Hacker News Reader

vegashackeron Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

We tried to change the name of our page from "Hit Tennis 2" to "Hit Tennis". (After releasing Hit Tennis 3, we realized a per version FB page was silly.) We were asked to explain the change and it was denied (as I recall they said it could lead to user confusion). I thought that was a bit picky, but I understand the position of being careful of changing their likes our from underneath users. No mention of having to pay to get our name changed.

vegashackeron Company withdrawing from Facebook as analytics show 80% of ad clicks from bots

The OP says that they are not accusing FB of using bots to drive up revenue.

vegashackeron [dead]

Ha. Never thought of that. But no, it's not a feature in the sense of something that was designed with this goal in mind. It's a way of not having to design and implement a whole url scheme, and instead being able to easily run arbitrary code in response to a link being clicked. This architecture, however, has the undesirable (expect apparently to you) side-effect of occasional "unknown or expired link"s.

vegashackeron The paragon of inefficiency

Sold. So is the Nike the one to get? I thought I had read that people didn't like that one?

vegashackeron Isometric text with CSS3

Is this related to this project? http://www.themaninblue.com/experiment/Cubescape/new.php Design looks the same.

vegashackeron Betable claims to give developers 6-month lead on Zynga for real-money gambling

Someone's gotta be first, right? And if it did work, the payoff could be huge. I see what you're saying tho--we're hesitant as well. I would love to see an example of an iOS app released that integrates Betable. This FAQ (https://betable.freshdesk.com/solution/categories/17300/fold...) makes it sound like it's at least allowed.

vegashackeron How we got to #2 in App Store without spending any money

Yeah I see what you mean. The title was designed to be catchy. Our previous app with a lot of users though was only one of our "bullets". The cross promotion idea is probably something more people can do than they realize.

Also having an app that people are going to download is super important (it sounds obvious, but we think the majority of people don't focus enough on this.)

vegashackeron Facebook Blames Email Problems On User "Confusion"

The articles headline quotes "confusion", implying to me that Facebook used that word in their explanation. But the quote given in the article ("That is likely...") doesn't use the word "confusion"--and in fact, is a lot less incendiary.

vegashackeron "Tap the spacebar with your phone." - Bump unveils new photo uploader

If you download it and get it in iTunes on your computer (either via syncing or downloading it there in the first place), then you can inspect the package yourself pretty easily.

But in my experience, 2.74mb is not a large iOS app.

vegashackeron Sergey Brin, et al. to U.S. Government: Do Not Emulate These Oppressive Nations

"fee speech": I realize it's a typo but it's a cool phrase. Kind of 1984-y. I wonder what it means--"pay to say"?

vegashackeron How Facebook is ruining sharing

FYI, even if you click cancel it will still advertise you to your friends ("Rob uses this app" in the bottom left corner of the signup popup). Which seems pretty questionable.

I verified with two other friends--I saw both of them in the "so and so uses the app" section and neither of them had ever added the app (only "cancelled").

vegashackeron Apple and the Kindle

I didn't know about Kindles being already logged in. That's clever--"out-Apple-ing Apple". I'd worry a bit about package thieves but that's probably mostly irrational.

vegashackeron I swapped my MacBook for an iPad+Linode

With SVN, probably, but the branching just feels heavyweight so sometimes it's hard to motivate. Git with the "git flow" addon seems like it'd be a better fit for you. Being able to checkin in "to your feature", as opposed to waiting till it's done and ready, feels great.

It's also not just about avoiding data loss. If your feature starts going off-course or has a bug, you can look at previous revisions to get fixed up.

vegashackeron Spotify now requires a Facebook account to sign up.

