IPhone unpopular? After 2 weeks, only 5 iPhones sold in Chinese online store - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/12/03/urnidgns852573C4006938804825767F00821E67.DTL&type=tech

<comment><USER2> The title is misleading.

To clarify,

> only 5 iPhones sold in Chinese online store

Which really means, The official ChinaUniCom store on Taobao.com has just sold 5 iPhones in 2 weeks.

ChinaUniCom is the only and run-by-government carrier of iPhones in China, all official iPhones has no WIFI chipset(Marvell 88W8686 Wi-Fi). And Taobao.com is the biggest & most popular B2C & C2C online store in China, something like a combination of craigslist+eBay+Amazon.

But, the statistics does NOT include ChinaUniCom's own website that offers iPhone sales online: <http://shop.10010.com/iphonesale/getAllIphone.action>

But this does not change the fact the ChinaUniCom version iPhone sucks hell. It's expensive and lacks function. Reports say that 80% buyers dropped the official ChinaUniCom iPhone OS for modded ones.

</comment><comment><USER3> I bought my iPhone in Beijing for 4800RMB, this included delivery to my apartment. It was unlocked, jailbroken and had WIFI. This let me use it with my mobile account on China Mobile since few people use China Unicom. I have many friends with iPhones. Free WIFI is everywhere in China so it'd suck not to have it.

Why would you switch carriers and your phone number to the smaller, less popular carrier and buy a locked phone without WIFI for another couple thousand RMB? Of course Apple/China Unicom sell no phones, DUH! It's almost like this is a face saving move by Apple to say they're in China without having to meet all the demands that China Mobile wanted.

</comment><comment><USER4> The CU iPhone is unpopular. This is the more expensive, but less functional version compared to everywhere else. Eventually it will gain some ground if the price ever comes down. I bought an iPhone on the grey market and have an official one. I'd have to go back to the US to get any support at all for the later.

Sooner or later, people are going to run into problems and that 600$ iPhone is going to turn into a 1200$ headache if you can't get it serviced.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am involved in the current #1 free app in the chinese store, and it's getting 2500 downloads a day, and the number is going up every day by 50-100.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which app is that?

<comment><USER5> Tips

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the article itself makes it pretty clear. For those who are curious, _The Economist_ also reported on this recently. It's not that the iPhone isn't popular, it's that the _Apple_ iPhone isn't popular, because the knockoffs are both cheap and come loaded with as much extra functionality as they can be crammed with.

<comment><USER7> While the shanzhai cellphones are popular (and very cool), I think the article's analysis of this is more accurate than your own. The illegally imported US and Hong Kongese Apple iPhones here have a wifi card and are significantly cheaper than the ones sold in a Unicom store. Why pay $1000 USD for a wifi-less version of the iPhone when you can pay $700 through an unofficial retailer for a version without any lacking functionality?

<comment><USER6> Yes, I agree. What I was meaning to point out is that the headline is misleading. Someone else stated that better.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: iOS/XCode designing UI layouts tutorials? - <AUTHOR> I'm having really difficult time learning how to design my App on iOS. I've found some great Pods for my UI but I do not know how to integrate them. Do you know of any tutorials for iOS/XCode design? <comment><USER2> You seem to be asking how to integrate the Pods, but the question stated seems to be about design. What exactly do you want to do?

<comment><AUTHOR> Mostly about design, I've found some cool Pods and I've integrated them into my projects via CocoaPods. But now I don't understand how to integrate them into my designs. I guess I also need to learn how to design a UI in iOS to begin with.

[https://github.com/HighBay/PageMenu](https://github.com/HighBay/PageMenu)</comment></comment>


ThoughtWorks Mourns Colleague Aaron Swartz, Responds to MIT's Statement - <AUTHOR> http://www.thoughtworks.com/news/thoughtworks-mourns-aaron-swartz

<comment><USER2> As a close friend of Aaron's who was on the email chain between ThoughtWorks and his family about this statement, I can tell you that marketing played no role in this. There is intense, genuine, sadness and anger there about what happened, from the top down. Having "About ThoughtWorks" on the page is an oversight if anything. A team of engineers has been working through the night to build <http://rememberaaronsw.com>, which is a beautiful tribute to him-- even the _content_ is open-source, kept in a github repo rather than a proprietary database. And TW was very concerned to support the family's wishes. I'm proud of them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thoughtworks using any opportunity to market themselves as usual. I hated working there.

</comment><comment><USER4> Call me crude, but this is just a thinly veiled ad for thoughtworks attached to the tragic topic of the day

<comment><USER5> Should we have said nothing? For the past several months Aaron has led the development of an online petition application working with several senior programmers at ThoughtWorks for a project we paid for ourselves, because we believed in his cause, and we believed in Aaron. Friends of Aaron who worked with him built rememberaaronsw.com because they are hurt and they wanted to honor the man in the best way they knew how. This wasn't a group of people trying to capitalize on a public figure. This was his friends and colleagues.

I'm sorry if this came off the wrong way to you, but you should realize that the message of internet freedom doesn't necessarily help us sell our services in a lot of places.

<comment><USER6> For me, that last paragraph ("About Thoughtworks") is what left a poor taste in my mouth. Up until that point, I personally thought it was in good taste. If someone doesn't know who ThoughtWorks is and needs to know, I assure you that they'll find it via a search engine. I'd also drop the contacts phone numbers as well.

