achieved by experimenting and chipping away at the concept over a few iterations. Minecraft's earliest versions didn't have a lot the "big features" that are in the game now.

But it's also incredibly scary to take on those projects all alone, so the majority of indies aren't even going to consider it. Indies are looking for "easy" too, even if it's bad for them from a business standpoint.

I do think that engines like Unity have a lot of value and can even be extended to include some new technology. (I started working on something that builds on Unity's physics system recently - and it shows some promise to be a unique product) But the people who are taking on the unknowns just tend, statistically speaking, to be the people confident enough to write everything themselves too.
In France, "95 percent of people who have received a first-time notice of illegal sharing 'do not give rise to the need for a second notice,' that 92 percent of people who received a second notice cease illegal sharing, and that 98 percent of people who receive a third notice 'show the same trend.'" http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/11/3316158/graduated-piracy-r...

So yeah, telling people "don't get caught again" works.
Why College Isn't a Bubble
Naive, me? You have got to be kidding.

And what exactly in my comment says that "Fred Trump and his money/influence were not an asset". By the way, Fred had no "influence" in NYC. Did the fact that Fred had a good reputation doing housing in Brooklyn and Queens help Donald? Of course it did. But this was Donald's project and he had to do much as I've said to get it built.

Note this from Fred's obit:

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/06/26/nyregion/fred-c-trump-post...

"In the mid-70's, Mr. Trump lent support -- and a small amount of money -- to his son Donald's aspirations of becoming a developer. ''But what he lent was mostly knowledge; Donald really did it on his own, along with whatever boost he got from being Fred Trump's son, of course,'' Robert Trump said."
It's not really that HTML5 requires extra work, it's that it lets you get away with not putting in extra work that you have to put in anyways with native mobile apps, and then the lack of that work ends up biting you in the end.

One of the big promises of mobile HTML5 was that you could just take your desktop web apps, scale them down, give them new CSS, and they'd "just work". It doesn't work that way. You need to test on actual mobile devices from the start, you need to account for the lower CPU performance of them, you need to figure in higher latency over 3G connections vs. wired LANs.

You have to do all of this on native apps anyway, but you know you have to do it from the start, otherwise you can't even get your app to display, and the frameworks are built with this in mind. There're still some areas where HTML5 wins - it's easier to update the app, for one, and it's more familiar to web developers. But the developer-convenience scales were not shifted as far to the HTML5 side as people hoped they were.

I'm still not sure which technology is, on the whole, better for mobile apps. But one of the signs that you actually understand a problem domain is that you can give advice more specific than just "Competing technology X is better than competing technology Y". We aren't going to get that in a TechCrunch soundbite; there're a lot of specifics that depend upon exactly what your market is.
Even if it was tested by the courts, you can appeal. And even after the appeal, you can appeal to a higher court, all the way to the Supreme. And even if was tested there, congress can pass a law that allows it. And even if that happens the Supreme court can strike down the law. And even if that happens, the public can mount a revolution and tear down the legal system.

But, practically speaking, Opus has extremely good guarantees for being unencumbered, as much as is possible - the people working on it have given licenses to use it, and experts in the field have had a while to go over this stuff. Nothing is 100%, but this is as good as it gets.
OP and backlift founder here. Backlift is free while it's in beta.
Oh well, it's the ISPs' loss. I'll lower my internet plan by $20/month and rent a seedbox colocated in Europe instead. Problem solved.
I had a change of heart about HelloSign (YC W11)
Tried it with Firefox 15 and Chrome 22 on Win64 Vista.

It's a race condition. First, deny location tracking then type a ZIP code very quickly and hit enter. You get "Invalid manual location entered, please input your current location above to find yourself some food." If you type it in and wait, it works fine.

if (!isEmpty(cur_locality)) is returning false after enter press sometimes. Enter is not triggering the autocomplete functionality every time.
There was no existing codec that is both good and not encumbered by patents.

Opus is good and not encumbered by patents, and it has just been standardized.
The 2010 iPad is still a great piece of gear and despite not having iOS6, will still run games and apps pretty well.

By 2013, a lot of apps will have migrated to iOS6, and the iPad1 might start to lose some of the platform benefits, but will still be a solid device.
No matter how many times I'm downvoted, it's still not unencumbered. It's simply not in the nature of our patent system that something this complex can be unencumbered, unless it's with respect to an expired patent.

