skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This. My pet peeve of re: Usenet old farts: 'top vs bottom quoting'. I certainly don't long for the days where I had to wade through flame wars over stupid crap like that.

If there was some way to add ads to Usenet and IRC, we (well, 'they') wouldn't have had to re-invent it all poorly in the form of phpBB and its thousands similar packages, and various 'chat' or 'private messaging' apps and websites. What life could have been, if there was one good dedicated client that could handle all user messaging 'sites'...
Upcoming birthdays and other calendar events appear on my iPhone in the lock/notification screen so no different to Android in that respect.

And as of iOS6 it automatically syncs birthdays with Facebook.
Curious, do you actively use the power control widget? Turning off wi-fi and GPS when you aren't using them can help a lot with battery life.

Also, if you are using CyanogenMod (or many other custom builds) you can change the performance settings on your cpu governer, etc., to improve it further.
Backgraound. Happy iPhone user since 2008 (available in our country then). In december they gave me to try out Nexus 4 (unavailable in our country).

As a device Nexus 4 itself is not much better than previous - Galaxy Nexus. Display itself is much worse on Nexus 4 than it was on Galaxy Nexus.

After giving back Nexus 4 I thougth I'd try out living with Galaxy Nexus, which until now was my phone in the drawer. And, actually, though I was an iphonee for 4 years, Galaxy Nexus with Android 4.2.1 is an awesome device.

Back button is something you miss dramatically on iphone after a detour to androidland. Sharing feature, Google Now, tiny things. I do not give a damn about configurability. There is a lot of stuff that I'd welcome into android world from ios, but other than that - I'm satisfied.

Such migration would be unthinkable a year ago. 4.2.x, though not that much different from 4.1.x, is mature.
1. Many engineers are unable to recognize the merits of one design over another. But they have a finely tuned sense of engineering effort required to implement certain design features, so they literally see the cost of UX proposals without seeing the benefit. So they argue.

2. Many PMs believe that all design is subjective, and therefore it's perfectly reasonable to substitute their judgement for that of the UX'er. So they argue.

3. Google is a uniquely bottom-up culture, where consensus is required to move forward.

These three things lead to design by committee, and it is extremely painful.
I haven't read the article but I was an iPhone3 for a year, nexus 1 for a year, nexus s for a year and now iPhone 4S for a year.

Things I still miss:

I still miss that android apps can download in the background so for example when I wake up I the morning any new podcasts I'm subscribed to are already on the phone. Contrast to iOS6 where I have to remember to manually run the app. Which generally means I only run it just as I'm about to get in the car. I then sit in my entry way for 2-6 minutes waiting for my podcast app to download

I miss that apps can register for more events and act on them. For example any app can register to get an event when a new photo is saved. It can then upload, in the background, that photo. That means I can install one Flickr app, one g+ app and one fb app and the photos get uploaded to all 3 services no matter which app I use to take the photo. Contrast to ios6 where either every photo app has to have built in uploading options for every service I could possibly want. Or, I have to manually run the specific app for each service.

I miss auto app updating. I don't have as many apps as most of my friends on my iPhone but it seems like every day or every other day there's a number on the app store bugging me to update stuff. having to manually update is a distraction, chore, and annoyance I don't need.

Of course I miss being able to choose various default apps. I want Camera+ to be my default camera. I want Google maps to be my default maps. I want gmail to be my default mail app. I want a different apps to be my default music player and video player. I want chrome to be my default browser.

I miss being able to customize my desktop and lock screen. Not just adding widgets but changing it to use other apps. See http://slidescreenhome.com as one example.

I miss geeky things like being able to run an ssh tunnel in one app and use that tunnel in another app.

That said I'm still on iPhone. There's still plenty of things I like about iPhone over Android. I don't see myself switching back for at least a few more generations.
And there was an article yesterday about samsung developing their own platform, a new one from blackberry and one from the makers of ubuntu.
If they take off who could afford native versions for all those in addition to android, iOS and windows phone?
I found http://www.arcfn.com/2009/03/y-combinator-in-arc-and-java.ht... a much clearer explanation of what the Y combinator is and why it's useful.
I concur. It took me maybe 10-20 seconds, because it's very intuitive to use and I don't have to upload to give it a try. Plus, the site has no loading issues, which is rarer than it should be.

Do the suggested improvements, especially the social integration, and it might go viral. Good job!
Why the future needs a brandname
I guess any Android phone is now a days. The Razr is smaller of the two. But I think the point still stands due to replaceable batteries on phones like the S3 mini.
Finally out! Congrats!
It's also possible to do it in person, from what I gather. Definitely less than ideal but anonymity is almost guaranteed.
SKMurphy, Inc. » Where Do Lean Startup Methods Help Most?
And both of those are quintessentially Android features. I doubt you will ever see them implemented like that on iOS without jailbreaking.

