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phil

1,874 karma · joined February 19, 2007

Formerly: YC W07 (WriteWith), Auctomatic (acquired), Urbanspoon

Now: Independent product creation for iOS, OS X, Web. Mischief.

phil@yearofcode.com http://twitter.com/yeahphil http://yearofcode.com http://philkast.com

I'm on Keybase: --- [ my public key: https://keybase.io/kast; my proof: https://keybase.io/kast/sigs/dEkqhDCfLTxHpUyO7TFI8Bzx9fBU5iuI-w0AIB4MnIc ] ---

submissionscomments
phil··on One Man Has Written Virtually Every Major Pop Song Of The Last 20 Years.
Great NYer profile of another pop hit lyricist & production team:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/03/26/120326fa_fact_...

phil··on An iOS Developer’s Wishlist
Wouldn't this make signing more complex? Currently the bundle doesn't change after you sign it on submission, but it would have to if resources were getting stripped.
phil··on Meanwhile, at code.org
This is so strange to see, especially since code.org's tutorials might be the closest thing we've got to a widely used implementation of (some of) Mr. Victor's ideas.
phil··on We raised money for the EFF and ACLU with an NSA t-shirt
:)
phil··on Why Silicon Valley funds Instagrams, not Hyperloops
My mistake. I thought your point was, "Tesla was much cheaper to start than people think, well within normal parameters for early venture rounds."
phil··on Why Silicon Valley funds Instagrams, not Hyperloops
Yeah -- but what are the chances SpaceX would exist if Musk hadn't personally invested the first $100m?

And Tesla might have been cheaper at first, but Musk led the A round and participated in every funding until the F round (!).

Without a deep pocketed founder willing to absorb years of losses, what are the chances Tesla ever makes it to market? Even so they nearly died before they shipped the roadster.

phil··on Ink (YC S12) Releases New iOS Layer That Allows Apps to Interact, Share Data
A short description of how it works would probably go a long way for developer adoption. There doesn't seem to be any.

The most obvious way to implement this might not work the same in iOS 7 -- I'd want to know more before relying on it.

phil··on How negative app reviews from iOS beta users could be prevented
Everyone has wanted this for years now. I wouldn't hold my breath.
phil··on Observations from a Tipless Restaurant
Chez Panisse and Per Se don't have the same reputation.
phil··on Exploring the Calendar Metaphor on iOS
It's really neat to see work of this caliber being done, then... simply released on GitHub as an example.
phil··on What's Wrong with the iOS 7 Icons?
I agree with this:

I freaked out in the beginning because I thought the crummy icons were representative of Apple screwing up the entire new design direction for iOS. But now that I’ve seen the rest of iOS, I’m not that worried.

After a couple days with the beta, it's pretty obvious that Apple didn't, like, FIRE their UI designers or anything. There are a few strange choices, but most of the new OS feels like an improvement when you use it.

phil··on Apple is finally allowing developers to sell their apps to other developers
I'm curious what people think of existing marketplaces.

If you're thinking of selling an app, do you feel like the tools are there to find buyers and perform the transaction?

phil··on 3D printing is nothing special
Don't forget the metal doohickeys, too.

How much of the stuff in your life could be made by snapping together plastic and metal doohickeys?

phil··on Apple deluged by police demands to decrypt iPhones
Do any HN people know what they're doing to unlock phones? Brute-forcing the passcode as the article suggests?
phil··on iOS Sale Numbers By App Store Rank
Unfortunately, I don't. I have two paid music apps but like yourself, only have good data for lower portions of the charts. Plus it's tough to pick apart iPad vs iPhone sales for universal apps.

If I had to guess, it's probably about half of iPhone, but don't rely on that!

phil··on iOS Sale Numbers By App Store Rank
It's great to see those charts. You're conflating iPhone and iPad rankings though.

~10 sales/day won't get you into the US Music top 100 for iPhone since iPhone is a bigger market than iPad. Yet that 80 sales/day number is for iPhone. That's making the extrapolated bit of your chart steeper than it should be.

phil··on J.C. Penney Apologizes in TV Spot
J.C. Penney Shoots Self in Foot
phil··on Adium Redesigned
That's a really nice mock.

I started prototyping something along these lines a couple months before Messages was announced. The idea was to make a (commercial) next-generation IM client for the Mac with a more modern UI. I stopped working on it when the first Messages beta was released, figuring that it added most of the UI things I wanted, and that if it shipped with OS X for free, few would want an alternative.

Now I wonder if dissatisfaction with Messages is high enough that there's an opportunity again?

If you're interested in this stuff and want to talk about it, drop me an email.

phil··on Google to announce new App Engine runtime for "very popular language" at I/O
Is it OCaml? I bet it's OCaml.
phil··on Auto Layout Performance on iOS
Those look like parabolas, which implies that there's something O(n^2) going on. Since autolayout has to evaluate each constraint against the other constraints, this shouldn't be too surprising.

Like other commenters, I find the 1,000 subview test runs pretty silly. (Pro tip: if you need to put thousands of things on the screen, you don't want to give each one its own view. They aren't that light no matter how you lay them out).

This stuff is pretty clearly optimized for use with a handful to a few dozen views. It would be great to see a performance comparison for that range.

phil··on The next generation of Instapaper
http://www.appannie.com/app/ios/instapaper/ranking/history/#...
phil··on Don’t Launch Your Product
Ah, the customer-value kool aid. Tasty stuff!
phil··on Don’t Launch Your Product
Yes, but which kool aid should you not drink more of?

The big launch kool aid? Or the anti-big launch backlash kool aid?

phil··on Startup Index: First Round Capital
9gag > Square?

This is really interesting work, but the ranking system seems flawed.

phil··on The market for paid iOS apps isn’t dead
You're mistaking the micro for the macro. Sure, the odds have gotten longer and ticket prices might be higher -- but from the app buyer's perspective, that's because there are just so many rides and they're so damn good. Can't try 'em all!
phil··on Secrets of the Magus (1993)
One of the greatest profile essays of all time, by one of the greatest profilers.

"A small riot ensued."

phil··on 1Password GPU brute-force with 3M hash/s
I'm not a 1Password user. What's a common number of PBKDF2 rounds to have it configured for? What's the default?
phil··on Status Board
Yeah, god forbid you're out the price of lunch and aren't 100% happy with what you got.
phil··on The Minecraft Creator Markus Persson Faces Life After Fame
He sounds pretty sad.
phil··on Helios
You should totally submit a pull request adding Android support!
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