skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A very interesting read indeed.

The question that keeps bugging me is that maybe this guy is blaming the platform, but the real problem was that they built something people didn't really need.

Look at http://any.do, these guys launched mobile first and hit millions of users in an extremely crowded market(todo lists) because they've created a great product a lot of people want and use daily.

In the end, it sounds like(and I don't know their story from close, only judging from things written in this post) they raised too much money early on because they are a YC company(raising a lot of money actually makes you much slower), launched a product with a shitty signup funnel and took a lot of time to fix that.

Apple taking their time to approve new versions isn't new, anyone(especially a YC company surrounded with top mentors) knows that a/b testing in a mobile app is a problem that should be tackled upfront.

Personally, I'm tackling that problem by testing everything I can BEFORE I even start to write code.

I'm running ads on FB/Google, testing CTRs for different value propositions/positioning, driving users to a landing page where I'm testing different mockup ideas I have for each value proposition, testing the icon, testing price, testing feature list.

I'm talking with as many customers in my customer segment I can not only to understand their needs and problems, but also to create an initial user base that likes me enough to agree to install my app BEFORE I launch it in the appstore using TestFlight.

This will enable me to discover a lot of UX problems upfront and to test a very very very important question - Is what I've built a painkiller or a vitamin, which is the most important question (I think) mobile app devs should ask since it's clear that most apps are downloaded and then forgotten in the abyss of unused apps.

If someone has read this long reply and has more ideas on how to test this question before launching, I'd love to collect more ideas.
This isn't a who-posts-first contest. The discussion of the other post is much better.
Yes! In fact, the Office 2007 team ran into the same problem with "selection readers"[1]. They purposefully designed the minibar (small useful toolbar that appears on text selection) to not interfere with us that like to select while reading/navigating.

It's a shame so many designers out there (NYTimes, Google, and many, many others) fail this basic usability test.

1: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2005/10/06/477801.as...
Why aren't we able to rebind these keys at will? Why is it hardcoded?

We've been able to rebind keys in videogames for a long time. Why can't we rebind ctrl+o to be cut, ctrl+t to be undo, and ctrl+k to be "delete this line"?

Why can't we have ctrl+v be one clipboard and ctrl+f be a different one?
... time?
Do you know what day it is?
I'm kind of happy to have just learned I'm not the only person in the world who habitually selects like this. I've done this for as long as I can remember, and the NYT thing drove me nuts as well.

Oddly enough I guess I always habitually deselect as well, so I've never noticed this gmail feature. Pretty useful.

Now if it browsers supported Sublime Text-style multiple selections for quoting several different bits of a long email, that'd be perfect.

On a sidenote it's kind of fascinating how polarised people are about this feature.
Anyone can make a bump key, but breaking into people's houses is still a crime :)
What Is Wrong With HTTP Secure?
Besides running a blog network and designing websites?
Microsoft Says It Has Sold 40 Million Windows 8 Licenses To Date
And as someone living in Estonia, Apple Maps lists just one restaurant for the entire country (a McDonald's) and no hotels at all.

For me, that's not just a showstopper, it's barely even a minimum viable product.
An excellent, excellent point.
There is no reason to subject someone learning how to program to Java. The amount of conceptual scaffolding required to do even the most basic tasks is stupidly large. It has a place in a survey class, I suppose, where professors with COBOL experience are approaching superannuation, but for all that's holy, keep it away from young minds.
I am making two points, the first that we are web-first, and the second that we are revenue-first. I'm not conflating them; that's the point of the article.

In any case, they are related in my mind. In order to justify why we are switching to a paid model, I bring up privacy because I think you are trading the loss of privacy for that of cash when you choose between ad-supported and a paid model on a consumer app. As for going web-first, I think I made the reason clear.
Show HN: my GitHub Game Off 2012 entry, Git Invaders
One guy likes a set of dinnerware. One guy doesn't care about dinnerware. Religious war ensues.
Preferential voting does not satisfy the Condorcet criterion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting#Voting_sy...
We do this at Leanpub (http://leanpub.com). We're free to use, and pay 90% - 50 cents royalties. Chances are you've seen a few of our books on HN :)
I think DirecTV is an example of a DRM win (for the company) scenario.

