skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> So I can't blame Apple for feeling the same way. When they originally released iPad 1, they probably didn't quite anticipate how graphical and visual the user interfaces would eventually turn out to be.

Oh yeah ?
Apple has always skimped out on ram on every single device and made you pay a premium to get more. That wasn't a real problem on macs in the past because it wasn't difficult to add ram yourself, but now with tablets and the new macbook air and macbook pro retina.. that's kind of a problem.

I bought one of the first macbook air that had the ram soldered to the board without thinking. If I had known that Mac OS Lion and Mountain Lion would've become so bloated I wouldn't have bought the 2gb model that I sold for a measly 200 euros recently. This piece of shit couldn't browse the web with multiple tabs open without swapping even though the same task was okay in the past with Windows XP and 512mb of ram. (I probably could have gotten more but I didn't WANT to sell it for more because I would have felt like I'd be robbing someone by selling them a defective device for a premium)
By the way, there wasn't a single PC vendor selling laptops with less than 4gb of ram, when I bought my MBA, even el cheapo laptops that sold for $400 had 4gb of ram (what does it says about Apple ?). I was kind of retarded to buy the 2gb MBA, and I should've spent a little more for the 4gb, but I don't really regret it either since I opened my eyes and sold all my Apple devices, and will never buy anything from apple again.

It was obvious to a LOT of people that the first iPad was way too lacking in power and would be prone to something akin to planned obsolescence. Even me, who got fucked by the Macbook air, knew that the first iPad was indecent (I waited for the iPad 2 before I got my first tablet.)

Look at the top of the line in the android world : the (tablet) Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, which has a much lower resolution than the iPad Retina (and thus less hefty memory needs for the apps), has 2gb of ram inside, future proofing it a bit against future applications. The (phone) Galaxy Note 2 also has 2gb of ram, as do some of the variants of the Galaxy S3, now that's a real top of the line phone.
When I saw the retina iPad for the first time, my first impressions, after the initial "wow" you get for the screen, was, the specs are underwhelming for this kind of device.

Apple is all about the shiny. The 13" Macbook Pro still has 4gb of ram as a standard in the entry level, even though it sells for 1249 euros. I've seen PC laptops under 999 euros sold with 8gb of ram, 1TB hard drives, core i7 and a nvidia chip inside (rather than the shitty intel graphic chip that's included in the entry MBP).

I'm done getting ripped off by Apple.
Had to throw another instance behing the load balancer, so the data set is split. Will merge after traffic settles down.
iPad 1 (April 2010) ----
Nexus 7 (September 2012)

So that's nearly two and a half years. You would hope the Nexus could do everything the iPad could at a substantially cheaper price.
Why should I have to? Google knows exactly what I'm asking for when I enter any of those terms, Apple does not. That is a deficiency on Apple's part, I shouldn't have to change my behaviour.
A two-year-old bike-sharing program in Melbourne, Australia — where helmet use in mandatory — has only about 150 rides a day, despite the fact that Melbourne is flat, with broad roads and a temperate climate. On the other hand, helmet-lax Dublin — cold, cobbled and hilly — has more than 5,000 daily rides in its young bike-sharing scheme.

As for the Melbourne part of that sentence: the city is spread out vastly over 8,694 km² (acc. to Wikipedia). Some of my co-workers ride their bikes to work, but unless you happen to live in a close-by suburb, you cannot really get anywhere by bike. Besides, Melbourne really is a car city, and made to be one, with 8-lane highways cutting through its geography. There are a few bike lanes, but parking is permitted on them, so in practice they don't exist.

But from all that you cannot deduce that Melburnians are fat and lazy people at the risk of a heart disease. In fact, like most Australians, people here love sport. Hardly ever seen so many joggers ever before. And yet there's rumour that people South of the Yarra river, that divides the city from East to West, run while people North of it ride bikes.

