skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You released a free app in a crowded market. You are going to need something exceptional to stand out.

Searching for "sudoku" in the Play store returns "at least 1000 results" for Android apps. Potential buyers are unlikely to discover yours on its merit alone even if it is the best in the field.

Review sites are unlikely to want to review "yet another sudoku app". Your 1000+ competitors are all asking for reviews as well. Unless you can offer a compelling narrative or give them an interesting reason to write about this app in particular you should not be surprised that there seems to be little interest.

Your app also requires significantly more permissions than some of the other most popular sudoku apps. I don't know if most users care but given a choice between several free sudoku apps that might make a difference.
There is plenty of evidence for both aspects of his statement for him to say it with confidence in public discourse. We he saying something that you don't disagree with, I doubt you would be demanding a higher grade of evidence.
>What does 'without authorization' mean, and what does 'protected' mean?

Protected computer is actually defined in the statute (subsection (e)(2)):
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030

The problem, of course, is that in the original law it actually said "federal interest computer" instead and was targeted primarily at computers used by financial institutions and the U.S. Government (which you still see in subsection (A)), but has since been amended to include computers "used in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce or communication" which is a term of art that means anything within the power of Congress to regulate under the interstate commerce clause, which I'm led to understand means pretty much everything now. So that's even worse then: Sorry you thought it was vague and might have been able to argue your way out of it, I hope you enjoy your cell.

I really am astonished at how bad this law is. "Without authorization" is undefined and so overly broad that it seems to capture just about anything and then the penalties are preposterous even for the smallest of violations. We really need to fix this.
"Is It hard to promote mobile apps?"

Hard when you are a few years late, in a genre (Sudoku) where there's not much room for innovation in game play.
The word for that is souveillance, surveillance from below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance
Hands on: RedBox Instant by Verizon is no Netflix competitor (yet)
On Counting Things
> Is it a felony to fake your name on a website demanding your name?

If so, facebook has made us all felons. We won't get access to facebook if we didn't give up our names, so it's wirefraud.
Neither. Or maybe either.
>All signed documents are legally-binding and automatically backed up in your HelloSign account, with all your other important signed documents.

Is this optional? I'd rather not have NDA'd contracts being backed up on a cloud provider, even if your legal page does look impressive.
Always? No. But when news agencies get more money, they have more careful copy-editing and better investigative journalism. When hardware companies get more money, they can afford better R&D, resulting in nicer products down the road. The things that get cut tend to be what avoids short-term losses, which isn't always good for the consumer.
Bingo. We hear about some new iOS app and are interested but we're Android users. I would gladly give the developer my email so they can ask me to revisit this later if/when they've got something/anything for Android, but I'm not going to remember to come back to this or heaven forbid poll/monitor it.
Yep, woops, being a single founder of a company means you make dumb mistakes like this. I'll get one up right now.

Edit: Done. http://eepurl.com/t7DzL
Exactly what I signed in to say. They all look very nice but few of them feel original in any way.
> It means you're not welcome on the network anymore.

I thought it meant, that specific MAC address is not welcome anymore. Otherwise, why would you allow that person to reconnect again just because they changed their MAC address?
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. Do you have some source to back up why that is "not going to happen"?

I can't imagine a scenario where Google wouldn't allow it to link to Twitter and Facebook, especially considering that Google is opening it up to developers.

Apple has already filed patents for a "Glass" type product and were Google to disallow developers to link to Facebook and Twitter, Apple would only have to allow this sort of integration...and then Apple has a strong selling point over Google.

I'm trying to think of any successful consumer product that blocks this sort of integration and am not coming up with any. Xbox, iPhone, geez even my dad's blu-ray player and people's automobiles (Ford Sync) integrate with Facebook!
Amazed how many people are loving this. Its cool for sure but its a feature to me, not a company. If it does want to become a company, that's possible, but digital signing software has been around for a while.

