skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Release app as is even if only for Android?
After several months of hard work, moonlighting in the late hours after a 9-9 schedule (Japanese firm), I've reached a goal I set for app development, which has been done using Parse for backend, AWS for data, and Android for mobile client.

In the near future, 3 months to 1 year, I plan for the following technical developments:

-Swap Parse for a custom backend for cheaper operation (let me know if you have good replacements)

-Develop app for iOS environent (no experience here whatsoever, being in Windowsland)

-Develop webapp for "the web"

-Hit MechanicalTurk (and related services) for content.

Given my current progress, and my target goal of hitting all significant mobile and web environments, what do I do from here?? As a complete noob to startups, I am in a bit of an analysis paralysis. I want to release an MVP, but also don't want to reveal it too soon. I have validated the app concepts to family, friends, and coworkers to very good reception, so I'm not entirely worried it will be a complete flop, but I'm not going to make any claims that it will be a huge hit either. But if the app is a hit ( so I'm biased ), then I feel like releasing it now would be a strategic... something. I see 2 options and their related outcomes:

1. Release for android first.

-Get initial customer feedback for the entire concept.

-If concept fails, then I won't waste time on the idea.

-Earn some money while continue working on the other targets

-Risk of concept taking off, clones overtake me by being better/faster, especially with regards to iOS space, where there is the most money to be made according to popular belief.

2. Continue developing until I hit all target items, then release

-Have app presence on all significant mobile platforms

-If app becomes popular, potential users will not be prevented by lack of choice.

What advice would you have for a poor bootstrapper. Any advice is welcome, I would appreciate any guidance on this.
You don't have any knowledge at all about Tim or Jony's feelings towards developers that the rest of us don't have.

Some counterpoints:

Why does apple keep investing in APIs for developers who they don't care about

Why did Tim make a speech on stage at WWDC about how much they care about Developers. You seem to be directly accusing him of being a liar.

Now, I actually agree with almost all of the linked post, and I am an iOS and Mac developer myself.

Software has been devalued by the advertising supported models of the Internet changing people's expectations. That's the root problem, and it wasn't Apple's doing

Could Apple do more to combat this? Yes, I think they could, and should, and I hope they will. But as long as you have their largest competitors doing everything they can to devalue software, you can't complain that Apple should be making sure their customers have to pay more.

Let's also face another hard truth. There is a lot of software that just isn't that valuable. People are willing to pay money for things that a) make their life feel better, b) save them money, or c) help them make money. The vast majority of apps just don't do any of these things well enough to be worthwhile.

If anything, consumers are spending too much money on worthless software.
Please stop.. Don't do things this way. This is like jquery monkey patch hell..
Show HN: Clippy – tool for generating CSS clip-paths
Neat idea, I'm sure you are violating fair use - but it is a neat little mashup of scrapers and text-to-speech.

I won't ever use it though. I have a bookmark for cleaning up pages.
> or ask for a second one if you don't like the first

That's actually very common, especially in states where you only have to pay for what you eat, so restaurants are all to happy to replace your meal if you don't like it.

That being said, I understand why you are doing it the way you're doing it, thanks to your explanation. As for the price, I don't think it's the price that people would balk at, but rather, the principle - the fact that they can flat out lose their money based on someone else's whim.

I think that if you figure out how to give them something for their money when a date falls through, then it would just make people feel better. I don't know what that could be though, so I'll leave it to you.

While I'm here, I'll add my vote to get rid of the Facebook requirement. I'm very single and ready to mingle, but I don't do social media.
Thanks for responding, but you didn't read my second question.

2) If you don't provide a good match (i.e.) one that wants to meet me, you should provide another match.

If I don't want to meet them, that's fine.

If they don't want to meet me, then I paid you $20 for nothing (besides being rejected).

If you don't think you can provide me a match that will want to meet me, you shouldn't take my $20.
Cab-Hailing App Hailo to Cease North American Operations
Cubes Challenge: Optical Illusion Game
Shellshock / Bash Bug: Solution and Answers
I don't think it translates any content, it just internationalizes the code so you can utilize separate translations (and numbering format, etc).
The risk of sickness, in these cases, can be a serious concern. My next door neighbor was a hoarder, or so the neighborhood found out upon his death. He was allowing wild animals to live in his house; along with a dog that was located in the mess almost a week after he died.

His nephew, who ended up taking care of the cleaning and refinishing, told me he contracted Toxoplasmosis from the accumulated animal feces. I accidentally let that fact slip to the first cleaning crew that was working in the house (without masks) and I didn't see them return after that.
Thanks Meerko, right on point.

The more people using your service, the less work for each matchmaker. Most premium matchmakers spend most of their time recruiting. We don't need to do that since we have so many users. We also have a lot of technology that automates the non-personal stuff, like sorting through age, height, etc.