Check out MOG. They have some sort of free option.

vegashackeron Logging out of Facbook is not enough

He's talking about after having clicked "log out". I don't think the "keep me logged in" button factors in here (though I could be wrong).

vegashackeron Apple Event for iPhone 5 announcement on October 4th

I've dropped my caseless iPhone 4 on sidewalks and other hard surfaces a handful of times. It's gotten dinged up, but nothing's cracked.

vegashackeron PG's Rarely Asked Questions

"How to Design Programs" (http://htdp.org/) is aimed at beginners. I haven't read it, but the people behind it are top quality.

vegashackeron Bump (YC S09) Shares What Its 10 Million Users Share

Is that "50 million total downloads" number right? It seems low. Especially considering they have 10 million active users on those 50 million downloads. Really? 1 out of every 5 downloads of Bump generates an active user? I feel like a zero is missing from somewhere.

vegashackeron Zero to Best-Seller in 4 Hours

Imagine the mainstream media using the word “hacker” for what it really means...

That'd be very cool indeed.

vegashackeron Show HN: Ernie's, Click & Collect Groceries

The "suggested recipes" idea is the rare kind of upsell that I would love to be offered. I never know what to buy at the grocery store, so I always end up buying the same 20 or so items.

vegashackeron "I've got an idea for an app"

How would you actually go about giving them 5%? It seems very complicated. Presumably it's after Apple's cut. There are also expenses. Is it a handshake deal? Is there a legal document? Is it 5% for all time? What about tax considerations since the government may think you got 100%, instead of just 95%?

vegashackeron "Hello Paul Graham" - Y Combinator hopeful buys Google ads targeting pg

This is sort of what you're looking for: http://www.paulgraham.com/vwplan.html

vegashackeron Twitter acquires BackType (YC S08)

The interest here (for most people I assume) is the YC funding they got in 08. (Or "O8" as it seems to be written in the headline.)

vegashackeron Ticketmaster: Rocking The Most Hated Brand In America

A number of the venues allow you to buy tickets directly from the ticket window without the extra fees. (The Fillmore allows this during restricted times, e.g.) I will usually try to do this as a way of not supporting the Master--but, come to think of it, I actually don't know how the money is divided when I purchase like this.

vegashackeron ThriftDB a new service from the Octopart Guys

Sort of, except that this is a hosted web service, which Solandra is not. At least as far as I know.

vegashackeron Y Combinator’s Paul Graham: We’re Looking For People Like Us

Thanks. What about the PG "office hours" that was supposed to happen? It sounded like it'd be really interesting to watch.

vegashackeron Indie iOS Devs Under Legal Fire For Offering In-App Purchases

Your first post implied to me that native apps are somehow more susceptible to being trolled, and therefore it's safer to code for the mobile web. Is there evidence of this trolling discrepancy? (If there is then I'm totally wrong, but it seems to me this particular case just happens to be targeted at app developers. The next patent troll issue that makes the HN frontpage could easily be targeted at mobile web devs.)

I feel like your more recent question is not directly related to the previous points (so maybe I'm misunderstanding), but I'll answer anyway: no, I don't think hackers should worry too much about patent trolls when building stuff (or else the trolling is working and limiting creation), but I do think hackers should make a stink when patent trolls do their thing--especially when they do it to the little guy.

vegashackeron Indie iOS Devs Under Legal Fire For Offering In-App Purchases

I disagree. I think things like "Apple can change the rules on you", "Apple has to approve your app", "Apple makes you pay the 30%", etc are much better arguments against it. This is just about patent trolling. It could just have easily been a troll on some (surely hypothetical) patent for "Payment-Accepting Web Site That Delivers Alternative Experience for Mobile Users". In fact, an iOS dev may be in a better position than if the corresponding thing happened to a mobile web dev, in that there's a decent chance Apple's going to step in and smack down this nonsense.

vegashackeron Systems Programming with Racket

Also, folks are super responsive on the mailing list: http://lists.racket-lang.org/users/listinfo

vegashackeron At least now we know why Color really got that funding

Does it matter though? The iOS app already asks to get your location information. It's that same location info that would go into the putative EXIF tag, so Color already has the info. Or is there something else in EXIF that would be relevant in this case?