Hits a great pain point, but i hope there is a bigger vision.
If I deliver, however, I can't just get up and walk out in the middle of the day.

Then you're working outside the IT-sector or in an old fashioned company.

In modern IT-companies (most startups that I know, including some with >150 people that barely qualify as startup anymore) the above is perfectly acceptable and normal for programmers.

You are expected to meet your deadlines, to be present for appointed meetings, and usually during a fixed set of "core working hours". Sometimes there are Sprints or "crunches" during which everyone is expected to be a little more present than usual.

In these companies nobody cares what you do with your remaining time as long as you meet the above criteria. Quite a few of my co-workers I've never met in person or only after already skyping with them for months. Others I'll see every time I hit an office because they're more the 9-5 (or 11-22..) type of guys. The line between "employee" and "consultant" is blurring rapidly.
This article should really be titled "What No One Told You About Opacity". I think all the z-index stuff is pretty well-understood. At least by people who consider themselves pretty good at css.
It's optional in the API and you can manually delete from our site.
How would you like to pay ~40% taxes instead of 5-12%? 36k is already a meager salary before taxes. It's a no-brainer to open a company, it pays for itself in the first month.
Is there an augmented reality aspect to these? I got the impression that there was not, that it was simply a little area in the corner of your field of vision where it would display things.
Some people here said US$50000 is very low and therefore the Chinese firm has ulterior motive. I have worked extensively with vendors in China, especially in Shanghai. First of all, Shenyang is a small city compared to Shanghai, with way lower living expenses. Second, this contract comes at RMB311K, which by no means cheap. For bench mark, hiring a decent engineer (I only aware of the iOS and PHP group) in Shanghai with 3 years of experience would be around RMB200K. For Shenyang, I guess RMB150K would be feasible, therefore this amount can cover two full-time engineers for the whole year. On top of that, outsourcing companies will and do interleave projects and will not put senior people in projects for too long, therefore this figure is entirely feasible. Just to conclude, I would think this looks like a regular outsourced project as done by thousands of outsourcing companies in China, Philippines, and India. All those conspiracy theories are a bit too much.
1.

So you really think that Comcast doesn't want you on their network with a router spoofing a laptop MAC today?

It's the intent to be somewhere you know (or ought to know) you aren't wanted that matters.

2.

It's not just "I did $5,000 worth of business." If Comcast had a program where they sold "router-attached Internet" for a price difference that totaled $5,000 over the price you paid for "computer-attached Internet" then you would hit CFAA levels.
> "each and every website, even if it's only remotely related to technology, appears to be populated with people who can't resist the urge to slam Apple for whatever is the popular Apple-fail-du-jour."

Is that because they actually hate Apple, though? Or is it just a function of the emotional attachment Apple creates?

Consider what we'll call "The Oprah Example".

Oprah doesn't remotely write or talk about technology that often. And far more people in Oprah's audience will have Windows PCs and Android phones than Macs and iPhones.

But Oprah is far more justified in talking about Apple. (And she does.) Because those people in her audience who have Apple devices likely have an emotional bond with them. And they will appreciate a story about Apple. Whereas even those people with Android phones and Windows PCs in her audience almost certainly don't give a damn about Microsoft or Samsung. They likely don't even know off-hand who manufactured their devices.

Not that Oprah herself parrots component order stories. But it's the same mechanism in other places that do. People care about Apple. Ergo they will actually read about Apple. Any number of blogs might have a grudge against Sony or Samsung or Microsoft, and repeat negative stories about those companies, but the fact that no-one really cares about those companies means that they necessarily fall flat.

So the "dog pile" on Apple that you perceive doesn't exist because people hate Apple for its success. It's because people have emotional opinions about Apple and thus will actually read stories about Apple.

Indeed what you see as a dog-pile against, many people who dislike Apple see as a mindless cult that gets outsized press because the newspapers and hollywood are full-fledged devotees to the cult.

They're two views on the same mechanism: the emotional reactions Apple generates.

