skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Does 100 users represent a small or a large portion of the total addressable market? If it's small, just ship it. If it's a large portion of your addressable market, then choose 5-10 of them and give them early access.

Either way, be up front about all the known issues and your plan to solve them over time. Keep in close contact with your users and gauge their reactions. If the pain point that you're addressing is large enough, there's a good chance that a product that works 25% of the time is better than no product at all. If, on the other hand, you learn that the product is too frustrating for them to use, at worst you've only burned through a small fraction of your addressable market. And honestly, you can probably gain a good percentage of those back once you do perfect the product.

I also wouldn't be too worried about someone else coming along, scooping the product and beating you to market. You've been working on it for years and you still haven't perfected it. That suggests a certain degree of technical aptitude is required to build the product so I doubt anyone can swoop in at the last moment and steal your thunder. The only way for that to happen would be if there's another team already building a product similar to yours in which case, yes they might beat you to market. But unless there's a network effect involved, the better product of the two will likely win out in the end regardless.
He didn't say nobody drives around to meet interesting people, he said nobody rides for that reason.
>She writes for anyone who is willing to pay her $400 per essay. It is not just for the children of wealthy Chinese...

I'm sure she wouldn't turn down $400 from anyone, but she makes it pretty clear throughout the essay that the vast majority of her clients are the children of wealthy Chinese.

>many Chinese people choose to write their own.

No one is saying that all Chinese students pay someone to write their essays.

> Test scores, teacher evaluations, and an applicant's résumé are often much more important criteria.

True, but these are easily gamed too if you've got the money, especially in these cases where distance and language barriers makes everything harder to verify.
pruthvikar
I guess at some point these essays would simply be filtered out through author identification systems. If not already. Even if the accuracy of author identification is relatively low (80-85%?), just the thought that there is such a system in place should discourage students from cheating.

As to proof-reading and consultants, more power to them. Everyone should bounce their work at professionals in the area, before publishing it. It is a very good practice.
Does he have nonpublic knowledge of those product lines?
i wonder if the author of the post has ever talked to an UBER driver... that's the first thing i would recommend to anybody who wants to understand the actual economics of these companies. talk to a former cabbie who now gets to drive a nice car all day (instead of renting an old crown victoria), and pick his or her kids up from school every day. then ask yourself if "unrestrained" markets are good, or bad.
I wonder if the author even realizes that Jordan Belfort is a real person and that his name is not Leonardo DiCaprio.
Comparing Ember and React
You should post on the illumos zfs-discuss mailing list. The most amount of experts will be there to provide comments. I just saw the hostname of the machine; your "clout" may get you some attention. :-)

You very well may have some flaky hardware which is causing the issue, in which case, it probably needs to be fixed sooner than later. And maybe with some magic, you can get the pool into a happy state without rebuilding.
I didn't find much in the linked article I hadn't heard before, except "dry labbing", which means faking research -- describing outcomes of studies not actually conducted.

http://www.answers.com/Q/What_does_dry_labbing_mean

Nice coinage. But guess what? It's more complicated than that -- it can also mean using a mathematical simulation to stand in for a physical model:

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

The second link covers both meanings -- the mathematical simulation as well as the fraudulent meaning.
They set an extremely high standard, but some do get through the cracks. The upside of that is we get to see some really fantastic apps being made, that meet Apple's expectations, which simply can't be done on other platforms.

If they didn't set the bar that high, a lot more junk would be getting through.
Trademark violation. I should also note that the version that got rejected was 1.0.1, even though 1.0 had this feature and was accepted without issue.
For sure, and I certainly did give feedback in that regard. Made me wonder though how many riders reporting a bad experience it would take to get the guy off the road and to correct the situation.
Because, examining the motivations of the decision makers at Microsoft in this case, allows you to better predict what their actions in the future will be. Seriously, I can't count the number of times on HN, both in this instance and in the past, people have missed this basic principle. Sure, it's great that Microsoft did it in this case, regardless of their reason, but how you should perceive the safety of your data with Microsoft going forward, depends entirely on why they did it. If they did it purely for fiscal reasons, or some combination of fiscal, public relations, and moral reasoning, then how will they act when there is no monetary benefit to be gained by safeguarding their customers' data?
Car problems arise much less frequently than hire cars have availability issues, unless you have a particularly crappy car.
Eh, this is a basic programming puzzle that is older than Twitter
Especially since it is so very, obviously wrong. Running to the press to trash the review process can help quite a bit when other avenues fail.
Horribly written, meandering article that a) doesn't argue nearly as strongly as the title implies and b) doesn't get to the real argument til nearly the last sentence which is:

TL;DR - When we allow capitalism to play out without rules, and learn anew how labor gets exploited under that scenario, we may recall why we had rules in the first place.