With a combination of technology (latest generation smart cards and cryptography) and litigation (going really strongly against infringers) has made DirecTV uncrackable in practice.

The fact that here in Mexico I cannot find someone selling a fully unlocked US smartcard shows that in a way DirecTV has won.

It used to be the case that for US$300 you could buy this fully unlocked DirecTV card to watch all USA channels here in Mexico. This was about 10 years ago when I was in college (and my flatmate used to buy that stuff).
thanks for great response! I would love to talk to you further. If you like to contact me via the email in my info
This is why we have a 2 party system :-)
I'm not sure, it's 5TB/month @ 100Mb/s then 10Mb/s after that. You'd probably struggle to use 5TB bandwidth on a server that small

https://www.ovh.co.uk/dedicated_servers/kimsufi.xml#bandwidt...
> You will pay through the nose (compared to US prices) if you have high bandwidth traffic

What do you mean? It comes with 5TB of network traffic, and they don't charge for additional traffic, merely limit your speed:

>> The server is connected at 100Mbps. The bandwidth is 100Mbps guaranteed up to 5TB of monthly traffic. Beyond 5TB of monthly traffic, the bandwidth is 10Mbps guaranteed.
> you do not get good understand of what is really going on at the machine level

I'd argue understanding "what is really going on at the machine level" shouldn't be the primary goal of your first programming language.

Java has a huge barrier to entry before one starts programming. Huge barriers to entry don't belong in a 141 course.
I think the single biggest mistake they made was calling the option "safe". That is obviously ludicrous! They should have called it exactly what it is - "async".
That's demonstrably false.

You haven't demonstrated it false; I can demonstrate it true.

she is being intellectually dishonest in her arguments.

Or she is just unaware of the scope of MDMA reesearch conducted thus far. I doubt this is her specialty.
Coding for the Changes You'll Have to Make Next Month
Ask HN: How to start traction with a enterprise startup?
Hey Guys, Me and 3 friends started a startup to help business to recruit faster. Our service uses a Vídeo CV in the way to avoid job interviews and have some filters to help the recruiters.

My question is, how do I really dig into the market? A consumer startup is kinda easy, in my opinion, but when I have a B2B solution, how can I make the first step? Sometimes I feel so slow when I have to have 3 meetings in a time span of 3 weeks to start a trial of my service.
It's entirely possible to be active in the ACLU, for example, and still be annoyed that since you live in Montana your vote for a Democratic presidential candidate is basically pointless.
This is an argument against satisficing, since seeking the worst is a form of optimization. I don't want $50 spoons and I don't happen to want the worst spoons.
Steve Jobs was 56. Nuff said.
I think the best way to fight against ageism is to make an effort to retain an open mind and curiosity.

The problem is that doesn't fight ageism. It panders to it.

Ageism is when you don't get treated fairly just because of your age - no matter how curious and open minded you may or may not be.

If somebody things I'm closed minded and incurious because I'm in my forties they are being ageist. They are the one with a problem. Simples.

You fight ageism by pointing out bigoted asshattery when you encounter it. You fight it by not staying quiet. You fight it by lobbying to make it illegal. You fight it by giving people concrete advice on how to deal with it in the workplace.

You don't fight it by trying extra hard to demonstrate that their bigotry doesn't apply to you. That's a coping strategy. Not a fighting strategy.
I believe Imgur gets around it by flagging the NSFW content and then doesn't load the ad display code on it. Not sure how that gels with the AdSense guidelines however but if they're still using AdSense then it can't be that much of a problem.
Piwik Security Issue: latest.zip is infected
Oh snap, I thought she was punning on a different chemical (to wit: deoxyribonucleic acid)...
Moby: Real-time Location Platform API free to HN developers and YC Alumni
A Short History of the JavaScript Security Arsenal
Perhaps I'm being thick here, but I wasn't able to find anywhere this is spelled out. Care to elaborate?

