skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
For most users it is the update problem that I'm concerned about, particularly from a security point of view. The contract is completely irrelevant to this issue isn't it? An iPhone on contract is completely updatable, I don't know if it is relevant with Samsung's phones or not. Even if non-contract Samsung's are updatable that makes advice to friends/family even more complicated.

The freedom problem is an issue with all the mainstream phones on the market but isn't a problem for most users. The solutions with the current market products are jailbreaking/rooting or joining developer programmes. In the Apple case developer programme costs $99 and additional agreements (in practice you need a Mac too). Or using a web app to get round the limitations.

There real solution will be when there is a real open source open platform on the market. And personally I wouldn't sacrifice much performance/capability to get it although the option would be nice.
I cannot believe that a world-wide bubble-like increase in house prices over the past four decades is down to back-handers to planning committees at golf clubs, in Spain, Crimea, Italy, Wisconsin and London.

I think simply that there are an awful lot of people who want to live where the jobs are. In cities. And there are few nice places in cities, partly because that is the nature of the urban beast, but mostly because we design cities badly.

Cities can be badly affected by poor planning decisions - and those are driven more often by lack of regulation than active corruption. I mean many cities are blighted by 1960s tower blocks and concrete jungles. Those were not put up by corruption - they were active policy. The wrong policy but still not corrupt, just f'ing stupid short sighted and moronic.

not bitter
I'll admit I'm not an Apple fan, but even I expected the iPhone 4 to feel a lot better in hand the first time I used one. I was very disappointed with how it felt, compared to my aluminum HTC Legend. It definitely felt like glass in hand, and in a bad way - like I was afraid that if I dropped it it would shatter in multiple pieces. And I guess I wasn't that far from the truth, considering how easily they cracked.

As for iPhone 5, Apple is being very misleading. Yes, it's "normal" for the scuffs to happen - if you're making a painted aluminum phone from 2005, like those LG or Nokia ones from years ago that lost their paint after 3 months of usage.

But I would've expected a lot better from Apple. It's obvious Apple is inexperienced with colored aluminum, and they weren't even aware of this issue, because HTC can already make dark aluminum handsets, and they don't scuff:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPZ7y1EDKvk
Alexander then goes on to not present any real evidence. I know that the standards of evidence of low in fields like architecture, but it makes me sad to see people engage with important topics like this one using nothing but assertions and platitudes. Dense cities have many advantages, especially around energy effeciency and environmental footprint. If we are going to make the right decisions for the future of our species, we need to make them based on evidence. If we don't have evidence, we need to do research.

As much as I like Alexander's book, I wish people wouldn't buy into his opinions so wholeheartedly.
The Hustler's MBA
You can tell in the first line it's a joke.
No people have ever had these problems on any other phone than an iPhone.

I think that's telling a lot.
Once, the future was spaceflight. Now it’s cat videos and status updates
The call to action link says: "Pre-Order on Kickstarter"

They must have not gotten the "Kickstarter is not a store" memo. They appear to be ready to pull the trigger on their manufacturing partners, so this is sort of a "how big should we make the first run?" type of kickstarter rather than a "let's create something awesome".

Details…

• Stereolithography printer (laser, not extruder)

• Much nicer than extruder style printers

• $2300-2700 for the machine depending on your precedence

• $140/liter for liquid resin
You Already Know How To Use It
Estonia Gets Highest Marks for Internet Freedom
To be fair, scratches and scuffs on the outside of brand new iPhones have little to do with build quality, just shoddy quality control at Foxconn. I assume Apple will take responsibility for iPhones that are damaged out of the box.

Wear and tear on the outside of the phone after using it is normal, if you really want to keep the thing in pristine condition, either put it in a case, or don't use it at all. There really is no difference with other phones here.

> And here I thought Apple's main selling point (at least to justify the price) was this hard-to-quantify "build quality" meme.

You don't honestly want to say that you see no difference between the build quality of iPhones compared to most cheaper phones, right? IMO there isn't much 'hard to quantify' about the build quality of iPhones.
Or maybe $20/gallon gasoline would make solar make more sense? Maybe then we would need to find a way to make more efficient cars?

