skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If your app requires earning coins through non-gameplay mechanisms to be a good game, then it's not a good game. If it doesn't require that, then you can get rid of the coins entirely and still have a good game. At which point your only question is monetization.

May I suggest you simply add a banner ad to the game, and then provide a single IAP to remove the banner ad, for players who don't like them? I hate banner ads, so if it's a good game I'll gladly pay a few dollars to kill the ads (and if it's bad game, well, I won't be playing anyway so it doesn't matter what you do).

Don't forget that the only players you're getting feedback from are the ones that currently are engaged with your system. You aren't getting feedback from any of the players that skipped your app in the first place due to the IAP/incentivized coin system. Personally, if I know a game has that sort of system, I will be far less likely to even give it a chance first.

---

Edit: Another suggestion, which I've seen used in games before, is to keep the coin system, but remove all the incentivized coin stuff (no videos, etc). Then provide a way to earn coins through gameplay. And finally, provide an IAP to increase the rate at which you earn coins in-game. If you tune it correctly, the base "free" game could drop coins at a low-enough rate to still encourage players to seek alternate ways to gain coins, but the coin-booster IAP would then increase the rate to a level at which most players are comfortable playing without buying any more coins through IAP. Then finally, you can still offer coins through IAP for those few players that want them anyway.

Of course, you have to be careful with this approach, because if you don't calibrate it right and people who bought the coin-booster still feel like they aren't getting enough coins to reasonably play the game, then they'll be angry. And if you give too many coins, there will be no incentive at all for anyone to buy IAP. But this just means you have to put enough thought into it to design it correctly

As an example of this approach, Ski Safari Adventure Time uses it (and I assume the original Ski Safari as well but I never played that). Coins are used to purchase in-game upgrades, and they're collected through gameplay, but you can buy a one-time coin booster that doubles the coins you get through gameplay. Personally, I like this approach because it means I can feel like I paid for the game, and it makes the game playable without having to resort to non-gameplay mechanisms to acquire the needed coins. It's also better than the ad approach because not only does it mean you don't have to uglify your UI with ad banners (and don't have to design a UI that can afford to give up that screen space), but buying a coin-booster like this also feels like the user is gaining a reward, as opposed to getting rid of ads which feels like the user is paying a tax, if you will.
That's the dirty word, used to explain that men aren't owed anything, its all unearned respect and undeserved rights.

If they aren't owed then I guess women don't need them either, right?
You know what is really creepy, when the tellers and staff at a store are painfully happy and courteous. If feels like if I frown or show any irritation their neck detonator will go off.
STM32 + espruino.

Lost my interest the first day. Couldnt manage to make it run.
Uber meets amex: Rewards for rides
In a venue such as this, there are only ideology and debate-points to be earned, they are the only coin. Its not all about the money for most folks - its about righteous indignation and following a dogma.
Founder of streak.com here - we think our product is really great for startups. Feel free to reach out to me at aleem at streak if you'd like to get a feature overview, although I'm confident you'll be able to install us and see what we have in less than 2 minutes.
Here's a review of a game that offers the first few levels free, with a single IAP to unlock the rest of the game. Everything is clear and above board and seems to follow the Doom (etc) model - playable game and pay to unlock the rest.

http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/iPhone/Glyph+Quest/review.asp...

Note that this reviewer calls it "tacky".
Different languages express different ideas of how their creators think programmers should express themselves.

Since programming languages evolve this tends to cause the syntax to evolve along with the languages.

There are several languages that can be considered the great-grand-parents of pretty much all the languages still in use today.

Here is a simplified diagram:

http://rigaux.org/language-study/diagram-light.png

Every step along one of the edges solved some problems and probably created a few new ones too. The syntax was adapted to deal with the new requirements.

So that's why the syntax for different programming languages can't be the same, if it were we would essentially have only one programming language.

And if we did tomorrow morning someone would come up with a variation to improve on some issue...
Without select, you don't have goroutines.
> what's the problem?

It's uncomfortably close to indentured servitude to me to say: you can't work for anyone else until you pay off this up-front investment we made in you (working only for us until you do).
Stylify Me – Site style guide overviews
Zuckerberg Snags Paypal Prez to Run FB Messenger
Interesting, but pretty thinly supported by facts. The demographics, in particular, could be explained as a function of relative disposable income as much as immunity.

Would be far more persuasive if backed up with a cohort analysis over time of a young and and old demographic.
We're talking about the Apple App Store, home of "we know evil when we see it" policies. They see lack of specificity as a feature.