The addition of that About TW paragraph, no matter how "standard" in a PR setting, is incredibly inappropriate in my view and makes it appear that you are taking the occasion of an employee's suicide to market ThoughtWorks. Don't do that.

<comment><USER7> Try to see it from the other side. The "About Thoughtworks" is just how companies talk.

The fact that it looks exactly like an official ThoughtWorks PR broadside makes it even clearer which side the company is on. No "this is the private opinion of colleagues/friends", but "this is how strongly the company feels about this".

I say well done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Department of Justice used TOS-violations to prosecute Aaron for wire- fraud. Perhaps we should all add a bit of T.O.S. to our sites to warn visitors from DOJ that that they are not permitted to access our sites, and further violations will be reported.

</comment><comment><USER9> You can submit your own via pull request: <https://github.com/rememberaaronsw/rememberaaronsw></comment>


Ask YC: Can a single person develop a  website? - <AUTHOR>

I am currently finding it  difficult to find a partner to work on a small idea that have .So what is the feasibility of developing a project in such circumstances.Has anybody done ever tried this? I am mainly doing this project to improve my php and javascript coding. <comment><USER2> of course. Start with a piece of paper and do a high level plan of the main goals/sections of the site. I find it helpful to use persona/role-driven design here. Once i have the main goals, then I develop the home page for a role inside Photoshop. I then develop an inner page. Once i have that, I move on to [web language of choice (i.e. php/asp.net)] and develop a few templates. Then I develop the home page and the inner pages using pure html (no database). Once I'm happy there, I move on to DB stuff nad oo-level stuff to support it.

I did all of <http://www.learnsqlserver.com/>, <http://www.learnitfirst.com/> and <http://www.videobooks.com/> sites by myself. It took a while but so what? I'm proud of the fact that I did it and I learned so much along the way.

</comment><comment><USER3> It kind of depends on the complexity and size of the site. You want to make sure you can have it done in a reasonable timeframe.

I'm doing all of the development on my site <http://collegeacb.com> but its a really simple concept (basically just a forum). One thing I have found really helpful though is having a cheerleader. Nominate someone to keep you focused (even if they don't do anything else) so that you don't give up half way through.

</comment><comment><USER4> Having a prototype makes everything easier, including finding partners. Build your prototype, and then while you're out socializing with other startup founders, and/or beating the bushes for customers, investors, business development opportunities, and press, you can also mention "I'm also looking for another developer to join the company in a partnership role". Somebody will know somebody, and if you're selling the dream effectively they'll be inclined to make that introduction.

The problem with people looking for business partners is often that they imagine that an idea is enough to persuade someone to get involved. It rarely is. An existing friendship might be enough, but a stranger with a new idea (and nothing else) is just annoying. So, building a prototype proves you're dedicated enough to put some of your own skin in the game before asking anyone else to do so. That's a big win.

And, of course, there _have_ been single-founder success stories. More than a few, in fact. So, if you never find a co-founder, if you can deliver a valuable product, you might still build a successful business. But it's obviously a harder row to hoe.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes they can :) Plenty of highly successful websites started their lives as one man bands.

<comment><AUTHOR> Like?

<comment><USER6> Someone has got to say it, but if I recall correctly the hugely successful plentyoffish was not only developed by one, but also maintained by one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I built my proof-of-concept on my own.

Lessons learned:

\- Working on your own rocks because - you can do what you want, when you want to.

\- Working on your own sucks because - you do what you want, when you want to.

It isn't a route for the unmotivated. You also lack a feedback loop, so you can't be sure you are producing high quality stuff as there is no local sanity check.

</comment><comment><USER8> I developed <http://zerodaydeals.com> (there is a good amount of back-end to it) as a one-person show and am developing <http://overtrainer.com> in the same way

</comment><comment><USER9> By starting to develop the project, it'll probably be easier to find a partner because you'll have something to show them, and it demonstrates that you are the kind of person who actually does something about his ideas other than just talk about them.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Can a single person develop a website?"

Absolutely! Personally, I've lost track of the number of trivial websites I've created... sites of some value, exactly three.

It can be done.</comment>


Fastest way to build an email contact form in a web page? - <AUTHOR>

I am hoping for a third party app similar to survey monkey - but for a simple email form, which would allow for an in-page email submission, which would later be redirected corrected from the 3rd party.  Any ideas?<p>Thank you! <comment><USER2> mailto:email@example.com

What else? :)

Contact forms suck: poor feedback, no copy of outgoing message, not certitude that the message has really been sent. Email provides a lower integration, but a stronger confidence.</comment>


Fed on lookout for recession but still sees strong economy: minutes - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-minutes/fed-on-lookout-for-recession-but-still-sees-strong-economy-minutes-idUSKBN1JV2L2 <comment><USER2> The yield curve has been flattening for a while now, especially for longer term (10Y, 20Y, 30Y T-Bills) securities [0, 1, 2].

As confidence in the government (i.e through a trade war) dips, as interest rate hikes become more of a reality, and as increasing amount of companies come forth with weirdly worded statements about their 'strong financials' and 'consistent growth', everyone is running for the hills.

No one needs to toot their horn when they're on a bull run, everyone can see it, and everyone is on their own run. It's only when no one can see you're having (or you will have) 'strong financials' that you need to announce it.

And it seems like you need someone to announce their strong position to keep the heard mentality of a bull run going on.

I very well might be wrong.