I guess they don't participate in the bike sharing program because if you ride a bike on a regular basis, you own one.
Arena Thinking
Applying to nReduce (thanks), but it seems to solve a slightly different problem.
Ten Days Remain To Make iPad Mini Real
> propaganda about frivolous lawsuits?

Oh please. This isn't about ambulance chasers, I'm not some right-wing nut who thinks corporations need to be protected from the unwashed masses. This is about things like patent and copyright trolls.

> He's not talking about particular cases, he's talking about aggregate statistics.

Justice is not decided based on aggregate statistics.
I expect exactly the opposite. The cost of litigation gives plaintiffs an unfair advantage over defendants. If a plaintiff wins it's all upside, while if a defendant wins they still lose because they had to pay millions in legal fees (plus the intangible costs of years of litigation).

Given this advantage, and the fact that defendants can always avoid court by licensing if a patent really is valid, I would expect defendants to win the majority of cases that actually make it to court (calling the plaintiff's bluff).
I assume this doesn't allow cars to make a right turn during a red light. That, and the long path for cyclists to make a left turn are probably what would make a lot of people in the US resist this design.

(I think it looks like a good idea, however.)
So you've rallied against the articles points from a logical point of view.

But do you have any evidence that helmet use decreases (severity of) injury?

From the evidence I've seen, requiring helmets lowers cycle usage, which in turn lowers the number (total, not per capita) of injuries, which politicians see as a 'win'.
It seems to me that the on state of the button should have the outline around the blue area (of the default button) also be blue instead of gray. Keeping the border gray when the slider goes to "on" gives the button the wrong appearance. The blue area doesn't look like it has been uncovered but instead looks like a tab sticking out of the side.
This is pretty interesting stuff. For example, I wasn't aware of the "jurisdiction race" that happened when new patent were issued. It puts into context some of the changes at least.

The most depressing, even alarming, part of this is:

> Instead, patent appeals are exclusively heard in DC by judges who live and breathe patent law. Unsurprisingly, this leads to insular thinking. For example, when we interviewed Paul Michel, who served as the Federal Circuit's chief judge from 2004 to 2010, he didn't seem to understand the problems facing small software companies. "If software is less dependent on patents, fine then. Let software use patents less as they choose," he said, seemingly oblivious to the fact that software companies don't have the option to opt out of patent troll lawsuits.

Seriously? The court seems to have no idea of the Pandora's Box they've opened by loosening the "obviousness" constraints.
What an insulting attitude towards janitors they have!
tl;dr: if you're threatened with a libel suit in the Commonwealth bend over and take it like a man
Ha. Yelp just bought a .co.nz domain name, therefore we're going to see an increase in data quality overnight? I admire your optimism. Why wasn't this present at launch?
We propose 40 colors, which is pretty hard to find when you try to do a DYI pixel art with photoshop. Also the stickers we propose are high quality vinyl (which is repositionnable). I often see guys do home made pixel arts and Stickaz is just here to make their life easier and their designs cooler!
Doesn't Copenhagen also structure its traffic protocols around bicycle commuters? For instance, letting cyclists go on a green light several seconds before cars, in order to ensure that nearby drivers can see them?

Copenhagen has done studies [1] indicating that every mile driven accounts for some net economic loss (due to the harmful health effects of sedentary lifestyles, pollution, the cost to the commuter of gas/cars, the cost to society of maintaining automotive infrastructure), where very mile ridden constitutes a net economic gain (decreased healthcare costs due to being more active, lower personal cost of owning a bicycle, etc).

If the US spent more time looking at commuting from an economic and health perspective, we'd probably find that more government action is needed, beyond "Bike to work day"

[1] http://sustainablecitiescollective.com/node/38206
"More precisely, what risk is going to be removed from the deal?"

You've got to be joking. One of the highest risks in every startup is the team falling apart. A team that was able to build a prototype is likely to be more consolidated than a group of people with an idea. You are weeding out the teams that disbanded while trying to build something simple, and I've seen plenty of those.