Basically, people are criticizing games where it is possible to spend a ridiculously large (or inifinte) amount of money. Any loopholes should be obvious enough that they're not a problem.
tags, respecting different votes differently, linking old conversations with new ones instead of 'archiving' them into oblivion...

HN might be some sort of local maximum atm, but more experimentation is warranted on these fronts.
As a maintainer, the +1s get very annoying and can actually get in the way of useful work being done.

At best it makes the comment thread hard to follow. At worst, it causes some people to start filtering their bugmail to /dev/null.

This is why some issue trackers have a dedicated voting system. Even then, people will still ignore it and reply with "+1" or "me too". sigh
Go Daddy files for IPO and Bob Parsons steps down as Chairman
> The problem with this is that most programmers don't need statistics on a regular enough basis. That's how things get into standard libraries: people need these things so regularly that there's no point in reimplementing them forever.

True, although I suspect there's probably a certain amount of historical accident to the set of functions included in math.h. There's a strong argument that some of these common 'special' functions are at least as fundamental to a variety of mathematical fields as (say) arc hyperbolic cosine, although admittedly it'd probably be hard to get clear consensus on exact which.

I expect if you asked a variety of stats/ML geeks they might have other priorities to those given here -- e.g. I might request the digamma and trigamma functions (first and second derivatives of log gamma, useful for computing gradients in various Bayesian models) before asking for Bessel functions, say. It might also be sensible to prefer log-domain versions of some of the functions he suggests, since much practical computation with probabilities needs to happen in the log domain.
Thanks I've reported this to the right person.
Sadly FF has not been our main focus, though our tool Montage has been getting some FF attention lately.
As opposed to not pinning versions and expecting your average Python/Perl/Ruby/PHP/nodejs library author not to introduce some crazy API breakage in a minor point release?
> it would be interesting to know if one can reproduce all Tessel capabilites with a Pi + extensions.

You can, I've had a Node-on-Pi based home automation system running for a few months now. It looks like Tessel's main advantage is the plug & play nature of their modules.
Thanks a bunch for that link; I wasn't aware that they had also released a very handy .pkg installer for boot2docker + docker. The installer works perfectly and, since it's the officially supported installer method, I'm polling to get the docker and boot2docker formulae removed from Homebrew to ease confusion: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/pull/30013
There's a world of difference that you're not choosing to notice!! One requires blind faith (and so is completely useless for another other that providing comfort for those that don't want to understand the way nature works, and the other is based on scientific evidence that can be tested.
My first thought is I would never get into a personal vehicle if the decision to "sacrifice myself for the greater good" was not my choice. [1][2]

How do you program "greater good" in a split-second decision making scenario? How do you decide who wins and who loses, and by what criteria?

I'll answer those rhetorical questions for you: you don't.

The guy that darts into traffic, which results in a network of cars deciding to kill me in order to minimize "overall" damage to humanity? You've killed a person with a family, with people who rely on me to provide for them. The guy that darts into traffic is running from the police after having committed a serious crime. How do you programmatically determine that his life is more worth than mine or the others who may be impacted by avoiding just running over him in the first place?

You don't. Not with a set of programmed rules in a decision making system that doesn't have the ability to take in external variables in the process of making that decision.

That guy jumping into the road, with the cop chasing him that I can see on the sidewalk? I'm running over him instead of killing myself in the process. If I see that "guy in the road" is the entire soprano section of the Angelic Children's Choir, then maybe I aim for the light pole and pick a deity to pray to.

I do not trust ANY piece of software to make that decision for me, or for anyone, for any reason, and in any situation.

[1] I have intentionally ditched my car in a way that I thought would result in my own demise in order to minimize damage to others. It was my choice to do so.

[2] I understand by getting into a vehicle that I don't control (plane, train, bus, taxicab, etc) that I am giving that decision-making process over to someone else. But that someone else is also human, with the same ability to process external input as I would, and I entrust them to not sacrifice both of us foolishly.
Making demos is usually a net loss for developers. There are few scenarios where the extra time and effort put into a demo actually result in increased sales [0].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QM6LoaqEnY
PHP vs. Node.js: The REAL statistics
Feel free!

The source is out there. https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki
I'd actually argue that an analogy with architecture is a much stronger one than the one with painting. In both architecture and hacking, the creative output has to hold up to some objective standards (to compile, run and solve the problem/to adhere to the laws of physics and provide a purpose) but it also allows degrees of freedom not commonly thought about when one thinks of architecture or coding.

