skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> I can't think of a really good legit reason for wanting a cross-app unique ID.

The use case that's affected the most by this change is that of advertisers who want to track the performance of ads they buy from publishers, which I think is a legitimate need. The fact that the IDFA uniquely identifies an iOS device (unless the user resets it) is a side effect of Apple's implementation of it; all app advertisers really want is the same kind of first-party conversion tracking for their apps that's standard everywhere else on the web.
Strange coincidence! A friend on fb posted a message tonight along the lines of "going to a new friend's house, if I don't check in by midnight, call the police". I've definitely let a friend know when making a craigslist or airbnb transaction. I probably would rather just let a friend know where I was going but it's nice there's an alternative and I'm sure this service can be run rather cheaply.
I trust that what you are saying is accurate for your company. (And, thanks for saying it. That's one data point I hadn't heard before.) It is at variance with things I have heard about other companies. I am, unfortunately, not able to elaborate.
Agreed. It is not a fair comparison, BizSpark probably provides a lot more.

But for a startup with only developers and zero capital, App Engine still provides a great platform to get started. And also, there is no need to apply and get accepted, everyone gets the free quota.

Let me change my initial comment - for those who didn't get into BizSpark and who have run out of their free AWS quota can consider Google App Engine for their experiments :-)
They price match and offer between 33%-97% discount on dev and test as well as charging per minute rather than per hour: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/campaigns/azure-vs-aws/
"addictions they choose"
Concentration Training Program: 11 Exercises That Will Strengthen Your Attention
> so why it's become an annual new release sort of situation is beyond me

The answer from EA's point of view is that people buy it every year, so of course they'll make a new one.

The explanation from the user's point of view is that much of the magic of the game comes from it reflecting the teams, players, and plays of the actual NFL. When some quarterback gets traded to another team, you want to get next year's Madden so he's on the right team in the game too.

This is one of the really cool things about the game. There are millions of people who have detailed knowledge of different teams and players and what their strengths and weaknesses are. Madden lets you take that otherwise pointless barroom trivia and use it to actually be better at the game.
I can make and receive phone calls in lifts. It was weird the first few times. I'm in the UK if that makes any difference.
Maybe Android is different, but about a year ago I beat Kingdom Rush on an iPad without purchasing any IAP over the course of a Sunday afternoon. Yes, later levels were hard, but definitely not unbeatable.

It's possible that they've changed the difficulty since in order to make people pay for cheats
That "in the elevator at work there is a sign that says so" is hardly evidence for anything.

People use cellphones in elevators ALL the time, ALL around the world. Especially when continuing a conversation they had as they walked in the building, and for as long as the signal stays.
I think that "We give you the client for free. We control the thing of value on our servers. We will rent you access to it." is both a) sustainable and b) almost completely robust against any attempt to "compete" with the company by pirating the product.

With regards to the sustainability of IAP: As I've told people for a few years now, take a look at China/Korea to see where the American companies will be in ten years. They were doing IAP and free-clients-with-content-controlled-by-server back in the late 90s. They're still doing it.
I can see this going really wrong -- I tend to forget things. Also, the value prop needs a bit of work. Show me the app or something. I want to feel like I trust this app.

Also, is this app profiting off of fear mongering? It's an interesting sector of technology that has sold to millions of people around the world. [See: Antivirus, Home Security Sytems, Insurance, etc]
Are you using Google DNS? I've had issues with CDNs because of that.
Care to post a link so I could read it? Thanks in advance.
For the record people "from the ghetto" can have a strong work ethic. My grandmotheer had her first kid at 15,h ad five more, raised them all by herself while putting herself thought nursing school. All of them want to college and live nice middle to upper middle class lives. She retired at 65 as a well respected head nurse. If that isn't "work ethic" I don't know what is.
I don't know the details here but I'm very sorry for the mistake here - somehow this slipped through the cracks. We will try to do better.
Same here, I hate the idea of IAPs and never ever consider even downloading a game that has IAPs. I would rather pay more to have a full game than to be constantly nickeled and dimed. I know a lot of my friends feel the same way.
Pattern Inspiration: SVG based random pattern generator
Well. Probably most people are not that smart.
"Scott" Venkatasubramanian would've actually written "should have" instead of "should of".
There are all kinds of ethical ways to get your most dedicated customers to "pay more" (what's the MBA-speak term for "trying to get everyone to pay exactly as much as they're comfortable with"? I can't remember). There are pre-order bonuses, special editions, purely cosmetic items that don't change the gameplay, mission packs, "mission pack sequels," actual sequels, "pay what you want," donations...

