skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
IOW: Apple admits iOS maps is a complete failure.

It least they didn't pretend otherwise, like with mobileme.
Don't worry, we can start out by getting a judge to enjoin the probable infringement. We'll make sure no kids are allowed to attend elementary school during those 3 years.
That does not make it justified by any meaningful definition of that word.
This is precisely it. I found an extraordinary mason recently from a friend's referral. He has zero online presence. When I asked him about that, he said "why would I get a website when I already have more work than I can handle?" Being known as a pro is more important than all the marketing and bidding in the world.
Mobile's opportunity: Marketplaces, says Benchmark's Matt Cohler
LaunchPad Tech Accelerator announced in Miami - $25k GRANTS
If anyone fancies suing the Whitehouse to make a point, here's a picture of what appears to be a relevant violation:

https://www.acclaimimages.com/_gallery/_image_pages/0519-090...
I see this a few times on here about DOJ or FTC stepping on to Apple like Microsoft, and I think it's pretty off base.

In order for that to happen a few things need to occur. First, the government needs to prove that Apple has a monopoly. Here are some numbers from NPD on smartphone marketshare domestically: https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/press-releases/pr...

Apple: 31 percent
Samsung: 24 percent
HTC: 15 percent
Motorola: 12 percent
LG: 6 percent

So right there, it's a tough case to make that Apple has a dominant market monopoly as compared to Microsoft in 1998.

Here's a CNET article I found quickly from 1999, one year-ish after the DOJ brought their case: http://news.cnet.com/Windows-95-remains-most-popular-operati...

Windows 95 57.4
Windows 98 17.2
Windows NT 11
Mac OS	5
DOS	3.8
Linux	2.1
Windows 3.11 1.1
Unix	.8
OS/2	.5
Others	1

So at that time Windows accounted for roughly: 87% of the market! And then beyond the government determining they had a monopoly, they had to show that Microsoft was abusing it's monopoly in anticompetitive ways. They concluded they were through agreements with OEMs and others to keep other software off the machines. Basically OEMs would install Windows and IE, and not make deals to install Netscape or other software. And part of that decision also had to do with the fact that in 1998-2000 as broadband was nascent in much of the country, getting new software wasn't exactly as easy as a 5 minute or less download.

And even still there are legitimate criticisms of the US DOJ case against Microsoft.

Finally though, it doesn't seem to me that this could be done by DOJ/FTC at all. Apple doesn't have a market monopoly. Since it is a device that they produce hardware and software for, and have from the beginning asserted full control over the app store, and other market alternatives (often cheaper) readily exist, I wouldn't expect any action.
Everyone cries and whines and moans about UI changes. It's like facebook changing their UI. It'll keep happening for a while, until eventually people will accept it and realize that they're being stingy.
Thanks for the article and the insight, Lee. I'm planning on building something for real estate as well and have some target users working with me but I probably might not have enough insight on the pains of the process. I'm tempted to go your route and get a broker license as well.
FWIW, I've read elsewhere that Google has had 1000 contractors in India cleaning up map data for 5 years. People using it isn't going to clean it up with "moaning". Apple is going to have to throw a LOT of resources at fixing this.
It reads like an apologist apologising.

Gruber is a known shill who writes 50 shades of gray for Apple-fans.
I think you can gauge the success of future OS by the enthusiasts (early adopter) reaction.

Windows XP and Windows 7 had lots of love pre-release. The Windows 8 reception is mixed (as was that for Vista).

Some people are going to love it. I am using it on two machines (a dekstop and an HTPC).

Here's they point though. I _won't_ be installing it on the computers of family/friends (I'm the family tech support).

Watching my wife use it (and the issues with slow user switching, multiple versions of browsers, etc) means its just not worth it. I don't need the extra support calls.

Windows 7 is just fine, especially for legacy hardware (those without touch screens and tablets).
First, this isn't Bret's introductory article on this topic. As far as I know, his first talk about this came in January of this year (watch the Inventing on Principle video on Vimeo). Granted, 7-8 months isn't a super long time, but he has never built/tested his ideas, yet asserts them as if they were proven facts.