This is, of course, implying that an architect is also capable of "implementing" his solution (which should, strictly speaking, be an engineer's job), but you could also argue that you can devise a system where a hacker would write a functional prototype and then a software engineer would reimplement it rigorously, with specs, TDD or whatsoever. This is where the analogy starts being a little far fetched so I admit it's not the best one but I feel like an architect's thought process follows very closely a hacker's one.

Maciej's text is very nice, and I must say I'm stretched between PG's original text and this one right now. I guess I just to need it a little more thought and reread both of them :)

On a side note, I sometimes think about whether programming is really "just engineering" and if I'm just being delusional and just eager to call myself an "artist" because I love hacking. It's an interesting subject to ponder about, but I can't say I've made up my mind.
I would like to see the Turing Test turned on its head ... the human has to convince the computer it is talking to another computer.
So, that might get 99c to remove the banner ads. How do you capture more money from people who want to support the authors?

"Buy a theme. No game play advantage but it gives us cash"? I'd be interested to see how well that pays. (I do agree with you though - many IAPs are awful and force the game designer to break their game so they can sell and IAP to fix it).
I completely agree, and yet I feel thinking this way misses the point: non-competes are blatantly disrespectful of human rights, and so on some level, the effects on innovation shouldn't matter.

If you take voluntary contracts to the extreme, it would include the ability to sell one's self into servitude, which is something that used to happen, in addition to the more violent and coercive forms of slavery that are more often remembered. Today we would consider the notion of owning someone, even with their permission, to be morally repugnant, and so we have defined limits on how much of yourself you can sell, both in the present and the future.

I understand that it is a problem to invest in people and have them leave. But them's the breaks: you don't get to have your cake and eat it too when you want to harvest the ruthless efficiency of a capitalist market. Maybe those employees should have that much negotiating leverage, or maybe the greater economy is better off if they poach a few coworkers and start a new company. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen; someone else will be happy to take your place, and give your workers a good enough deal such that they have no interest in leaving.
It's awesome, now the devs have to be on 24hr call with the ops people, because they're the ones who built the environment.

Welcome to my world!
* So our new myths are more plausible, but just as unsubstantiated.

that's blatant bullshit - god myths are in no way more plausible than scientifically testable means. It's not like evolution isn't something that is not still happening, it's perfectly testable. I am sure that citing numerous examples wouldn't change your mind because no amount of scientific evidence will ever change the minds of those that choose not. Faith is a dangerous thing, but thankfully it will be selected against by evolution as we move into an era where our species survival will rely upon science.
That sounds awesome, any details on what kind of setup you have on the Pi for home automation? Would love to try and setup something similar!
Why It Shouldn't Be Criminal to Report Government Secrets
> As blue_beetle said: "If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold."

Also if you are paying for it. See cable TV, magazines, cell phones, etc.
She's Her Own Twin
I don't disagree with you. In fact, I agree with you. My comment is directed at the title of the article, suggesting this has something to do with government and politics. But reading a few paragraphs the whole problem to me is just people don't want to lose their jobs, which is part of reality. I think the journalist who wrote the article is trying to make the money part less, so no one gets hurt by people who are against mass public funding program.
It needs not be dominant, it just needs to be significant, which, observably, it is. Just look at the Featured Games list in AppStore.
I think CoreOS solves a number of these problems. It's no walk in the park to set up but it's a really nice stack.
The Backlash Against Tech in Seattle: What we can Learn from San Francisco
Linked from Ed Thelen's site is
http://www.bemorehealthy.com/LGP-30Computer/The30.htm
which has a couple photographs of Mel's handwritten code.
Doesn't have anything to do with being "smart" or getting smarter. At best, it's a trivia site (and of not very interestign or thinking enhancing trivia at that).

Also: "Genghis Khan was the founder of the Mongol Empire. He was responsible for the death of so many people that the Earth's carbon level dropped by almost 700 million tons".

Really? I seriously doubt that -- including doubting the fact that it uses a meaningful metric.
The Rust mis-votings are quite absurd.

In no way can Rust be considered "stable". The most recent version is 0.10 (that is, it's still very pre-1.0), it's undergoing significant breaking changes on an ongoing basis, and even its home page warns that "Rust is a work-in-progress and may do anything it likes up to and including eating your laundry."

Anyone who points out that Rust is just not stable yet is absolutely correct. Anyone who points out that it's looking unlikely that it will be stable before the promised end-of-2014 deadline for 1.0 is also correct.

It doesn't matter who points out these facts, or how many times they do so. The facts are still facts, and whoever expresses them is totally correct.

My suspicion is that the inappropriate downvoting is just immaturity on the part of the Rust developers. I realize that it can hurt to face valid criticism of one's work, but an important part of being a professional adult is to consider such criticism rationally, and to learn how to improve based upon it. Engaging in censorship of facts, however, completely contradicts with self-improvement.

