skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think we're skipping the non-exploitative companies that rely on this model. Like mine.

We tried selling a game - it doesn't work. We have a free (ad-supported) and paid version of our game, and we make 95% of our money on ads.

Adding removing ads as an iAP to the free version, instead of having multiple versions of the game on the store, saw that go from 5% to 15% or so.

It's RARE to have any true success in the mobile game market. It's even RARER to have that come from a game that has an up-front cost.

iAP is the new shareware. Anyone that bitches about iAP has to get their head around this. The market dictates how people are willing to spend money, and it's via iAP, not up-front costs.

We love making games. We love our job, and our company, and we want to keep doing it. But there's a hard truth that ad-supported free games have very, very low ARPU - for us, in the $0.20 range. We're lucky to have millions of downloads and hundreds of thousands of daily active users, but very few game studios are.

Someone that buys the ad-free iAP is worth 5x our average ARPU. So selling people customizations or whatever else iAP is the only way to raise ARPU to anything sustainable. Gamers don't (and never will) spend $60 on a mobile game again, and we have employees to pay and families to support. Yes, it can get exploitative, but if you have a better idea of how small game companies should survive - real ideas, not trolling - we'd love to hear them, because we would implement them immediately.

Edit: grammar.
I love the story, and am currently waiting for the next installment.

One very tiny nitpick is about the title; the story is (at least currently) intended for web-based distribution, and in Chrome (Mac), Chrome (Windows), and Firefox (Mac), the title when rendered in the tab bar is truncated to "Harry Potter and the Meth", which frankly I'm embarrassed to have on my screen. A simple change such as using "&" instead of "and" would fix this.
A brain transplant would require some technology that won't be available for a very long time.

You would need to connect the two brains and somehow move or copy all of the data to the new brain, then gradually shutdown the old brain.

We're no where close to that, but it will be a very interesting time once that happens. It will be yet another major step in our evolution.
I think the point is really to have a strong interest in the language. Not just an accademical curiousity, but something that is stromg enough to force the brain to go painful places, cram unordinary amount of new concepts and throw ourselves completely outside our comfort zones.

For most people it's a signifiant other, or just living in a foreign country where not understanding is more painful than doing the effort to learn. As an anecdote, a few people around me got to learn japanese by sheer passion for the culture, as they were breathing it day in day out anyway. We could say their games, anime, manga, novels and tv drama were kind of their S/O, if only by the amount of time it took in their daily lives.
It seems there are obvious parallels between Bitcoin:Coinbase ::
SMTP:GMail

XMPP:GChat

~OAuth:Facebook

These analogies are only so accurate, but the centralized service seems to try to lock-in users whereas decentralization forces the opposite way.
Dell isn't actually doing anything with the Bitcoin, they're getting USD payments via Coinbase. And Coinbase appears to be US only and maybe US bank only? Their site says:

"Right now the only supported payout option is USD to a bank account. However, options for other countries are planned."

Which is a bit ambiguous but I think it may be only US bank accounts (or accounts accessible within the US system)?
I mostly read software and technical books. None of the books I am interested in is in the collection. Maybe the improve the collection later, but for now it's cheaper to buy for me.
I wonder how this will affect free applications with IAP-powered donation buttons.
That's all perfectly fine, but app stores should not list these games as "FREE", they should be listed as "DEMO".
In Toronto, Safari Online is available for everyone with a Toronto Public Library card (anyone who lives or works in Toronto)
The secret is the cliche of having an amazing team around me who are awesome people + even harder-working than me.

To wit: 2 years ago Kat was my right-hand and now she's a partner + runs outreach at YC.
Uber IceCream Delivery
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Alexis just told me about these comments. You guys know that I can't impact your careers anymore right! :) Jokes aside, thank you for the kind words. It was an amazing few years.
There's also a subtle point here about accessibility of creative works that I think is often missed -- copyright, as a social contract, exists because society has a reason to provide creators with a period of economic exclusivity in exchange for the release of the work. There's no natural or defensible "right" to prevent people from copying. If a creator chooses to release their work in a format that they can retract (e.g. they can negate the societal benefit of the release), society is under no moral obligation to respect their copyright.
Say you're a bank employee who handles money. It'd be pretty easy to just slip some off the top of each stack every day and take it home. Or arrange the software to skim some into a separate account and pull that money out often enough that the balance never gets high enough to be suspicious.

Both of those things, plus many more, require daily or weekly effort. If you're out of the office, something will go amiss and you'll get caught.
Should you upgrade from the Samsung Galaxy S4 to the Galaxy S5?
Other than some software, as far as I know you still have the option to "own" (ignoring copyright issues for the moment) most digital content. By "own" I mean "make a one-time purchase and then download the media onto your own device" as opposed to "pay a regular subscription fee and stream the media to your device."