Maybe, but the author doesn't examine this issue with any depth at all.
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=waterflow+loeb

Didn't get attention here when the story was new:
I wonder if there are "HN Posting Consultants" that help you get into YC?

I also wonder how much I'm kidding when I say that.
You say you like side projects...

I'm the founder of a med-tech non-profit that helps residency program administrators schedule their residents within the hospital. Its pretty boring B2B stuff, but we really do get to improve the medical education system. We have an MVP and completed an alpha test this spring, currently we're iterating on the product for our spring 2015 Beta test.

If you have the urge to work on something during your time off, but want to keep some space from your normal life, perhaps you could help us out a bit? It could be a good way to challenge yourself to find that "willingness to perfect the execution". I could use help from anything to a few hour review of our layout to actual development. Since you're donating your time it'll all be internally motivated, low stress, work from anywhere, do what you feel, no long term commitments. All the code would be open sourced. :)

Other suggestions:

* go camping
* try sailing (people are always looking- just go down to a yatch club and say you want to crew)
* get out of town for a month (your mom n dad would probs love to see you)
* pickup an exercise regime, or challenge yourself to cook every day, basically add a healthy component to your lifestyle that will improve your 'normal' life when you return
Digital Ocean: Ubuntu, Nginx, Unicorn, Rails
It says "self-destructing" and "encrypted".

How does this encryption protect me from anything, since the server controls the key?

I also have no proof of the destruction of the file, once that time has passed.
I agree wholeheartedly with the review time criticism. It is an impediment to any kind of responsive development cycle.
In the not too distant past, Apple released benchmark reports for major new Mac lines: G4, G5, Intel.
For someone who's never seen Ada code, could you explain what kind of strictness it has that doesn't exist in other languages like (say) C++?
It also kind of hints that they're vindictive and unprofessional.
It opens doors for some people who wouldn't have been able to otherwise. But more importantly, I hope this type of cheating leads universities to change their selection processes so applicants don't have to play this second-guessing game.

I feel like the university staff are fools being deceived by this nonsense. That they actually give weigh to the application essay shows they're not making a fair decisions.
‘I Consider Law School a Waste of My Life and an Extraordinary Waste of Money'
> Unfortunately, when technical people do the writing it rarely ends up much better (since most were never taught how to effectively synthesize ideas for a general audience). Hence why I wish more technical programs had larger disciplinary and liberal arts components.

Complete agreement, but there's a paradox here. On the one hand, it would be nice to have journalists able to write for a general audience but also technically knowledgeable enough to avoid most of the common errors journalists make.

On the other is the fact that a student able to absorb technical material sufficient to make him or her a serious journalist, would be strongly motivated to change majors, because of the much higher status and rank of any technical major compared to journalism.

It's why there are so few technically adept college professors -- most who actually understand their subjects have long since jumped ship and are working for Google/Facebook/etc.
I would think it's not benchmarking, perhaps not all of it. I think it's about his experience of what users look at, how they use it and what are they complaining about in nowadays consumer tech. Like "No way guys, this iphone antenna will be obstructed 90% of the time" type of thing.

I'm sure they a bunch of people like that already, but still.
This is almost certainly not what's going to happen; what's going to happen (assuming Uber succeeds, which is less than certain) is that Uber will attempt to kick the ladder out from behind them by bribing policymakers to enforce custom-crafted regulation that makes being anything but exactly Uber illegal and being smaller than Uber unprofitable.

Which is, of course, why we have rules in the first place.
You're misunderstanding what the OP is saying. He/she is pointing out a logical fallacy in the App Review rules.

Developers are allowed access to something called an "advertising identifier" which lets them track users between apps, for the purposes of targeted advertising. Apple is very restrictive in terms of user identification, in order to protect users' privacy, so this is the only way to uniquely identify a user/device, and the user can optionally opt-out of the advertising identifier entirely.

Apple doesn't want developers to use the advertising identifier for things other than advertising. But the way they enforce this is simply by requiring that an app include ads in order to use the advertising identifier. If you use the advertising identifier and your app doesn't visibly include ads, it will be rejected.

This restriction is ostensibly intended to prevent developers from abusing the advertising identifier, but really it just encourages developers to include shitty ads in their apps, because if you include ads, you can use the advertising identifier for whatever you want behind the scenes. It's a nonsensical way of enforcing this policy. Thus, "security theater."
Or maybe he senses the hypocrisy of complaining about the same sort of treatment he dishes out. I think he's too smart to make that mistake.
Effortless UX Can Be a Happy Accident for Small Businesses
two points -

> In summary, two near identical (99.9 percent) apps. One approved. One rejected.

This sounds like the real reason they rejected your app was due to the similarity.