And the proof of this is as simple as looking to the way that Apple has long commanded a slice of the public consciousness that far outweighed its marketplace relevance. It's only fairly recently that their user base was large enough to justify the press they already had.
Sound awesome but unfortunately it seems to not work if you don't use the US-English version of Gmail + even after I changed that I received the following message after hitting the "sign" link: "error: HelloSign couldn't parse your attachment."
" I think socialism is deeply flawed"

Yeah, so's capitalism... good thing we can mix 'em!
The Register article said he used his spare time to find other jobs, which he then outsourced, so he was making a good deal of money on the side.
> Have an alternate reality game with digital objects people can place/write on. Only Glass users can see the teddy bear in the corner, and only google glass users can see the giant graffiti wall where people sign their name.

There's a small team at Google working on a game that uses the real world as its map, Ingress[0]. I haven't been able to get access to it yet (typical Google closed beta), but from what I've seen of the game it would fit right in with Glass.

[0] http://www.ingress.com/
Looks interesting. From reading http://hyperdex.org (tutorial link is not useful, find the QuickStart in the regular documentation) and considering it against redis for my current project…

• In a single server configuration, HyperDex is marginally faster than redis at GET and PUT.

• SEARCH looks like it can be much faster on HyperDex. I don't search, but I do keep some ancillary mappings from secondary attributes to keys, I could lose that with a good SEARCH.

• redis has a richer set of data types and operations, in particular I would miss the server side atomic EXEC of Lua code¹.

• HyperDex uses a schema as opposed to the free form of redis. That's ok for me. I like to make rules about my data.

• If you plan to go beyond "in RAM" sizes, redis won't work.

• Should I be so lucky as to need multiple servers, it feels like HyperDex would scale better, but it is early days for redis clustering so that would need to be assessed at that time.

• I'm not seeing a wire protocol documentation for HyperDex. I think because there must be logic in the client end for hyperspace hashing. The wire protocol is a beautiful thing if you live in a strange world of insane performance goals achieved with asynchronous threading. You can just toss the supplied libraries and write your own. It will probably take a full port to figure out if there are problems with the HyperDex API in my world.

So what it comes down to is, I'm not switching now, but I like what I'm seeing and will give it a spin and be ready to move if I need to.

␄

¹ In practice, the unprotected nature of redis means code out front anyway and I can move the logic out there, but that is nonblocking C code for me and it is a lot easier to write the logic in Lua that gets atomicity for free, plus probably faster since it doesn't have to shuttle data back and forth to my process.
Python – paralellizing CPU-bound tasks with concurrent.futures
Tony Wright has a good write up about free vs paid iOS apps here http://www.tonywright.com/2012/how-to-evaluate-a-paid-iphone...
The driver is the only person responsible for a DUI, unless they were somehow forced into driving against their will.

Are you seriously proposing that we hold bartenders responsible for the actions of drunk people?
Apparently it 'may not work correctly' in my browser. Why is the error message an image rather than text? http://www.allisnotlo.st/static/img/top/txt_message_en.png (I assume it's because typography on the web still sucks)

User agent sniffing, pre-rendered images for text and browser specific sites. This is not the open and modern web we were promised.
Is there any way I can buy a pair right now? Will they be selling them at the San Francisco event?
Sorry, define, "strap to your hand?"

Like: http://www.ikey.com/industries/military/ak-39.html

Or like: http://www.keyglove.net/

Or something else?

Either way, variations have been around for over ten years, and the same problem remains: you're carrying around an extra thing solely for input. You can't wear it in every situation; with a suit, on the beach, in 110 degree weather, when it's raining, etc., and you can't use it for anything else but the rest of the device.

