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bombson [dead]

The number I've seen thrown around is that 90% of startups fails. I don't know over time period, what fail means or if it's even factual.

bombson Apple Magic Trackpad

The older Mighty Mouse could be configured to do this by defining the scroll wheel Button 3 under Mouse in System Preferences.

bombson Apple Magic Trackpad

The iPod didn't support Windows when it was released. Maybe Apple are doing the same thing here; I'm sure by not supporting Windows, they're able to get a better product out much quicker.

bombson Why the ExpressionEngine community is good

EE starts at $99.95.

http://expressionengine.com/overview/pricing

bombson Ask HN: Books To Learn Web Design (HTML/CSS/XML/PHP)

I'd recommend SimpleBits's (http://www.simplebits.com/) own books and their reading list at http://astore.amazon.com/simplebits-20.

bombson Peter Norvig's Library

Maybe he's read them all or maybe he's read some. A personal library doesn't mean a collection of books you've read or intend to read; they could simply be points of reference, whether it be the whole book, a chapter, a page or a paragraph.

bombson Ask HN: Anyone know how ICANN works? (gTLD application, 312 pages)

I don't think 312 pages is that long for something as big as a gTLD. I thought there'd be a lot more policy and bureaucracy for introducing new gTLDs.

bombson LightSquared: new national 4G network under construction, no telcos involved

The $8,000 satellites are put into low-earth orbit (160–1,200 km), where as these would require a geosynchronous orbit (35,786 km). The increased mass and orbit requires a lot more lift, i.e. fuel, i.e. money.

bombson Handy Light: Tethering App Camouflaged as Flashlight

The kid's under 18. You need to be 18 or over to sell apps in the App Store, as per the agreement. They could choose to pull his apps, remove his account and not pay him for that reason alone.

bombson Handy Light: Tethering App Camouflaged as Flashlight

It's possible to create a tethering app using public APIs. The APIs for HTTP/HTTPS connectivity and WiFi connectivity are public.

Apple rejects apps that use private APIs.

bombson "Pain gun" gets deployed in Afghanistan

If it was able to penetrate a car body, it'd be a great asset for checkpoints and roadblocks — surely better than live-round warning shots. Do they have those anymore? It'll help in riots and other such things, I'm sure.

It sure is a nice, big target for insurgent RPGs though! I wonder in what ways it'll be protected — even mounted on a heavily armoured vehicle, the dish would be vulnerable to damage, right?

bombson Ask HN: How do I sell a PDF document?

http://www.clickbank.com/

They charge a one-time $49.95 activation fee, 7.5%+$1 for sales and $2.50 payment processing (i.e. $2.50 for them to send you a cheque).

They have affiliate support, so you can run an affiliate program using them and have ClickBank handle paying affiliates.

bombson Ask HN: How do you spend on food?

A _lot_ of fruit, vegetables, oats, chicken and beef.

bombson Ask HN: How do you spend on food?

I follow a strict diet plan, which involves eating the same thing every day. It lets me eat cheaply, because I can buy in bulk. I spend $25 a day.

I eat a lot too, because I like good food. I might eat out every second or third day and spend $100 a meal, including drinks.

I could save money by cutting down on going out, sure, but it's a small price to spend for the enjoyment of the food and the company and the environment.

bombson Founders at work: Interview with Steve Wozniak

definitely one of my main inspirations not only for wanting to make money in software but also to start my own company.

If I remember correctly, Woz didn't want to make money or start his own company!

bombson RIM on Apple's claims of Blackberry Bold signal loss

If the antenna is internal (and invisible) how many would even realise they were affecting it in any way? Apple drew a lot of attention to its antenna, both in terms of design and marketing, so how many people reported problems after deliberately trying to screw with it?

I just made my iPhone 3GS, Blackberry 9700 and Nokia N97 all drop a couple of bars by covering their internal antennas with my palm. I expect this to happen with any phone.

bombson Have you partnered with thieves and robbers?

I bet they're making a lot more money from the technology used to serve the ads via licensing than they are from the ads served in their own games.

bombson A List of Lost Formats

I guess they mean lost in the sense that it has an immediate successor available for its intended use, e.g. BD replacing DVD.

bombson 300 actions a minute? Truly mastering StarCraft

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

bombson Chrome 6: Early peek under the hood

  <!--[if IE 6]>
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="ie6.css" />
  <![endif]-->

The standard way to show a custom stylesheet to IE6 only is to use the IE6 conditional, which is ignored by all browsers except IE6, because it's semantically a comment and other IE browsers will ignore it, because they don't match the version number.

bombson Show HN: Turn scripts from userscripts.org into Safari Extensions

This is great, but I'd love to see a Safari Extension version of GreaseKit [http://8-p.info/greasekit/], which works fine with Safari 5, but is still based on SIMBL.

bombson There Are No Pictures of iPhone 4 on Google Image Search

They start at the end of the first page.

bombson It's too late to worry that the aliens will find us

Detecting this leakage radiation won't be that difficult. Its intensity decreases with the square of the distance, but even if the nearest aliens were 1000 light years away, they would still be able to detect it as long as their antenna technology was a century or two ahead of ours.

How? If radio waves travel at the speed of light and the first radio transmitters were in operation in the late 1800's, this would mean that the transmissions would be no further than 150 light years or so.

There are stars in this range, sure, but I'm interested in how antennas outside of this range might be able to pick up the signal.

bombson Ask HN: Agile - Pros and Cons?

Extreme Programming Refactored: The Case Against XP [http://apress.com/book/view/9781590590966] was a fun book for showing the other side of the XP coin.

It does a good job at critiquing the XP movement (and agile), including some of the examples from Kent Beck's Extreme Programming Explained, e.g. showing how the XP/agile poster-project, the Chrysler C3 payroll system, failed.

It's focused on XP, but many of the points work for other agile methodologies.

bombson Hashrocket execs (not Obie) charged in $425 million mail fraud case

.aspx is to ASP.NET what .php is to PHP and .cfm is to ColdFusion.

bombson Apple letter about iPhone 4

AT&T have a fee-free 30-day cancellation policy [1]. AT&T will refund any activation fees, but you're still liable for any usage fees.

If you cancel after the 30 days, there is an early termination fee of $325.00 (minus $10.00 for each completed month).

[1] http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/specials/iPho...

bombson Apple letter about iPhone 4

I believe that both Apple's letter and AnandTech's review show us that we shouldn't be measuring signal strength (either numerically or with bars).

AnandTech said "That brings me to the way that signal quality should really be reported - Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR)." [1]

I found a good comment on MeFi that discusses the bars' uselessness for CDMA. [2]

[1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2

[2] http://ask.metafilter.com/60227/What-do-cell-phone-reception...

bombson Apple letter about iPhone 4

"As a reminder, if you are not fully satisfied, you can return your undamaged iPhone to any Apple Retail Store or the online Apple Store within 30 days of purchase for a full refund."

This is more pragmatic than bitching on the Internet (I concede a difference between investing and reporting these problems and merely bitching) or class action lawsuits[1]. Vote with your wallet, eh?

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1478105.

bombson Blu-ray apparently isn't coming to Macs

The BD standard also includes support for downloadable and streamable content via BD-Live.