skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I completely agree that the app store environment would be better without paid promotion from companies like AppGratis. However, I would also agree with the CEO of AppGratis in his post when he said that the app discovery process through the app store is broken.

There have been numerous times when I've been searching for a good app in a particular category and the app store search results are very bad. For example try searching for "panoramic photo app". You'll get numerous results but all of the top ones are complete crap.

I'd like to see Apple allow at least one service which actually filters out all the garbage apps to show only the decent ones. Or at least improve their own service to manually ban the crapware apps to the bottom. Also the "one free app a day" model is a nice and effective way to spotlight interesting apps compared to Apple's staff picks, which aren't updated frequently enough.
Density can be miserable, but San Francisco is far away from the levels at which it becomes miserable. Midtown Manhattan is probably approaching 100,000 people per square mile, but it seems much denser than that because Manhattan more than doubles in size during the day so the daytime density is probably approaching 200,000 people per square mile (for reference, china town in SF has a nighttime density of 75,000 per square mile).

100,000 per square mile is not at all miserably crowded. I was working here right after Hurricane Sandy when all the commuters were staying home, and it was not crowded at all. My neighborhood in Chicago, which is probably around 50,000 nighttime density, feels positively empty on the weekends.

You could double the density of most parts of San Francisco and still not even be approaching "uncomfortably dense" (that would take the CBD to ~100,000 and areas like the mission to ~50,000).
I get 100% of all my sales through Facebook... as a small business owner social media is the lowest price entry point directly to your audience
A Hacker's Guide to Habitat: Part 1
11 quick + dirty things about writing
1. Many frameworks create boilerplate when you create a new application. Do we count those LOC?

Yes if it's code someone could edit. Someone unfamiliar with the framework needs to read these lines of code. Boilerplate may be "pre-typed" for you, but it's part of "your" app, and it's optional. That's not the same as a lib or the framework itself. You could start your app differently.

The new hire has to deal with these LOC regardless of who typed them (you or a wizard), so they're significant.

2. Many frameworks on dynamic languages copy their entire corpus of functionality as source files into the application's root. Certainly we don't count those. Check out our Github repo's colored language bar at the top right.

Agree this should not be counted. Only what's part of the app in question. Put another way, if those directories could be "hidden" from the new hire, and he could do his job, don't count them.

3. Do build scripts count as LOC?

No.

4. Do configuration files count as LOC?

Yes. The Spring framework's pom.xml or any dependency injection "configuration" file is crucial, so yes. On configs, though, I'd guess kbenson's idea about diff is reasonable.

- - -

However, about diff on #1 above, I'm concerned that with diff you're really just measuring how different the test is from the boilerplate. That says more about the test than about the framework. Someone could also optimize their framework's pre-typed boilerplate to match your test. (As we see on browser rendering benchmarks, for example.)

Really, if it's code that's typed (by the framework or by you) into an application, it should be counted.

I'm coming to this from the standpoint of hiring a new developer onto a project. More time is spent maintaining projects than jumpstarting them. At some point really soon after jumpstarting the app, boilerplate and edited code are going to be intermingled and indistinguishable. The new guy has to wrap his head around it all. So I would like any code typed by you or for you to be counted.

And beyond LOC, it matters how those lines are distributed. If you have to open five nested files to find out what one hello world is doing, even if each file only has a single 3 line function in it, that's complexity that matters. Number of files and number of directories both make a framework feel very different.

Most benchmarks are for weekend MVPers. Your benchmarks are moving into "real world" territory. In the real world, being able to wrap your head around someone else's existing project matters. LOC, files, directories, and dependencies, factor into that heavily.
Does it make sense to scale horizontally just because you have extra space in the next rack over? Or maybe the servers in the other rack need room to breathe and cool themselves, so scaling vertically might make sense for the servers that can handle it.

Doesn't it make sense to keep cities confined to relatively small areas? It helps eliminate the need to travel long distances, waiting in traffic jams.
Is there any evidence this wouldn't be temporary? I don't know of any US cities with high density cheap housing.
Hey! I'm there! A little "blue" though.
Didn't realize there were so many HTML5 presentation frameworks out there..

Shameless plug: I've created a GUI for creating ImpressJS presentations: https://github.com/tantaman/Strut

I'll have to look into adding support for the ones in this article.
To me, this is a strong sign that the patent holder should at least run a substantial risk of getting charged for legal costs if they lose. It might require a bit more due diligence on the part of the patent holder in genuinely enforceable patents, but it would all but eliminate the motivation of patent trolls when they know their patent is dubious.

