skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
1. People find me. A combination of Google juice (I occasionally blog about iPhone development), and people (ab)using the "support contact" for my apps in the store. I've never (except when I had just started) actually had to approach anyone. Random point sample: I've gotten two e-mails so far from people who have read my comments on this post. It's a developer's market.

2. I don't talk about clients' numbers for obvious reasons. I'm not really sure how to elaborate. Can you elaborate on your question?

The figure I gave above is for a generic niche app that does a useful computation for those in a particular profession with no marketing budget. There are a lot of people who say to themselves "I'm a doctor, and I want an app that does X" where X is something doctors do. That is, the primary audience is the client. In cases like this, the marketing budget is 0 and the client's focus is to make a little extra income, but his day job is being a doctor, and making his own life easier. If he makes his investment back in a year, he's happy, and has 3-4 years or however long the lifecycle is of pure profit.

Other times you have people who use iPhone apps as a loss-leader (online ordering, etc.) for their real business. I have no way of tracking the "success" of this, but anecdotally the proposals are like 25% of the market.

The "startup" case--where somebody quits his job to develop the killer iPhone app--is actually not that prevalent (except on HN). 90% of these people are those flakey guys who "have a killer idea" that reduces to "Facebook for X" or "Let's make a CSI-enchance button for the iPhone camera." There are other problems too, that basically reduce to not having thought things through or not knowing what they're doing. The remaining 10% are legit, but it's work to separate them from the flakey people, and meanwhile I've got unsurmountable piles of Type A and Type B people's proposals in my inbox.
It seems to me that the eyebar was not designed correctly - it has a stress concentration point exactly where it cracked. (If you can visualize the forces acting on it, and then take the derivative you'll see the inflection point. It's important that the derivative of the forces be smooth.)

If I were making one, I'd make it in a tear shape. i.e. the shape you would get if you wrapped a rope halfway around a bar and pulled on it.

Interestingly the outside of the eyebar is (almost) the right shape. Someone filled in the inside to make it a circle. This is a mistake - the skin of metal is much stronger than the inside (that's one of the reasons cables are made of many many strands). By filling it in you are not making it stronger - you make it weaker, because now you have less skin on the inside, and additionally you have a stress concentration point.
I'm excited about the Droid. It looks good and it seems like it runs pretty well. It's the first non-iPhone that I've looked at and kinda thought "I would not mind one of those."

However, not to bring the mood down or anything, but do you guys remember the hype around the Pre at CES in January?

Yeah. I really hope the Droid doesn't pull a Pre. Because I really want this phone to succeed.
self link, but i keep a tumblelog of new artists i find around the internets: http://lowart.unstoppable.org.
Flagged. This is way off topic.
I agree the marginal improvement may not be worth the effort.The web application I alluded to would offer this "content valuing" service to a community. It's actually on our wish list and not the main value-add of the offering
COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS!

I sort of feel like the internet is as close as we get to it now, with Twitter and other microblogging services bringing us a step closer. But really, I want full-on instant telepathic communication with anyone. Cell phones don't cut it. Gone would be the days of humming a tune in your head, whose name you do not know, only to realize you cannot emulate those noises with your mouth. Good luck finding out who plays that song. If everyone could read everyone else's thoughts, you'd just hum the tune in your head and the name would come to you right away.

I don't think we're good enough with gen. prog. right now to do anything useful or safe with it. GM crops seems to have negative health and environment effects. When we can open up notepad and write the ooDNA code for my new pet mini-liger, then we could probably start programming our food.

Also, I kind of think we need a new form of math. While maths currently describe our universe well, I think it is overly complex and non-intuitive. This leads me to believe that we could create a simpler language, one that builds off itself -- like a programming language which is built from AND, NOT, OR -- which is naturally recursive like the universe. These days you have to build an entire framework to encompass your latest quantum theory.
Cool projects pay less than boring ones, and at this particular stage in life I want to work on cool things.

I'm also very selective about clients and I prefer working with very reliable people. I might raise rates on somebody new, but I haven't taken on any new clients in... at least 6 months; there's plenty of work to do for the existing ones.
If the Droid didn't have a physical keyboard, I would strongly consider getting one.

To me, the physical keyboard is just a burden that adds thickness and weight.

Aside from that, the Droid looks fantastic and is the first iPhone alternative to make me think about switching.
> You can combine subway, bus and bike.

You can do the same thing (though not quite as convenient) with a folding bike.