It gets "unsavory" when you're focusing more on designing the perfect skinner box than actually creating a game. I think games are all about the feelings and mental states you get into when you play them. An action game gets your adrenaline pumping, competitive ones especially so. Strategy games require incredibly deep thought to stay one step ahead of the enemy. Puzzle games really stretch your brain to the limits of logic (or maybe they're just bullshit). From my experience, the games that people malign when they talk about mobile games and "social games," on the other hand, promote nothing but anxiety, and use it as a tool to wedge themselves into your subconscious so that you will fork over more cash into their creator's pockets. See the common practice of games based around waiting for something to happen, and bugging you with an alert whenever it does. I don't think very well of people that create things (I won't dignify them by calling them games) that do nothing but prey on anxiety, compulsion, and our attractions to flashing lights.

It's the difference between creating something that people will pay $50 to experience, and creating something that is engineered to repeatedly exploit our basest negative emotions. These games are in some senses worse than heroin, because at least heroin is fun while it lasts.

Jonathan Blow does the topic far more justice than I can at the moment (what am I doing, it's way too late to be drink posting on HN...) in his talk "Video Games and the Human Condition"[1], if you're interested. It's nearly two hours long, but I believe it's very much worth your time.

As for "why do other startups not get shit for this," I think there's a big difference between A/B testing different versions of your game's site to see which version results in more "conversions" or whatever it's called, and designing your entire "game" around frisking people at every turn and being the best darn frisker you can. Not to mention the ones obviously marketed to children, which reasonable people agree is one step removed from turning up at your local elementary school with a trenchcoat full of free samples.

(I have no idea who you are or what games you make, so don't take these comments personally, this is just my general opinion of the mobile games I've tried. If it (or especially Jonathan Blow's talk, because he's much more eloquent than tired, drunken me) rings close to home, however, it might not be a bad idea to download a pack of the 1000+ NES games and try a few at random for a reminder of what playing a real game is like)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqFu5O-oPmU
I've seen a couple of free-to-play games where you collect in-game currency to buy powerups, and the currency accrues at a somewhat less than satisfactory rate (not "3 months of grinding to get one item," just a bit slower than you'd like), and you can buy packs of currency with IAP, but you can also pay like $3-$5 to permanently double your pickup rate. So the people who are willing to pay $20 or $50 or $100 to have everything right now can do so, and the people who just want to pay a few bucks and get a complete game also have that option.

There's still problems with it, but I like it better than most pay-to-win shit.
Or .. you could use a Fall Detector app:

https://play.google.com/store/search?q=fall%20detector&c=app...

There are plenty of them. They watch your activity, if you're moving around, and if the phone detects you have fallen over, it sends alerts to your configured SMS/Twitter contact.
Not impossible, but you do have to do some brazen, easily-detected stuff like watch the table for awhile and refuse to sit down unless the count goes positive.
Sounds more like a fact than a problem.
Right, because thinking stereotyping is bullshit is a total "fratty" move...
You could beat the good arcade games on one credit, and if you were skilled enough to do so it was the best possible experience. Some people still consider it the only "legitimate" way to play those games.
> I tend to forget things.

I assume that's why it texts you before it texts your emergency contacts.
Absolutely -- you can get RF burns from holding antennas, and you can obviously see the results of massive radars (e.g. putting a gerbil in a microwave).

What we're arguing about is the signal strength and duration (and to some extent, where on the person the radiation is administered; hands are pretty tolerant compared to brain or torso), and the conversion factor to biological effect (which varies by frequency).

With modern radios, you've also got duty cycle -- your cellphone isn't transmitting full-time.

I'm basically not afraid at all about "tower" signals as a member of the public. I wouldn't stand in a microwave point to point beam. I also wouldn't want a 5W HT radio next to my head (or groin) for high duty cycle use, but I'm ok with holding it in my hand with a hands-free kit.

The people who vote you down for saying some types of non-ionizing radiation can be bad are actually worse scientists than if you were to say all (non-ionizing or ionizing) radiation is a huge problem. We have positive evidence that some radiation is really bad, and some is sort of bad; we have a bunch of negative confirmations that low levels of many kinds of radiation aren't likely to be very bad, and certainly aren't super-bad, but the exact borderline isn't known, and varies, and a 0.01% increase in cancer with zero benefit is more of a concern to me than a 1% increase in cancer with massive benefit (e.g. a CT for trauma where you'd otherwise be likely to die).