I personally don't want anything like that. I would rather Apple just allow widgets in the notifications section and have live icons.
Any mirror? Its down here.
The author conveniently left away the most important benefit of HTML5 apps: at least in theory, you only need to write the app once to support multiple platforms.

With native, you have to re-implement your whole logic (and redo significant parts of the design) for every smartphone platform you want to support, which is a major cost point.

Of course, you will not get perfect UX on all platforms with an HTML5 app without major tweaking, but still the total amount of work is reduced.
The problem with mobile HTML5 is that the frameworks aren't nearly as sophisticated as their native counterparts. There's nothing that even touches UIKit on the web. Things as simple as drawing a UINavigationBar-style gradient prove to be unbelievably challenging. On a technical level, it's completely doable, but it requires a lot of time, effort, and designer time. Multiply this out by all the little niceties like animations and embossing all of the buttons and you've got a big job ahead of you.

All the technologies are in place to have a native-quality HTML5 app -- we have canvas to draw pixels however you want. We have WebGL to do any 3D rendering. We have blazing fast JS engines. We have hooks for things like location and camera roll access. The problem is that it's really hard to justify the investment of building out a UIKit-quality framework for the web. Apple and Google can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on their frameworks because it means they'll sell more devices/services. But it's really hard for someone to justify doing so for the web, where there's no ROI for your platform.
I really attribute the existence of IRC to what I've been able to achieve in the past few years. Since starting my own network back in 2006 when I was in sixth grade, I've met numerous users who I've been in communication with for years, learned how to setup and manage a Unix server, how to deal with the occasional trolls and denial of service attacks. It even lead to me learning how to code, as I hung out with quite a few devs. In fact, my first online business was a result of some brainstorming on IRC.

Fortunately, for me, most of my friends that I met through IRC are my age (+/- a year or two), which I always found to be pretty neat. The conversation is always active for the most part, and most of the guys are in the US and UK, so it's usually active all day. Over the years, we merged/linked with other networks, welcomed new people, hosted channels for various open-source projects, but just as the article states, usage has definitely declined. I can recall back in 2009-2010 when we had servers in three continents to reduce potential lag when things were really going well. Now, the IRCd hub and services run comfortably on a Linode 512 without links.

Part of the reason I think we're still alive and well is because of the admins (NetAdmins, IRCops, etc). You'll notice that on most networks, admins are arrogant and very strict when it comes to messages per second, or banned words/topics. As long as nothing illegal was being discussed nor transmitted, we don't do anything. In all honestly, I can't recall the last time I used any commands to ban, Gline, Kline, and so on. This is what contributes to a network's longevity.

It's comforting that IRCd(s) are still being actively developed, but I would really love to see its popularity pick back up again. It's really an amazing tool for communication, whether it's used for collaborating with coworkers, discussing open source projects, or even for a casual chat.

If you find yourself looking to connect and need a client, you might want to download Textual (for OS X only, available through the Mac App Store or Github).
Of course you can.
You can even use your own router.
My comments from the article:

> I’ve developed apps both native and not native for all platforms, and html5 apps don’t deliver faster results. Developing in javascript is not faster, in fact making a complex app takes about the same time or even more.

This is really a matter of opinion. Obviously if you approach an Objective-C developer and ask them to build you a HTML5 app it will probably take more time, but for someone such as myself who doesn't know and doesn't want to learn Objective-C it will be faster to use HTML5 and Javascript.

> Learning native technologies takes time, but that is a time well invested in something that you will use over and over again to deliver results.

Again, this is really just an opinion rather than fact. If you want to learn and write your app in Java, Objective-C, C# and whatever the Ubuntu phone will use then go ahead. However, I quite happy to write my apps once in HTML5, knowing that there will be some issues, but that I can get it done a lot faster than writing once for each platform.

> HTML5 does not look and behave like native app, never

This really isn't an argument any more. I agree that to make stuff look like native components (and as pointed out by other commenters to behave) is harder in HTML5, however take a look at apps such as Path or Foursquare. They don't look like native apps at all either. Making things look native isn't necessarily something you should be striving for.
I wish more people knew about this and used it.
It's easy to find out by searching hn.

Still, an explanation would be nice, for example on the guideline page.
So by cutting the already-meager flow of money available for free content, they hope to force Google to bend to that? When Google is already swimming in money?

I think they're dreaming.
It's not very "optional" if it's turned on by default.
It's neutral : the filtering is at the router level, which belong to the user network.
Extraordinary support? You’d better blow my mind.
The offer has been extended till end of the day, 4th Jan. So you can still continue with the shopping, http://www.packtpub.com/news/stock-your-reader-christmas.
Well, except IRC isn't dead...

http://irc.netsplit.de/networks/top10.php?year=2012
Facebook continues its mobile focus - Pages Manager for Android
Hindu American Congresswoman takes oath for the first time
not that hard to believe. I am 20 now, and I didn't even know much about iPhone when it launched. All I thought about it was that its just another super expensive phone, like one of Nokia's luxury phone. Coz I wasn't interested to these things at the time, and well, I wasn't paying attention.
I love using HTML5 instead of using apps which require installation etc. I really hate installing app for every darn site.