Also, I know why I'm being down-voted. Bret is an inspiring person. His Vimeo talk, specifically, is very inspiring. He acts on principle, he believes strongly in his ideals, and there are many people who agree with him. So, the people who like Bret are people who align themselves with his ideals. So, when I challenge his vision by asking for data, people who read it feel like I'm challenging them, personally - like I'm challenging their beliefs (because, well, I am - I'm asking them to prove their beliefs). People respond to that kind of challenge in a negative way. It'd be like if you tried to argue the ideas of Steve Jobs with an Apple fan - they're just not going to listen to you, no matter how solid your arguments are.

I, myself, agree strongly with Bret's principles. He's right that developers need better tools and we need a better way to teach programming to people. However, I try to divorce myself from those emotions and still look for facts and evidence. If someone claims A is better than B, I will look for proof, even if my "gut instinct" tells me that they're right. I very well believe Bret could be right, but that doesn't mean we should all just assume he is without evidence.

My point here is that asking someone to give evidence for their arguments is completely acceptable. But, when you challenge the ideas of someone feel emotionally invested in (because their beliefs and ideals are being challenged), you receive negative feedback. Thus, the down-votes. It's actually a very interesting study in how people can be loyal to someone even without evidence of that person being right.
Those companies do not have good data for Asia, afaict. There are many other companies and data sets that would need to be integrated to provide even something resembling what Google has today with it's Maps service.
Intriguing, but a small code example illustrating it would have been nice.
I find it odd that many folks in this debate have focused on the exiting contract and its dates. There's nothing stopping two willing parties from updating an existing agreement at any time - as long as they can both agree. No senior exec at Apple would have ever said "Oh, dang it - if only the date was in a different location we'd be doing a different strategy"
I am working on http://www.youfm.org

This is the side project I'm using to learn programming. I built the first(current) version using PHP + Javascript without any frameworks. The upcoming version is rewritten in Rails and Backbone.JS (which I think was a mistake). The new version has additional features like playlists, mobile-compatibility, the ability to resize the video, bookmarkable URLs, etc.
Only 2000 apps in the Windows 8 Store, where’s the interest?
You can run Linux in Windows Azure.

http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/manage/linux/
Thank you, I have been wondering what drove apple to act so stupidly.

I can easily envision Tim Cook doing this. The whole world is watching, and there is major ego on the line. The last thing on earth he'd want is for wall street to see that google had him by the balls.

Not that Jon Gruber is guarenteed to be right, but it certainly has the ring of truth.

Edit: Of course, if wall street were really paying attention, they'd see that apple behaved this badly because Google in fact had them by the balls. Thank god they're not the sharpest tools in the shed over there.
Yeah, I tend to disagree, mainly for the many reasons pointed out in this fantastic article: http://geoit.posterous.com/41latitude-google-maps-label-read... .

I do believe that vector graphics are far superior to GMaps' tiles.
I offer a Linear Algebra that is Free. Some years ago I was contacted by some people in California and prompted to apply to become some kind of official Free source in that state; it involved filling out some forms on some web sites. That I can tell, nothing ever came of it. So I'm a bit dubious about this initiative.
"Expert Python Programming" by Tarek Ziade (http://www.packtpub.com/expert-python-programming/book)
It really doesn't matter. The reason this was done is because it fits in better with each application being searchable (you see how this is more consistent?). Once the user realizes this once, the problem is gone. It's really not much harder to search 'settings' if you're looking for a setting than to search apps if you're looking for an app now is it? I don't understand how people make a big deal out of things like this.
> And I have never worked in an organization with a hiring quota - the companies I've worked for will all take you if you meet the hiring bar

You must have worked only at places where the amount of acceptable candidates is greatly constrained. Either because the hiring bar was extremely high, or there simply were extremely few candidates out there with the right skills.