[0] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10Y2Y](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10Y2Y) [1] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DFII20](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DFII20) [2] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DFII30](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DFII30)

<comment><USER3> For some extra material on the yield curve, I found this via Naked Capitalism: [https://wolfstreet.com/2018/07/05/as-the-yield-curve- flatten...](https://wolfstreet.com/2018/07/05/as-the-yield-curve-flattens- threatens-to-invert-the-fed-discards-it-as-recession-indicator/)

Sure, makes sense. When a very reliable recession indicator starts showing signs of alarm, the logical option is _of course_ to come up with a different indicator.

<comment><USER4> Per Wikipedia, the last QE ended in September of 2016. That means we're possibly seeing the market sans those affects. Of course there's still stimulating factors at play like the US tax cuts. Personally, I'm operating under the assumption of an impending recession to last quite a while. There are many troubling activities underway and planned.

<comment><USER5> Could you expand on the troubling indicators..?

<comment><USER6> A hollow economy built on debt with most of the country living paycheck to paycheck with little to no savings, no real wage raises to keep up with inflation since the 90's, doesn't sound like a 'great economy' to me. It may be a wonderful economy for the people at the top though.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live- paycheck...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live-paycheck-to- paycheck.html)

[https://www.vox.com/cards/minimum-wage-explained/minimum- wag...](https://www.vox.com/cards/minimum-wage-explained/minimum-wage-history) (for the minimum wage vs inflation graph)

<comment><USER4> Stagnant wages and a proliferation of ways to share consumables through the "gig economy". Just at the ground level, I see lots of new construction but I can't point to any projects to employ more people. Then there's the very real meddling with the US international trade posture and associated international agreements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I did some research on this about 5 years ago at a former job. Unfortunately, I no longer have access to it, but the slope of the yield curve definitely had some interesting correlations with recessions.

My (incredibly simplistic) reasoning for the correlation is that as short term interest rates rise (relative to long term interest rates), investors reallocate money away from risky assets (VC / PE / Small-Cap Equities) into short term investments (Money Markets, T-Bills). And since risky assets are what really drive our economic growth IMO, we start to see a real slowdown in economic output.

While the curve has been flattening, it certainly is not flat (or inverted like it has before). I'm cautiously optimistic about the U.S. economy over the short term (1-3 years). After that, who knows.

The Fed loves to revise data retroactively, so take the following graph with a grain of salt, but they do publish a 'Probability of US Recession Predicted by Treasury Spread' [1]

[1] [https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/capit...](https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/capital_markets/Prob_Rec.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER8> How is the fed gonna sell off its 4.5T in assets including all the housing loans it bought, or is it somehow going to destroy them?

<comment><USER9> > _is it somehow going to destroy them?_

It could just hold them to maturity.

(Also, their total assets are $4.4 trillion [1], down from a $4.5 trillion peak and falling about $20 billion a month [2].)

[1] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL)

[2] [https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/07/05/fed-balance-sheet- runoff...](https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/07/05/fed-balance-sheet-runoff-hits- another-snag.html)</comment></comment>


Breakdown: The unwinding of law and order in our cities has happened quickly - <AUTHOR> https://www.city-journal.org/ferguson-effect-inner-cities <comment><USER2> So, uh, I even find the "defund the police" rhetoric and policy to be unwise, but the text of this article is, shall we say, not very balanced or objective.

Not saying that the mainstream alternative IS balanced and objective, but if one is looking for a cool and dispassionate evaluation of the facts, this is not it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another article today from City Journal on the same theme: "The End of Chaz: In Seattle's "autonomous zone," lives are destroyed under the banner of social justice." [https://www.city-journal.org/end-of-chaz](https://www.city- journal.org/end-of-chaz)

</comment><comment><USER3> You know, if i had to use all my brain power, id wager it isn't simply only 'toxified social justice' but literally failed politics top-down and a major socioeconomic downturn.If thats the case, the solution is larger than directly attacking the culture of spontaneous anarcho-liberals since they're all resultants or symptoms of larger systematic failures. If you want to prevent other CHAZ's which are likely not uniformally spontaneous across the lands you cannot avoid the discussion of helicopter economics as one of the gateways of restoring a sense of civic relevancy and econ stability.</comment>


Interview: Damian Conway - <AUTHOR> http://www.linuxvoice.com/interview-damian-conway/ <comment><USER2> I once had the pleasure of following Damian's presentation techniques course. A really good course that i can recommend to every programmer and engineer. Perl and me however do not get along. Yet still looking forward to see where perl 6 will go.

<comment><USER3> Cant find which one it is, but a talk about perl6 grammar dsl/lib was very inspiring. Very very very.

<comment><USER4> As someone who's been distantly following Perl6 from its inception, the new RE grammars are the most exciting thing to me. It's the one time I've seen a YACC type thing and thought, "ah, this is how it should be."

I predict that if Perl6 ever becomes somewhat released/stable/fast we'll start seeing a bunch of compilers/transpilers written in it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > You have to give them a way of focusing on one level of abstraction at a > time.

Very true. Though having levels of syntax can actually help with this, such as python's indentation. The boilerplate of _if_ and _for_ helps beginners to recognize it.

In contrast, I've seen Group Theory notation with juxtiposition for both function application and composition, distinguishing functions and variables by alphabet and inference. It's very compact and elegant, but hard to read at first.