I think the "erosion" you observe is simply the phenomenon that many people genuinely prefer subscription models to one-time purchases, or perhaps they prefer to not manage their own files, syncing, etc. I don't think there's anything bad about that.
So this argument has now been forked into Django's ORM capabilities and wether or not you should use Django for an API. The former is up to taste, the latter is not.

> Not really. You're always free to use raw SQL, and it makes it pretty convenient to do so for the occasions when what you want exceeds the ORM's capabilities (which will likely happen).

I can't argue with this, fine.

> Stuff like a rate limiter, for instance, or a pluggable social media authentication backend. Or the one mentioned by the OP. All useful when making APIs.

Rate limiter is framework independent, can be built using Redis with a few lines of code. So not applicable.

Pluggable social media authentication backend is for websites not APIs for APIs you most commonly use API key/secret. for an api you can still build your portal in Django and do all authentication/whatever there and simply sign requests for the API.

> You're not railroaded into using any of those things if you don't want to (the same way you are with RoR). All of them are optional and most of them are even swappable without too much effort.

I am familiar with Django, and I know that you can (not the ORM though), but do you want to drive a monster truck when all you need is a car to get around? You could, you will get odd looks though.

Since you can't use Django's ORM anywhere else you need to use something that another "car" supports.

I'll leave you with: "if all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail"
Can anyone provide some insight into why this would be? What's the intention of these restrictions?
Here is another set of notes which helped me improve my cluster configuration [0].

[0] http://gibrown.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/elasticsearch-five-t...
Intentional or not, there have been, at most, three passenger jets hit by anti-aircraft missiles in the last thirty years.

Keep in mind that even if this happened once a year, flying would still be far, far safer than driving.
In San Francisco, a _1 bed_ apartment would often be over $2000.
Overstock acceptance is absolutely not a marketing ploy. The CEO of overstock gave a talk at a Bitcoin conference. He is very passionate about certain areas of philosophy, and Bitcoin tickles his philosophical fancy.
I have a question. If business sells something directly for bitcoin (not via 3rd party which accepts bitcoin and proceeds cash), how do they do VAT?
> Someone in marketing probably came up with this as a way to get some free publicity

Bitcoin comes with essentially none of the consumer protections associated with credit card payments[0]. All of those consumer protections represent liabilities to merchants.

Similarly, merchants usually bear the costs associated with disputes and/or fraud (depending on how they're resolved, and this depends on the company). Bitcoin offers a great way to process these transactions without any of these risks for the merchants (oftentimes at the cost of shifting those risks onto the customer).

So, it's not marketing so much as some higher-up realizing that they can now offload some of their liabilities onto their customers. At this point, why wouldn't they?

[0] There are other consumer protections that are independent of payment method, but I'm referring to those specifically.
It still a work in progress, but my plan is to release it on the launch day of iOS 8, with a lot more features. Like a Today widget and a share extension which will allow you to post to HN right from Safari.

Edit: I started an Hacker News Swift scraper, which is what SwiftHN use now, it's called Hacker Swifter: https://github.com/Dimillian/HackerSwifter
It's highly inspired from LibHN (https://github.com/bennyguitar/libHN) for the scrapping part at the moment.

Feedbacks and pull requests appreciated :)
Why should netflix have to pay for last mile when they already pay their backbone provider, who may own most of the wire? We can come up with any scenario or one off situation but still the problem remains.

Should net neutrality go away? And is it fair what Verizon and others are demanding from Netflix/Youtube... Also, who should foot the bill, the backbone providers, the content providers or the last mile providers.

You talk of peering arguments yet you dont seem to back them. If netflix is a level 3 customer and level 3 has a peering argument with Verizon, then whats the problem?
I'd argue that the intention for that is to protect against using military equipment against civilians. (which is already being done in some cases, MRAPs, automatic weapons, body armor, SAMs)

Using the military to protect from foreign attacks is exactly what it's suppose to be used for. What's the harm of protecting US govt employees and even civilians and businesses from internet attacks with agencies that are technically part of a military branch? I'm not saying send troops after anyone, if someone within the US hacks something, either pass it to the FBI or just fix the security hole and move on.

From the page you linked to: "Active participation in civilian law enforcement, such as making arrests, is deemed to be a violation of the Act, while taking a passive supporting role is not. Passive support has often taken the form of logistical support to civilian police agencies." So basically that doesn't apply to internet and telecommunications protection. I'm not suggestion that USCyberCom hacks US citizens or businesses, but they possess the capabilities to help protect them which in turn strengthens their own security.
> "This is something that never, never happens, and it's unlikely to happen again. "

> This wasn't an equipment failure or a natural disaster, so I don't really agree with this line of thinking.

