skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think the last point is the most important:

6) Know the need. Don’t build things which users won’t find useful.

However all points (except maybe 5) apply to all forms of development, not explicitly for mobile development.

Can anybody offer additional points that only apply to mobile development?
Ask HN: What open source project to master?
I'm looking for aproject to master and work in the field, or even just to contribute to an open source project.

I'm looking for ideas. For example, mastering the linux kernel, or git internals.

It should be something that few people truly master, and I prefer something that can land me a nice lucrative job.
A very quick jQuery hack to get the divs on to the screen in a nice rainbow of colours:

<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.10.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>

var config = { count:1000, r:255, g:0, b:255 }

var steps = config.count;
var step = Math.floor(255 / Math.ceil(steps/5));
var s = 0;
var r = config.r;
var g = config.g;
var b = config.b;

for(x=0; x<steps; x++) {

if (x % Math.ceil(steps/5) == 0) { s++; }

switch (s) {

case 1: b -= step; break;
case 2: g += step; break;
case 3: r -= step; break;
case 4: b += step; break;
case 5: g -= step; break;

}

$('<div style="background-color: #'+toHex(r)+toHex(g)+toHex(b)+'"></div>').appendTo('body');

}

function toHex(n) {
z = '0';
width = 2;
n = Math.floor(n).toString(16);
return n.length >= width ? n : new Array(width - n.length + 1).join(z) + n;
}

</script>
This is solvable by using a more deterministic system like Nix as the base build box.
Really appreciate the commentary HN. I'm just getting started with Elevator (apologies for the still-in-progress site with a terrible Wordpress theme). Follow @thisiselevator for more.
There is also http://hackerbra.in

but I always use vanilla HN because I'm fond of it and the UI is pretty much the best for me.

That said, it would be very cool if users could implement their own custom CSS natively like you can on http://yayhooray.net

I personally detest browser extensions and I don't like how they slap custom CSS over the top of sites like make-up. Even those who aren't up for fiddling with style sheets could share in what others make.
doesn't work at all on browsers without requestAnimationFrame support (e.g. Opera 12). I guess that that's fine, but then better display the final number instead of 0.
> For reference, the 15-minute law mentioned in the article is a restriction that companies like Uber have to force their customers to wait at least 15 minutes

This law is disadvantageous both for the customer and the driver, so just how difficult would it be to even enforce?
>Because if your product does something new, you can ALWAYS get PR.

Heh, that's a nice fairy-tale world you live in, man.
That software is just WOW!

@taliesinb here you go: http://alternativeto.net/software/wireshark/?platform=mac
If it walks like a duck...
Unifying PHP
>This problem of endless dissatisfaction needs to be solved

Hmmm, I disagree. This seems like a solution in search of a problem. Adding pageloads by removing infinite scroll seems to me to be a clever way of putting more ads in, something I'm 100% against.
If you are interested in that you should take a look at the Flippa listing which provided quite a bit of information of the business https://flippa.com/84185-11-000-month-revenue-no-1-in-market...
The article doesn't state it's a protest against Uber.

I condemn violence and most strikes when they're used as an easy form of politics, but we can also note that protesters don't feel supported by their government and that's their way to make a threat.
Not sarcasm. American companies are notorious for treating employees like shit and paying them as little as they legally can. French Unions ensure decent working conditions and a fair wage.
Strong trade unions are dandy and employment rights are okay too.

Threats, violence and vandalism of someone else's property are not okay.
Any reason why they didn’t just use a paused video and step through it frame by frame on scroll? Seems like it’d be a much more efficient experience for the user.
Why My Address Book Is Spamming You
This article comes from a time when we were cautious with "free services:"

"Plaxo is a free service and their Web site says the company, which has raised something north of $10 million in venture capital, plans to sell premium services to business users. Before I give Plaxo my information to store on its computers, I'd like to know what the company's specific plans are to earn a profit, and how my information fits into those plans. So far, there are no answers to those questions on the company's Web site."
This would be really terrifying for the passengers and driver -- impressed that the Uber driver was able to deal with it as well as he did. This pretty clearly falls into a lethal self defense situation, so driving off, and if required through, the attackers would be totally reasonable, but if your car is already disabled you're kind of screwed.

It's amazing how some cities have essentially criminal mafias running taxis (Paris, Pattaya, to some extent Bangkok), some have crazy feudalism (New York, where you have rich people sitting on $1mm medallions and Somali immigrants making $30/day to drive), some have what seem to be overpriced but reasonably well run services (London, Singapore), and some just have ~no taxis at all (most of the US outside major cities, and most poor parts of US cities).