> I won’t go into full detail about how many times I was on the phone with customer support about problems solely due to Apple

Ever tried ringing Google's customer support?
And the picture is taken from another Soyuz.
Here's what happened with an app I was working on:
I was working for a startup with another vendor who has some great experience making iOS apps and our client was a TV network. We offered full streaming episodes in the app. Like you'd imagine, the network wanted to protect the streams so nobody can steal the content. So, we encrypted the streams and had an authentication mechanism (which Apple recommends anyway)

Come launch time, the app was solid, clients were happy and we submitted to Apple.

Rejection #1: You must have low bitrate audio only streams for the content.

WTF? Who wants to watch audio only TV? Oh well. Added a new encoding profile.

Rejection #2: You must have low bitrate audio only streams for the content.

What? We did that. We had back and forth with Apple for months. Stakeholders are getting pissed off. One of the higher ups steps in who apparently has enough clout to reach out to a real person at Apple.

The real reason for the rejection was that they watched what streaming URLs were being loaded, tried them out and they didn't work. Yah, they didn't work for them because they were encrypted/protected. As a result we got a form letter rejection complaining about the lack of a low bitrate stream
Blame is not exclusive. In a chain of idiocy, you can point fingers at every idiot.

Hate the player and the game. Without players, there is no game.
Can you elaborate on specifically what made your essay bad?
You can contact your local developer relations person at Apple. We had a crucially timed update get canned because the reviewer missed the notes we included. We contacted dev relations and it was sorted out very quickly.
They probably thought about it and then figured it was easier to deploy globally and satisfy regulatory hurdles by working with MC/Visa. Besides, I am almost certain that whatever "solution" will be priced as an extra premium card and that retailers will have greater processing costs that'll conveniently be sent Apple's way.

After all supporting iOS payments says quality, right?
Yes, you could. We use a remote configuration in our game to adjust the mix of ads from various providers.
Oh, I suppose that could be read either way but given the context you're probably right. Thanks!
A kid? I didn't see a kid. I saw man.

Yeah he called Señor Torvalds out and so what? (using "Señor" here because you used "Mr." vs "a kid").

> What grounds does he have to say something like that to Torvalds?

An open Q/A forum? Are those good enough grounds?

Ok now you tell us why do you think he should not be able to ask that question?
While those are all suggestions that open up good things, I'd like to suggest that you take a minute to think about those from an attacker's perspective. Most of what you suggest comes at a significant cost. Paying that cost might be on balance correct. But there's definitely a security/user-trust cost to implementing these suggestions.
Interestingly I mostly agree with your sentiment but I mostly disagree with your examples. There are plenty of examples of apps that are much much worse than those shown. the flappy clone isn't great but it could be worse. the other all have thousands of reviews with an average of 4 star. just because you aren't impressed with the graphics doesn't mean those shouldn't have been approved.

there are far far worse examples that could have been used, most of them never got into the top 10 in the store though. the fact that he had another popular app doesn't mean people are just going to click on the ads and automatically install their other apps. clearly you haven't advertised mobile apps before. it's not just trivial to drive that many installs even for good apps. doing it for terrible apps would be impossible unless you are using bots.
> But more importantly, I hope this type of cheating leads universities to change their selection processes so applicants don't have to play this second-guessing game.

Well-heeled parents who dote on their children, and who regard a college education as an absolute must, represent a formidable natural force to be reckoned with. They will always think of a way to see their children treated with favor. "I'm donating ¥100,000,000 for your library. Oh, by the way, have you met my son?"

> That they actually give weigh to the application essay shows they're not making a fair decisions.

"give weigh"?
China’s Online Black Market – Part III: Underground Android App Distribution
I thought about this long and hard because I really don't want it to be true. A lot of states fund prized "math and science" and magnate high schools, and those usually try to represent the demographics of the state. Then I looked up one of the most famous of such high schools and saw the black student population is less than 2%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_High_School_fo...
dawsonc
Considering the importance of not crashing, both literally and figuratively, I can understand the need for that heavy of a software process. Isn't this par for the course in high CMMI [1] [2] organizations? I don't really know much about this side of engineering, but I find it fascinating.

Thanks for sharing the anecdote with us. :)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model_Integ...

[2] http://boeing.mediaroom.com/2011-10-26-Boeing-Huntsville-Sit...
Strange to see this (currently) heavily down voted. It's a great summary of the hollowness of the article.
I know plenty of people who feel like they have a good balance between money and satisfaction with what they're doing.

Indeed, I think it's a lot easier to be financially successful doing something that you find energizing rather than soul-sucking.

