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This should really be viewed in Netscape 1.2 to see the gray background as it was originally intended.

This was one of the most thorough Apple articles I've read in a long, long time. It demonstrated a really strong grasp of the way Apple runs their business and how they decide what information to share and how they share it. The advice was sound and analysts would do well to pay attention to it. Sure, some of it is catering to the types of questions Apple wants to be asked, but the suggestions of asking about security measures and the App Store review system are both within bounds and highly relevant.

gr366on How to raise money without lying to investors

I believe this a a duplicate of this post:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1068029

gr366on A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter

The artist should hook it up to a microblogging service so that it can keep a log of the auction winners. It could be a very exclusive club to be in.

gr366on NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.

I don't suppose this means that subscribers will get a version without banner ads. In the same way that newspapers have historically sold their print version for less than it cost to publish and made their money off print ads and classifieds, I imagine we'll get much the same experience but be paying for it. NYT doesn't want to trade ad revenue for subscriber revenue. They want to augment it.

BUUUUUT, since the internet is a dynamic medium, maybe they could offer a tiered pricing scheme (like every other for-pay web app these days) that includes a no ads option. It should be easy enough: just display the print version of the article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/business/media/21times.htm...

gr366on Ask HN: How viable is it for a programmer to switch to a DVORAK keyboard layout?

I made the switch to Dvorak over a 2-week holiday break just under 10 years ago. I may have eventually boosted my speed marginally, but I can say my hands don't get tired or sore typing for long periods as they did on Qwerty.

The only con I've run into is when I have to use somebody else's computer, like during a presentation in a meeting and I end up basically hunting and pecking on Qwerty. I get looks like, "this guy is a developer?" One time when I explained I was a Dvorak keyboardist, a participant asked if I also spoke Esperanto. (I don't.)

However, I highly recommend the switch just for the brain-remapping experience. Going through the learning process literally feels like a mental rewiring.

gr366on Apple Cofounder Confesses: He Loves the Google Phone

Be sure to read Woz's comment attached to the story, explaining how he still has two iPhones and buys a lot of the newest gadgets.

gr366on Yahoo backs Google's response to China hackers

If they have no action to take, does it really matter what they say? More relevant will be what Microsoft does in response, since Yahoo is basically out of the China search game.

gr366on Yahoo backs Google's response to China hackers

Easy enough to throw your lot in with the one who stood up to the bully first. Especially after you've already handed over your info to the Chinese government.

gr366on Cutting The Cord And The Impact of a PC In Every Living Room

I agree that this is the way things are headed, and I will be all too happy to jump on this bandwagon. The only thing keeping me from cutting the cord (or ditching the dish, in my case) is live sporting events. I'm not a sports fanatic, but I like to be able to turn on a basketball or football game (or even baseball if it's a reeeeally slow day). My house is situated out of line-of-sight from the public TV broadcast towers and I would have a serious beer gut if I went to the local sports bar to watch, so I'm beholden to a TV subscription package.

gr366on [dead]

An amazing story and both sides deserve credit for being able to reunite and reconcile. The article is a bit abrupt in describing how this all got on the BBC, though. I'd be interested to know how it went from Facebook messages to televised reunion.

gr366on Pinboard.in blog - Technical Underpinnings

"A rule of thumb that has worked well for me is that if I'm excited to play around with something, it probably doesn't belong in production."

That has to be incredibly difficult to adhere to, but doing so probably saves a ton of headaches.

gr366on 2010: The year of the products + a new way of working

It will be fascinating to watch how 37signals copes with its growth. If they can cultivate a corporate culture where people don't mind switching teams frequently, I'll be impressed. As soon as you get a multitude of personalities interacting, unless they are very disciplined and/or fully bought into the company vision, there will be some relationships and interactions that will be sought out and some that will be avoided. Even small teams have personality conflicts.

I expect the ideas behind this direction aren't being handed down by Jason and David from on high, but rather came from employee feedback. They're probably still small enough to test out some of these ideas without doing damage, so I'm interested to see what comes out of it and what modifications they make and what we can learn from this.

gr366on The Happiest People

It is a lovely country well worth the visit and they deserve a lot of credit for their environmental conservation. But it's not as though they've done away with poverty. I've seen families living in shacks in Quepos just down the hill from sprawling expat mansions in Manuel Antonio. (Though even those families did seem pretty happy).

gr366on Poll: Tablet? Why?

If you've ever watched someone pick up an iPhone for the first time and be able to immediately start using it (delightedly so), consider how some of those same people interact with a computer (double-clicking links in web pages, calling their browser "the Internet", having to deal with virus protection software, etc).

An Apple tablet might meet the needs of most people as a radically simplified "media device" to the point that they don't need to buy a traditional computer.

gr366on Jerry Seinfeld's Productivity Secret

This has been floating around the internet for a while, but it's good to come across again. I'm impressed by the level of simplicity to which the technique has been distilled. Notice that it wasn't necessary to write a book about the productivity system — it can be explained in a paragraph.

On a side note, I believe there are a number of iPhone apps that implement this system.

gr366on The Next White Whale

I suppose now it becomes more of a test of whether a prominent blogger's post is enough to prompt these firms to look for his submission and respond. Certainly not representative of the average person. And the fact that the companies aren't named puts no pressure on them to follow through.

But then this begs the question, why do the VC firms' web sites offer the ability to submit in the first place? How about an Amazon Mechanical Turk task to have people screen the proposals for them? Have the Turkers write a bullet point summary and give a thumbs up or down.

gr366on Why I think Mongo is to Databases what Rails was to Frameworks

Agreed, the comparison of Mongo to databases as Rails is to frameworks is appropriate. I recently started playing with Mongo in a Rails app and the Array type led to an a-ha moment followed by giddy handclapping and a fair amount of code deletion.