I know my position causes a lot of cognitive dissonance with people, because it implies that the system is fundamentally unfair. Well, you can either take the red or the blue pill.
I did it with a Horoscopes app on Facebook. I don't own it, my employer does. In October of last year it was at 12,000 users a day, and now it is 1.8 million users a day.

I did it by having a really nice app, really understanding how to grow an app on the Facebook platform, and a combination of black magic and luck.

If I had to do it all over again, I'd do a couple things: try to get into the build-measure-learn loop faster, and once inside BML space try to loop around faster. Second, for funnel optimization focus on removing or rearranging steps, as opposed to optimizing the conversion from one step to another.
I'm one of those who can't use UDK or Unity.... too many buttons, it's confusing.
Only on the home page. My CSS-fu is a bit out of date, but I think it has something to do with vertical centering/height 100% fun, which once upon a time was most easily accomplished this way.
Don't be cruel. I'm reading this on a machine running XP alongside my 100,000 co-workers running with the same. The company-wide upgrade to Win7 has been running late for the last few years...
A bit late of a response sorry, but now that VMWare and others have OpenGL support inside the VM, isn't that the graphics card access you are referring to? I'm sure it's still slower than bare metal, like all abstraction layers, but perhaps it's better now?
telephonic : This account was obviously created specifically for the purpose of commenting on this thread. Please be a little more up front about who you are and what your intentions might be.
The flash plugin itself is not actually loaded until the tab gets focus.
Show HN: Registered developer
Show HN: From MIT - PictoBin - A new way to share photos
Ask HN: Python / Django Workflow, and choosing an OS
I'm trying to transition my work world from one of PHP and possibly the world's ugliest Zend Framework code (which is not necessarily a dig at ZF, but horrific development practices, reactive testing, and 'debug in production') to something a lot more organized and streamlined, with Python and Django (both of which I'm fairly new at, though experienced as a web developer, albeit PHP).

I would like to get some input. Try as I may, my mind just doesn't sit well with OS X - I keep trying it, and find my brain likes 'structure and discipline' and feels chaotic with windows at "random" locations all over my desktop. I like the Unix/BSD underbelly, but still. Maybe there are methodologies that can help?

I'm really debating whether to go back to Windows, or retry Ubuntu. What holds me back from Ubuntu is the Office suite (I know the arguments), and GoToMeeting (absolutely mandatory at this point - I telecommute, and it's our annointed method of desktop sharing).

But what I'm really trying to iron out is a workflow for developing, testing, deployment. I'd like to get something set up with tools like LXC for virtualizing a production environment (currently on a separate machine). I'm not really looking for any comments of the lines of "Why Django?" - you're solving the wrong problem. Instead, offer me insight on how I can streamline a workflow from conception to delivery and beyond.

I currently use PyCharm and Sublime Text 2, and am very happy with these, though I'm not averse to hearing compelling arguments (rather than religious wars) on alternatives (as much as I see, and admire the vim-elite, I'm not sure I can make that me).
Since the motors aren't direct drive, what happens when the belt gets wet or the trunks flex and the belt slips off?
I find it a bit weird that you have shifted from iOS to Rails given:
1) There is an established rails bootcamp in the area (Dev Bootcamp) while there are very few iOS bootcamps anywhere
2) Before yesterday, the website was taking applications for iOS classes
3) The only batch of students you've had go through your program were iOS students and haven't been placed yet

Makes it a bit hard to judge the quality of the program since you've wiped the slate clean by changing technologies before your first batch has finished. It's a bit hard to gauge your student comments since they were trained on different technologies and haven't even been placed yet.
I'm already seeing weird conclusions drawn from this. Anyone can tell you, the mobile web app for Facebook worked. Well. It was very, very fast and looked nearly pixel for pixel like the "native" Android app.

Thus, it seems pretty silly to act as if HTML5 is incapable.
I signed up for the rollout to Australia, but it requires a merchant account with Westpac (!) first.

(It almost defeats the point of using it at all over one of the existing merchant-account-requiring solutions here.)
This sounds more like a problem with the issuing banks. Is there any way for a merchant to know that a card is prepaid? If not, how would they know not to check the billing address?

(Semi-related: Do prepaid cards count as debit for purposes of the regulation on swipe fees?)
On the Kindle Fire (and my Android phone) at least, their mail app puts most others to shame. It's one thing they've done extremely well.
I disagree pretty strongly on all three points.

The post-IPO share price decline is bad but I have not seen much, if any, evidence that it has hindered the ability to hire and retain employees. In fact, an easy case can be made that the smaller valuation creates much more upside for the RSUs that Facebook issues.