I don't have the hard statistical data to prove it, but I would bet on that hypothesis.
Anecdatum: I recently learned that an old friend of mine had died in a bike accident. No other vehicle was involved; he hit a road hazard (I'm not sure exactly what, but perhaps an uncovered storm drain) and landed on his head. He was wearing a helmet, but it didn't save him.

I've always worn a helmet when cycling -- and I'll continue to do so -- but I've never had an accident in which it mattered, and I don't think it changes the odds as much as you suggest.
If the phenomena was purely psychological, then it might be possible to overcome it. Possibly, rotating the specific task you are working on, or changing locations, or taking shorter but very intensive breaks (like playing street hocky for 30 minutes), might be enough to prevent the brain from switching into despondency mode and allow a few more hours of high productivity. But if the limit is physical, then switching locations or activities won't help much, the brain simply needs to rest (although perhaps a cooling helmet would work - http://www.news-gazette.com/news/health/health-care/2011-03-... - I can't wait for magazine articles with trendy startup engineers at their standing desks all wearing brain cooling headgear).
Please don't use these. I've seen too many mobile users get confused by these sliders, wondering why they can't manually slide them.
The real reason here is a technical limitation. The Nexus One and many other devices from that generation have very little ROM space. Typically <500MB. ICS+ takes anywhere from 350MB-400MB of that. So the user is left is left with hardly any space to install apps. It can fit less than 5 apps probably.

Even with custom ICS and JB roms this is a problem, but there people know what they are getting into before hand, and also for rooted devices, there's ext2sd which basically uses your sdcard to store user data.

Google fixed this with Nexus S and forwards. So we have to wait and see how long the Nexus S will be updated.
Using pigeons against French startup-killer law
Honestly, if you are that blown away by turn by turn directions, then you've been held back by Apple for the last few years. Android has had it, Windows Phone had it, and numerous third party apps on iOS provided it.

None of this blows away Google Maps. It blows away Apple's implementation of Google Maps, which was subpar. So, now Apple's implementation is on par with everyone else, but with subpar data.
It sounds like a good business that's also running some unethical revenue-enhancing recurring billing scam. Take away the scam and revenue goes down.

Where's the "every month while you're a member" in that text?

"JOIN TODAY" does not imply subscription with recurring charges, just like "sign up" or "create an account" doesn't.

"there's a box you have to click indicating that you accept the terms" - perhaps that gets you off the hook legally, but not ethically.
Well, you can opt out of all third-party apps, if you want to.

Notifications are a core part of Facebook. It's like complaining that Twitter doesn't have an option to stop people retweeting you.
Some interesting points. If you have some better ideas about how to organize the data, please submit a proposal to the judges (info here http://www.ioccc.org/judges.html). Even better if you can volunteer the XX or probably YYY hours to actually implement it. The site is statically generated and we want it to remain that way.

As to point (3), the current logo is generated by Matt Zucker's 2011 winning entry. I (Simon) have added a link to it from the logo and a little annotation :-)
If your planing on working for a longer stretch (4h) in one location then I recommend the Tea Lounger in park slope. There's a ton of comfy space & lax rules on hanging out a long time.
>Unfortunately for Apple, Steve Jobs is dead and the magic is gone.

Steve Jobs was alive when the iPhone 5 was conceptualised and designed.

Also nobody cares about your anecdotes. I hate to be rude but seriously they are meaningless.
Is TDD supposed to prevent bugs? I thought the main point of TDD was it was suppose to encourage better design.

First write the test. This is supposed to make you think more about the API and how you'd like to use it. Then write the implementation now that you've effectively tried using the API by writing the test. That why it's called Test DRIVEN Development. If all you're doing is writing unit tests that's not really TDD, that's just writing tests.
That's a great article! I learned to really program on Turbo Pascal, and if I remember correctly, the small executable made it easier to store programs on the "program disk". Though by the time I built my own computer, it had dual floppies so it wasn't as big of a deal.
(2) and (3) are now fixed.

