jlees

I think that's partly because watching great dancers is a very entertaining thing by itself, even to the completely uninformed; the sizzle doesn't need to be manufactured. In fact, SYTYCD helped me learn a lot about the nuances of dance, something I'd been unaware of previously.

On the other hand, I can't see an ideologically pure version of 'So You Think You Can Code' any time soon.

Probably just looked in strings.xml and perhaps for some obvious variable names / validation against string values. There might be some hashing check they can do that means they don't query every valid string in their database.

The work is interesting. I've been consulting for a few startups doing MVP development and it was a lot of fun getting those first few decisions off the ground and doing a bunch of product as well as code work. It depends on the length/terms of the deal, of course. I wouldn't do it as a full-time career but it was great to fill a few months of creative time while I was working on my own projects and deciding what the hell to do next. I ended up joining one of the startups I was consulting for :)

I agree with you and your parent. If this system goes into place I'll probably spend far more time on HN than I usually do these days -- at least at first -- specifically trying to approve comments made by other women, in the fear that others with enough karma will dismiss their point of view.

However, that won't stop many of the negative comments you mention, posted by and/or endorsed by high-karma members, also showing up in the thread. It only takes one high-karma approver to allow the negative stuff through and we're back to square one, but possibly excluding some underrepresented groups.

I like the idea in general, that is, I like the drive to improve the quality of HN comments. I'm not sure that flipping 'flag' around into 'approve' is the solution, but sadly I don't have any better ideas. Well, other than post emotion analysis and multiple-tiered karma systems (+1 Insightful, anyone?).

I got in the habit of not using mine since some of my past employers' email schemes didn't allow numbers. :-(

Can't say I ever found it particularly bad, just mild poking fun - my Scottish friend at uni in England with me had it a lot worse. Kind of like being Canadian in America, I suppose.

I've found that some of the folks I took to lunch interviews were reluctant to ask certain questions because despite assurances that the lunch has no feedback, they didn't quite believe me (natural cynicism, I suppose). It was a shame.

What did you like about it? I'd suggest Tad Williams' Otherland, Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age & Snow Crash, and Gibson's Pattern Recognition purely based on subject matter (gamey-cyberpunk-ARG-AI), but none is quite as lighthearted in terms of nodding towards videogame culture.

Someone on HN tipped me off to the Workshop in SF recently, which has a similar pay-per-minute (well, hour) model. Coffee's still expensive, but you don't have to buy it, and there's concierge service with food etc. It's been a great spot to fill a multi-hour gap without guilt.

Now I have to change my interview question. :(

I kept my surname, and am frequently called Mrs by random shop assistants reading my name off my credit card and noticing my ring. No; that's my mother.

However, having experienced this weird identity/title disconnect a few times now, I know she would also feel like it wasn't her, but somebody else, being addressed if she were forced to be "Ms".

Sure, there are times where you don't want to be informal and there isn't much of an alternative than Title Surname, but I'd rather see the titles removed altogether. Should we try to make "Miss" and "Mrs" obsolete? Probably, but not by removing the ability for us to choose it on forms.

Great point. Situations like this make it abundantly clear that folks out there are more than happy to bash away at some poor indie the other side of the world, as well as making demands, publicly vilifying and the like. I guess it's the Internet. It's trained us to be angry in public at anonymous faces, so when the faces are other people, it's a lot easier to treat them like they aren't.

Blogging about creating it would be much more interesting.

So, if I can IAP to get an extra 5 moves in a puzzle game, or infinitely replay the same level and get stuck, never playing the game again, that's a sham?

What about currencies/powerups that I can either get via IAP vs social obligation? I'd rather pay than bug my friends.

(Of course, one argument is that none of these mechanics should exist in the first place. But they do.)

I'm working on a game data project and one of the things I'm trying to figure out how to track is exactly this difference.

How can you tell whether a game with IAPs has "good" IAPs -- and the critical path of the game remains free -- or "bad" IAPs, paywalls/gating/pay-to-win? Also, how do you decide whether a content gate is a "bad" IAP or a "good" one?

I'm coming at it from a value-for-money angle at the moment, but I've learnt that people's definitions of "value" vary wildly. Some folks are more than happy to boast about completing Candy Crush without giving a cent to the developer.

The marketplace isn't viable. Refunds aside, people aren't willing to spend that level of money on a mobile game when they don't know if it's going to be good or not (and many are not).

Many game companies work like this.

Saying 'scientifically proven' with no about page or justification is like saying 'healthy'. Might want to rethink that copy...

Well, you can kind of use decision forests, and similar approaches, to combine algorithms. The lack of human-readability makes it pretty tough unless you're in a domain where you can effectively apply weighted heuristics (which I found to work pretty well in NLP, albeit with a lot of experimental tweaking to arrive at the right model for my domain).

Interesting idea, but why is it an iOS app?

Since you can install Android apps remotely on your device via the web, desktop ads for mobile aren't that ridiculous.

Doesn't sound too much worse than The Social Network.

What are the other usages? I genuinely don't know of any beyond the "bro culture" thing. But then I'm not a bro, so maybe I wouldn't.

I don't feel excluded by the name, but I did think the tool must be a joke rather than something that could actually be useful. Surprised to find it's the latter.

And yet others are sinking to the lowest common denominator, and hardcore studios are slowly learning about F2P. I love the current indie movement, but it's not strong on mobile, because players are being trained not to pay for games and indies tend to produce full content with an upfront price rather than use the "scam" mechanics. There are definitely titles that manage to walk the line well (e.g. with episode or item IAPs) and I think we'll see more of those.

Yes, I only realised this recently. I got into the habit of paying (although via FB, as the cost to unlock new levels is 2 credits - 20c - rather than $0.99).

However, I'm actually quite happy to pay for the content directly. Developers don't work for free, and they're constantly adding to the game. I like to support them (and other devs) as so many people expect to get hundreds of hours of gameplay for free these days.

I don't see an issue with paying for content gates in such a fashion -- but I do dislike the "Pay $0.99 to get 5 more moves, you've nearly done it!" mechanic, and others like it, so I don't pay for those.

Ah yes, fun when your CEO's email address is the same as the name of a product. I worked on +Pages, and we'd constantly be adding +page@google.com to discussions in Google Docs by mistake. ^_^

Oh my goodness. I learnt to code using that book (Adventure Games)! It wasn't the only one, and as you say the big program at the back is somewhat mystical, but I remember it being instrumental in demystifying how a game was put together.

You could segment users based off activity, for example sending:

1) a goodwill email, an up-sell to a longer-term plan or extra features, etc;

2) automatically cancel these folks, and send an email to that effect: "We notice you're not using X, so we won't be charging you at the end of your trial." They will just cause a cancellation anyway, though you will lose some of the 'free money' from lazy or unaware users.

3) Don't bill, but you could automatically extend the trial since they haven't used it, and you'll get more value from people converting to group 1) than 2). Perhaps the free trial starts when they've actually done some impactful action other than create the account.

There's way more segmenting you could do based on the types of users you see, which ones are most enjoying the service, and so on. Just seems odd these days to say "I'll email everyone" on a fixed rule.

I really dislike services which make you call to cancel. There are some in the US, too.

The OP could use the Times model to try and convert folks to a longer-term, discounted plan if they are enjoying their trial. But too much upsell and your conversions will drop.