And its simply, factually incorrect; military forces shooting down civilian airliners is not something that never, never happens, nor is it something that is unlikely to happen again. In fact, it seems to have happened more than once each decade for most of the history of civilian aviation (though there may have been only once incident in the 1990s).

EDIT: The one instance I had seen in the 1990s actually involved two planes of the same airline shot down by missiles by the same rebels on subsequent days, and a third hit while loading by mortar fire while loading on the ground on the next day. So, the 1990s aren't an exception to the "more than once per decade".
We know that number of blockchain transactions has been more or less constant for a while and in the range of several tens of thousands per day. This means either merchants aren't seeing too many bitcoin sales OR a lot of these sales are happening offchain through coinbase/bitpay.

In the latter scenario, coinbase just looks like a giant transaction fee with nothing changing except an entry in their database. Are they generating enough value to justify these fees? Note coinbase/bitpay makes money when (1) they sell you (the customer) bitcoin (2) the buy/sell spread when you buy btc (3) merchant fees and (4) buy/sell spread again when the purchase occurs.

A big selling point for bitcoin was that you'd avoid credit card processing fees. Has someone done the math on whether this is turning out to actually be cheaper than credit cards after all fees are considered?

And even if they turn out to be marginally cheaper, is it justified from the consumer's point of view given you don't even get the consumer protections that you get for free with a credit card?
It looks like I was incorrect when I predicted that the ebooks would only be available on true Kindle devices (and not for example the Kindle app on iPad).

Unfortunately it looks like the Lending Library (which comes with Prime membership) still only works on true Kindle devices. I wonder if this is a licensing issue, or just a deliberate choice on Amazon's part.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000739811
> "The [oil blend] bottles look like those travel-size shampoos you find at drug stores or in hotel rooms; they’re convenient, but they seem wasteful since you’re unscrewing one and throwing it away every single day."

Essential fats (polyunsaturated fatty acids) oxidize when they come in contact with the air. Not individually packaging these would be a mistake since the oil would go rancid by day 5.
By the terms of the problem, it cares a great deal - it's willing to torture you endlessly for your failure to adopt a particular moral belief at an earlier time. If we admit this possibility, then we need to propitiate every imaginable omnipotent being, just in case.
There is no detail of how this actually works. They are keeping everything secret. Easy to wonder if this is vaporware.
"In order for this to work, however, the data is coded and decoded with the patented technology. [...] The company makes the RLNC technology (Random Linear Network Coding) available to hardware manufacturers and they are in secret negotiations that will bring the improvements to consumers."
Drawing The Line Between “Peer-to-Peer” And “Jerk” Technology
Haters gonna hate.

Yesterday I read an article about AirBnB from someone that had clearly gone off the rails. Taking less issue with the boobs/balls/vag image in the logo, she started off by ranting about how insensitive the white-male founders were for using the slogan "belong anywhere" because one way people “belonged” to other people was through chattel slavery. Another was through marriages that made women the property of their husbands. Seriously?
The sudoku difficulty can be very varied, but it doesn't rely on multiple solutions - a grid where multiple solutions are possible simply isn't a valid sudoku puzzle; a minimalistic puzzle is one where no numbers can be eliminated without losing uniqueness of the solution, but adding extra numbers to that minimalistic puzzle makes it easier.
They're surprisingly forgiving. If someone stole my IP and then utilised it in a commercial product I might not be so forgiving.

That being said, it is a very happy outcome, $4K to food banks and the author seems happy. Plus I'm sure Kraft's design company can write off the charitable donation anyway.
> I suspect that it would take me many months or perhaps even years of immersion and full-time speaking and thinking in French to get to the point of being able to construct most sentences in "natural French" structure on the first try.

If you have difficulty learning French, I suggest learning another language with a similar "structure", such as Esperanto.

I'm a French native speaker, and I'm currently learning Esperanto. I find the two languages very similar in their way of constructing sentences, but the later one if a lot easier to learn: conjugation and agreement, in particular, are much simpler, and the absence of suppletion (a verb and its derivative always share the same root) helps greatly for memorizing the vocabulary.
Phone numbers are very similar. They have a short and long representation and the short is often duplicated in different countries. Imperfect but a very human solution: works because it's easy and 99% of the time we call the right number.
In this case, it's more like the Bystander Effect[1], which is related to the tragedy of the commons. Both can be the result of what's called the "Diffusion of Responsibility" [2]. Specifically, the game model this is following is the Volunteer's Dilemma [3].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer's_dilemma
Yeah that all makes sense, but if we aren't going to prevent commercial banks from buying high risk securities, it also seems like the FDIC shouldn't be insuring them.
If schoolchildren develop a strong interest in politics, that would be interesting.
Agreed. Maybe the default in LibreSSL should be swapped from "go ahead and use this fallback faux-entropy if we have to" to "fail if we can't get good entropy". It'd be a matter of changing and undef to a def in the code.
I, for one, am glad that hitting back is not the only strategy available to ensure that the chances of this happening again are minimized.