I applaud Rackspace for this act of charity to the community, but it should not be necessary. Let's root for Rackspace, but it's more important to fix the system.
For nearly any other assembly language, like say System 390 or PowerPC, it's a straightforward 1-1 mapping. Macros and pseudo instructions more fall into the real of text pre-processing than compiling.
Custom SublimeLinter markers
Change the default outline for a simple warn sign.
That's a fine ideology but when trolls are diverting precious resource and focus away from actual innovation over protracted and expensive legal inventions, settling can be a pragmatic choice for just getting on with life. I'd love to be in RackSpace's position of being able to hammer down these worthless parasites.
A lot of people like San Francisco the way it is. Razing half the city and building skyscrapers is their worst nightmare. Especially if doing so would just be a way to temporarily house more tech workers in the middle of what may be another bubble.

After people flooded the city and drove up rents during the dot com boom and then fled the city when the bubble burst, real San Franciscans were still there. And if it happens again, they'll still be there afterward. And in 50 or 100 years, they and their families will still be there. How many coders working at startups in the city today can say the same? Who do you think should have more say in the future of the city? Those who care deeply about it's past, present and future - or those who are only looking out for their own short and medium term housing needs?

The old guard - who have the power - wont allow your suggestion to happen in our lifetime. The best you can hope for is slow, methodical babysteps in that direction.
Interesting. What kind of business?
Hmmm there's not a lotta people in Oceania
There's even a feature where you can post the question and the answer at the same time now I believe!
The Near Future of the Web Platform (for HTML5 games)
> America needs more dense cities like NYC, for economic, national-strategic, and environmental reasons. But the citizens of cities will decide how they want to live.

Sure, but you have to let people actually decide, instead of municipal zoning boards.
Trivial counter-example: foodtrucks.

Outside of that, well, um.... er...

EDIT: Further thought would suggest, Facebook, G+, Twitter, etc. That seems to hint that maybe the main business of social media is: spreading social media. Ruh oh.
If you cannot understand how people could possible think that software patents are acceptable, I recommend reading this article. [1] Not because it will convince you that software patents are good — it won't. But it will help you understand the thought process of lawyers who do think that there should be some software patents. For example, Goetz writes that he supports "patents where the preferred implementation of an inventive machine process is in software (via a computer program), hardware (via circuitry), or a combination of both software and hardware."

[1] http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2010/09/in-defense-of-softwa...
Apple agrees to $53 million settlement in water damage class action
Chat App For Remote Engineers By Remote Engineers
Drew is exaggeration. I took on Acacia, it cost me nothing more than the travel, and time away from my primary business.

Lawyers cost a lot of money, but for something like "the ability to rotate a mobile screen" that rackspace is fighting you don't need a lawyer.

Prior art exists for rotating screens on desktops and tablet PCs. Feature parity on Mobile is not innovative. Obviousness is the challenge to a patent and the defense against its infringement.

This is not a "risky" case. It is not a case that requires 4 lawyers for a year. It is a case for 1 guy part time for a year. Which if he is $400k a year could be $75k but it doesn't need to be that.
Isn't that what DuckDuckGo is for?
I'm sure there'll be another person coming in with 50 years of age and more existential regret to reprimand both of you, but I'm not that person because I'm frankly not that old. None of you two (or any number out there) is a busted flush till you've stopped breathing for about 15 or so minutes, so don't sweat it. Alan, you're 40 years old, and your expiration date is proably still another 30-50 years off. That's more than enough time to do something that makes you happy.

Yes, I'm younger than you two, but I had to say it. I mean I thought my life was done for and wasted when I was 13 years old (tsss...truely depressing times weren't they?), and that was obviously not true. But lack of hope for the future is understandable when your plan A seems blocked, your plan B is nonexistent, and a lot of people tell you you will fail if you don't pull the ship tight together. But there is always a second route to Rome, and along every limes there's a hole you can get through, no matter how extensive it looks. Especially since I only looked for one meter to either side back then.

Anyways, none of you guys are as doomed as you make yourself out to be. If you start out now, will you be as sucessfull as the 19 year Wunderkind who started his multi-million dollar company with 16? No, but you don't need to.
I do know that direct social media marketing works like a charm. It has saved me a lot of time and generated good results ever since I started doing it. You can generate sales from it without much hassle. No need to purchase a lot of ads, either.

A lot of these huge companies market very differently than startups (those that do market) and small businesses. They focus more on branding. So, any result they get does not translate to you.
Have you considered a user.js script? I'm using one to fill in the white borders and wrap comments at a reasonable width:

// ==UserScript==
// @match https://news.ycombinator.com/*
// ==/UserScript==
(function () {
document.body.style.backgroundColor = "#f6f6ef";
var s = document.createElement('style');
s.innerText = "td.default {max-width: 40em; }";
document.head.appendChild(s);
})()

(For Chrome, name the file hn.user.js and drag/drop it onto the chrome://extensions page.)
Have there been any studies definitively showing a link between social media links and increase in search rankings? I've been doing SEO for a number of years and I'm always a little skeptical of what is proclaimed as the latest trend.