</comment><comment><USER6> Even if you're not a perl programmer, attending a presentation by The Damian will be time well spent. He's not only brilliant and insightful, but very entertaining!

I was present for a talk at a YAPC years ago where I think he first introduced programming in Klingon. Most of it was way over my hear, but it was brilliant nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER7> Went through one of his courses, and although I don't use Perl, I learned quite a lot about programming as a whole.

</comment><comment><USER8> One of Damian's pictures in the article holds a quote where he says something about Rails enabling "not very strong" developers to build fairly sophisticated systems.

I wish the author had included that part of the interview. I never found it anywhere in the article.</comment>


Ask HN: Why some startup equity agreements have "repurchase on divorce" clause? - <AUTHOR> I've noticed that some startup founders equity agreements have introduced a "repurchase right on divorce" clause that allows the company to repurchase shares of the company stock upon involuntary transfer of the stock from a founder.  For example, if the founder`s spouse owns equity as a part of common property and there is divorce, shares could be repurchased from founder`s spouse. That is shitty, in my opinion. What is the main reason behind that clause? Is it a must-have, or VCs don't really care? <comment><USER2> A former spouse of a founder may have different (or even opposing) interests versus those of the company. A dissident shareholder might be able to block or delay important corporate actions; would be entitled to information not otherwise available to the public or without an NDA; and might seek to sell their shares to someone even more hostile to the company, and/or at a price or on terms that disrupt further financing rounds for the company.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Is it a must-have, or VCs don't really care?</comment></comment>


Show HN: When my builds fail I pay money to charity - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/football-whispers-engineering-and-data-sci/failed-builds-cost-more-than-just-time-4e7c196cc8bc <comment><USER2> The interesting thing about this project is how the incentives align. The premise requires the view that donating to charity is a bad thing. Or conversely, writing build failing code is a good thing. Otherwise --if donating _and_ buildable code are good -- there is no self reinforcing cycle. The system architecture is closed...a finite pie if you will. Successful builds and charitable donations have a reciprocal relationship. An increase in one comes at the expense of the other. A win-win system architecture would have a positive correlation between charitable donations and successful builds. The charities and the developer would both benefit or suffer together. If both successful builds and charitable donations are good, the system architecture encourages the Shirky Principle [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky#Shirky_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky#Shirky_principle)

<comment><USER3> Neither of your requirements are true in the least. It's a great idea because he's penalizing himself for failed builds in a really fun way, with no waste because it's going to a good purpose. It's called "win-win" and it's a good thing.

<comment><USER4> "penalizing himself"

Implies that OP is correct. In order to penalizing yourself you need to do something you consider a punishment. In this case donating to charity...

<comment><USER5> OP and yourself are perhaps engaging in what could be termed as "semantic trolling"

Fortunately it isn't working because as others pointed out, "penalize himself" and "donate to charity" concepts aren't directly tied together. Where the donation actually goes is immaterial, so it's not possible to argue that "punish himself" implies "donate to charity" is punishment.

<comment><USER6> The only misuse of semantics I see is where an attempt to obscure a concretely causal relationship occurs:

mistake > punish himself > donate to charity to punish himself

Donating to charity as a method to achieve the punishment goal is precisely material in this case.

GP is asking if this method, which contains both a gain and loss, actually results in a punishment with an intended loss.

<comment><USER7> The punishment isn't donating to charity. The punishment is losing money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm curious why you need to pay for a load balancer when you're running this as a service just for yourself. Sure it could fail, but it's not something critical and a LB just seems like unnecessary complexity/cost.

</comment><comment><USER9> Everytime my build fails I effectively donated money to Amazon.

<comment><USER10> Ah, I was wondering who was subsidizing my free shipping. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am missing the point of the article. Why does build failing require any incentive or punishment?

If a build fails, nothing changes in the production environment. The developer can troubleshoot and fix the build. Pretty much like when local compilation fails due to a syntax error.

Why does such a routine thing as a build failure need to be rewarded or punished?

<comment><USER12> Once upon a time, builds used to be very expensive and take forever. Entire development teams shared a single single-pipe build server, and builds could not even be built locally first.

We're (mostly) past those times now, but "breaking the build" is still in the mind of many devs as a negative behavior.

<comment><USER13> I'd imagine 'breaking the build' is, for almost everyone nowadays (and in most situations), a _very_ minor issue. But it's still, _all else equal_ , a net negative, however small.

Breaking a build once, for whatever reason, probably _isn 't_ a big deal. But breaking a build frequently certainly could be.

<comment><USER14> If you break our build, your pipeline fails and your code is not merged. Simple as that. The master branch doesn't break, because we don't merge broken code into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not sure if I'm in to equating charity with failure or mistakes, but I suppose it's better than a complete lack of charity.

<comment><USER16> A few years ago, I had this idea of paying a small amount to charity every time I hit snooze on my alarm clock. I forked into an android alarm app, started working on it (but never completed it). My rationale then was that if I feel lazy and would prefer to sleep in further, I would penalize myself but in a way that would benefit someone else.

<comment><USER17> There was a study (referenced from a few books -- never read the study itself) where parents were required to pay if they didn't pick up their children from the kindergarten. Since setting this up reduced guilt (they were now paying for the care-takers' extra time) the average time of being late actually increased -- instead of decreasing as thought initially.

<comment><USER18> Freakonomics mentioned this. It took place in Israel. It took a social faux pax and converted it to an economic transaction, thereby reducing/removing the stigma of being late.