Oh well, where's Hacker News App? It would be great idea to do it for every imaginable mobile platform. What are you guys waiting for?
Does Greece really need anyone's permission to default? Iceland didn't. Defaulting on the national debt is almost an act of war, but there is historical precedent.
here's a question - if I want to setup a company wide IRC server, which (super easy to install) server should I go for ?

Do note that I will be hosting this on EC2, so some semblance of authentication/security would be welcome.
Imho it is not that dead at all, I'm surprised how often used it is. For open source support, but also by gamers for games.
I'm more like: sooo, this dude didn't know crap about the internet and launched one of the biggest websites in the world. #fml
> You can get a top-of-the-line smartphone for $300. That's amazing.

Not sure why you think this. It is mid range phone by every benchmark (e.g. no LTE, battery life, screen quality) and it gets destroyed by the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S3 in every performance benchmark.
Yes. Isn't it? To my mind what you've done there is very obviously not a crime.
Having worked doing BI work for a bit during a semester off it seemed like there is so much money to be made in the 'BI for the masses' space. Interesting to see some competition for SAP , MS and Oracle popping up, I'm rooting for them.
You flagged an article because you didn't agree with the author's opinion? I guess I should go flag half of the the Hacker News top posts.
A protocol that can change the future of Social Networks
I designed a simple protocol, which can help develop a world of interest-centric activity based social networks.

2013, might well be the end of the "Social Utility" model.

Disclosure: This is a rewrite of a post that generated some interest last week-end, but addressed some of the concerns people had about it.
Oh and of course you can 'customize everything' and here you have 4 examples of the most ugly homescreens I have ever seen on a mobile phone.

Good grief, you speak of personlisation like it's a bug and not a feature. I personally hate the iOS window-dressing. You have this sleek-looking bit of hardware, but the OS looks plastic and Fisher-Price, with safe and chunky buttons to give to your kid with no sharp edges. The way you speak, it sounds like you would deny me my preference for something different because you think it's ugly. What about those who don't think the default skins look good? Why isn't it a good feature that we can customise the way things look?

I really don't understand the Apple-spawned fanboy cult that considers personalisation to be a bad thing - especially since they once had a successful marketing campaign based around personalising your hardware with the coloured macs.
My understanding was that at least on the lock screen there was no easy way to distinguish between different calendars - I want birthday reminders to show up persistently for at least a week before the event, which is obviously undesirable for most other events.

If the lock screen gets/has that functionality, I'm not sure what the real difference between that and a widget is - except that mine displays on the home screen while yours displays on the lock screen.
Exactly - it uses a much bigger power-drawing screen, too.
I did not mean to attack you, and I do understand the difficulties from the side of people that try to offer their thing online, everybody has the right to try and get some finance to be able to do their hobbies.

So many times I heard the argument that advertising was the thing that made the internet cheaper and accessible to all, this is simply not true, upscaling made it cheaper and better software made it more accessible.

As I am online for quite a while (over 15 years), I have seen so much crap appearing due to the advertising industry.
The quality of what is available online has only got worse, I personally think that the more expensive internet of 15 years ago was worth every penny while the cheap access nowadays is too expensive for the crap that is being offered.

I am glad that paid services are coming back online and will hopefully normalise this webworld again to pre 2000-2010 norms.

Unlike the advertisement world, I think not everything should be free, quality can have a price tag and rightfully so.

I wish you all wisdom and luck and hope you can convert your business.

b.t.w. I do not think that an ISP should decide to block adverts, however I do think the public should be able to choose, I use the HOSTS file to black out all adverts, which is quite efficient and does not need external code (like in the router or in a firefox add-on).
This is why I prefer to say "patent ogre". It is clearly different, but also clear that there is a similar-scale problem.
I've been using Inspircd (http://inspircd.github.com) for quite a while, so I'd recommend checking that project out. As far as authentication goes, there's the Atheme (http://www.atheme.net) project that integrates nicely with Inspircd. If you haven't used it or heard of it, it allows you to register channels/rooms, establish a hierarchy of operators and admins, and give users the ability to login and secure their username.