Mark is one of the premier CEOs of his generation. Removing him would be completely insane. He is, by far, the single most responsible for having created a $60 billion company, something few can ever even hope to do.

Facebook is extremely customer-focused and I don't think the privacy dust-ups suggest strongly otherwise. It's fashionable but trite to think Facebook will got "the same route" as properties before it. Pretty much the same thing gets said about any lasting company. It doesn't take much intelligenc or curiosity to consider that's not always the case.
As someone who recently signed a document in MS Paint on a computer which I didn't have admin rights to, a cloud based service like this would be incredibly useful.
+1
The whole reusability thing is a red herring, it's like the whole Java run anywhere thing, it might save you duplicating UI code but the apps will look crap and run like a dog.
Surely the rate of death from both accidental injuries and violent crime is affected by access to emergency medical care, though? You can't disentangle the two that easily.
Sigh - another product I paid for that is now free - Let's see now - I bought the original Mozilla - a mailer and a Usenet client - soccer data - an cd to mp3 converter - and more - all now free.
Swiss banking Whistle-Blower Is Awarded $104 Million by IRS
Sure, blame it on HTML5, the voiceless culprit. Blame it on the janitor, the office assistant, the programmer.

But never dare you touch a C*O for the failure of a corporation!
Why not apply directly to the top 3 companies you'd like to work for and where your expertise will be a good match? This might save you a lot of time and efforts.
Hey Cole, Backlift looks really cool. Any chance we could chat over email about something? I can't find any contact info for you.
Would absolutely love to hear when you open source it! I was actually highly considering one until I saw your comment.
Related:

http://www.mpegla.com/main/pid/vp8/default.aspx
"...and intends to initiate a visa that would be issued to people identified by venture capital funds as candidates to create startup firms in Canada."

Anyone else find this to be an odd way to go about it?

VC firms have distinctly different goals when funding companies than the people actually running the company.

I guess it raises some questions for me:

(1) Is there a floor to how much funding is required? For lack of a better term, does the start-up have to have X numbers of years of runway to qualify?
(2) What happens to the entrepreneur if the VC firms decides to turf them? Do they get to stay or are they required to leave the country?
(3) Does the entire start-up team get visas? The article mentions how the old e-ship visa has been put on hold. So if a founder gets VC funding, starts the company, but wants to bring in more foreign workers, can they?

Don't get me wrong, I think this is a great idea and it is exactly what the US should be doing as well. There are just a lot of unanswered questions for me and I wonder how well it will work in practice.
As a cyclist, 15 deg incline is steep. Honestly, steeper than all but rural roads and even then rare. There might be some hills like that in SF. Even in the mountains, graded switchbacks are not nearly that steep, for the most part.

Which beings me to who and why would you want to ride down something so steep on a skateboard? I have a hill a mile from my house, thats ~200 vertical feet, and a around a 1/4 mile, its 12 degrees max on my GPS topo. I'm easily 35-45 mph on this, coasting. No hands descent would be NFW. 40 mph on a skateboard and there is a piece of gravel on the road, I'm not sure a Helmet will even help you with the face-plant potential.

But other than that, I think for a flat city it may be of interest. Or even a flat-ish area like soma/mission. But Manhattan? Nah. I'd pass. Maybe in the sub-urbs or exurbs? Where its just a long slog down a random road to the store or whatever would be more interesting. There is a lot of sprawl out there. And this would be cooler than a segway =D.
Just verbally when they sprung the 3 pay stubs requirement on me. I kind of knew where it was heading but they said it was standard practice to verify employment. Mentally I was over it, but I submitted them more out of curiosity to see if a company would actually stoop to such practices. It was right when the .com bust happened and a lot of companies now felt like they had the upper hand.
That's what I saw observing the guys at Kiurma in the latest three years:

1) Most stuff is developed for Android and iOS, and all the rest is served via a CSS that is made mobile-friendly. So developing a native app for iOS + Android you cover 95% of the important target in the best way, and all the rest can stil access your services. So actually, for now, it's just two platforms and not N at least.

2) If you do the iOS application first, instead of trying to make the Android/iOS in parallel, then the Android app takes like 30% of the time of the first at max. You end just copying the iOS app just "translating it" into Java+Android SDK, so the time, in my experience is not 100% + 100%.

3) Anyway once you want to create a native look & feel in different devices, and want to make sure that the javascript, interaction, ..., all look the same across devices, even HTML5 is not exactly cut & paste.