MP3 players didn't take off before the iPod because normal people don't like carrying around a bunch of doohickies, and so cell phones won out over MP3 players. People carried around an iPod along with their cell phone because it also served as fashion accessory and status symbol, until the iPhone finally made it unnecessary to have two devices. It's the only time in portable electronics history that normal people have willingly toted around multiple gizmos; traditionally, there's a one-gadget limit. I make this same argument six years ago here: http://www.eyetap.org/wearables/wear-hard-06/2006494.html

I posted a bunch in this other thread, if you're interested: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4993498
>You either break the law, or you don't. The law should be the same for everybody and should NOT be applied selectively. It's actually outrageous that you imply otherwise.

I'm not implying anything. That is actually how it works now. If you don't like it, change it. But good luck, because first you're going to have to fix all of the laws before you try to force prosecutors to prosecute all of them or we'll all be going to trial at the same time and the entire world will grind to a halt.

>If this goes on pretty soon everybody will be a criminal

There is no "pretty soon" about it.
The relevance of the security measure is that it serves to prove that the trespasser knew he wasn't allowed on the property. That's why the strength of the security measure isn't relevant. If I don't want Bob Dylan walking on my lawn, and I post guards who simply ask "are you Bob Dylan?" that shouldn't be any different than if I put up retinal and finger print scanners.

Note, that doesn't mean I think you should get 30 years in prison for simply walking across my lawn.
Cartoon - Mom's Diner
Some fun with uniform random numbers
Holding out for iGlass lol
There's power in the concept of chain of custody. I agree that you don't want to associate negativity with this stuff, but identifying an owner who understands the code and whose job it is to fix or find the right person to fix has huge merit. I've worked on too many projects where the issue tracker balloons due to diffusion of responsibility.
I for one do not trust facebook with any of my data. From a professional standpoint though, it opens up some interesting avenues for microtargeting in advertising.
If your game is a cool evolution of Sudoku, then focus your initial marketing efforts on places where people discuss that game.

Find where your customers are, then spend your time and effort there. Go to those specific forum boards/google groups and be helpful and cool. Don't just barge in and spam everyone with new topics. Help people out first. Ask senior members to review your game and give you direct feedback. Take their concerns/comments seriously.

Trying to market to everyone simply dilutes your effort.

Make sure you have a good keyword rich domain name like sudoku-pro.com or sudoku-evolved.com or something (I have no idea if those names are taken). Highlight how your product stands out from "generic" soduku games.

Setup a simple landing page (e.g. from a wordpress app template) with more information that details how great your game is specifically for Sudoku fans.

Add google analytics or kissmetrics to the landing page.

List your landing page in google for indexing (be patient it takes a while).

Then buy a little traffic on adwords when people search for the keyword Sudoku (like 50-100 clicks). Limit your budget at first. I'm not suggesting you spend a lot. Just a little.

Check google analytics to see the keywords that showed up on your page. When people click on an adwords ad, it shows the keywords they searched google for.

So, if someone clicks your ad for "Bacon-flavored Sudoku", you will
see in your logs their search term of "delicious tasting sudoku"

You can learn a lot about what people are looking for this way and then fine tune your messaging and even your product to fit what people are looking for.

Hope that helps.
Vote clone tab feature on IntelliJ IDEA
Neither of the solutions is actually beautiful, they all require some sort of deployment magic - env variables set, cap symlinking files or similar. What works for me probably doesn't work for you.

Btw: you can check the regenerated file into the repo, adding it to .gitignore just prevents you from accidentally adding it:

Last login: Tue Jan 15 17:07:14 on ttys005
Voice-of-Evening:~ fgilcher$ cd /tmp
Voice-of-Evening:tmp fgilcher$ git init test
Initialized empty Git repository in /private/tmp/test/.git/
Voice-of-Evening:tmp fgilcher$ cd test/
Voice-of-Evening:test fgilcher$ echo "README" >> .gitignore
Voice-of-Evening:test fgilcher$ touch README
Voice-of-Evening:test fgilcher$ git status
# On branch master
#
# Initial commit
#
# Untracked files:
# (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
#
#	.gitignore
nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)
Voice-of-Evening:test fgilcher$ git add -f README
Voice-of-Evening:test fgilcher$ git status
# On branch master
#
# Initial commit
#
# Changes to be committed:
# (use "git rm --cached <file>..." to unstage)
#
#	new file: README
#
# Untracked files:
# (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
#
#	.gitignore
Voice-of-Evening:test fgilcher$
I'm 21, and have been working on "startups?" since I was 14. While I have pretty successful with my past ventures, I'm still in college and intend to finish getting my degree (last semester). While I could easily drop out, move to SV, and see what happens I think it all comes down to ones personal risk aversion.
I'd love to see this app for it. I call it real life screen sharing!