In terms of knowing what people are looking for - we met our first few thousand users and arranged a few thousand dates by hand. We learned a lot about what matters, and what doesn't - for instance, how active people are tends to matter a lot more than their political preferences. I hate to pull the whole 'proprietary' card, but we're not very public about how we match beyond that .. will try to add more info to the site soon.
Exactly my point! I've always wondered why journos give the wrong advice to people and why people stupidly trust them and not a technical authority on the subject. At the end of the day, all companies now reset passwords if necessary, so, people should wait for the companies to tell them what to do, and not some journo in the business of clickbaiting and scaremongering.
That you can't type it isn't an argument against types, but that you can't type it and that's perfectly fine with you suggests you don't actually think types are that important.
Thanks to the YC crew, speakers, and attendees for putting together an inspiring event!

Startup School TLDR; "Focus on product"
Easy Way Download iOS 8.0.2 Cydia and Jailbreak iOS 8.1 Cydia Coming Soon
I'm glad they're charging money at least. It's nice to see a startup focus on revenues for a change.
How to Get Mobile Game Downloads with Little Marketing
Thank you for writing this explanation - I think the presentation of this idea needs to be clearer (and pitched as a positive thing). Bring the humanity aspect back to the online matchmaking service experience.
It's not "spamming", it's Growth Hacking ™.
Sandworm: Do Vulnerabilities Need a Logo and Marketing Campaign
The company incentives aren't aligned with the user incentives. It is in the company's best interest to keep dinging people for $20/mo indefinitely and not having them match, but dangling the prospect of one (eg near misses). See the allegations against match for fake/zombie profiles.

It is in the user's interest to pay their money, 20 seconds later get a perfect match that works out, and never use the service again.

Restaurants are not a good analogy. There are many to choose from, you can leave at any point in a meal, it is a well defined product, there are numerous reviews, you can browse the menus beforehand etc.

It would be far more interesting if you could find a way to get paid on success, and not much on failure.
Justworks Raises $6M to Help Businesses Handle Employee Benefits
I'm a dev who has spent many years closing largish deals, and the best thing I've ever read on the subject is "Spin Selling" by Neil Rackham. The focus is on the difference between closing 6 figure deals vs smaller deals and closing deals within organisations as opposed to selling to individuals. http://www.amazon.com/SPIN-Selling-Neil-Rackham/dp/007051113...

It's also the only sales book I've read that actually measures the results of its advice, which might make it especially relevant to technical people.
Sure sounds like steve jobs. Look what happened to him.
Ask HN: We are running a contest, can you share your thoughts?
Let me start by briefly introducing our app. Arima is a Q&A site for Mass Opinion. Unlike traditional Q&A sites like Quora or Yahoo Answers, which focus on expert advice, we focus on mass opinion and try to help users to aggregate data and visualize data submitted by others all around the global. In a simple sentence, think of us as Quora for Numbers. Please have look at http://arima.io

We are running a contest called 30 Days for 30 Prizes (http://insights.arima.io/post/99188609271/arimas-social-contest-30-days-for-30-prizes). Anyone here has experience running contests and would like to share their stories? Or would like to help us spread the words? Thanks!
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=war+in+the+womb#!/story/forever/0/...
I've never understood why people put up with the ridiculous fees banks are charging these days. My credit union charges me one $5 fee per year, and I have checking, savings, overdraft protection, an ATM Visa check-card, Visa credit card, a free bill-pay service, and a smartphone app that can do mobile check deposits. Plus, my mortgage rate is lower than any local bank offered.

All local credit unions share each other's fee-free ATMs, and I still have several nearby branches I can visit when I need a real person. In addition, they are rapidly growing not in spite of these consumer-friendly practices, but because of them.

Why would anyone choose a Wall Street bank other than for something gimmicky like a rewards credit card or non-traditional loan?
Ah, correct. I meant to say also that we used to send people on dates for $20, and the few times people had bad times, they said they would have rather paid $20 not to go. So it's better to spend $20 and not waste time, than it is to spend $20 and go on a date that you know instantly isn't a good fit.

[1] We should explain this better, but when you sign up, you'll see you can tell your matchmaker a lot more about yourself, and we use feedback from each match / date to improve matches. Plus, of course, we're using all of the research we've collected on what makes people compatible. So it's definitely off of more than just a profile, but I get what you're saying.
> The "astronomical marketing spend required to compete," Barr says, which makes "profitability for any one player almost impossible."