4) It's true that apple takes 30%, but the possibilities of customers just hitting "purchase" button with a 0.99$ price tag or alike are a lot bigger compared to creating your way of making them paying. So IMHO the 30% cut often is justified by the advantages in the "processing" of the payment and in a raise in percentage of people motivated to buy because it's simply easier for them.

5) It's true that you can do stuff like playing videos, capturing images, or audio, or location. But trust me, if you try to do Instagram using this API the result is NOT the same. Doing stuff in HTML5 is often too slow, or you have too little control about how stuff is presented (see HTML5 playing of videos on iOS), or you can't use gestures well enough, or stuff are not working ok on Android or vice versa. Tons of problems.

6) A big pro of native is background. The iOS / Android location service that can awake your app when there is a significant change of position is extremely useful in a lot of social-alike apps.

So even with the small startup IMHO the quality you end with, responsiveness, and often also easy of development, more than justify to go native for everything but the most "just show some content" of the apps.

But after all, even Facebook should classify as a "most show a feed of stuff" app, that is one of the naturally prone to work in a decent way with HTML5, but still...
I see.

I was wondering what the complaints re: Reflector/RedGate were, I am a big fan of their SQL Server tools, but they do cost money.
I like the idea for length-limited emails, it's original and clever. Unlike shortmail, this limits people who aren't on your whitelist.

Automated response email (good catch Rudism) could be handled via some sort of separate inbox or UI organization.

One counterintuitive thought: this may work even better within corporations. My external email isn't bad, but company internal email has always been a few hundred messages a day for me. A length limitation might put the onus back on the sender to be efficient.
I can't speak for him, but I do believe that was his vision for the future. However, what he shipped (Facebook 3.0) was native. He was long off the product before the frankenstein HTML5/Native Facebook app shipped.
Steve Blank would say get out of the building and talk to customers.... let them decide. Pounding the pavement is a lot of work, but you are actually passing the buck to the people who will ultimately decide the fate of your business.
I saw this at the design museum, he also made a denki puzzle radio

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/16/view/23447/yuri-suzu...
There are advantages to a Unix-like OS for web development. When I was working with Django I switched from Windows to an Ubuntu VM. That was a few years ago, though. Nowadays Python and Django on Windows (and even on the Azure platform[1]) are fully supported by Microsoft. Since you want something different from OS X and you want Office and other apps, I suggest you try Windows. You can still use Sublime, git, and many other tools.

[1] https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/python/
Siri Inventor Cheyer Confirms He Left Apple "Some Time Ago"
Why is Facebook adding fake likes to ads?
Ever since Facebook added ads to the iOS app, and I saw that people "Liked" the ad / company. I had a sneaking suspicion it wasn't true.

So I just asked one of my friends if they had liked "Cox Communications", and sure enough they hadn't.

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

So why does Facebook think its OK to lie to their consumer base?

How can we get this stopped?
IMO, the solution to "it's different" is either to learn how to use the newest version, or to not upgrade.
Here's a recording for anyone who missed it http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/25340828
I would love to see he reaction of someone who is not in tech try to parse that sentence. It would appear to be gibberish to them.
The TTL on tethered packets is 1 less than on packets originating from the phone. That's the easiest way, and one that most tethering solutions don't fix.
Text-Mining of US Pager Messages from 11 September 2001
shoot me a note at support (at) backlift.com
I can see exactly what you mean, but the point you make is marred by your usage of the word "Idiots." The concept of Office being a different kind of "Metro" than normal Metro is not obvious to everyone.

Edit: I guess I'm just confused about who "Idiots" refers to. The quoted MS employee? The people agreeing with the quote? Everyone in the comment thread?

Also, to be clear: I work at MS and on a couple small parts of VS. I wasn't really part of any of the UI decisions.
Thanks for looking up actual numbers!

I guess my point also has to do with what "averages" mean. In 1939, a 20 year old might _on average_ live to 67, but that means a number would die at 47, but a similar amount would live to 87.
Hi teh_klev, M-x here again... I always added my own answers if no one else came up with a good one. e.g.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9272244/uisplitviewcontro...

Personally, I think StackOverFlow isn't worth the effort. What people there don't get is that what's really important is simply getting great questions and great answers. That's it. Period!
It is absolutely able to dynamically adapt based on bandwidth, and is robust to packet loss. It was designed for that :)

http://www.opus-codec.org/
https://wiki.xiph.org/OpusFAQ