I will shed zero tears for the end of the taxi industry. First by Uber and ride sharing, finally by robots.
Tactus receives series B funding from Asia investors
Vagrantfile for setting up a mooshak competitive programming server
Hi! congrats on your new site. I think it's a lovely effort, and very worthwhile. One piece of input, at least from my end, is to provide your users not only with the answers, but also with some elaborations on things they should / shouldn't do when writing code. This will be of course more evident when they tackle problems when they have to work with string or collections and things like that. Instilling some good principles, even just slightly, at the very beginning is something which will dividends for people learning to program just a bit down the road. Just my two cents, and once again - great job and best of luck!
Uber and it's ilk are nice and disruptive and all and you get a cheap ride out of it, but we must not forget that they are disrupting people's livelihood and cultural and social traditions too. I do not condone the violence, but I kind of understand it. Do we really want every country to be Americanized like this, one disruptive app at a time? To some people, these "unions" appear to be protection rackets, but I saw them as part of the French society and culture. If you don't like it, don't force your own beliefs and practices down their throats. Go somewhere else.
It is not at all clear what point you are trying to make. Put in a little effort.
In that sense, we found that all container-based systems have a near-native performance of CPU, memory, disk and network. The main differences between them lies in the resource management implementation, resulting in poor isolation and security. [1]

[1] http://marceloneves.org/papers/pdp2013-containers.pdf
"There's a career-oriented degree. It's a Masters."

I work in academia here in Spain. The Masters is usually a prerequisite for doing a PhD here.
Didn't you used to post on the SitePoint forums a few years ago? I remember someone showing off a review plugin for WordPress on there. Was that you by any chance?
This is just embarassing. The fact that more than 200 people upvoted this even moreso.
Generally speaking taxi in Paris is unpleasant experience. It was only a matter of time before some competition arrived to "fix" the problem.
Thank you, could not agree more. Too often people take a short-term approach to such things - "I'm getting a cheaper price so who cares that the taxi driver is being paid an unfair wage".

Seems to be an American problem which is spreading like an infestation to other countries.
We had similar problems in the US. Various organizations would start legitimate businesses and engage in violence against competitors - garbage collection, construction and importing Italian foods (olive oil in particular) were quite popular.

They would also extend "protection" to favored businesses, and use violence against businesses which did not accept "protection".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Mafia

We've had great success using laws such as RICO against them. Perhaps France can ask our law enforcement agencies for some tips.
A few months on a very low wage (that is what the $20k is for..), away from your friends and family, living in a tiny apartment is nothing compared to working on something you feel exceptionally passionate about.

Chances are you'll never find that problem. Most people don't. Those problems are rare, and solutions to them rarer still. But that's fine. If you have a business idea that you're keen on but don't want to give months away from your family or accept a huge drop in income for, bootstrapping is the right way to go. But that doesn't mean investment is always for chumps. For the few that do find a problem that they live to solve, making the tremendous sacrifices at the beginning is worth it, even if other people get rich off your efforts. Your friends, family, investors and humanity as a whole is better for it.
I'm also an American living in France, and I have never even been able to get a taxi in Paris, on the street, at marked taxi stands, or asking directly in a bar where the taxi drivers hang out while they are 'working'. Fortunately I don't live in Paris.

It seems that taxi companies are more mafia than union in the US also, but at least they will pick you up. This is because the government won't give them money if they don't work. I appreciate that France has a strong social safety net, but this is one of the downsides of that; it's easy to abuse.
The customers don't seem to care about the "skilled professionals"
How to Hire a Developer if You Know Nothing About Coding?
A question many founders ask me every week. Do you agree with?
Is the "American way" (the NYC medallion system) better?

These generalisations don't help.
Java, Objective-C Still Popular Thanks To Mobile Development
It is much easier on your eyes. Having to scroll through code bloat is just physically painful.
French cab drivers are typically way above minimum wage...
Why Do Chrome Plugins Need Access To ‘All My Data’ and ‘Browsing Activity’?
Hi,

Thanks for your feedback. I think we've also reached a point where mobile development isn't new anymore, and as platforms mature, it's looking like the essentials are the same as the other.

On a broad level, I think being mindful of design (UX actually), battery and data are the main differentiating factors from mainstream development, which I think we've covered here.

Look forward to other differentiators too :)
And again in Chrome on Win 8.
This looks super interesting. I personally like the way JS is maturing into the back-end, with stuff like this and node picking up steam. What I liked about this site, even while I'm installing it to play with it, is that they seem to have put in a lot of effort on it to make it intuitive + clear , even at such an early stage (just to be clear - this is the first time I've seen it). I'm taking this for a test drive to play around with it, and hopefully if it works well find some place down the line where I can put it to use.
It's not exactly a level playing field, with a limited number of taxi licenses being bought and sold on the open market for around 200k-250k. No surprise they're not happy and want to recoup their investment…

The Rude Baguette did a nice article on how the Paris taxi market works, which explains a lot:
http://www.rudebaguette.com/2013/08/07/anatomy-of-the-paris-...
There's a license for taxi driving in France. Uber and Uber drivers don't pay for it. That's unfair competition.