(2) The mime types for the .c and .h files are now set to text/plain on http://www.ioccc.org.

(3) I (Simon) have added a link to the winning entry that generates the current logo.
Yes, Apple does seem to be between a rock and a hard place.
A Conversation with Will Wright by Celia Pearce
I know this is (re)opening a can of worms, but the interesting part about this article is that it very clearly highlights why it would have been a terrible idea for the recent Apple vs. Samsung trial to be decided by a jury of patent specialists instead of laymen.
A few ideas.

1) Try to be more selective with the meetups you attend. Particularly, meetups focused around a programming language or a specific technology (Python/Hadoop/Node.js/etc) are likely to have more dedicated technical attendees. Bonus points if the meetup doesn't allow vendors/recruiters - that generally means that they like to keep the conversations focused on technology, rather than sales or job offers.

2) Hackathons. It's often encouraged to show up without an idea, form a team, and work on an idea for 24-48 hours. This is a great way to test-drive a partnership with someone who you might invite to work on a side-project. Chances are, by the end of the hackathon, there's mutual respect/trust among team members; the bonds you form by hacking together for a day or two are going to be far more conducive to working on new projects than the bond between you and your twitter followers.

3) Open-source projects. Pick an open-source project that you find particularly interesting. Sign up for the developer and user mailing lists, ask questions and answer them where you can. If you ask the developers where a good place to start helping out is, they'll often give you some easy ways to help out (improving logging / documentation / code style is often an easy first patch).

Hope this helps!
This post seems to focus on requests for games that are played on the Facebook website, but what about mobile apps? I am actually in the process of integrating requests into my Android app and other than a bug I ran into, I was actually pleasantly surprised by the way the request works. Since my app is only on Android, the notifications only appear on Android devices. If you invite people who are not using an Android device, they will never see the notification. If the user doesn't have the app installed, the notification will bring them to Google Play, otherwise, it will launch them into the app. This feels a lot less spammy overall and it at least feels as though it will be moderately effective. Anyone have any data on this?
Alright, sounds like IRC chat would be best... of course it depends who else you are chatting with, but I'd give that a try!
it assumes uniform search distribution
Startups Can Avoid a Privacy Class Action with a Single Clause
Well and good, but it might be better to say "correlate with" rather than "predict." In the scheme of things, it's probably more accurate to say that pi(x) is self-generating, and it's the zeros of the zeta function that are tagging along for the ride.
FWIW, I've personally worked with partners at a couple of these funds, as well as some of the senior execs at the parent company, and they are stand-up guys, not con artists. Aggressive direct marketing isn't a crime (have you ever watched TV infomercials?), although there are certainly gray areas where disclosure could be clearer, etc.

IMHO the most important consideration is that the more aggressive any company is about acquiring new customers under this kind of model, the more liberal it should be about returns/refunds/cancellations. There were many lessons learned a couple years ago when discount-membership checkout programs (WebLoyalty, Affinion, Vertrue) and their e-commerce partners (Fandango) got the smackdown from various state AGs. There's enough similarity here to warrant paying close attention and making sure to stay on the right side of a thin line. Here's example coverage of the previous controversy:

http://www.zippycart.com/ecommerce-news/1165-affinion-vertru...
2D Animation In The Digital Era: Interview with Japanese Director Makoto Shinkai
This article seems to answer the wrong question.

I think the reasons that Apple wants its own maps are fairly well understood, so "Why is Apple creating its own mapping infrastructure?" isn't a question that needs to be answered.

The question that needs to be answered is: "Why did Apple flip the switch now, when their infrastructure is in such a poor state?"

[Some people have attempted to answer this by saying "Because they need massive numbers of users to help them develop maps further," but I think that isn't really true: there's ample room for improvement to Apple's maps with no user feedback at all. I don't think they're anywhere near the point where user feedback is necessary to help point out problem areas.]
Kill The Landline Pitch Deck from Startup Weekend Columbia
As a WordPress Developer I see lots of innovation going on the WP platform. I think for new blogging platform to get any kind of momentum it has to differentiate in meaningful ways. In terms of features, it's hard to beat WordPress.