And I'm glad that there are governments in place in this world that share this perspective.
I was pretty bummed when Spotify was Europe-first.

Motivation to rewrite is often tied to money. No money? No motivation.

Which is why some people in "remote places" don't really have many qualms about piracy. If it's not available at any price, what _should_ I do??
Http://blog.spendingkarma.com/
Not only is there a "contact us" link instead of a pricing link, there's a big banner saying "enterprise" at the top of the page. If ever there was a clue that something isn't going to be cheap, that would be it.
Ditto! I think it's beneficial to have grown up breaking computers :D
There's a new sheriff in town.
UK and Germany antitrust regulators forced Amazon to drop their "price parity" clause for Marketplace sellers.

If Amazon tries to use (monopoly) Segment A of their business to impose conditions on (emerging) Segment B, it won't help adoption or regulation.

http://www.dw.de/german-cartel-office-ups-pressure-on-amazon...

http://ec.europa.eu/competition/ecn/brief/05_2013/amaz_deuk....
A brief NPR report on the subject last week was the absolute first I heard, but this article is the first detail. The NPR story didn't say what the hackers had tried to get, just that they breached OPM and tried to get a list of government employees in sensitive positions. This article I did not see until it was posted here

Edit: clarifications
Woops, that was dropped in a refactoring of the website code. Fixed in https://github.com/mirage/mirage-www/pull/192 and should propagate live soon. Thanks for reporting!
Nominate the Best Company Blog
Who has the best company blog? Nominate and upvote to determine the winner...
The design of Bitcoin is such that no one, not even the "average consumer" is ever unable to operate directly in the decentralised backend. All that is required is some open source free-free software, of which there are already several versions.

About your second point. I was one of the people who had coins at Gox. Hundreds of them. I still think the parent is right and you are wrong.
PHP. It was what I used initially so I could have access to our internal libs since our main application is in PHP. After crashing the ETL server a couple times though, I decided to try moving the heavy lifting to Go.

When we benchmarked them, what would take PHP 30 minutes, Go could do in less than 30 seconds. Only the transform is written in Go, the rest of the ETL is still in PHP.
Harnessing Twitter API with C#
And that is a double-edged sword for the consumer. What if I purchase something and the vendor screws up and refuses to fix it? What if the vendor scams me? Having a credit card gives me the chargeback process to resolve a dispute. Using Dunning-Krugerrands... sorry, bitcoin, gives me no real recourse other than to piss and moan on Twitter.

I get using Bitcoin to purchase when it's questionable or you otherwise want something to be anonymous, although with a physical good it is much harder to be anonymous, but why in the hell would I care if someone knows I bought an Alienware laptop or a pack of socks on Overstock? And that is assuming they someone got ahold of my transaction records anyway.
Wouldn't the fact that the customer sends an SMS from their phone mean that you now have their phone number? How are you going to respond to the request without having their phone number?

Or is it not using SMS after all? Not sure that's clear from the presentation. The tag line says "Find and text any business in your area." The term "text" is generally synonymous with SMS. If that's not what this is you may want to change the wording.
To be fair, the bit about the horcrux is speculation. The author never explicitly states what that particular character was actually doing at that particular event of real-world historical importance. But anyone with two brain cells to rub together and some ability at predicting the behavior of storybook villains could figure it out.
Perhaps this was in the works prior to the official announcement?
How about we stop trying to design experiences and instead just write better?

The reason why you were absorbed into the book had little to do with the way the book was printed and everything to do with the story.
What was "nefast" supposed to have been?

Which "them"? 1) The developers of this app; 2) Those who use Noscript?

Noscript (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/). That page claims 2,159,875 users and is probably an undercounting.

The whole point of noscript is to have javascript off by default (to avoid a whole host of possible security exploit situations and an enormous amount of web tracking) and only white-list it when necessary.

Going to a landing page, to view the advertisement for the app., is not a reason to need to turn on javascript.. If the landing page advertisement is provides enough info, then one can decide to turn on javascript to try out the app.
Hey Erik,
I just wanted to say thanks for your awesome icons. I used them on a Saturday project I did awhile ago (http://weather.basementserver.org/) and they looked great!
Right, this will have short term negative impact on your revenue but in the long run it may encourage more users to download the paid version because AAA iAP apps no longer set the "free" standard for pricing.