I can see on taxis-de-france.com that the price is 120-195k€ (Notice the k) depending on the zone. It's not comparable to 240.000$ in Chicago, because the average salary is 1500€/month in France. Guess why taxi drivers are irritated.
It is quite difficult actually, if only for political reasons. Taxi drivers have a high level of nuisance, which gives them bargaining power. It would be suicidal for the gvt/institutions to go directly against them.

While violence is unacceptable (and hopefully the perpetrators will be found and tried), one also needs to realize that taxi drivers had to pay a high price to become taxi drivers. The current price for a license is 250000 euros in Paris (according to http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxis_parisiens). Anybody in that situation would be pissed, and a fairer solution would most likely involve a plan to rebuy licenses.
Looks OK to me on android - http://i.imgur.com/JqV9bK0.jpg
This is completely egregious. Deleting now.

I love that the developer's defense is that he could have sold our passwords to someone but (supposedly) didn't. That really instills confidence in his morals, doesn't it?
5-7% of your company

Where are you getting that number? My impression was that YC had very fair deal with founder equity > 30% (unless they are funding beyond angel).

Beyond that it's just risk/reward equation. If you want same income as your stable job then you are not taking risk and hence should not expect reward beyond that. Good founders rarely however expect same income as the stable job they could have gotten because they strongly believe in their vision and success and are willing to bet everything they have. That's the first requirement to be founder, IMO. Nearly every successful founders from Bill Gates to Elon Musk have showed this most important characteristics. BTW, lest you think Bill Gates was just another college dropout with nothing to loose, consider the fact that dropouts are usually at great schools, have spent lots of time, money and effort to get there and a suddenly giving up all that to chase some idea is significant risk taking. Even to this day, Elon Musk had been willing to bet every single penny he had on SpaceX. Without this singular characteristic, your chance of becoming successful founder is very low.
i think saying you "feel like" going out and buying something is not the same as "i will absolutely buy it now without looking into reviews or anything else whereas before i saw the ad i would never have bought it." The first suggests that something moved you emotionally. The other might be more irrational.

Maybe if you make a pretty website he would "feel like" buying some magic beans and eventually decide not to.

personally, i love the scrolling. you get to stop and look at things. in the future, these are going to have much more interaction and exploration. That's the next logical step.
"treating employees like shit"

Unlike smashing the windows and tires of the car they're driving? The guy driving the Uber car is just an employee, too.
French labour laws are serious. French unions don't mess around.

Farmers use their machines to fling cow shit at government buildings. They set fire to lorries full of live sheep.

See this example of officials vigorously enforcing labour laws. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/french-pub-f...
> There’s no confirmation that this attack came from the protesting taxi drivers

So why are we talking as if it came form the protesting taxi drivers then? Maybe they were just ordinary thugs. I know people who got robed in their rental car in Paris. I love Paris but there are certainly saver places in France.
>In a technical job market there are recruitment consultants that know all of the companies, what might work for you and where there might be a need. In my experience they do provide a very good service. However, we tend to dislike them when they are not needed so we might overlook them as our first point of call.

wait, really? There exist recruitment consultants who are paid by the employee, and not the employer?

I mean, I'm mostly asking 'cause I kinda want that job. I think I'd be good at it; I have a pretty good track record of getting my friends jobs. Hell, I'd show up for the interview.

(If you are talking about the regular kind of recruiters, who are paid by the hiring company... that's a very different thing. They can be useful, but you need to remember who they actually work for.)
Does he do that to the conversation partners, or does he use them just as the stylistic figure? If you know an example of the former, please cite. For the later, it still doesn't represent him particularly favorable, but it's his choice of how he wants to be seen.
Congrats on the leads! I started a company 18 months ago but due to my hate of the Salesforce.com UI we pivoted and solve just that: http://www.brisk.io

As a company we use Mixpanel + Salesforce and did an integration track product usage and can easily see it when contacting users/companies.

Mixpanel is also good for drip marketing, but depends on if you people are logged in or not. Check out Intercom.io or Customer.io depending on what kind of users you have.
Yes.

While Uber doesn't seem faithful to me on this story, I would also love if taxis in Paris were affordable and good quality, like in Madrid and Syndey. It would develop the job and reduce car pollution.
Not sure that it was a predictable outcome that the Taliban would decide to start acting against their own interests and kill anyone involved in any vaccination problems.
>> Is there any startup that inevitably needs early investment?

Yes.

In the UK, if you try to make a company which helps people travel overseas and arranges somewhere for them to stay then you are caught by all sorts of travel regulation. You'll need a £40K bond as well as all sorts of upfront costs just to get started.

So pre-traction you've had to spend huge amounts of money to enter the game.