They could put a plan in place to offer incentives for people to buy some standard folding bicycle. Folders are expensive because there aren't too many produced and because they need to be fairly light, however, mass-produced they shouldn't be too expensive.
The programming world is like this too, only worse

Much worse. I think the problem is magnified by our obsession with languages - overlapping subsets of syntax features that have highly intricate relationships with programming techniques (making certain techniques easier to implement, others-harder, regardless of problem domain).
I am not a developer but I have hired a couple to develop apps on my behalf. I think $60/hour is a reasonable rate and I have no trouble (psychologically) paying that. When I see someone charging $40 my first thought is to assume he is either a college student or an indian (i dont mean that offensively). When it comes to development, price is indicative of quality (at least someone on the "buy" side like myself thinks so).

That being said, I think you will find it difficult to go around charging $125 an hour unless you are damn good. When I hire someone at $100 an hour (which I currently have), I know I am getting a guru. Your price should be indicative of your level of expertise. Your clients will find out sooner rather than later if you arent worth what they are paying you and that isnt good for anyone.
See, if I were to watch this website on my crummy 1024x768 LCD the font would be positively huge :)
The NYT's book review of a Rand biography seems to be little more than a tedious, sermonizing, simplistic, and unconvincing ad hominem against Rand herself. This is what qualifies as journalism these days?
Kevin did those benchmarks (as I watched) on a single MBP using the Ruby client, specifically Ezra Zygmuntowicz's benchmark script. I would definitely consider his numbers circumstantial, but also the bottom end of what's possible considering the fact that it's a laptop and the performance characteristics of Ruby.
I've had a difficult time getting into either Clojure or Scala - bought a book on each, and had fun playing, but neither language felt great to me. I am stuck on (J)Ruby, Common Lisp, and Java when I need it.

BTW, Kenny is about as close to a "pure Common Lisp" purist as you can get. I worked with him for about half a year - cool guy,and very much focused on Lisp.
I was figuring that it such orderliness, cleanliness and safety might be a characteristic of small Germanic cities - a category into which Berlin would not fit.

Perhaps I am wrong about that.
Profile Of The Spam King, Who Now Owes $700 Million
That plaintext site is PR 6 of 10, so apparently Google likes it.
Pocket touch screen devices.

I want cheap, low-functionality touch screen devices. Like, an iPhone, but with only a calculator, a dictionary/thesaurus, and some other useful but simple applications (text reader/editor, todo list, etc).

Or how about an open-development touch screen device? Where programmers can create their own applications for it easily?
I found:

<META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Adobe PageMill 2.0 Win">

Edit:

According to Wikipedia that dates back to 1997:

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

At the time one review of Adobe PageMill 2.0 said that it "adds more features than I have fingers and toes… PageMill with its tables, frames, graphics, and support for form interfaces, makes it easy to lay out a page"
International Domain Names Are Coming In 2010
Some of us out there are starting to get worried, yes, and thinking about how we can pull out of the google monopoly. I've started trying out other searches and I'm trying to find a good way to transfer my email right now.
Here are a couple that came to mind:

1) Constructive feedback -- I want more, now :)

2) Web UI technologies -- progress, but at a snail's pace

3) Web APIs -- bring down those "walls"

4) Internet-driven TV apps -- why not?
Deja Vu Sans Mono is highly superior to all the mentioned fonts there.

?? It's number 3 on the list.
it seams you want someone to create a language that you could use to create itself. where it could be modified on the fly. where the syntax used to describe data would also be interchangeable with the syntax of the code.

(in 'tongue 'cheek)

> t

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_(programming_language)
Really not sure what to think about this, I have been following this news for a while now and I don't know how to feel about it.

On one hand, yes, I agree wholeheartedly that the Internet needs a more international growth. There are more than just latin alphabets out there and we should respect those and add them.

But, on the flip side, I am scared about the organization. The internet might get really cluttered. ICANN's going crazy and also planning to just open up any domain extension for registration (.hany, .kloncks, .mash, etc). I, like many others, question their intentions. Do they just want to make money?

What I would like to know is if this move will impact mainstream websites or really just local sites. Because in that case, it shouldn't disturb our organization and instead add value to the internet in areas with non-latin alphabets.

Share your thoughts please :)
FarmVille Halloween: 4 Sheep and 1 goat trick or treat on my street
Wow, seriously?

I don't get how such popular websites (Drudge, Craigs) can be so underdeveloped. It almost seems like they don't deserve their amount of success.
Well, some percentage of the "can get away with being uninsured" demographic actually can't ... they just don't know it yet. In those cases, I'd imagine the impact on the startup of the uninsured founder is very negative. But I understand that those cases might be rare enough with YC's target demographic that it isn't worth the time / effort to prevent them.