I agree it would certainly make sense for Google to do it (and I imagine they are, and giving favor to G+), but I haven't seen any compelling evidence myself.
Dennis Crowley and the cycle of second-guessing — Tech News and Analysis
And most of those forms are copyrighted -- one of my former employers did electronic real estate forms, and the threat of a lawsuit was always on the horizon (until we either came to an agreement with an area, usually).
Isn't a municipal zoning board an example of "people deciding"?
It's temporary in the sense that people just move in until prices go up, but the equillibrium supports a lot more people. E.g. housing prices in San Francisco are approaching those of Manhattan, even though the latter has twice as many people in half the space. In comparison, downtown Chicago is similarly dense to downtown SF, but housing is about half the price (thanks to liberal policies in the 1970's that allowed free development of tons of 25+ story high rise apartment buildings).
There is a certain point where density begins to become a hindrance and can as a result create communities that are just as 'dead' as some suburban ones.

For example, here in Vancouver we have more condos per capita than anywhere else in North America--with maybe New York ahead of us and San Francisco just behind. In areas where there are 4-6 story buildings, I find that the communities are vibrant and have a lot of activity on the sidewalks.

However, go into neighbourhoods like Yaletown or newer developments in North Burnaby, you'll find that the large towers are actually not very vibrant and just act as terminus-es for those who live there.

I believe that there was an Economist article a few years back that discussed this very problem affecting Tokyo, which is pretty much the epitome of urban densification.

Cities need density in order to thrive, but there is a point where too much density leads to problems. It might be premature or naive to call for San Francisco to make itself even more compact considering that it is already one of the most dense cities on this continent.
How can you twist words like that? You get paid by a marketing company to steer discussions on social networks in favour of your brand.
As far as the "99% of users are using software built with git" claim goes, it's not that far fetched depending on your notion of "using". ~32% of servers run Linux (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...), which of course was built with git, so if you are an Internet user at all it is extremely likely that you are using software built with git.
For obvious things like this, there shouldn't have been a patent issued. If I however invent the first hyperspace engine, You shouldn't be able to buy one, take it a part and make your own.

That is what patents are supposed to protect. Cotton Gins, and Hyperspace engines. Not Rotate your screen on your phone like you do on your tablet.
A lot of smart, well-informed people object that increasing density will make things worse. They are not entirely wrong; from the current 10 people/acre moving to 15 or 20 in a clumsy way will make things worse, but moving to 30 in a smart way will unlock vast benefits. See Alex Steffen's Carbon Zero for more: http://www.alexsteffen.com/carbon-zero-2/
Hijacking via Android?
You don't need to kill patents to kill the troll: modify the law so that the only way patents can be transferred is when the company gets acquired.

This makes patents a valuable asset for start ups while completely killing the patent troll business.

Patents can be useful, don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
It's not 8x, but Rackspace is lobbying[1] for a bill that would allow courts to make patent trolls pay for all of the cost incurred by the defending party in a failed suit[2].

[1] http://www.rackspace.com/blog/patent-trolls-make-them-pay/ (last paragraph)
[2] http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c113:H.R.845%3A
I agree, but I wonder if you explain the lack of density as because of the municipal zoning boards or as because of the people deciding.
One thing I've learned here is that it's much better to encourage what you like than bitch about things sucking.

I don't like the posts that say "weird new tool that everyone but you has heard about has released a new version!" I tried criticizing those posts and got downvoted, probably legitimately.

But my #1 upvoted comment ever, by at least a factor of 3, was this one[1] where I praised a tmux posting that very clearly said what tmux was for someone unfamiliar with the concept.

So clearly I struck a nerve and other people feel the way I do, but I just had to find a positive way to encourage what I wanted.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5462105
How does this sort of service compare to direct supermarket delivery?
Seems like they can significantly reduce overheads due to bulking the deliveries, although at the expense of speciality requests (i.e. ripe avocado).
People buy BTC with USD one day, and buy CAD with BTC the next, with every intention of going back through the exchange and the Bitcoin currency again in order to cash out.

Are you sure they're doing that?? Bitcoins volatility would render it pointless for Forex trading.
(edit: by which I mean trading between two old school currencies via bitcoin)
> a height limit of 85 feet, or 8-story buildings, for
> Mission Street, between 16th Street and Cesar Chavez
> Street, in order to take advantage of Mission Street’s
> high transit service, including BART and Muni line

Has the author ever tried to ride a bus down Mission street now? It takes like 45 minutes to go 8 blocks and you're packed in there like a sardine can.