[http://freakonomics.com/2013/10/23/what-makes-people-do- what...](http://freakonomics.com/2013/10/23/what-makes-people-do-what-they- do/)

<comment><USER19> Which is _great_! The daycare discovered a lucrative business growth opportunity that help improve their customers' lives. Next step shout be to set a fair price for being late, so caregivers and parents can make mutually beneficial exchanges of time for money. Social mores are crude heuristics. Explicit prices can do better.

<comment><USER18> I would not say great. I would say it's useful and efficient in some circumstances, and unhelpful in others. There are some things that don't scale, and social moores might act as a safety valve in those cases versus an economic transaction.

Some human interactions are only a few A/B tests away from turning into a Black Mirror episode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It seems weird to have a constantly running a server and database for what could be implemented as a cron job which just calls an API for last week's/month's data.

But it guess if it is just for fun who cares :)

<comment><USER21> I would think that the consequences need to be pretty immediate to have a psychological effect. Seeing at the end of the month, "Wow, I broke the build 8x. I should be more careful." just doesn't carry the same sting as "Oops; there went today's coffee budget!"

<comment><USER20> Presumably you get an email or other notification when the build fails. So even though the deduction isn't immediate you still get the immediate feedback that you will be deducted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nice write-up. Strikes me as a little strange to donate to charity as negative reinforcement though.

<comment><USER23> Depends how much you donate.

Another approach is donating to a charity you despise. Some friends of mine use a mutual donation pact to get things done. Each sets a goal they need to accomplish by the end of the month, and hands the other a signed check for $50 for a charity or political campaign they hate. If they don't accomplish the goal, the other person drops the envelope in the mail.

It's very effective. :-X

<comment><USER24> This is the proper way to set up the disincentive, and you'll find it recommended in many places.

For instance, stickK sets up its commitment contracts with the option to donate to an "anti-charity":

[https://www.stickk.com/faq/charities/Commitment+Contracts](https://www.stickk.com/faq/charities/Commitment+Contracts)

It also allows you to donate to fan clubs of sports teams you despise :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wouldn't you always compile and test locally before uploading to CI? I understand that CI can provide some confidence about working in a standard hermetic environment, vs. potentially only on one developer's laptop, in a team environment. But why would a CI build ever fail for a personal project?

<comment><USER26> As an example, if you forget a file before pushing; all local tests will pass and abject failure remotely. You can do local checks for that sort of thing, but it's ~impossible or at least impractical to catch every case through automation even when developer does due diligence.

<comment><USER27> Impractical is the key.

So many people focus on how often the build is broken. That's not the important part in CI. The important part is how often (% of day) the codebase is broken.

It's not how often you break the build that kills the team. It's how long it stays that way. Breaking it twice a week for five minutes each is better than breaking it once a month for an hour or two.

<comment><USER25> Why would a broken build affect the team? Are you pushing changes to master that don't pass CI?

<comment><USER27> What don't you like about the other 5 answers you got to this question?

The point of CI is to identify integration issues, not a blame assignment system (the loaded way you ask the question is really not helpful). So we can work faster. Not so we can spend all day second guessing our push being afraid we will make the build red.

Any commit can have integration issues. With enough people committing, there is a build going on all day long. It won't always be ships passing in the night.

<comment><USER25> The answers given above are 1) forgetting to "git add" and 2) test suite takes too long. These are fine reasons to offload testing of your PR to a CI system, but why would you be _merging_ changes that potentially break the build? Our highest-commit-volume repos have a queue system doing test-then-land. There's still no way a change set that breaks the build gets in the way of one that doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I take a different approach. I keep a file for each project and make an entry each time I resolve an issue. This helps me understand how I created the bug.

Donating to charity, while an incentive, won't help me see the detailed lesson a year from now.

</comment><comment><USER29> Solution looking for a problem.

<comment><USER30> Is it a solution though?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Pretty neat project. I guess the only question left is, how much did you donate to get it done?

</comment><comment><USER32> I don't think a 9-paragraph Medium post is appropriate for "Show HN."

Does seem like a neat idea, but you'd probably be more likely to avoid failed builds if (a) the donation was immediate and irreversible; and (b) went to a charity or organization you vehemently disagreed with.

<comment><USER33> You should mail the mods if you want stuff like that looked into.</comment></comment>


Unblinking Eye: The infinite rewards of immersion in Proust - <AUTHOR> http://www.weeklystandard.com/unblinking-eye/article/2003578 <comment><USER2> >In art there are merely—some merely—discrete geniuses, who arrive without predecessors and depart without successors.

Well, after Proust there was Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Completely different from M. Proust in ideas, writing style, novels, but surely a great successor. I loved Céline and his major work: Voyage au bout de la nuit.

I loved also how quick was the shiftment from the Proustian period to the new Céline era.

It's easy to see how we went from Balzac to Flaubert but it's totally non- sense how we went from Proust to Céline a in a few years.

A huge part of literature is not predictable and that's the most interesting part of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember having to read Proust's In Search of Lost Time in school when I was something like 16-17 years old. I remember the book as excruciatingly boring. It's a small book and I used whole two weeks to read it because of that and went away from it with no takeaway whatsoever.

I blame it on the school program. Perhaps we were too young to appreciate it at that age, perhaps the approach was upside-down: we _first_ had to read a book w/o any guidance, and _then_ we'd discuss it.