Also, fun fact: Copying/pasting the code in that minified file either results in weirdness or complete crashing from Notepad++, depending on the file encoding setting.
I think you need mobile. Leaving it out is a mistake because you need to be where your customers are (to me - of course it depends on your app). I just think that mobile is the wrong place to start right now.

Sorry for the word overdose. I have a degree in philosophy and computer science; just the right combination to produce overly lengthy and verbose blog posts.
I used AdBlock to stop the NYT script that implements it from loading.

A large chunk of the reason I dislike Chrome is because of its weird text selection logic compared to Firefox - boundaries around paragraph starts and ends feel unnatural.
Do you have prior programming experience? If you do, and you're in a lower-level class, you may be frustrated by a class that is designed to teach students things you already know.
I know that the case is for safe is obvious, and I'm happy about the switch. However, read the manual before getting your CAT6 in a twist. I really want to use Postgres for an upcoming project, so I plan to read everything I can about it. A sane developer tests, reads, tests again, swears a lot, drinks coffee, and reads again. Try to find every damn pitfall you can digest. You will spend an exorbitant amount of time reading, but you'll be better for it.
I've written a small RTOS for an 8-bit embedded processor, and ported it to run on a 32-bit embedded processor too. I don't laugh at the OP; I think he's got the true hacker spirit and I wish him well. It sounds like a fun project.

What's the harm here? He's going to dive in and learn something, and he's probably going to get further along than you expect, because this stuff just isn't as complicated as people like to think it is.
By the same logic, a door with a lock is a non-solution to protect your flat. Nevertheless I do not see people getting angry about other people installing those in their homes.
[Infographic]How Y Combinator's powerful alumni network operates.
Same in Thunderbird
So for any of us who have been responsible and actually used the fire and forget behavior of the previous driver here is the API call that you can use to revert back

http://api.mongodb.org/java/2.6/com/mongodb/Mongo.html#setWr...
They fired him probably because of this http://i.imgur.com/vSJTQ.jpg
I like the name. I may use it, I'd like to see a screenshot / screencast / video before I sign in with my credentials.
Replying to myself, here's the much more exciting retelling of the story: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/05/revisiting-the-blac...
Which might simply mean that this is the approximate amount of non-Apple laptops (and desktops?) sold since Win8's launch, because most of them are now sold only with Win8 licenses [0]. Hardly a mark of success, but of MS's (doomed?) pervasiveness.

[0] e.g., http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPo...
Mail.app does this too, except that I keep using it accidentally.
Students encouraged to "bend the truth"
Let's say there are two head-line candidates: A and B. I hate A, am neutral towards B, and love the less popular of the three candidate C.

So do I vote 0/0/1 or 0/1/1? Well, that depends on how popular the three are and is very much an example of strategic voting.

When proposing an alternative, one should probably be up-front with its flaws.
I'm happy running an OVH / Kimsufi server, costs me £25 a month + VAT from the UK site, it works brilliantly.

Support is essentially non-existant, it's at best "Don't call us unless the box is power dead". But for the price, that's fine, if it dies or starts showing a hardware fault, I'll cancel that one and order a replacement.
> I refuse to tolerate this in any company I work for and I will ceaselessly call them out for this ageism.

And yet they appointed a 24 year old as CTO. Better pack up your stuff, since you refuse to tolerate it.
That's fair. I do have something data about that, however. We tried making our app paid and found that we were now trading 100 free downloads for 2 at $0.99. So now we have 5% of 2 people instead of 100. Regular people are really price sensitive and the problem is they can find something that does something similar to what your app does for free. Like I said, they will not value their own privacy when making that decision, hence they will always choose the free version on mobile. I think in that future that will change, at least that's what we're betting on.
I remember my 1st OS - CTOS running on Convergent Technologies hardware. After a couple weeks on the job, I had read all the code and changed many modules, and I remember thinking "Wait, I never saw any magic. Its all just code!"
Wow!! This is fantastic.
You can get around this by renaming the file to have some arbitrary image extension. Not ideal, but works.
My work email is usually HTML which is clumsy to reformat with the precision I had formatting simple text using Emacs+Gnus on Usenet. Normally I'd rather have the transcript of successive emails anyway.
To demonstrate this, consider the following.