Imagine if you made the buildings twice as tall you'd have to triple the amount of buses. Which probably wouldn't help because with the current amount of traffic you spend more time stopped than you do moving.
"But with out patents there is no incentive for innovation."

What a merry little idea. Has it occurred to you that there are a large number of people who invent, innovate, and develop because it's simply not an option not to? That it is a sort of compulsion, a reason for being?

In a market without patents, I'm sure capitalists will find a way to keep making money, just as I'm sure that inventors and makers will continue to keep inventing and making.
Personally, I support software patents. I'm just against idea patents, as opposed to invention patents.

Screen rotation is no invention. It's an idea; once you have it, it's trivial to implement. That, IMO, does not afford patent protection. However, certain things can, and should be patents. RSA, for example. It's a non-trivial procedure that was non-trivial to invent and there are not very many alternatives.
That's a great point. But Facebook is starting to stonewall business owners with promoted posts, and the value of the channel seems to be dipping lower and lower. So business owners work to build up these audiences, and then they're charged a premium to get any eyeballs. At this point, a simple website and a good SEO expert might be a better long-term investment.
Bad design is so inspirational
Some Orthodox Christians still use the Julian calendar, if only symbolically, so Christmas falls on January 7th and New Years on January 14th (Easter is a much different story: http://christianity.about.com/od/faqhelpdesk/qt/whyeastercha...). In theory, these dates should move farther and farther apart than just two weeks from the Gregorian calendar because the Julian calendar doesn't count leap years the same way.

For us Julian calendar folks, there's upsides and downsides. We get to celebrate Christmas late, but my kid will celebrate both (since my wife is of a different religion). And of course, Easter falls on Cinco de Mayo this year (but we had remember to buy enough egg coloring well in advance)! :)
It's an example of some people deciding, not all the people deciding, specifically the people who got their first and then put up regulatory barriers in an effort to drive up housing prices. If you gave everyone in the Bay Area a vote as to whether they wanted to "keep the SF charm" or put up high density development so they could afford to move into the city proper, I think you'd get a different outcome.
Web Design - mainly building B2B sites as well... Behind every 'B' is a 'C'... I connect personally with business owners around my city and post useful info about how they could build their business with a better website. Get about 3 leads a week from people asking for more information - get about 1 sale a week.

I've literally stopped my SEO efforts.. most are just price checking anyways, looking for 'the lowest price'... I tend to find building a relationship and educating my potential clients better than trying to get a sale from SEO window shoppers
Thanks for the link. I scored higher than I expected.
So they promoted applications that users (that liked what they saw) downloaded. And that impacted numbers of downloads in the application store.

That's his whole beef and the reason for calling them a 'black hat' marketing company?

Using that logic, if application is featured on a popular web site where company paid PR to advertise makes the company in question a black hat marketing company who is fucking everything up for everybody else?

Bullshit.
I am the developer of Store News ( http://store-news-app.com ) a iOS/OS X app that shows the best deals in the Mac/iOS app store. Several ad companies contacted me and offered money for a good position in my app. I always declined because thinking about it made me feel bad.

When this whole AppGratis thing came up a few days ago I had an interesting discussion about that with a friend of mine who is a lawyer. He told me that according to German law it would have been illegal to what the ad companies wanted me to do: To falsify the apps my own app is displaying for taking money.

I don't want to judge AppGratis for what they are doing but to me it feels not right. They may not break any US/... law but still… I think it also depends on how exactly they promote apps inside their own app. If they clearly mark it as a promotion/ad then I think it is fine. The comparison the author of the blog post makes only holds water if they did mark their promotions as ads because Google is clearly highlighting/declaring paid links as such…
127.0.0.1 responds pretty quick
Agree completely. Density can be wonderful (see paris) or miserable (see kowloon walled city)

Like anything else, it just has to be done well.
Burberry is great example of using social media to completely revitalize the business. The stock as grown over 300% since 2007. One can attribute their success to a variety of factors but an important prong was social media. I think the difference with Burberry's strategy and say Pepsi's is using social media to enhance the key values/identify of the business.
Aren't the zoning boards appointed by elected officials?
Yes. I work for a national professional body - a membership organisation - and we generate business (i.e. new members) through social media. We also retain more members because we can subtly remind them of the benefits they get, and respond quickly to their customer service needs, through social media.

Twitter is perfect for raising brand awareness, dropping hints about the benefits of membership to non-members, and quickly resolving issues members are having.

We also use social media to position ourselves as being at the forefront of our industry by being the first to break news, RT things people wouldn't have spotted, provide practical advice and create debate via our blog, etc.

Works for us.