<comment><USER4> It's not only boring, but also incredibly poorly written. Disregarding from the fact that he's using far too many words to say very little (which is arguably a matter of taste), having a single sentence strech multiple pages is just poor writing.

I do disagree with you that the book is short though. According to Wikipedia it's 4215 pages, which I believe is correct.

<comment><USER5> Well, you're welcome to your opinion, but the statement "Proust (sometimes) writes long sentences" is a fact, not a value judgement. Whether the prose can be understood or not is how we separate good writing from bad, and in Proust's case it's not hard to follow what he's saying. There are, by the way, a large number of people who would strenuously disagree with you and consider Proust one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Among them are people like Edmund White, John Updike, André Aciman, and Vladimir Nabokov, formidable prose stylists themselves; in fact, here's Nabokov explaining precisely why it is that Proust is so unique, using an illustrative passage to come to an understanding of how Proust's prose works as it does: [http://www.catskill- merino.com/blog/nabokov-on-proust-in-blo...](http://www.catskill- merino.com/blog/nabokov-on-proust-in-bloom)

...Nabokov being a good example of a person who never shied away from making sweeping value judgements about authors, but was usually willing to back up what he said with examples.

<comment><USER4> It is indeed my opinion, but when reading your response I felt it was an appeal to authority, which is a fallacy, and as such difficult to constructively argue. I would much rather hear what your personal opinion is on Proust.

I read your linked article by Nabokov, and suffice it to say that I don't agree. And, yes, I do recall the very passages quoted in the article since I have read it before.

A good writer would have been capable of conveying the same message with the same emotion, but with sentences that does not require the reader to concentrate to the point of it being work to actually read the thing.

When reading it, I used to feel a sense of accomplishment after every few pages. That's a pretty good feeling, and if it was hard to really understand what the author wanted to say, it must be better than that simple writing by lesser authors such as Tolstoy, right? (yes, the last part was irony)

Well, arguing about literature never really leads anywhere. I'd rather argue about why Emacs is better than every other editor than talk about authors that I don't even enjoy reading.

<comment><USER5> Not all arguments from expert opinion are fallacious. In this case I think that those authors are recognized, themselves, as excellent prose stylists. Therefore it's reasonable to accord their opinions more weight than the average person's. If I'd said something along the lines of "Dan Brown says Proust is a master prose stylist and he's a writer..." then you'd have a point. Also, they are pretty representative of the critical consensus on Proust's particular strengths. Finally, they all happen to have written on Proust and what they like about him, some of them quite extensively. (Sadly, not all of it is available online. John Updike penned a very nice piece years ago on the ways Proust shaped him as a writer and the difference he found reading him first in the Moncrieff translation and then later in French; doesn't seem to be available anywhere.)

>> Well, arguing about literature never really leads anywhere.

A problem with the inherent subjectivity of art in general, I suppose. But nonetheless, it can be an enjoyable past-time if kept civil and respectful. Anyway, I appreciate you explaining what it is that you don't like about Proust, even if we don't see eye-to-eye.

<comment><USER4> I have not read the Updike article, but I might seek it out and read it if I find myself with some extra spare time.

Based on what you have said so far, I get the impression that you admire handiwork of actually constructing a 4000+ page novel of this kind. In that respect I can actually agree with you. It is indeed a remarkable work in many ways. But, it is my opinion that in terms of a vessel for conveying a compelling story, it completely fails.

Can you say that you actually enjoyed reading the book? Or did you appreciation stem from a feeling of accomplisment that you managed to plow through something that few people succeed in reading?

I can happily admit that I was not able to complete it. Once I realised that it wasn't going to improve, I just stopped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow he really loves Proust

<comment><USER7> There is a reason why he is described as one of the greatest novelist that ever lived. I'm reading through In Search of Lost Time and just the simplicity of the writing, exploring some of the most seemingly banal aspects of human nature, is astounding. I do wish I knew French; I can only imagine what the original manuscript must feel like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What a weird web site. You need to click for the second page of the article, yet you can scroll down for the "next" article.</comment>


Ok, glass – new Google Glass concepts - <AUTHOR> http://jackwmorgan.com/ok-glass I had some spare time this weekend, so I created some simple concepts for Google Glass. What are your thoughts on the soon to be released device? <comment><USER3> I still don't know.. Google Glass feels like these people standing in the first row in a concert and watching the whole thing through their 2.5" smartphone screen just to share it on facebook. It's just not the experience I want to get from life.

<comment><USER4> But that's the point of Glass. You don't have to stand with your phone in front of your face to watch the concert anymore. You just have Glass record it. And you're watching the concert as you've always done it. Glass _frees_ you.

<comment><USER5> Free you it does. But at what cost? With Glass _everything_ I do I'll do with compromise. Divided attention. When I play with my son I'm keeping an eye on Twitter. When I'm at a concert I'm making sure I watch the stage. When I'm visiting friends I'm wondering how they'll feel with a potentially always-on camera photographing and recording their kids.

Attention. Split. Down. The middle.

<comment><USER6> >With Glass _everything_ I do I'll do with compromise

This is a choice you make. You're making it for the sake of your argument, then presenting the argument as if everyone will make the same choice.

You shouldn't; I won't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the potential of glass is mind blowing... but it will take a while to get there. Some of my dreamy musings on the future:

[https://plus.google.com/117405082753493075236/posts/MTrVALTp...](https://plus.google.com/117405082753493075236/posts/MTrVALTp9m7?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER8> There's some good examples, but also some awful examples that just play into the hands of the detractors of Glass.