Subsidies don't help anyone - except people getting them.
"We're number three! We're number three!"
Why are people shitting so much over LibreOffice? I have both on my machine in the office, and I've set LibreOffice to the default and use it almost exclusively. It's faster than Office, has a better UI, more features I see as essential (save to PDF is nice), and the leap from Office to LibreOffice these days is tiny.
> Maybe some marketing about great Perl built projects could help. Does something like this exist?

Some do get "marketed" via Perl News (http://perlnews.org/) or PerlMonks (http://www.perlmonks.org/). But I know of many Perl built projects which you only get to hear about via contacts, mailing lists or jobs postings.

Here are some announcements of Perl built projects (that I recalled and found quickly)...

* The Secrets Behind Blekko's Search Technology - http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2010/12/the-secrets-behind-...

* DuckDuckGo Architecture - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=525048

* LOVEFiLM’s love affair with open source - http://www.itpro.co.uk/622960/lovefilm-s-love-affair-with-op...

* Trendshare.org - http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2012/09/announcing-my-new-...

And here is a list of Perl start-ups that come to mind: Lokku, Moonfruit, CareerJet & Adzuna.
Form 1: high-resolution 3D printing on your desktop
This reminds me of a segment in the movie Objectified where they interview Bill Moggridge, the guy who designed the GRiD Compass (the first laptop). He talks about his choice to use magnesium for the enclosure and how he liked the fact that the laptop would gain character as it accumulated little nicks and scratches, exposing the magnesium. I have to agree with him. In a way, it actually makes a product feel more durable because you can see it's withstood some wear and tear. In fact, it's the same reason why people like vintage furniture.

You can see the clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHEA-jbo1aI
Apple Attempts To Trademark Its Music Icon, But Myspace Got There First
Beam Yourself to Work in a Remote-Controlled Body
This looks amazing. I have been waiting for this... the quality is top notch! What a deal too :)
The only people I see with cracked screens are iPhone owners. No Android-phone owners I have ever seen has been using a broken phone.

So no, I don't buy that Apple has some sort of magical build quality-property which can't be had in better (and cheaper) phones made by significantly less evil vendors.

All Apple has left is full platform lock-in and a church.
> Prefab homes exist, but they are more expensive than traditional homes per square foot for nice homes that are bigger than a double-wide trailer, so they remain a bit of a novelty (in the US anyway). The fact that the market has yet to find a way to drive down the cost using prefab makes me wonder if onsite assembly isn't in fact the cheapest form of construction at our disposal today.

A narrower set of financing options for prefab homes exists as opposed to traditionally constructed homes. That leads to a pretty serious difference in demand, and an awful lot of the price difference might just come from that.
I worked at an electronics store when the iPhone and iPod touches were initially released. We would take our keys directly to the screens and say to the customer, see its a solid product, even with keys in your pocket it will be safe. Selling Apple products back then was a joy because they were one step ahead of the curve with everything. Now it seems rather than continue to innovate and blow away competitors they are concerned with how their competitors caught up and if they can legally knock them down a wrung or two. Apple stinks of greed nowadays.
It has nothing to do with the quality control. It's the whole idea of putting a coating over the aluminum that's wrong.
Cool. But it's easy to do. It's just a get request to google. Nevertheless, it's my new homepage!
Or phrased it differently to take into account their target market: "We want to be #1 in the business smartphone market and provide the best integrated mobile solution for enterprise customers."

Realistic, ambitious, and entirely positive.
Well, there are a few good reasons for that: coding for WinRT is harder than it should be

A lot of us haven't even gotten far enough to figure that out. Microsoft just switched us all over to a new UI toolkit (Windows Presentation Foundation) with the release of .NET 3 five or so years ago. We've invested a lot of time and money into getting up to speed with this new technology. And now we're already being asked to migrate away from it and onto yet another Next Big Thing.