In practice I've seen quotas everywhere I've worked. At small startups, at the beginning you often have no money to pay salaries, so you give out equity, and you don't want to be diluted into nothing from day one. It's also crucial to find great talent for the very beginnings of your company and codebase.

For large companies, there are always quotas because otherwise they would grow until they quickly become unprofitable, and of course there is a limit to how fast you can integrate new people into an existing structure. Each division and team has a target size for the next year, and they hire up to that limit.

I have never been in a company, big or small, where we said "hire as many good people as you find! no matter how many! we'll take 'em all!"
Is Instagram Bigger Than Facebook?
I wonder if they considered re-licensing with Google for a while and releasing their own 'App' in the App Store to compete. It would get downloaded if only because it had turn by turn and the licensed product did not. Then offering people perhaps some perks for helping improve it, allowed it to live side by side with Google's maps until it was ready to take over.
You haven't used iOS 6 Maps in non US/EU countries. The OSM map data in Asia is much less accurate. There is no Yelp outside of the US. Think global. iOS 6 Maps is worthless in Asia.
Don't worry. The EU recently standardized Pizza Napoletana[1]. Among some of the regulations are:

* The flour used has to have a deformation energy between 220W and 380W

* The dough has a pH-value of 5.87 and a density of 0.79g/cm³

* The salt has to be applied with a spiral motion on top of the tomatoes

* The olive oil has to be applied with a spiral motion as well, totalling at 4-5g of oil with an allowed error of 20%

* The baking time is 60-90 seconds. The dough has to reach 60-65°C

That's not just a patent. This is a legal ordinance. This is law. This is taxpayers money at work!

EDIT: edit for formatting and source

[1] http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=0J:L:2... (German)
Custom bots for Unreal Tournament 2004 pass Turing test
I just want to know where "just works" went. Why should a consumer have to worry about contracts between corporations when all they want to do is use their phone to catch a bus, just like they have been doing for years?
Until they fix it by partnering with a real mapping company, they didn't recognize the depth of the problem.
I'd take Microsoft's approach with Windows 8 over Apple's tack any day. 10.8 is the most convoluted, user-unfriendly OS X yet. Microsoft is right to strip things down so radically and get the basics of the post-WIMP PC right.
There are no valid claims on this disclosure, see last page. The description is just a narrative: even though they can be used as evidence of prior art for future patents, they are not part of the IP given to the applicant.
I would upvote this a million times if I could. I'm one of the kinds of people who wants to read the entire reference manual, front to back, before using a programming language, library, etc. I want to make sure I know exactly what it does, the proper way to use it, and what it doesn't do. This is both so I can make an informed choice about the technology, and it saves a huge amount of time in the long run.

But it seems like there's a big trend now to just "get things out there" and that good documentation isn't "cool" anymore, kind of like braces in syntax.

Examples of good docs: PHP, jQuery, MySQL. (The first two sites include user comments too, which make things even more useful.)

Examples of terrible docs: Python, CoffeeScript (the worst)

I can at least understand insufficient docs for pre-1.0 versions when the implementation is changing constantly, but when something has been around for more than a year, it's just inexcusable.

I don't want a "getting started" guide that gives a bunch of examples. I don't want to type in the console to find out what methods an object has.

I want a friggin' reference manual, that includes (as applicable) syntax rules, exact rules governing whitespace, orders of operations, all functions, all parameters, parameters passed to a callback (why are these forgotten so often?), default values, flag values, all possible return values, specific exceptions that can be thrown, what input parameters result in undefined behavior.

Really, it's just not that hard. It may be grunt work, but if you'd rather make your users waste a cumulative 25,000+ hours figuring things out, rather than you spending 100 hours of your own explaining things, I just can't have respect for your product, no matter how otherwise amazing it is.
Claim 1 states:

"A method of swinging on a swing, the method comprising the steps of: a) suspending a seat for supporting a user between only two chains that are hung from a tree branch; b) positioning a user on the seat so that the user is facing a direction perpendicular to the tree branch; c) having the user pull alternately on one chain to induce movement of the user and the swing toward one side, and then on the other chain to induce movement of the user and the swing toward the other side; and d) repeating step c) to create side-to-side swinging motion, relative to the user, that is parallel to the tree branch."