Neither are the friendliest in terms of setting up and configuring, but it's really not too bad. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me a message on IRC (irc.flux.cd #flux) or Twitter (@Lyetz) and I could help you out.
If the base OS is sufficiently good UI-wise, there is no reason ever to need to customize its looks besides the wallpaper

I take it you share Jobs' opinion on clothes? Same jeans, sneakers, turtleneck every day. Hey, it's perfectly functional, why would anyone want to vary things or look different? I mean, everyone has the same use-case, right?
I never understood why ISPs think that bandwidth heavy sites ought to pay them. Surely if a user is wasting bandwidth on sites like YouTube then the ISP should ask the user to pay for that bandwidth. Why don't they do that?
Google's Motorola purchase: Was it worth it?
Reproduced this on my Galaxy Nexus.

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VifsRbAEsaM&feature=youtu...
"I think it's important to use ugly people with weird names in your designs to gauge how it will actually look in production"

Both funny to read and true as well!
this is what I was thinking too. maybe this explains why it was written in PHP? :)
A long time ago, at work, I wrote a mIRC plugin to display incoming messages from a bot on a separate stay-on-top window. IRC has indeed a lot of business applications.
Mine Kafon: low-cost wind-powered mine detonator inspired by an Afghan toy
Why are you comparing it to the iPhone 5? The current top-of-the-line Google smartphone, the Nexus 4 (which is what you should compare to the iPhone 5), also costs $300.
Yes, inter-app communication is a major difference for developers. On iOS, apps will say "Supports Twitter and Facebook" and the developers have hand-written the integrations; on Android, the app integrates with whatever the user has installed and the developer does no work at all to integrate with any specific service or app. So it's a win for developers as well as users.
Everyone points out two-column layout as problematic to read. I however don't have any issue with it. It's not in any way more difficult for me to scan, and it also looks aesthetically appealing (sans photo cropping errors from time to time). Recent popularity of Pinterest (5+ columns) would suggest that it's also a non-issue for many people.
Engineers are from Mars, Designers are from Venus
Isn't the A in ABS "Anti-lock"? In which case, it's comparable. I like your syndrome name, though!
What are people's experience dealing with the migration of music from iOS to android? As an iOS user with an itch to checkout android again (had one of the first HTC "google phones"), this is one of my bigger concerns.
You sound like someone who ships a mediocre product because you run out of time trying to perfect everything and end up having to leave stuff unfinished because of deadlines.

Most products have a budget and deadlines. Your job as a designer is to do the best job you can given the time and money allotted. There are very few projects that have unlimited time and unlimited money.

I've been on too many projects where designers didn't get that and given the promises to distributors, retailers and advertisers we had to ship a worse product than we wanted to because the designers spent to much time perfecting certain elements and not giving enough time to others.
I thought about this a little more.. I think the reason I find it so hard to believe is because of the MS antitrust trial. It was a huge thing at the time and Netscape was a big part of it... so unless you were completely oblivious to computers and the internet, it would be hard to not know about Netscape.
Do you have specific evidence of that?
12 Great Books on Willpower, Motivation, and How We Think
Newcomers to web design, don't be put off
No you can't use your own router instead of the freebox.
I'm connected to 9 channels on 3 networks. IRC is not dead and won't be dead for at least several years.
I feel that my 3GS is old because it lags like crazy. I have a hard time believing it would not be the case for you too.
It's not a logical fallacy. People complain about 2-column layout of timeline and 2+-column layout of this "new look", because they have too many columns to follow at the same time, while I have yet to see anyone complaining about 5+-column layout of Pinterest.
XML is a gleaming beacon of purity and grace compared to the CTCP spec[1]. Something that should be relatively simple: "allow very basic RPC using inband signals." The mess of incoherent and mutually contradictory statements about how quoting these messages should happen makes it likely that anyone writing a bot either uses an existing library or still wakes up occasionally in teh middle of the night in a cold sweat.

[1] http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/rfc/ctcpspec.html
I'm confused what part bothers you. That Apple patented it. Or that it is worth a billion dollars.

Because if it's the first then it is just a hypocritical position. And if it's the second then maybe you don't understand the math. Size of lawsuit = Price per patent * Number of infringing devices.

It's because the number of devices sold is so large that it ends up being such a large lawsuit.
Loser pays would likely be better for the rich, but even worse for the poor - if you're a poor murder suspect or drug user being pressured to accept a plea bargain rather than risk a much longer sentence, adding in the costs of the fancy prosecution case makes it that much worse.
Online gambling sites adopt Bitcoin in an effort to circumvent the law
I'm done with paper like I'm done with pens.
No. I have no numbers, but I'd say we're looking at 80-90% of all websites written in dorm rooms in 2003 were written in PHP. Most of the rest in classic ASP (which was barely 'classic' yet in 2003).

For scale, Rails was released in June 2004, four months after Facebook's launch.
> as such, it would be short sighted for Facebook to incorporate a design which relied so heavily on shitty user generated photos.

The point is, the new layout discussed here relies in some way on the pictures being not shitty. The discussion here is about a layout for content that is not under Facebook's control.