Meanwhile, Microsoft zinged its mobile developers (the very ones they're so desperate to court) even harder by deciding that the new mobile platform they brought out only two years ago would not be compatible with the new mobile platform they're bringing out now.

It was twelve years ago this month that Steve Ballmer did his famous monkey dance while repeatedly shouting "Developers!" and apparently slipping into some sort of fugue state. Well, it turns out that all those developers he wanted to make such a big deal of saying are such a big deal? They're are all kind of pissed off and disgruntled right now.
I think it was a smart way to do it... they are using Kickstarter to take pre-orders and to encourage small contributions from those who want to support the effort but don’t necessarily need to buy a printer (by buying a t-shirt, a part printed from their machine, etc.)
could be a bit risky to have a domain containing the word "google", don't you think? Dude you got it even two times in there, double offensive :)
Apple’s iOS 6 Maps app is awful, and now the world knows it
Is this really necessary? I use Chrome, and can just type my search in the URL bar and go? I'm pretty sure Firefox has this same feature. On top of all that, if you go to http://www.google.com/ and just start typing, it will start your search. This site just seems like a waste with so many other (quicker) routes that are available. I don't see any value in this. Am I missing something?
And yet, I tend to read comments without looking at usernames. I'd argue it's more anonymous then "a traditional social network". Both more social and more anonymous, oooh creepy.
Formlabs just released their 3d printer
Yeah, that's what I was thinking the whole time I was reading this article. "Only" 2000 apps? I'd rather have 200 well-designed and useful apps over 20,000 useless spam-ware ones any day of the week.

I've owned an Android device for a year or two and I can say that I have under 30 apps installed on the thing from the app store (and probably 5 of those are superfluous, I'm just too lazy to get rid of them). Yet, it has all the functionality I require. As nice as it is to have thousands upon thousands to choose from, honestly I think fewer can be better in some cases, especially from a consumer's perspective: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/your-money/27shortcuts.htm... Based on that article (I know it's NYT but it cites a good source or two), fewer apps might even result in more purchases overall.
Eyestrain within 8 minutes of looking at VS2012: Priceless
> "Did I miss anything important?"
Yes. These problems apply to Windows on the desktop as well.

And Windows exists as the 800 lb gorilla on the desktop for two big reasons:

1. massive numbers of legacy enterprise apps with mind-boggling levels of customization. (e.g. plugins, forms, scripts, macros, etc)

2. games

Making life easy for developers in updating/supporting those apps on new versions of Windows has been a huge part of maintaining their dominance. If Microsoft makes an upgrade even nearly as difficult as porting to a brand new platform, they're making a huge gamble that developers won't hedge toward cross-platform solutions and web apps.

Which, while great for consumers, would be disastrous for Microsoft.
Give me a break. People haven't cared enough about other phones to even notice these types of issues. Mountains out of mole hills.
> You just need to put it in water and re-anodize it.

Right now I have an image in my head of Steve Jobs saying that, very much like "you're holding it wrong".

You can't be serious.
A date is good to plan on. Also some basic info about the API, so I know if I need it or not
If you can figure out how to make a comfortable living working sixty hours a week, I can tell you how to make one working thirty hours a week: take the sixty hour job and work thirty hours on it. Thirty hours of actual productive work instead of staring blearily at your screen, compulsively refreshing e-mail because you're too tired to do anything more useful, and botching work that will have to be redone next week, in between redoing work you botched last week.

Seriously, this should not be a matter for debate anymore. We know humans evolved for something like a twenty hour working week, and cannot productively do more than thirty, maybe forty at most, on any job more demanding than repetitively putting component A into widget B - and those jobs are mostly done by robots nowadays. Useless sacrifice is not cool or heroic. It's just useless.
"Responsive design is (often) not worth it"
They shouldn't really be inexperienced with coloured aluminium after the last few years of coloured iPod Nanos and Shuffles
But it's great that they use 28MP cameras in the making of the phone.
Jelly Bean Notifications Brings Interactive Notifications to Any Android Phone
How to change the link color with pseudo class hover in CSS
MS doesn't give developers an option better than Apple's. Their platform (win RT) is as close as iOS. Oh, and that Metro. Do they really use this UI daily themselves? Or do they have a secret way to turn it off completely? Perhaps I am just too old to appreciate this new fashion.
I've been using 8 off and on since it went RTM and don't really feel "forced" into metro at all. The only time I even really see Metro is when searching for something, otherwise it's just a slightly snappier 7 with the charms bar (which has grown on me) and a slightly uglier UI (coming from aero glass, 8's desktop windows look like a regression).