Now go find prior art for this where it shows steps a, b, c, d. Not easy anymore is it?

Obviously, common sense should have played a huge part. But common sense by it self is not patent law. You still need evidence to support your common sense.

dctoedt is right. Humans make mistake.
I needed to make a plugin for our video player recently, so I downloaded FlashDevelop and gave it a go. I was astounded at how good it was for an entirely free piece of software. It's no wonder Adobe gave up on Flash, they certainly got no money from me while I developed with it.
I'm at a loss, how could it be easier to add music? From files, it is drag and drop, from CD's, it is one click "Import".
What do you mean by "densest"?

Please give us a URL to the benchmarks game web page that you think shows Python is the densest language.

>>I don't make type errors when writing the first version of a piece of code<<

Maybe you just don't test the first version well enough :-)
What I really want is to make my Win7 install look like Win8. Not the touchscreen-friendly big buttons, but the flat color style, ala outlook.com

Does anyone have any pointers on this?
I'm not sure, but I don't think the implication was that the project must be 100% perfect in 6 months, just shipped. Slap a BETA tag on it, and it's still shipped, just not polished.
Really? I always see funded startups limit their hiring to their investment and because it just isn't practical.

If you are a 10 person startup, there are likely thousands of people in silicon valley who could work for you, and hundreds of thousands who could work remotely. You're not going to hire them all - it would take too long, you would run out of money, and you would have your equity diluted into nothing.

edit: shorten and focus
It also could suggest that the .1 version will be a significant upgrade if the underlying date's good but it's being parsed wrong/deprioritized for OSM data/etc.

Better than if the underlying data is wrong, anyway.
So the trick is to release something terrible and then your locked in users won't have anywhere else to turn and get excited about the next 'fixed' release? Got it!
The rate of map refining will always be quicker than the rate of building roads.
I went through the notes. They are concise, but not too concise. A nice tutorial for people who already know the basics.
http://www.scs.stanford.edu/11au-cs240h/notes/
When you dont have immense amounts of data to search, having to put in effort to pre-filter your search results feels like unnecessary work.

Filtering should only be needed/useful when the result-set is bigger than the user can handle.

There is a fine line here, but I feel Microsoft missed it and stepped on the wrong side.
Looks like Google re-enabled this account a few hours after we saw the article on Techdirt: http://python-ebook.blogspot.com/2012/09/google-ads-are-back...

It's unusual for an author to post a torrent link to his own book, and so I understand that this happened, but it's an unfortunate mistake in my opinion. I hope the team will take the situation as a chance to see whether they could have handled things differently.
Grokking V8 closures for fun
Too bad you're open to US devs only :/ Any plans on expanding?
I've experienced every one of those scenarios in the last week. And I live a few miles from Apple headquarters!

Turn by turn navigation is awesome though. Once they've worked out the kinks I'm sure this experience will be better overall.
Silky Electronics that Dissolve in the Body
Yeah, claiming he lost for putting his own book "on a torrent" is burying the lede. Google isn't going to touch The Pirate Bay with a ten foot pole.
Cyberattacks? What? No! The digital equivalent of a sit-in!
Which I find to be bizarre. There is very little reason in doing these sorts of attacks _unless_ you plan on taking credit for it. You can't say "maybe it's a test run" because this potentially gives enough warning to your targets to bolster their defenses.
I think the jury's out on that.

Vista was a disaster because of MS' focus on security. UAC is a usability disaster, both because it's not clear exactly when it is triggered, and the behavior of the system when it is triggered(blanking out the screen then the dialog, etc.). Also, the driver signing meant that a lot of suppliers weren't able to get drivers out quickly enough.