(Incidentally, my fear of ~200 wifi devices transmitting in the milliwatts on 2.4GHz or 5.8GHz or on a flight is approximately zero -- especially since it's unclear how many would actually be using the service at any given time, and it's a pretty large volume.)
"It's stupid more than anything. I guess stupidity has ruled the day here."

Gotta love people weighing in with their expert opinion.
>So? Who cares if the average 15-25 year old does something?

Well, since we were talking about old movies, people who value them, and who would have liked to see them being watched by newer generations and surviving into the future, do.

>The average 15-25 y/o may not visit a museum, attend an orchestra, or have a tenured professorship, but all those things still exist.

Just barely.
People are harmed when they get unnecessary CT scans. Not from the CT scanning but from the unneeded treatment they get after that.
I don't follow how a relation is a "dynamic homogenous map". Can you elaborate?
Gaming is actually the most evil possible context for freemium. It encourages bad design at literally every level, in ways that generally do not transfer to other types of software.

If freemium were generally just a demo for a better game, you would be right that there's nothing wrong with it, but optimizing a game for freemium means a worse game. Watch the second video in the article; the "best value" gem cart is in the ballpark of just straight up buying a game. Except you don't get the entire game.
Consent? We're talking about the child's life, here! We can't just let parents consent to letting their child take massive risks! You can't "consent" that your child can jump into a murky lake or go down a slide with a rope in hand, so you certainly can't consent to letting them do something as reckless as skiiing.
all it would take is a minor tweak to Watsons question picking algorithm to use game theory and it would wipe the floor with this guy
... and in that sense, Erlang is following existing practice better than Go did — := is "traditionally" an assignment operator, not a binding operator.
Exactly, in 2014, Github has tons of clones. Lots more sites have reduced visual clutter nice user flows and allow for social interaction. Both in VCS and in general, what Github is doing is not innovative. In that context, yeah this seems pretty dumb.

Github was the first VCS hosting service that took design seriously and kept clutter and bullshit off of all of these different pages (or provided them all). They were the first VCS hosting that realized the power of social interactions around code, before every app under the sun had a social timeline.
FYI evolution hardwired us to take relatively massive risks during adolescence.
What makes you think that addiction is a choice?
In parts of England "should of" is in common use amongst younger speakers to the extent that "should of" to me is associated with South or East London more than non-native speakers (though it's in use many other places in England too).

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_levelling_in_Britain#Ex...

My four year old might occasionally use it because his friends does, and he knows it drives his mother absolutely crazy when she notices he uses South London dialect features.
I'm very curious about this as well - although I would accept a standard "recipe" that is implemented by <random> and designed by <best>.

Did you ever try reaching out ? I'm way too small for them to be answering org questions !
What people hate is paying money. Full stop. Oh sure, there's always the "I'd pay for that if..." or the "I don't mind supporting stuff I like" (as though this were charity), but this is talk and talk - like bullshit - is cheap.

In reality, the vast majority of people won't pay unless they absolutely have to, with "absolutely have to" meaning "you'll go to jail on criminal charges if you don't." So assuming you're in a situation where people really must pay, the question becomes "How seamlessly can you integrate payment extraction into your providence of value?" In the case of airline tickets, groceries, and auto repairs, the answer is "Pretty easily, actually". As a result, payment extraction is a solved problem.

With the non-negotiable inevitability of payment accepted, and the means to pay made as frictionless as possible, people don't think twice about handing over their credit cards the moment a demand is made. When people expect to pay, producers can expect to get paid. It's just that simple. Businesses compete for the custom of those who accept the system and it call the cops on the tiny minority who don't.

The problem with IP is that the legal system that protects every other viable business has imploded. And it's not about "just inventing another business model" since the unsolved problem of human nature means having to produce a new law enforcement structure to back that model up. Devolving to private enforcement (e.g. the Mafia) is an obviously unacceptable outcome, so instead of telling IP producers that it's up to them to "just invent new models" it's really time for people to recognize that law and law enforcement are the responsibility of citizens, not corporations.

If you want a smooth and efficient market then come up with the laws and enforcement mechanisms that (a) this kind of market requires and (b) you can live with as a society. In the meantime, expect suboptimal solutions from producers who have been left to squeeze whatever cash they can from the teeming hordes of assholes who think payment is debatable.
and you get to keep them after the MSDN expires

Are you sure about this ? Any more details (assigned to company/individual, etc. ) ?
How often do you get a scam call AND the lock screen notification has been pushed to the bottom (within careless swiping range of the actual slide to unlock zone) AND you are swiping without aiming? Does avoiding that extreme edge case really seem worth removing a useful shortcut?
The only games that are worth playing is stuff released years ago. i have never payed a single $ to play these app store scams and never will. I however dumped close to $200 on a KS game I wanted made.. scum is scum and I will never assoicitate with them(shared office in with one of these before.. felt dirty at the end of the day)
>The USD is currently being deflated like never before and could potentially collapse without warning. Thus making it increasingly unattractive to hold over long periods.