Working at a large company that's pretty invested in RDBMS, I'm curious to see where the downside of using something like MongoDB comes in. E.g. James Golick's creation of Friendly because they hit a scaling wall — how big do you have to get for it to become an issue?

gr366on Tell HN: I have a bunch of Google Wave invites

These things went from the hottest online commodity (selling on eBay, etc) to something that can't be given away. I think there's a conundrum — nobody is using Google Wave because there weren't enough people on it to begin with, but now people aren't interested in the invites because they hear nobody is finding a use for it.

This wasn't an issue with Gmail because it worked with all other email systems, whereas Wave is having to build its user base from the ground up.

I'm sure it's been discussed in numerous other threads, but is anyone genuinely using Wave for anything productive?

gr366on Want Everyone To See Your Credit Card Transactions? Meet Blippy.

Not to worry, Square has them covered. https://squareup.com/

gr366on Ask HN: What should I learn next? Python or Ruby/Rails?

Each language is relatively easy to get started with, and there are numerous free tutorials available on the web. Why not take two weeks and try each one out for a week? See how far you get building something and decide which is the best fit for you right now.

If you've written a PHP app, maybe it's a good candidate for rewriting in these languages. Having a problem space that you're intimately familiar with can reduce the variables to just the languages or frameworks themselves.

gr366on Coolest software of the decade?

TiVo

gr366on Revenue reality of a book on the New York Times best-seller list

This looks like another case of those controlling the means of production and distribution primed for disruption. There's no shortage of "iTunes for Books" ideas out there, but imagine giving authors a means to distribute their work without a middleman taking quite so large a cut. Similar to what's happening in the music industry.

It wouldn't have to rely solely on digital distribution either… well-known authors or books that meritoriously rise above the rank and file could then be picked up by the remaining smart book publishers and given real print distribution for those who still like to show off their bookshelves. Sort of like people still buying vinyl even though they have the MP3s.

gr366on Log in or sign up with OpenID

I had been wondering what the uptake of OpenID (or OAuth) logins would be given the amount of friction removed by the various providers' login offerings. It's not surprising that the majority of logins are coming through Facebook, just through sheer volume of users on that site. There's also the benefit of posting status updates as you publish a blog post on TypePad: http://everything.typepad.com/blog/2009/08/happy-together-ty...

As we move beyond Web 2.0, I think this ability to [relatively] seamlessly connect disparate sites will become second nature to web users. It's possible that in a couple of years people will bristle at the need to create a new username and password for a site they want to use.

gr366on The Ruby Revolution is Over

I think Rails had a lot to do with Ruby being the initiator. Rails introduced enough of a paradigm shift with its philosophy of making development fun, and it had a better level of visibility via 37signals than other options (say, Django for example). The fact that it was also the way to do web development in Ruby for quite a while (before Merb, Sinatra, et al) strengthened its position. Django already had to compete with existing web frameworks and so the market was inherently splintered when it came out.

Ruby has also benefitted from folks like the Pragmatic Programmers quickly legitimizing it (and Rails) with a number of books, and you have to give the folks promoting Ruby and Rails a lot of credit for trying to tackle thorny problems (e.g. migrations, web services through ActiveResource, etc.) incrementally to build a platform that Enterprise is no longer afraid to adopt.

In summary: good implementation, excellent promotion & responsiveness to the market.

gr366on Three things about Marco Arment…

I was a long-time resistor of Instapaper because I had my "to_read" tag in del.icio.us. But I would only very rarely return to that tag and go through items I had bookmarked. Plus I'd feel the need to come up with tags for an article I hadn't even read yet, based on what I thought it was about.

I finally started using Instapaper with my iPhone, and can't say how many times I've been stuck somewhere for a few minutes that let me read a longer-form article when I'd have been distracted by 5 other open browser tabs were I on my laptop.

Being able to click the Instapaper bookmarklet and not have to think about anything — not even be taken away from the page — has removed all friction from the process. I love it. I didn't even realize you could get a digest sent to your Kindle. I'm going to have to go set that up right now.

gr366on Hunter Becomes the Prey - shopping is broken

I think the point was that there are too many options:

  Now you shop on the Internet, and you can buy from anywhere on the planet.

  The options for any particular purchase approach infinity, or so it seems.

So while you may get tons of ads offering to sell you something, how much effort is spent determining which is the best match for what you want. It would be better to get 5 results that are really close to what you're looking for than 500 that are sort of what you want.

gr366on Daring Fireball en Español

Muchas gracias por esto. Puedo practicar mi español mientras leyendo uno de mis blogs favoritos.

Pero, yo espero que Ángel no se traduce los posts sobre los Yankees. Puedo vivir sin ellos. :-P

gr366on Is Software Set to Replace Sports Journalists?

The sample is pretty good. If I were an ambitious sports journalist, I would use Stats Monkey to generate an initial boilerplate article of a game (drudgery anyway if a computer can do it) and use all the time I saved to do actual in-depth, behind-the-scenes reporting (i.e. my real job).

So perhaps we can combine automation with an investigative human element to more efficiently achieve a better product?

gr366on Writing good documentation (part 1)

I think the point about auto-generated documentation being near worthless is an important one. A project I'm working on has a requirement that the documentation be auto-generated and available at a URL on the build server, but nobody reads it. The developers read the comments in the code itself, and the checklist people just check to see that it's there.