"ok glass, how fast are we going?"

Really? You want to ask Google rather than the driver?

How far to the top of this escalator? Can't we just stand on one for 30 seconds without having to perform some micro-action? And anyway, the app would just be showing some "failed to connect" message here (plus 3 minutes for an escalator to move 197 feet (about 65 metres for those of us in the current century), really?)

I'd halve the number of shots in this pages, but make them the really good ones, the message is pretty diluted, otherwise.

<comment><USER9> I like to think that the "we" refers to the wearer and his Glass, at this point they have become close friends and Glass whispers in his ear

 _we're going 75 miles per hour jack, isn'it it exhilarating_

I would definitely buy that.

<comment><USER8> I wonder how it'd deal with things with double meanings:

"OK, glass, how high are we?"

<comment><USER10> "you are 43.78% as high as snoop dogg is right now, david"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A lot of these applications could be done with a smartphone and VR. Most did not (see the failure of QR codes). I doubt that people will get dedicated hardware to perform this task.

<comment><USER12> Maybe the reason they failed was because of friction that Google Glass removes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Neat seeing some things I already wrote on there :)

Music playing: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mrb9Jb5VTLs>

Face recognition: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1aeMJY1AO0>

A friend already wrote the running one too: [https://plus.google.com/102638891846233998637/posts/TFqoT49Q...](https://plus.google.com/102638891846233998637/posts/TFqoT49QRqn)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, glad to see there are already people bringing it to life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I got to try out Glass a couple of weeks ago and (for me, at least) there is a huge problem: the display floats about a foot or so in front of you, up and to the right. That means you have to shift your focus from what's in front of you to see it. And not just look to the side, but actually focus closer, which means the rest of the world goes blurry. It would be very hard to walk down the street and be accessing Glass without running into things - the same problem as looking down and being engrossed in your phone.

In the video demos everything (the Glass interface and the background) are in sharp focus so you don't even think about it being an issue. But when you're actually using them it's extremely distracting to shift your field of vision back and forth. Not to mention that when someone else is wearing them it is _extremely_ obvious when they're looking at Glass instead of you.

The technology is amazing, but for me the interface is just too distracting right now. Have the HUD appear at the same depth of field as wherever I'm currently looking and this thing would be unstoppable. But it's going to be quite an engineering challenge to determine where your eye is focused and adjust the display to match on the fly.

</comment><comment><USER15> My google glass proposal was to use it as a brain extension for things we can't do with our brain. For example - remember some of the foods we eat and how we feel to predict our reactions to new foods and environments - <USER2> spikes, side effects. Our brain can't always do it as we do not know the ingredients and do not remember our metabolic abilities at various outside temperatures, etc. Aurametrix can do it. Interested? Let me know.

</comment><comment><USER16> Love the workups, I've sent them round our department (TfL).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. As a daily user of the tube, I would love to hear what your colleagues think.

<comment><USER16> Sure, feel free to drop me a mail and I'll collate and send back.

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be great. Thanks, James.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is one amazingly good project and the demonstrations are really well done which bring the whole project to a forefront. I will be curious to see its usage and adaption upon launch.

The whole project, though, is very much dependent upon a camera, are there other feasible usage scenarios when operating without the camera? Because there will be "vitriol" poured privacy issues over coming months.

<comment><USER18> Well, you have access to a GPS, have a display and can produce sounds that only the wearer can hear. I can imagine a lot of things that can be done with that alone.

Think Google Now.

The camera just increases the number of (at this time) potential applications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This mockups are really selling me the whole Glass thing. So many useful features to be developed!

Too bad the API Google released a while ago is so limited.

<comment><USER20> Except for not having direct camera and sensor access, the API isn't _that_ limited. It just requires a little bit more thought in terms of how you lay out the UI and design how your user will interact.

I've seen some pretty impressive stuff with Glass thus far, and Glass has only been shipping for about 3 weeks. Even now only a small fraction of the 2000 developers from I/O have actually gotten their devices yet.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, OP here. I'm currently at work so I can't respond right now, but I'll reply to you all as soon as I can. I never thought a quick weekend project would be this popular. I can't thank you all enough for your interest in this. In the meantime, I'm @jckmgn on Twitter. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER21> I spent quite a bit of money on corrective laser eye surgery (which turned out great). The surgery meant I no longer have to wear glasses, which I didn't enjoy at all. Sorry Google, put your tech into some other item of clothing and I might be interested.

</comment><comment><USER22> One feature I'd _really_ love would be the ability to video chat and share views with other glass users near by without Internet.

I'm aware this won't probably happen for another few years at least, but if I could go skydiving with my friend and have a viewport of what he's seeing up in the top right corner, it'd make things really pretty cool

</comment><comment><USER23> You know, the funny thing is, most scifi movies have something glass like for military applications as opposed to civilian. I could see militaries watching this with great anticipation for friend or foe tags, navigation/waypointing even targeting systems.

</comment><comment><USER24> Few of these use cases require actually wearing glasses to perform (namely only the ones that require taking a photo). Given that phones might in the future be shrunk down to wristwatch size,it seems a more comfortable alternative.