That cannot happen. The USD is tied to the Yuan to the Euro to the Yen and all. If it goes, everything goes.

In case that happens, and we're talking about a situation that could trigger something like WW III, BTC will be perhaps the least safe place. One of the first concerns of big governments would be to squash those alternate currencies, and BTC just has some bits and bytes, they have the police, SWAT teams, and international agreements.

>Finally, there are many ways to do fast transactions in BTC. Have you ever tried sending BTC from one android wallet to another? It comes through instantly.

Yes, but I was talking more about the transaction to convert your BTC to "some currency I can actually use for my actual buying needs".

(That you can use BTC with a "list of vendors that accept it" doesn't count. I don't want to buy novelty items from fringe vendors experimenting with alternative methods of payment. I want to buy a house from the realtor I want, I want to buy food from McDonalds down the corner, I want to pay my utility bill, etc...).
As a PHP dev (8 years), I can honestly say PHP is an ugly language. But it gets the job done. And I'd say with 10K hours under your belt, you can do what you damn well please. Feel like spending another 10K hours in PHP? Go for it. Wanna learn C or Rust or Scala or Python or Ruby? Knock yourself out.

I personally am a fan of diversity (master one skill set, then another, then another). Unless you're doing cutting-edge work, you're probably at that point where your diminishing returns are close to zero, so you might as well learn something new.
Well, some airlines [1] already offering such services...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phones_on_aircraft#Statu...
It's explicitly in the terms -- you get to keep the licenses for the software you've downloaded. Presumably they stay with the company which had the bizspark account.
Yes, I think it is. Given two candidates of equal competence, I'd naturally prefer the one with the greater passion for the particular kind of work the job would entail. Does that really seem strange?

Of course it gets trickier when the more competent one seems the less passionate. Then it's a question of how much to weight the two dimensions (along with whatever others one is considering). I have no magic formula here; I think it depends on the circumstances.

There seems to be a subtext here that work sample tests give no indication of passion. I don't think that's true; when I've given people programming exercises, I think the craftsmanship of the code (is it well-modularized, well-documented, nicely indented, etc.) is indicative of their passion. Competence, to me, is more about whether the code works.

So yes, I'm using craftsmanship as a proxy for passion, so I suppose next you'll ask, why not just go for craftsmanship? The point we seem to be coming to is that passion is difficult or impossible to measure directly, so why not stick to qualities that are more measurable?

I don't think everything important is easy to measure.
Beautiful product, both aesthetically and conceptually. Very simple and honest, very few apps start like that, but I think the ones who do, legitimately deserve success.

Keep up with the great work!
Thank you people!

My lesson: I will stick with PHP and learn more about organization, architecture and best practices. And Composer and PSR.
From my quick skimming of Yugoslavian history, the period from the end of World War II and in particular the 1970s up to 1986 was actually frought with economic and ethnic tensions. One of the sections of the Wikipedia page is titled "Ethnic Tensions and Economic Crisis." [1]

People should also note that the Ukranian activities have been a long, unfolding process - there was the Orange Revolution there just 10 years ago. The recent events are not unanticipated.

I mention these b/c your post refutes the PP's belief that the U.S. is far from "downhill." I do not believe the U.S. is anywhere near "proper" :) conditions for things to go downhill. It is still wise for us to inhibit the growth of surveillance apparatus, but the U.S. is quite different from the war-torn former Communist republics. We have had some challenges like recessions, the Enron scandal, etc., but we are simply too large, too diverse and have too much momentum for damage in any part of our country to spread and threaten the entirety of it.

I believe the majority of the spying apparatus which has been uncovered has been for national and individual economic cheating and gaining military initiative rather than controlling the population. Gaining access to individuals of interest, however, is a handy fringe benefit, I imagine, and we should certainly curtail the growth of systems which abet this activity. We could start by not working for and not letting our friends work for, the architects and implementers of these systems! Of course it's not a problem for most of us in this particular sphere, because so many of us focus on delighting and creating value for customers instead! yay!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslavia
Yes! This is exactly what I was hoping for in the comments. I found the article intriguing but could see that there was a lot more to say.

Having read the interview, what I really take away from this is a rationality success story. Chu kept a simple focus on what he was trying to achieve, and worked to maximise his chances.