Which of course just reinforces the point that there's no compelling reason to upgrade from 7 on the desktop yet, but Metro isn't anywhere near as obtrusive as some people make it out to be.
Ask HN: does anyone else find threads of their conversations hard to follow
One of the things that brings me back to HN regularly is suddenly realising someone I have never met has made an intelligent, thoughtful counter-point to something I said. There is always something to learn in those situations, sometimes about the subject, sometimes about me.

But time zones, real work, and real life mean that comments can go unanswered for hours. And I can never tell if my latest scintillating contribution to the sum of human debate has fallen off their threads page, or simply offended them so much they unplugged.

(F'ing hell, I sound lonely. Need to work in a two-person office)

Anyway, is there a way to change HN a little bit such that

lifeisstillgood
your threads commented on _6_ times since last visit
you were downvoted _14_ times

Have we already had this conversation ? Has someone launched a startup solving this problem I don't know about?
Another option is to populate the cart preview via an ajax request, which allows the initial page to be served entirely from the cache.
Individuals don't need that many apps. But since individuals need different sets, we need a large total. Your Mum needs rail navigator for German railway tickets. I need the Dublin Bus app. If you're exhibiting at the Munich Design Conference, you might need their useless lanyard scanning app.

Sometimes users need specific apps that are otherwise interchangeable. Kindle, for Kindle owners. Kobo For Kobo Owners. Gmail for Gmail people. Viber for friends of viber users. Whatsapp. LotusMessenger. Skype. Expensify for people who use expensify. You don't want your Mum to have to tell her friends to use Skype instead of LotusMessenger because her tablet doesn't have LotusMessenger, especially if she already uses it on her laptop or phone.

Raw numbers implicitly assume that the ratio of crap/important is the same across platforms. You could use the number of apps X each app's userbase to get the idea. The platforms are probably look more level if you look at numbers like that.

It's more critical now that people already have smartphones and they'll probably want the 5-10 apps they use to work on whatever tablet they buy.
I think you may be projecting a bit
The YouTube comments seem to disagree about the scratch/scuff-ability of the surface of the HTC One S.

and: http://www.androidauthority.com/four-times-the-strength-of-r...

In spite of the bold claims made by HTC about the micro-arc oxidation (MAO) process used on the One S making the phone almost immune to dents and scratches, reality (as it, too often, tends to do) begs to disagree.
So first, they have metal backs which get scratched and everybody complains (first iPhone). Then they move to plastic (3G) and everybody is happy until they actually use the phone at which point everybody complains about the cheap "plasticy" feeling.

So they go ahead and announce the iPhone 4 with a glass back. Everybody is happy after the announcement that the cheap plastic days are finally over, but once the phone comes out, everybody complains about scratches, or worse, breakage (even though, personally, I love the touch-and-feel of the iPhone 4(S) and so far, neither the front nor the back broke).

So finally, they release the iPhone 5, again with a metal back. "Finally! No more breaking risk" everybody says after the keynote. Then the phone comes out and everybody starts complaining about scratches again.

So what's left? What material would you suggest they could use?

I realize it's not always the same people rejoicing that are then complaining, but I do see kind of a pattern here.
From what I understand stock Android doesn't have the problem. Multiple manufacturers seem to have introduced the flaw in the same way with their customizations.
That sentiment was popularly applied directly to iPhones not too long ago.

http://www.davidhughes.org/aged-to-perfection/
Not from England, but true dat. Once coal in England became cheaper than wood as a fuel source, the trees breathed a sigh of relief (more so once the British fleet switched from wooden construction to iron hulls).
Being familiar with aluminum and it's uses in windows, doors, and railings ......