One less in the race with Uber, Lyft, et al.
People who still hate on IE are living in the past. Its been many years since the "fuck the web" days of Microsoft.
I do have an amp, a giant amp, point is I want to make the speakers portable and add bluetooth streaming.
Nanyang Tech. University: ultra-fast charging batteries: up to 70% in 2 min
Three Tips for Choosing the Right Fitness Clothing
I just played the demos in Chrome on the website and they run really well, except Dustforce which has a warning on it about only working well in Firefox.
Animals – GBRMPA
They're a repressed memory from a less austere time.
Not that this takes away anything from this generous philanthropic gesture, but this happens to coincide with Zuckerberg's recent purchase of a large portion of a Hawaiian island that certain reports say cost more than $100MM: http://mashable.com/2014/09/29/zuckerberg-hawaii/
http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-buys-700-acre...
If someone can suggest a more neutral and accurate version of the story, we can change the URL.
Toughest Adversity Follow-up
I've heard (anecdata alert!) that some men get frustrated and will start sending out "form messages" because they will take the time to craft meaningful messages only to get no reply

This was documented on the old OKCupid blog. I think the post was taken down after Match bought them.

Men grow frustrated and get tired of wasting their time, so they stop sending in-depth messages. Women are then even less likely to respond, which ultimately sends men into a downward spiral of desperation.
Our employees don't have fake profiles on OkCupid, although the Premium Matchmakers do occasionally use their real profiles if they find someone that is exceptionally good for one of their clients. This is a pretty common practice overall in the matchmaking industry - do whatever it takes to find a good match for clients who are paying you a good amount of money for the search.

We do our best to not spam and inspire trust by being available 24/7 to answer questions and personally interact with users. At the same time, we're constantly trying to grow so that we can provide the best matches. It's hard! Cut us some slack? No? Because it's HackerNews? Yea, I guess that's okay then.
Loggly Fundamentally Changes Operational Troubleshooting with New Feature
Social Insights that Matter: What needs to be improved
Off topic life advice: When you tell someone to stop doing something, don't start out with the word "Please". It doesn't really make any sense as it's a pleading word used as an order. It comes off passive aggressive and abrasive. Same thing with "I'd really appreciate it if" and "Would you mind". If it really is a simple request, then by all means, but when it's an order or a direct request, just say it without the weird prefix.
A Primer on Contextual Computing
SimAnt (Maxis, 1991) follows this strategy extensively. Ants wander around, dropping different pheromones (food, alarm, ...) and exhibiting surprisingly complex behavior for an RTS of the time.
If anyone wants to try using some of this stuff and not just looking at it, there are a number of schools that study the martial arts described in these manuals. Depending on where you are you can probably find a local(ish) study group or school here:
http://hemaalliance.com/?page_id=686
I run a group just southwest of Portland Oregon (www.nwarmizare.com), and we're one of four local groups all studying different things. We specialize in the techniques of Fiore die Liberi.
thank you for proposal, I was not aware of this interesting deity. But i decided to keep Stalker alive, I believe its name fits better the purpose despite its negative connotation.
I'm not sure, but I used to run the Nightly build on all of my Windows machines in order to use 64-bit Firefox and anecdotally Waterfox does "feel" quite a bit faster. I definitely notice fewer pauses.
> The above is a gross oversimplification, but I don't think its wrong in that

That does seem like a gross oversimplification.

First and foremost, I'd say that there is nothing inherently unique about recourse when a bank goes bankrupt. It's merely based on conventions and contracts. How that works is that there's an insurance corporation, the federal deposit insurance corporation, which insures deposits at banks up to $250k. That's all. Of course, this isn't free. It's costing all of us money, as any insurance does.

What this means is that you can build any type of system and throw an insurance product on top and it'd be no different. There's nothing unique about FDIC.

Of course, we must realize also that FDIC insurance only covers about 1%, at most 2%, of deposits. So it's only really effective when a few banks go bankrupt. A complete systemic meltdown that we were very close to would've made FDIC useless. Fact is, the only reason that didn't happen is because we magically created a trillion dollars out of thin air to create magic demand for toxic assets nobody wanted and were causing imminent bankruptcies. And that, too, comes with a price to ordinary citizens. Nothing special about it, and it's certainly costing us all money.

As for Paypal? It's regulated to death. In some places it's regulated like a bank. In other places it's regulated as a money transmitter, as a money services business, as a non-bank financial institution. All of those carry real regulatory obligations. For example, there's a law where a money services business can't do fractional reserve, i.e. you're by law required to keep 100% of your custodial funds (funds from customers that you hold). There's another requirement that requires you to separate company funds from custodial funds, meaning if your company goes bankrupt, the customer funds are untouched. As for Paypal simply 'taking your money', that's illegal, and you have legal recourse. That may not be perfect, I'm not saying it is, but it's similarly imperfect as when the police seize your funds. In both case you have legal resource, Paypal is not unique in being above the law.

And then lastly, there's surety bonds. So in virtually every state Paypal operates, it needs to hold sufficient surety bonds. That means, literally, insurance. They pay every year some company which insures them, so that if say they go bankrupt or flee the country, this company has a surety bond for the customers to get paid out.