Large regulatory costs are one of the ways big companies keep new entrants out.
That was probably me. I haven't been around in a few years, but I'm still the 6th most prolific poster on that forum.

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/memberlist.php?order=desc&so...
Only someone who doesn't have family could say:
"A few months on a very low wage (that is what the $20k is for..), away from your friends and family, living in a tiny apartment is nothing compared to working on something you feel exceptionally passionate about."

Do you have small children? If so, can you try to imagine how difficult could be to miss the first words or first steps of your baby? Can you imagine what could mean to simply drop everything on the shoulder of your wife? Your comment is so superficial.
It's not just about being lazy, this is really helpful for mobile users.
Let me tell you how things are in Russia. We don't have any taxi driver unions, I don't think we have any licensing for taxi drivers, but if we do, it's probably not expensive.

In Russia it works this way: you go out on the street, raise your hand and you get your car in like 1 minute (even at 4am in the morning it doesn't take very long time, provided you are downtown, did that many times) - basically some guy who wants an extra buck will stop and get you anywhere. Some make a living that way. You negotiate the price, it's usually rather cheap even in large cities compared to what you'd be charged for the same ride in Europe or the US. You don't have to tip the driver, since the price is negotiated beforehand. Now we also have a lot of competing official taxi companies. They all are relatively cheap and they mostly get their clients through internet or phone and the use case for those is when you need to go to the airport or have a pre-arranged trip.

We also have jitney transportation which is only slightly more expensive, but much faster than public transportation. Drivers are mostly from central asian republics or southern republics - demographics russians are rather hostile to - yet I haven't met more friendly drivers in the whole world. And, in my personal view, people are rather receptive to that and are quite polite with them too. It's pure competition and free market and it works to the benefit of all.

You can criticize Russia all you want, but in some areas the free market here exists relatively untouched (probably thanks to bribes, but still, it's better than regulation).
The London way (a difficult exam, probably far beyond what's actually needed for the job, as the main way to reduce supply) is probably the best way to manage supply.

Most American taxi markets aren't restricted like NYC (or a few other big cities), and even those that are are not anywhere near as expensive. NYC and SF seem like the big outliers for restrictive permits in the US.
Interestingly, Xenia is a brand of Daihatsu car. At least in Indonesia.
http://www.daihatsu.co.id/products/highlight/xenia
When reading about the lean start-up movement (of which I'm a fan) a question that comes into my mind is - can LSM techniques be applied to more traditional technology areas such as storage, networking or even stuff like medical equipment? I'm sure they can be, and would love to hear from folks here, what they've seen in that area or how they think those can be applied there.
He's essentially a scab, undermining the Unions bargaining power. Enough scabs and it becomes difficult for employees to be treated fairly.
The display tech changing the way we shop
Just because dynamic linking is used doesn't mean the library doesn't get shipped with the app package.
These are the wrong assessments.

You should rather say: "I suppose it depends on your type of business. If you are a B2C and you need lot of traction before charging customers, the answer may be yes."

Family and Mortgage should not affect your choice for bootstrapping.
Your ternary demo needs to be written thus for it to work:

let ter_demo = if a.is_none() { 3 } else { 2 };

You can also often use pattern matching:

let ter_demo = match a { None => 3, _ => 2 };
There's nothing wrong with other people getting rich off your success, as long as the ratios of wealth are commensurate with the value provided. This is very rarely the case in typical investment scenarios.

I have less respect for the man that lives to introduce the greatest SaaS platform ever built than I have for the man that lives to see that his home and family is well provided for.

Most grown-ups making grown-up wages can easily infuse 20k into their own businesses. Persons with that passion typically exercise a modicum of discipline and save up for a while before they decide to live on a shoestring. They don't need YC's help to do that, it happens among entrepreneurs the world over every day. And they get to keep 100% of their companies, and even get to continue living in their own houses!

Like I said, if you have no permanent responsibilities and no dependents and think it'd be cool to live in an apartment in SF on $200/wk for a while, be my guest, that's totally fine with me if that's what you want to do. But it's simply not realistic for any adult with permanent responsibilities, no matter how passionate they are. If such a person allowed his "passion" to override his obligations to provide, there'd be a good abandonment case against him. This kind of irresponsibility is simply not allowed when you're an adult with dependents.

Please do not attempt to twist this into "anyone who isn't willing to abandon his responsibilities is just not a passionate founder!" That's typical investor FUD and it's not constructive. It's an absurd ad-hominem.

Perhaps the problem is that we have not all become as morally decrepit as the investors that would claim we lack passion merely because we seek first to care for our wives and children. I'd say the man who provides for his family while bootstrapping a business all on his own has a good deal more passion, in more important areas, than the man who abandons his dependents to pretend like he's 21 again and live off pizza and ramen in a SF loft on a one-in-a-million shot while his family is left without his emotional, physical, and financial support.