There is such a thing as maintenance free aluminum. It can be anodized, stained, painted, and more and look exactly the same.

Our Macbook Airs don't scuff easily (but they still do, due to the nature of aluminum) for the reason that using a suitable type of aluminum was paid attention to.

I'm pretty amazed that the iPhone, being the most mobile, out of laptops, desktops, etc, didn't go a step further to use even more space age aluminum.
Sure, but I think people are getting tired of that kind of lock in, and it seems difficult to recreate. Granted, most iPhone users are probably tied to the platform for life because they spent 100s of dollars on apps already. Then again, most of them probably aren't as essential as MS Office.

Also I think the professional companies will simply hire people to port their apps to every platform, no matter how painful it is. Some indie games might be missed, but even then - if they are successful, they probably make enough money to pay for a port.
steve jobs has left the company - and with the head of the company gone, there goes the company
Daily numbers indeed but I'm open for suggestions.
OpenGL ES 3.0 and OpenGL 4.3 are going to be even more interesting in regards to that, as developers can write OpenGL ES 3.0 games for iOS and Android devices, and then do a 1:1 port to OpenGL 4.3 PC's, without further modifications, because OpenGL 4.3 fully incorporates OpenGL ES 3.0.

What I find mind-blowing, though, is that Intel's new architecture Haswell which will come out mid 2013, and is supposed to be even more GPU-oriented than previous chips, will only support OpenGL 3.2, which will be 4 years old by the time the chip launches (some sources say OpenGL 4.0 - still 3 years old though)...and yet it will support DirectX 11.1. I find that incredibly disappointing.

I guess Intel just doesn't care about OpenGL. I'm not sure how they are supposed to make us believe that they are serious about entering the mobile market with that kind of attitude towards OpenGL.
This. Also, it breaks my back button.
Can It Be? An Entrepreneur Bubble?
Same, USA. Looks like google's DNS servers 8.8.(8.8|4.4) haven't picked it up yet.

Switched to OpenDNS and it works fine.

The domain resolves to 74.207.230.240 if anyone wants to add it to their hosts file instead.
> do we really need so many apps?

Said every Mac user in the 90s (myself included).
Because:

You would need to build a factory. Which is millions of dollars of investment that a construction company would not need to do and don't traditionally run.

Your buildings would have certain constraints (like the same ceiling height or some other criteria) that clients may not want to have and you will be inflexible in regards to changing it. Maybe the architect would not appreciate it either and the plans would not work.

You would need to keep that factory producing all the time in order to pay back the investment and to make this sort of production feasible or efficient.

So you would need enough customers to always be creating these cookie cutter buildings.

In hose manufacturing there is this sort of thing. You can buy pre-build frames that make up a roof instead of putting it together onsite. There are concrete forms that slide together to easily build a foundation. Afterwards the concrete form becomes insulation for the foundation.

So maybe only a centralized socialist government would be able to set the standards and the capital in motion to get this sort of project done. But ultimately you might cut down on build time because you're offsetting the labour by having it happen on the factory floor.

You'll need a company that does manufacturing and construction. Now you have two problems.
"You're anodizing it yourself wrong"
Yes first thing I noticed too.. How long will the cognitive dissonance last? Until toda when I backed a documentary I had only 'backed' things that I expected to receive goods from (including $120 on a product running 6 months late)

Saying one thing and acting another way can only last for so long... It would be a different thing if you could purchase an actual 'stake' in the company for your fee, however unfortunately US law doesnt allow this at the moment (or so I am told)- however it seems like the only way to make this fantastic concept (crowd sourced funding) a viable long term solution to a glaring problem is by making it more accountable and transparent in that sort of manner
I normally read through comments and only look at the username if it's a particularly good comment, sometimes I follow the person.

Better than 700 friends I barely know.
Android Owners "More Complacent" Than iOS Users When It Comes To Browser Choice