It renders the voting system useless when it's incorrectly used to censor others, due to a lack of emotional control on the part of the person misusing the system.

It's one thing to downvote blatant commercial spam that has no inherent value. It's harmful to downvote perfectly legitimate commentary that you may just happen to disagree with, however.
This reminds me of OpenGeofiction: "a collaborative platform for the creation of fictional maps."
http://opengeofiction.net/#map=5/51.495/-0.088

Perhaps someone can port this so that we can all modify it for good measure.
Sorry to hear it. Good luck with your project!
Finding unaffordable neighborhoods, more like.
any ideas on what company it is that they're working with?
I'm working with Timber[0] and Twig[1] for our theme. It is pretty slick.

[0]http://upstatement.com/timber/

[1]http://twig.sensiolabs.org/
The flipside is the market clearly doesn't think mobile games are directly worth enough to pay for making them.

But it doesn't necessarily follow that mobile games have to be digital crack. If a game can't survive on <$100 of IAPs per user, I'd be happy to see that game not exist.
GitHub released GitHub for Windows, version 2.0
> It used to be said that a compiler would never beat a programmer at assembly.

Probably still couldn't. But with gigs of ram, terabytes of hard drive space, and gazillions of flops of cpu time available, no one cares. No one can wait for Mel to optimize blackjack, your boss wants the new build 5-15 minutes after you've written the code, and that shouldn't take more than an hour itself.

It's not that the compiler got better than programmers... it just because cheaper. Hell, how many Mels are there out there anyway? Surely the number of people that clever and devoted to the bare metal of a CPU has never exceeded a few thousand people out of the entire population of Earth. Rarity makes them expensive, but it also means that shitty software shop in St. Louis or Tampa could never have such a person.

And since technology drives the economy, everything would crash if we had to rely on the availability of super-programmers.

Optimizing compilers are slightly better than they were long ago... but this isn't because they're all that impressive. We've just had thousands of monkeys pounding away over decades, hammering out one little optimization or another, and the storage to allow compilers to grow big enough to have a library of those to rely on.
I've been playing boom beach for several months and haven't spent a penny. In the same time I've spent over $100 on two lackluster blizzard expansion packs for d3 and sc2. Given the amount of time I've spent and enjoyed the game I don't begrudge people in my position that do spend money. And no it doesn't 2 hours to train troops and there are plenty of free gems.
"None of these are particularly tricky to implement."

Almost every mathematical function is hard to implement, if you want an implementation that is correct and (about) as fast as possible. For example, see http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_55_0/libs/math/doc/html/math..., which explains how boost implements the Bessel functions.

(By the way, I think boost math special functions is that 'BSD'-licensed library you are asking for)
I would get tired of typing "Invalid syntax."
If it were the only grocery store around I might see it as wrong, but personally I'd just shop somewhere else.
Alternatively, pointer-events: none; will do all the above in one property. Better cross-browser support also.
the new myths are more plausible than the god myths, i believe they're saying.
Seems odd, that a big payment service's exec would get poached to head-up a chat service (likely implemented using XMPP).

I mean, if FB was serious about chat, wasn't there an exec at a chat-focused company that would have been a better fit?

Also, why would the President of PayPal leave (his Top-dog position) to take on a head of a mere department at another company? Also seems odd...
> PHP might be still having the “king of web” status, but with node.js in the town, I don’t see that status staying for very long!

I doubt that. PHP will stay because of Path dependency, most webhosters provide PHP, because software is written in PHP. Software is written in PHP, because it is most widely supported. I like node better, though.
Will he pass the Voigt-Kampff?
I guess this was downvoted for the unnecessary sarcasm, but the linked thread was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this new github feature. A lot of unfortunate ignorance and anger-in-response could have been avoided (or at least diverted from github) had this feature been in place at the time.
That's a multipart response [0]. In the early days of 3G (and multimedia phones) we used to use those for some models of phone which supported it to give a better browsing experience - the gamble being that more downstream data would be faster than costing a request / response round-trip if you were pretty confident that the phone was going to ask for it.

[0] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1806228/browser-support-o...
It says Accion
Did you see what his old company did? Payments through mobile phones.
I remember filling out that form. :-(

I also remember checking into a Brazilian hotel, where they wanted Brazilian guests, at least, to specify their highest level of formal education (!), as well as profession, date of birth, and the city from which the guest arrived and the city to which the guest planned to travel next.

I wonder if the last two are specifically meant to aid law enforcement investigations.