Plus, Vista was a pretty huge system hog, and bogged down even with the "recommended" requirements. That, I think, was the deal breaker for the majority of people.

Comparatively, the complaints I've seen so far about Win8 are either centered around things that aren't really that much of an issue(See Notch's complaints about MS reaching out to him to certify Minecraft), or just new UI/UX designs that they're not used to. I haven't see many complaints about the stuff that matters: performance or driver compatibility.
Freelancing sites are a poor way to make a living long-term, but I know several people who established themselves using freelancing sites. They are one way of establishing happy customers, customers who go to you first for new work and who refer you to others.
looks like a Flash game from 1999
If John Gruber had not invented Markdown, he would be very high on my least favorite humans list.
>They could have made it so much easier to add music, etc

What? You either drag and drop, or purchase with one click from the store. It could not possibly be easier.
Very well done and performing pretty well.
Before pulling the end of world pickets from the attic, just have a look at the last page of the patent.

None of the claims are granted.

If anything, this shows the level of crap the patent examiners have to deal with everyday.
I don't understand why this exists when SickBeard is much better and is written in Python with a web interface so it's platform independent.
Nope. I've never heard of it. I tried looking it up on Google but didn't come up with anything, either. What is TREL?
Interesting choice of example. The 9V battery gets its rectangular shape from being a stack of 6 1.5V batteries in series. Yet, claiming that the battery isn't 9V but 6 x 1.5V would be considered needless pedantry.

Now, let's say that I have a cuckoo clock that chimes once per hour. This is a rate of ~ 278 μHz. Now, imagine that I buy 3600 of these clock and set them to offset them by 1 second each. I now have 3600 x 278 μHz signals. However, I also have 1 clock going off every second. Thus, the frequency rate for the entire system is 1 Hz, even though the individual components have a much slower rate.

Now, let's say that I didn't do such a great job in aligning the signals of the clocks. Some are 2 seconds apart while others are mere milliseconds apart. From a Fourier transform perspective, there's now multiple signals with multiple frequencies occurring. However, if I average over a long time period, I'm still getting 3600 events per hour, or 1 event per second. The signal may not be a perfect sine curve, but, barring a pathological timing, the strongest Fourier component is going to be the 1Hz signal. Thus, 1Hz would be a reasonable way to describe the cuckoo bird rate of the system.
While a certain part of me could never say no to any Moon-based enterprise, the Moon seems barely more hospitable to data centers than humans.

With no atmosphere, the only two choices for cooling are straight into the Lunar surface or radiating directly into space, either of which seems like a huge pain in the ass.

Solar power is in some respects as good as it gets on the Moon, except for the whole two weeks of darkness thing. Even building near a pole, it's going to take quite a bit of infrastructure to keep the lights on in the data center, either in the form of massive solar arrays circling the pole connected by hundreds of miles of power lines, or massive batteries of massive batteries.

And at the same time, the antennas for collecting all that data from satellites and problems also need to be globe spanning. While a dark-side-of-the-Moon observatory is great for observing whatever it happens to be facing at the moment (which is valuable in itself), it's going to be pointing the wrong way from whatever you're collecting data from for two weeks at a time. So you need some system for buffering transmissions for two weeks at a time, or for retransmitting from an array of satellites in orbit to antennas on the ground, or an array of antennas spanning the Lunar globe.

So while I would totally vote for a Lunar datacenter if I were in Congress spending billions of dollars of other people's money, it seems slightly less feasible than an undersea datacenter. (At least with the undersea datacenter, you can cool into the ocean, and run the entire thing on the temperature difference between geothermal heat and the icy depths.)
That's a good point. Certainly the average iPhone user is now learning the value of a good mapping app vs the value of a crappy mapping app. If they launch their free map app a few weeks after iOS6 launch, they've taught Apple and a lot of people a lesson...
(Just saw this comment, sorry for not replying earlier)

We use LaTeX to generate the PDF. You could try pandoc if you're going from HTML (or markdown) to PDF.