80 people: A, C, B

50 people: B, C, A

35 people: C, B, A

IRV eliminates C (as it has the fewest first-place votes) and elects B. But voters on the whole prefer C over B (115 to 50). This is the failure that Pinckney refers to.
Well, well, Mr. Galt: "There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil."

Much as absolutism makes for simple priorities, applying these general principles out of any context is going to make you wrong no matter what you choose. As in game theory, where mixed strategies often defeat any individual strategy, the best, the worst, and the middle all encounter their uses in different spheres.

Personal possessions? I'm fine with the best or the worst, but not always. For instance, I could buy one of the world's most powerful supercomputers if I were rich enough, but I'm fine with my MacBook Air.

Also, try political or religious thought. I typically prefer a moderate liberal or conservative to a fire-spitting Tea Partier or an ardent communist. I also prefer secular humanism to, say, fundamentalist Bible-bashing or virulent atheism.

I propose a different criterion: the right philosophy for the right context.
"Microsoft had not released any sales figures for Windows 8 other than saying the company sold 4 million upgrade licenses of the operating system to those with previous versions of Windows during the first three days it was available."

That's 10% of the total in the first three days to existing users.

Including myself.
> Error(s) encountered: All events are sold out.

Bummer.
I thought this would be a rant about G+ integration with Play, why people don't like it, and how "Google don't 'get' social".

Google haven't revealed if it's a supply issue or a distribution issue.

Which humans on the planet are making these phones?

Do the have sufficient resources to make them?

Are there problems transporting it from there into shipping channels? Is it an inventory problem, where stock is on hand but databases don't know this, possibly on the dock but not checked in?

Is there an issue coordinating database replication of the quantity of phones in stock?

When we refresh and the button goes from "Add to Cart" to "Out of Stock", we may be watching the inventory be checked into the warehouse and immediately purchased.
You’re Only a Beginner Once
In apple mail you can actually turn this off! (Settings, bottom of the composing tab.)

- another selection reader
I had similar issues with my service. It's hard to keep the service up with no money.

Some suggestions:

1) Improving the quality of the site

2) Remove the adult content to attract better ad providers.

3) Look at adding a paid service (for power users) to hedge ad revenue. Be careful not to alienate current users.

4) Focus on a few key things and do them very well.
A good decision. I know backwards compatibility is important, but safe defaults are an important aspect of usability.

Also, it's difficult to change something after defending it for a while. That's a promising sign.
I hate to be that guy, but after almost a decade doing Python one thing I learned is that we prefer Pythonista, not Pythonist.
Rob Pike on how to learn programming
If I'm going to considerably pay more, I am still better paying OVH more. I'm thinking of getting this bad boy: http://www.ovh.ie/dedicated_servers/eg_64g_ssd.xml
This article was focused more on the movie-villain version of ageism (Over 25! NO HIRE! MUHAHA!!) but the real-world version often goes something like, "look at this guy, he's like, 38! if he's applying for anything less than CEO he's obviously terribad!" That said, I also think the argument missed the mark.
I switched to MongoDB because devnull is webscale. Why take the speed of devnull away from new users?
A great Gmail feature that a lot of people don't use is "Send & Archive". It's very useful for keeping a clean inbox.
How is it mathematically viable or honest to assume that a company will have infinite profits? There's an extremely high probability when you start a business that you will fail and lose everything.
My service, http://bookspry.com, does something like that. It's still in semi-beta (which means I'm taking paying customers, but the "do-it-yourself" plan is still very much the "I'm-doing-it-for-you" plan, since you'd be shocked at the bizarre formatting options people put into their Word document that have to be cleaned).
What you're saying is true, which is why reviews are context-dependent.