</comment><comment><USER25> The translate concept got me thinking - I wouldn't be surprised at all if Google didn't buy Quest Visual/Word Lens: <http://questvisual.com/us/>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's actually what inspired that particular use case. I would love to be able to travel to a foreign country and be able to understand every piece of text I looked at. I think it could also be useful for learning a language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'd rather not have someone recording video of everything that is going on and even worse having it uploaded to Google.

Imagine the looks if you had a digital camera out like that and were walking around with it.

<comment><USER27> I may possibly have bad memory or attention span, but sometimes I can't remember various important details from a dialog that happened just an hour ago. Or remember and recognize faces from a yesterday meeting. So I'd really like the feature to record and analyze everything that happens around me, but I'd certainly want keep it on my own (physically-owned) storage and nowhere else.

I actually set my phone to automatically record every phone call I make or answer. Calls are recorded, kept for several hours, then encrypted and moved to my home NAS for a secure long-term storage. Helped me many times.

This may sound like a privacy issue, but I try to maintain reasonably high security (<http://xkcd.com/538/> is completely relevant though) and as for possible disclosure concerns, I believe having a recording changes nothing as calls are already recorded in human memory anyway.

(Well, I'm fine with storing almost anything on Google servers if this data's ultimately encrypted on my side with Google not knowing anything about the keys.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Since the introduction of navigation systems a lot of people have absolutely no clue of where they are. They also don't remember the route they took because there is no need to remember.

With the proposed app you don't need to remember a face. Could it be that in the future a lot of people just don't remember you because they can always look you up?

I can understand some fun of this gadget but I don't understand why people think this is _"to enhance the world around us"_. In my mind these gadgets are anti-social. They are there to "share" but forget that "listen to" is as equal important.

There have never been so much lonely people in this age of "social".

Disclaimer: I love what you can do with a computer/device but I don't own a nav system, smartphone or whatever.

<comment><USER29> On the contrary, nothing has done more to _help_ me get a picture of where things are than GPS, especially when someone else is driving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Someone is going to be famous as being the first person to die as a result of being distracted by the intrusive UI of their Google Glass. It will make the news. They will be thought of as a pathetic fashion victim. Winner of a Darwin Award.

<comment><USER29> And then the product will become as obscure as the car radio.</comment></comment>


IPhone 4S Review - <AUTHOR> http://thisismynext.com/2011/10/11/iphone-4s-review/

<comment><USER2> Right off this comment gave me pause in the review:

"It's kind of incredible when you think about it. Competing phone-makers have had more than a year (a lot more considering the leaked photos of the iPhone 4 prior to its release) to best this design, and yet no one really has. As frustrating as it is to say this, no other phone on the market comes close to this level of craftsmanship, materials, or considered design."

This is a very personally subjective statement. To me the phone's design is a brick with rounded corners, I was rather disappointed when it launched. I've never really thought there was a lot of 'design' to the iPhone 4. I agree it's clean but really, is there much to 'best' design wise? I personally find it ergonomically uncomfortable and awkward.

Interesting he then follows with: "The iPhone 4S may not be the most resilient phone in the world (I've broken two original iPhone 4s in accidental drops), but it probably is the most beautiful."

Perhaps other phone designers haven't copied it because glass front and back and an exposed antenna aren't things that they might want to copy? The fact that the reviewer has broken two only adds to that.

I'm sure everyone thinks differently on this subject but that's exactly my point... that a comment like this really doesn't belong in what should be a generally objective review. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The rest of the review I thought was well done though.

Edit, and yes, I fully expect the Karma hit for criticizing a design aspect of an Apple product. :) Just my 2c.

<comment><USER3> I completely agree with you. When I first saw the iPhone 4 launching, I thought a glass body like that sounds pretty cool. Then months later when I first held an iPhone 4 in hand myself, I have to say I was quite disappointed with how it felt. It really felt like if I drop it it would shatter into many pieces. I have an older HTC phone with aluminum body, and it feels a lot more solid than the iPhone 4. In fact even some of the plastic bodies out there like the one on LG Optimus Black which I tested myself, feels more solid than iPhone 4. So yeah, I can't say I'm surprised not many others wanted to copy it this time.

As for the design, I guess it's a matter of taste, but I prefer phones with rounder corners. The rounded shape also feels better in hand than the squarish one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> After watching the video demoing Siri at Gizmodo[1] and saw a screenshot in the article[2], I'm very surprised at how "human" Siri is.

And there's this:

> Asking it "what is the meaning of life?" will bring up a number of > responses, both serious and not so serious. The first time I asked, Siri > simply said "42." If you ask Siri if there's a god, the software points you > in the direction of the nearest church

Amazing.

[1]: [http://gizmodo.com/5848584/real-life-iphone-4s-siri- demonstr...](http://gizmodo.com/5848584/real-life-iphone-4s-siri- demonstration-is-pretty-damn-impressive)

[2]: [http://1876.voxcdn.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/10/iph4_scre1...](http://1876.voxcdn.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/10/iph4_scre13.jpg)

<comment><USER5> The examples you give don't feel natural to me, they feel too precalculated. Something like wolframalpha seems really awesome when you ask it the right things, but you have to know what to ask. (In fact, one of the pages from the video looks very familiar [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=moon+distance+from+eart...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=moon+distance+from+earth) )

For something like Siri, it would impress me most to do mainly one thing well; to understand my context. This is especially difficult if a sentence draws on distinct subject areas. The video seems to give hope for it to be able to do this though.</comment></comment>