That being said, as someone who isn't in that demographic (but is thinking seriously about a startup), the soft "can get away with being uninsured / or can juggle health insurance on top of everything else" is personally frustrating (and was what inspired my comments above). For me, it would be a reason not to try the YC route (to be weighed against the reasons to try it, of course).
Probably one of the most promising ideas that has lost much of its meaning....We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
This looks pretty similar to Google Squared.
I sort of agree with you, but I would only up vote to show that the topic / comment was interesting, even if I did not agree with it . Up/down voting because i agree or disagree is arrogant. If it makes people feel better, bully for them.
The danger is that a group of people will upvote a perspective and alienate alternative points of view from a thread. This creates a narrow minded culture and prevents interesting discussions. Ideally there is no point posing to a thread you agree with if you have no content to add.
Definitely: radio is the killer app that will save Nokia.
Are you "that" friend? What are the chances?
I've done apps for less then 5k.

Depending on art, etc, they are 3-40k for most apps, and more for more advanced stuff.
Capitalism-driven legislation. Particularly the taxation of negative externalities.
Bandwidth as a constitutional right in addition to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
Do you really believe that? Are you really so blind to all the progress since 1788?
There's no snow to shovel in Silicon Valley. Does that matter? Hell, yeah.
Amazon EC2 Origins
It fits the needs of the company, with a minimum of visual noise. How is this "underdeveloped?"
Why does it require installation?
Do they know that YouTube is available for years already?
How is math not intuitive? Where is it needlessly complex? How is math not already "naturally recursive"? (What does that mean?) How is the universe naturally recursive? What does it mean to "build math off itself"? Are we not doing that already? I think you are complaining about math and then proposing that we build math back up exactly as it is now.
"Cut down on long footnotes and long block quotes. Because block quotes and footnotes count toward the type volume limit, these devices do not affect the length of the allowable presentation. Note: Does not apply to House of Leaves."
In my opinion, Scala and Clojure aren't new "kings", they're hybrid languages: bridges from the old paradigm to the new one, the same way C++ was around 2 decades ago. That's why the "tail wags the dog" and sitting on top of the Java runtime (or .NET for the Microsoft world) is what matters first.

That doesn't mean they won't have longevity and staying power (see: C++), but they aren't the "kings", the Java runtime is (the same way C is for C++). If you're looking for a new "king" you need to be looking for a language/platform that is as different from the JRE as the JRE is from C. I don't think we know what that would be yet (or why we'd invest the effort in that transition).
Linus views open source, or at least the kernel, as guided evolution
Hi, I'm the co-founder of Get Apps Done. The site is still pretty young, but we get a few new job listings everyday. Let me know if you have any other questions about the site.
And a way to reach me is:

iphoneappsiphoneapps at gee mail dawt com.
If I could just get 0.001% of that market, I'd be set for life! ;-)
dupe - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=913137 ;)

good job adding date to make it past the darn HN URL checker.
About collective consciousness,something like the WebBot[1] project uses it fairly well.I hear it uses the collective consciousness to predict <dramatic sound>The FUTURE</dramatic sound>

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Bot
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not guaranteed anywhere in the Constitution. Those three are a rhetorical flourish in the Declaration of Independence, and do not create enforceable legal rights for Americans. The Constitution guarantees enforceable negative rights, for example, it forbids the government from killing (or otherwise punishing) you without due process of law.

The Constitution, by design, doesn't establish positive rights. An example of a positive right is "You have the right to an education."

Positive rights suffer from implementation issues, expanding government creep as pressure groups suffer rights-envy, and the generic problems associated with state-provided services.

An example of an implementation issue: the Japanese Constitution guarantees that "All people shall have the right to receive an equal education correspondent to their ability, as provided for by law." This has been interpreted as making it unconstitutional to remove students from mainstream classrooms, regardless of behavioral disability or a distressing propensity to stab teachers in the neck.

An example of rights-envy: Once you have one positive right, every pressure group under the sun will want their own mandate. The argument will sound something like this: "The constitution guarantees bandwidth, food to eat is a lot more important than bandwidth, the constitution should guarantee food, too." Other favorites for expansion are health care, education, and sexual services. (Oh, Europe, what a continent.)

The American political consensus is that positive rights are not desirable at the federal constitutional level.
Its the price we pay to be able to listen to mp3s whilst GPS navigating in the car!

Or leaving my SSH session open while replying to a tweet and checking a website.

My point: until a super-fast android is released, would you rather have things slow but the ability to multitask, or fast but no multitasking at all?
Upvoted because I agree with you.
"insure" domestic "Tranquility"?
Nice comment; though, I think the OP was just comedically endorsing Net Neutrality, which, iirc, asserts a negative right.
Who loves Windows 7?
I installed Windows 7 and couldn't be more impressed with it. Seamless and painless installation. As a diehard Mac user, I could live with Windows 7. Who is with me?
Up to a point... http://www.angelfire.com/super/badwebs/

(warning: autoplay music)
Math isn't NOT intuitive as far as math itself goes. It happens to be a very nice language. I tend to think that relativity and quantum mechanics do not mesh well because of the language we use to describe them. While standard maths is NP complete, it does not seem to inherently describe the universe without getting all crazy complex. I encourage you to try and comprehend even some of the simplest M-Theory equations. (not saying I do, but if math was really the language of the universe m-theory equations would be quite simple).