The API connectivity you speak is very doable in WordPress (take a look at Kickpress which turns WordPress into an API, or the JSON api plugin). I think you're on the ball in terms of the importance of a more connective experience.

WordPress is incredibly flexible and every day use-cases where people would have said 'WordPress is not the right tool for this job' people are starting to say 'actually WordPress can do this'. (Checkout projects like wp types/pods/buddypress/p2 etc)

I'd love to see more innovation going into WordPress. Right now I think it could be made a lot easier to use for beginners. I'm not really keen on the backend in that respects. Personally, I'm making tools that will make for smarter themes and more personable apps for WordPress.

There's also lots of blogging platforms that take a more minimalist approach if that's the direction you want to go in. Then you have to contend with established platforms like tumblr and posterous. And that market is also cornered by services like google plus and facebook which tap right into social networks which is very attractive to users craving connectivity with their network.

Last but not least, I'm assuming you'd want to develop something that makes money. In that case you need to really figure out a product that people will pay for. Personally, if I had to do that, I'd pick a niche I understand

Themeforce for example built a saas using WordPress( rather than building something from scratch) as the platform for restaurant owners. It's very customized so most people of their clients might not even realize it's WordPress and frankly it wouldn't matter to them either. I think their example is a great lesson: most endusers aren't going to care that much about the tool, they are going to care what results it gives them, the cost and how easy it is to use.

Right now I don't think your USP as it's coming across at the moment is exciting, new or radical. 2cts
It's a very interesting point!

I'm focused to make all the process easier (and the WP admin panel is full of boring stuff, in my opinion), so maybe the creation of the whole product could be a natural evolution of the plugin instead of a new product.

The plugin could also help me to attract users, adding some functionalities to WordPress blogs and making available an option to move to my product, with even more features.
I really don't know where to start with this ridiculous diatribe.

Firstly as for your MacBook Air. OSX runs fine with 2GB and shouldn't be swapping constantly for browsing. And not sure why you are complaining that you got 200 euros for a 4 year old machine.

Secondly you seem to be really bitter about not buying the cheaper and arguably nastier laptops. Why not buy them ? Clearly the only thing that concerns you is specs so why not buy an Apple ?

Thirdly a LOT of people thought the iPad was an incredibly feat of engineering to get all that it did into such a small form factor. Seems to be a lot of revisionist history there.
Why do some people use .com instead of .org ?
NReduce is definitely cool, but I would love a more lightweight version of it.

(I don't mind videos chats, but I creating videos updates that are accessible to everyone, would mean me focusing too much on the message as opposed to driving progress).
it is supposed to do both, prevent bugs by the fact that you capture behavior in test and improving design by leveraging natural laziness of humans to take less effort to achieve results. Usually less effort approach results in clean better structured code at least that is what I observed
It seems that the trouble in Apple vs. Samsung was that one of the jurors thought he was a patent specialist instead of a layman.
I'm not sure I understand you correctly, but he's saying that startup founders tend to be young, probably due to the risk profile of startups vs small businesses. Entrepreneurs as a whole (a much larger group) may well be in their forties on average, though.

Edit: Does anyone happen to know the success rate (for some definition of success) for restaurants?
This is very helpful, thank you.

I never thought of going to hackathons or helping on open source projects.
Bugs vs. changed LOC could be a good one. I believe there have been studies showing that bugs are proportional to LOC, but don't quote me on that.

The nice thing about his data is that it's fairly well controlled (for software, anyway)--we can separate his contribution vs. others' and his code pre- and post-TDD.

I agree that his analysis isn't great, though. Also, it's hard to account for effect of legacy code. The big drop in bug count doesn't happen until 5 quarters after he started TDD.
When working on a startup there are so many things to think about. Avoiding Action Lawsuits... never seems to be a top priority. Advice worth thinking about and implementing +1.