And lastly, a non-legal point, but just a practical one: Paypal is worth a lot of money, the 150m users are worth a lot of money. That doesn't mean they can't go bankrupt, but unless they're knee-deep into complex derivatives they don't understand, like banks the past decade, I'd say the chances of them disappearing with everyone's money is pretty slim. Not saying it won't happen, just saying it wouldn't be a reason for me not ever use Paypal.
How often does a K-12 teacher thank you for coding? Find out at Clever (YC S12)
Steve Jobs described education as one of the final frontiers still untouched by modern technology. Clever (YC S12 - https://clever.com) is building the data platform needed for great software to make its way into the classroom. Just like Stripe has made it simple for developers to build payment processing into their apps, Clever has made it easy for developers to build applications for schools using student data.

We're a small, highly technical team (35 people, 17 engineers) with deep experience in education. In under two years, 1 in 5 schools in America has begun using our APIs, meaning that Clever moves data for eight million students every day.

Our newest project is essentially Facebook Connect for education: one identity to tie together all of a student’s learning applications into a cohesive experience. We’re making that happen with our Instant Login service, which allows students to log in once and immediately get access to all their apps: https://www.edsurge.com/n/2014-05-14-no-more-passwords-cleve...

And while we have all the startup perks (a beautiful loft office in SoMa, free lunch, unlimited Amazon credits for learning..) – hands down the best part of the job are the calls and emails from schools describing how much Clever helps them.

As an education company, we’re all about learning personally too – it’s practically a prerequisite to work here. In the past few weeks we’ve done tech talks on things like exoplanets, set theory, and kitesurfing. (We also love a good round of bughouse chess – just ask Magnus Carlsen http://screencast.com/t/xD7umWfo)

We’re looking for full-stack engineers who can hack in Node, Go, and Python (or are willing to learn), but more importantly, we’re looking for people who share our passion for improving education. If you’re interested, we’d love to hear from you.

https://clever.com/about/jobs

At Clever, we want to work with the best people - applicants of all backgrounds and beliefs are welcome to come improve education with us. We're committed to making our office a safe and comfortable environment for all employees.
At the end of the day, sales matter. Sustainable sales is the result of the loyal and love from your customers for your products and services. That’s why I think insights is ultimately about: identifying what needs to be improved.
I think we can safely infer that we are not referring to medical science from the future.
Also, to clarify, while I did personally message a ton of people during our early days (CEO in her pajamas at 3am doing anything to get a site off the ground) - this is not at all what we do now. Our Premium Matchmakers will contact someone if they have someone they want to set them up on a date with. You're on OkCupid for dates, right? So we're trying to help :)
Get deeper Analytics of any YouTube video & Channel
> This is what Roland Barthes called photography’s “catastrophe,” the photograph’s unique ability to make a viewer “observe with horror an anterior future of which death is the stake.” But this catastrophe is not the brutal performance of an execution. Rather, it is a poignant bruising of the self that occurs while looking at photograph [sic], that dreadful recognition that everyone photographed is dead or will be dead.

Everyone "is dead or will be dead", photographed or otherwise. Presumably it requires a professional philosopher to imagine that there is about this fact something extraordinary, or that there is about its recognition something other than a necessary stage in the transition between infancy and adulthood.
The economist versus the terrorist (2003)
looks really good! started to use one really cool
August’s Smart Lock Goes on Sale Online and at Apple Retail Stores for $250
Yes I agree, his benchmarks seem like mostly fluff to me.
Multicolumn is fine as long as the vertical height is less than the browser window. For long text this is really hard to make work in the browser unless you take over the pagination with javascript. This is not a good example of using multicolumn text.
Two words: Double opt-in.

As simple as it seems, that is the primary driver of the success of Tinder, helped generously by a smart on-campus initial seeding strategy for the customer base.

Every other dating site allows members to contact other members at the initiating member's will. All it takes is a few people with a dearth of tact and an overabundance of time to completely blow up (mostly women's) inboxes.

Basic free-rider problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem
The problem is that women don't use sites where they are in charge and make all the decisions. So you get a catch 22.

(EDIT: Before anyone asks, of course it's been done. HerWay comes to mind. The userbase is miniscule.)
I understand what you are saying, but its always been surprising to me how many folks who use Macs in this era don't. Those that do know there is an alternative to the store often view such items as a perversion of their system. Apps from the store are like old friends and family; there is a certain sense of safety and familiarity. Apps outside the store are treated as strangers, eye contact with such software is not advised.

Conversely, PC users tend to treat all software as guilty until proven innocent, and as a result many of us have developed our own workflow to determine quality and safety.

I guess I've always associated using a PC with a more "trust-yourself" attitude, and Macs with "trust-the-system" attitude. Obviously a lot of this is irrational bias based on a life time of having lived on the other side.