I do believe, though, that you are unlikely to get maximum dollars and maximum joy from the same job. Many terrible jobs pay more because they have to. E.g., I used to work in finance, which was lucrative but awful. Whereas many nonprofits get great people at relatively modest salaries because they are, in effect, paying people in meaning. So a lot of the people I know who are happy with both their jobs and their paychecks do it by living more modestly than they could if they were only about the benjamins.
Great points!! I just did a coursera course, learning how to learn, in which the professor emphasized some of these points. I have started using the Anki software and has helped me.

https://class.coursera.org/learning-001/lecture
Hey, I visited your game website http://thespatials.com/ and it started blasting audio automatically. Some consider this an anti-pattern!

The info on mission scripting is really good though!
Why Choose Deep Learning?
There's a relevant Programmers.SE post on this ...

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/153266/what-o...

According to comments there, some modern aircraft run an RTOS (real time operating system) on top of the bare hardware, which then lets you run Ada or C code. Those mentioned include VxWorks[1] for the Boeing 787 and Integrity[2] used by the Airbus A380.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VxWorks

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_(operating_system)
Anyone who has been to a high end business school will not be surprised by this in the slightest. Chinese (and others - lets not pick on the Chinese alone here) students who can't speak English, and yet were scoring 700+ on the GMAT are a dime a dozen. Everyone knows it, including the admissions departments - but they're under orders to increase the "international" percentage of the student body lest they get painted as "too waspy". It's a racket.
Yeah, I can't imagine the QA process for, say, the satellite industry.
I have a 1998 Honda Civic Sedan which other than an oil change and tuneup, has been running fine. More than once people have asked me if I was interested in selling it most likely due to how reliable these cars are.
She only charges $400?! That's crazy. What Ivy leagure candidate COULDN'T afford that? At those prices I'm surprised anyone writes their own letters.
WTF? Did you even read the article?

http://cl.ly/image/0e2Q3m0o2P1I
apple doesn't care what your ads are. they care that you don't use the ad identifier for things that aren't ads. nothing to do with being a "nefarious ad machine"
But then the students are still partitioned among those that needs to have elite grades to get in and those that can pay their way. Either it is a fair system or it is not -- there is no middle ground.

80% of American households earn less than $100k and if 80% of the students got their education for free that wouldn't work out well for the universities.
As far as I'm concerned, when there are more downvotes than comments attached to a given post, something's fishy -- it could mean an attempt to suppress a particular outlook by underhanded means, like multiple HN accounts controlled by one person, each account with enough karma to begin downvoting in earnest.

EDIT: boys and girls, it's another example of self-reference!
> Uber proper is priced for people who are used to driving their BMWs or hiring limousines but don't want to this time.

I've taken a few black cars not because I'm into limousines that much, but because of airport regulations, and the ride is typically within the range of the cab. Cab drivers in the US also expect to be tipped in 10-20% range, which leaves Uber black car service frequently a winner price-wise.
Convert DVDs for Kindle Fire
Questioning the Hawthorne effect (2009)
> A lot of states fund prized "math and science" and magnate [sic] high schools

Magnate : a person of rank, power, influence, or distinction often in a specified area

Magnet : a piece of material (such as iron or steel) that is able to attract certain metals
Moscow given a one-week deadline to stop its intervention in Ukraine
OpenBazaar Beta 1.0 Release (P2P ECommerce Platform)
A guy who took me to the airport last week said Uber kicked his friend out of UberX after the rating fell below 4.4.

Their flow for reporting bad experiences is categorized, so I'd imagine "unsafe driving" is weighed more than "car smell".
Scalable, reliable Postgres is absolutely possible. This comment is unfounded.

If you truly need reliability, of course you'll have to invest some time into setting it up. If this isn't something you're interested in, just go with a hosted postgres instance like Heroku.
> There were a few years where tuition+room+board for my sister and I was more than their after-tax income

I don't know anything about CMU's financial aid system, but in the Ivies, this situation certainly would not have occurred.
i have been rejected a large number of times for things not on that list that were also nearly always not true. i've appealed and won at least double digit rejections for various apps over the 4 years i've had apps on the store. I think i've had 4-5 updates rejected just in the last 6 months that i've subsequently gotten approved through appeal.

lots of different things but an example:
paraphrasing - "you included the audio in background setting but don't play audio in the background so we are rejecting the app"

first off, who cares if i included a setting but didn't make use of it? second, i did in fact make use of it. there was simply a setting for a certain feature that could be either on or off.
Nevermind one company keeping detailed maps of where and when you have been everywhere in the world (in addition to Apple and Google)
> 80% of American households earn less than $100k and if 80% of the students got their education for free that wouldn't work out well for the universities.

Actually, it would work out just fine (for top-tier universities). They can easily survive on the investment returns from their endowments, along with donations from wealthy alumni.