E.g. this user lives in Germany, so his review has more weight for Germans. This user likes Indian food so his review has more weight for people that also like Indian food.

Well that would be the ideal. But then you need the ranking process to know something about you, at which point you can't really work with real anonymity. Maybe Google could hide the real names and profiles of people that want to remain anonymous, but use their profile in the ranking they are doing.
> That's not a "cloud," that's just a server.

Much like Web 2.0, cloud doesn't have a technical definition.

> There's an important difference, and people need to stop using them interchangeably.

People need to stop using "cloud" altogether.
He's just using the greatest marketing trick you've never heard of.
I have one of these: http://www.online.net/fr/serveur-dedie/dedibox-sc which are pretty nice as well. I think the CPU is slightly better than the OVH atoms.
Intrade Tells U.S. Users to Shut Accounts After CFTC Sues
Yeah, I bought one of your licenses Microsoft. I didn't want to buy it. Given the choice I would not have bought it. And quite clearly as evidenced in my past week of Twitter I've been trying to get rid of it. Alas, to no avail...
Even if that wasn't true, which it is (there are still billions of people without internet access), I've spent the majority of my time on the internet and I think I can tell the difference between ads and content.
Now You Can’t Buy Your Crude Oil Futures In $10 Increments On Intrade
The author notes that there is no meta key anymore [1], however you can often setup your terminal emulator to use another key as the meta key.

In iTerm [2] I have the left alt/option key setup as meta, so things like meta-b are much easier to type then Esc-b.

[1] "You'll often see Meta+b but there is no such key on the keyboards anymore."
[2] Profiles -> Keys "Left option acts as meta"
Injecting power into a WiFi dongle for the Raspberry Pi
I think attachment sizes were also limited because back in the day, you know when Internet connectivity was a series of beeps and clicks, people used to surf the internet on these shitty little things called modems that ran at 33.6 and 56 kbps. Forget the 10 meg limits imposed in those days, it would probably have taken an hour to download that single message!

A lot of the hang up may have remained from that.

I remember the days when it would take 20 minutes to download an mp3 only for it to drop out in the final minute. Grrr!

Add to that what lloeki said, it's probably one of the most important reason. I becomes very easy to take down several servers at the same time!
On a related note, what's a good place to host a high-bandwidth server? We want to host a backend for gaming, with video interspersed.
Do you not eat a lot of soup, or have you just never used a truly excellent soup spoon? Has it not occurred to you to replace your butter knives with something that has an actual blade on it, or do you just take for granted that we set places with pointless little paddle tools next to the forks?

I own $10 dinnerware (and very cheap shoes) but the notion that fine dinnerware is the reductio ad absurdum of materialism gets to me. But we cook a lot, and nerds tend to eat out, so maybe that's what's going on.

To illustrate: I wore nothing but cheap combat boots from 10th grade until last year (now I wear cheap slip-on dress-like shoes) and never once noticed any downside to it. I'm at the same time well aware of people who spend many hundreds of dollars on a pair of shoes. This observation never really drove me crazy.
Saying that doesnt make you a better programmer, nor smart.
> I really don't think that Google cares about Outlook users (why should they).

Because they want their users to be able to communicate with Outlook users?

You are talking nonsense, they obviously need to play nice with other email hostings/clients; and with this new way of sending files it let their users know that they are two different ways of sending data; that is not really an email attachment but a link to your file in the cloud; a distinction that many times matter.

And they can't give the amount space they give in Drive to every gmail account; why would they do that? Better to be a different service that only the people interested in that kind of big cloud storage will take.
Yes, you are right. I was responding to the use of eval in production code.
Like many, it's probably one of the first "feature" I bumped into with Gmail and that still annoys the hell out of me years later.
In a philosophical sense, sure. But the revenue is exactly the sum of its parts.
But then.... there is PyCharm which is more solid and well-supported. IDE or not depends on your application. For me, even doing Django stuff, I use VIM all the time on the terminal. No GUI. Well, I use a desktop version of Ubuntu. Fine....
I think that we as an industry need to drop the 80 char per line rule.