You know how in science and math people describe certain things as 'elegant' ? For example, E=mc^2 is very elegant. If math were elegant, you could get from here (higgs bosons) to there (atoms) with a simple equation which has been recursed x times to produce a mathematical model of an atom.

Math isn't bad, it's quite useful in fact. It's just not the natural language of the universe like everyone thinks it is.
there's not enough going on with 10 Foot Interface advancements. Boxee and XBMC rock, but a lot is happening and about to happen in this space. What's possible today was not possible 18 months ago whether it be hardware OR software. Boxee already has 600k users and that's with their alpha. I'd love to see hayzap or a casual games developer launch something on their platform. With that said, seeing more sites have a "10 foot interface" alternative, just like they have a gui for mobile devices would be great.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10-foot_user_interface
I'm a little confused, isn't QNX an operating system focused on embedded systems? I would expect it would probably lag behind in desktop apps because of focus and small user base.
Of course I see progress, but the question was "what idea hasn't been taken far enough."
I think the purpose of this application is to teach the theory of relativity and show what it would feel like if matter (the space ship) could travel at the speed of light. Of course the only way to do this is if the speed of light was slower, and not the max speed of the universe. I guess you'll get to see how buildings will compress, and time will slow down.

I just happened to be on Windows 7 64 bit on boot camp on my mac and it didn't work. Required some dll file called d3dx9_37.dll. So I downloaded it and put it into windows system folder and it ran.

It's pretty trippy. It's like at 3d game where you control a spacecraft except when you start moving forward it's like you're on drugs.
The same could have been said about Apple in 1995. The CEO can bring focus or can allow the turf war.
stealing - reminds me of this video showing indifference in NYC (even with cops in sight).(substitute NYC with any major city)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbklkFuFk-4
The interface should provide two ways to vote: one for relevance (value) and the other for agreement/disagreement.
Novell has been in trouble for quite a few years.

Ever since they bought Suse and Ximian they've just been lost. Part of that you can lay directly at the executives that came with the acquisitions. The open source side of the business is schizophrenic. With Miguel De Icaza building a clone of every new fad microsoft technology that comes along.

Not a fantastic way to build a solid, durable business.
I've ruined a battery by keeping it in my laptop, when it's plugged into the wall at my desk, letting it get very hot for several hours a day.

It's a small price to pay for the convenience of being able unplug my laptop and go elsewhere without fussing about.
Functional programming.

I really like it when my computer crashes because someone decided that checking whether or not "-5435" was a valid array index was "too time consuming". Wait, I hate that. I have 4 cores that are idle 99% of the time. Let the computer do some self-checks that will keep my data intact.

(Read the ext3 source code some time and tell yourself that you trust important data to it. The only reason it works at all is because everyone has already been burned by the most obvious bugs.)
Even though I knew what I was looking for, I didn't see the bear the first time! (I was still trying to keep track of the passes.) I find I tend to be good at tuning out distractions when I'm reading or making something (either physically or on the computer). I wonder if people who see the bear/gorilla are more easily distracted than those who miss it.
Net Neutrality isn't a negative right. If you own a network, net neutrality takes away from your ability to use it as you see fit; if you want, for whatever reason, to dick around with your customers and block Craigslist, you should be able to do so -- just like a newspaper can refuse to run an ad, or even refuse to write about a story.
Me too. I did "set-buffer-face" to "variable-pitch".
The content dates back to that time. Check the Chairman's Letters and Annual Reports.
It's not HN until someone corrects you with facts.

I admit I wasn't clear that L,L,PofH was guaranteed anywhere in the constitution.

But with my one-liner, the point I hoped to get across was that I do think that it should be extended to access to the web and its information, as it becomes more ubiquitous and integrated in our lives. I named it "bandwidth" mostly as a remark to how I wished I had more of it.
I actually prefer BH's website to any corporate site I have seen. everything is there, is easy to find and there are no pictures cluttering the screen.
I think he meant "radio" as in the GSM module.
Congrats if you truly get that rate for every hour you work on multi-month projects.

I'm currently making apps for Disney and I price total projects based on a detailed spec (not hourly), but when you figure actual hours worked, I don't charge anywhere close to this rate.

Do you really not stay up until 4 am polishing the app even when you're over budget?
Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem of Hell
Ending world hunger. Children Education. Peace.
Hirst isn't as bad as people say he is. It's an instance where people don't understand something and take it out by claiming hatred.
I thought that's what you meant when you said "unlocked".