Take any task you need to do;

say change a tire.
You post a request to the internet for help.
Someone agrees to help you.
Then they see on their screen what you are seeing through the glasses.
They can talk you through doing whatever you need to do, and perhaps even point to places on the screen and it will highlight that area in your view screen.

Think how many repairs we're reasonably competent to make if only an expert would look over your shoulder and you could ask questions!
Give me Dennou Coil and I'll be happy
Unrelated question: How to change MAC adresses the most convenient way on every restart?
Petitions are like polls. And politicians certainly follow polls.

Big ships turn slowly, some patience is required to see the effect of steering. Many changes in society look quick and immediate only when clouded by the shortened perspective of looking tens or hundreds of years back in the history.
A dive into Salt Stack
How silly it would be if the government works only on the popularity vote!!
Show HN: Tightrope, a color-based news stream
If I had to take a guess, a UX expert is not part of the core team and someone was probably contracted for the design.

The idea/product/execution are 90% AWESOME, but then the little UX neglects things like what's mentioned above + dull text (looks inactive) when you're writing in an active form field on sign-up, and a default dropdown of industry that you can't scroll down the bottom too in that same (3 field) sign-up form.

Take Igor's comments into account, and then hire a decent UX expert/consultant for 1-2 weeks (40-80 hours) and you've got a VERY viable product.
Why the Atlantic's Scientology Advertorial was bad
Oh, good, insults.

The fact that something is easy to bypass doesn't mean it's legal to bypass.

In fact, that "Aaron Swartz isn't allowed on the network" example is perfect. If I have a sign saying "Bob isn't allowed on my property" and Bob comes on my property, that's trespassing.
Offline advertising will be irrelevant in 10 years
I've resisted commenting on these threads, we'll all know more in the coming months. I do have a question as we're shifting blame and responsibility.

Does anyone know if Aaron ever received treatment for his depression? Did he talk to any doctors or anything? Does anyone know?

Just curious. Presumably folks close to him encouraged him to talk to somebody over the years.
I don't know. Except I am sure being a complete loner is not right (ie: I have zero in person or possibly in person business contacts).

The company need investors, but like I said, my associate want to take care of that.

I personally want to learn more in general, learn about marketing, and about making good products :)
Trying this out. If it works as advertised, I'll be very happy.

By the way, maybe someone from hellofax can help me: I'm unclear on your international support. Can I get a local number for Israel for people to fax me to? I would love to switch to HelloFax instead of my current online-fax provider, but I'm not sure if this would work.
Cobblestone Walls
On top of ALL the comments here, which all have very valid points - even if you had a brand-new, innovative game concept, it's still damn hard to get traction and visibility in the app store(s). Nobody knows why this game is so good or that he needs to have it, and for some of those games, it's really a shame. The situation is comparable to web sites a few years ago. There's basically the SEO way - sideline promotion, forums, reviews, people skills etc. and there's the SEM way. If you invest enough to push your way up in the store through advertising (Trademob, the company that I'm working for, estimates around 10-100k, depending on category and target market), you'll eventually be paid back through the resulting organic installations coming from the visibility once you get into the top charts. TL;DR: In 2013, even for killer apps, there's no way to the top except through the hardship of promotion on all possible channels. Viral campaigns, PR, spreading the word, posting, blogging, and often pure money investment as well.

Sorry, pal!
German iPad Salesman (no need to understand German)