grumpyfart

That's the kind of research and work that you need to do before applying any job. Not just sending you resume to 50 potential employees.

A letter to "a letter to Steve Jobs" letters

Yeah new policy sucks, Steve won't change it even if you send thousand of letters, sometime he might bother to answer, but it'll be the same thing.

Although if he answers, that's great, because then you can publish it again and HN can be flooded with more "letters to Steve" and "Apple stole my teddy bear" stories.

Even though it's insane all developers will suck it up as Apple has the power (boat load of users) and developers want to make money. They'll suck it up and keep developing what they are developing.

From Apple point of view this makes perfects sense, they are not loosing anything. They know as soon as they can keep the end-users happy developers will come. That what has been happening and it'll keep that until someone else comes up with a better marketing + product and take over a big chunk of the market. And Android is not ready for that kind of action yet.

"It is perhaps reasonable to specify the nature of the programs that can be sold in the AppStore. It is not reasonable to specify how developers create those programs so long as the end result meets the specified end result criteria."

Can you see the pattern?

About a couple of months ago we were swearing to Apple because of AppStore policies, and now AppStore policy to ban random apps is acceptable since they introduced even more ridiculous terms.

I like the way how Steve plays!

Why the hell one opens a website to choose password and serve it over clear-text (HTTP)?

Isn't that ironic? Trying to make something secure by actually making it totally insecure?

(Before someone jumps, even it's JS it doesn't mean safe against MITM as someone can inject JS before it loads and send all keystrokes to another server)

So how long did it take for crack to come out? He mentions 2-3 months but he never says the actual time, or have I missed it?

Because he says they bypassed in a different way maybe it was only 2 weeks.

What a load of bollocks.

- If you don't like the person don't help, don't talk, walk away. Save your time.

- If you are not going to execute the idea give it to someone else so at least you'll help the world to be a better place (assuming you are not working on efficiency of drug smuggling)

- If you are going to do the idea yourself you don't say it to anyone, obviously!

- If you like the person and if you are not going to do the idea by yourself and still refuse the share ideas. "What's your problem?"

I can't edit it any more, I think because of it's been a while. Anyway I'm sure people will figure out.

Sounds nice, I'll look into that.

you are right, edited.

No todolist, is that even possible to ship a good and profitable software like that? (assuming not everyone is a cofounder)

Maybe not everyone is aware so I want to point out these issues:

1. Don't use it if the page is over SSL (it'll include external JS over HTTP which means that you are vulnerable to MITM)

2. Don't use it if the website carries "sessionid"s over URL

3. Keep in mind that arc90's JS can actually read the cookies (I'm not saying they are but they can). That means if someone hack into their systems they can access to cookies in used websites. (think XSS). Obviously by using it you trust instapaper guys with your account in the active website.

Developers of Readability should point out these security issues clearly in their website.

Simply put: Happy Thanksgiving

Many reasons:

Look at the sales of PC games and console games. It's clear that PC games are going down. Many companies don't even release PC versions any more.

PC gaming is more expensive, you got keep your hardware up to date and that's truly expensive. A good graphic card's price is more expensive than an XBOX 360.

Piracy is a big issue in gaming and piracy rate in console is much lower (none in PS3, although potentially next year we'll see PS3 as well).

Developing games for a fixed hardware is much easier unlike developing games for a platform such as PC or God forbid, Linux.

PC is going to a be only niche players complex MMORPGs, indie game developers, some RTSs.

I guess you can't understand difference between hundred thousand games and a hundred games.

It doesn't matter how Steam is cross-platform as soon as no one bothers to develop games for other platforms.

BTW about 10 years later none-console gaming will be such a niche we'll see less and less games, and only lemonade tycoon quality :)

You got a good point, let me retry:

We need all kind of technical bloggers not only Joels and Jeffs :)

If you are developer and doing TDD or some sort of automated testing (which you should!) and if you are not writing automated tests for bugs, you are doing it wrong anyway!

If the bug is GUI inconsistency, looks crap on my mom's computer sort of bug, then you can't automate anyway. Assuming you testers' mom haven't got serial ports.

It doesn't matter how to be popular, let's not forget the power of being a hardcore technical blogger who only have few visitors (but awesome followers). Blogs that only a few can read and understand. There is nothing wrong with, we can't expect that every niche blog will have millions of visitors.

If you want to be popular choose popular topics, explain them in the most clear (KISS) way, then keep doing it. Now and then post a blog with some religious stuff in it. Post obvious stuff but, put lovely pictures, cure kittens and try to explain one simple thing like no one knows it.

Unfortunately more and more blogs are getting empty, good stories, lots of bollocks but not a damn real thing, or the same things over and over with a new narrative...

So please, please, please don't improve your technical writing style to be "yet another 'I write nice blog posts about mass technical(ish) people' blogger.

No offence to Joel or Jeff, they are doing something nice, but we don't need more Joels or Jeffs, that area already have been covered.

Write pure technical blogs and deep subjects if you dare, not stories.

I don't agree on the code examples, I think it can be a good book without code examples however this is not a good one :)

As a replacement I'd recommend Code Complete and Pragmatic Programmer

- It's writing style is bad, somehow consistently bad

- Structure is no good (I think this is expected though) but I was looking for an overall consistency like in Founders at work.

- Most of the advices written in many words but can be summed to 2 sentences. And rest of the text doesn't elaborate the reasons like they supposed to mostly they are there to fill up space.

Overall I don't have one bad thing but it's like reading a bad novel, you don't feel like that the author or the book has a soul.

Again Founders at Work is a perfect example of having multiple people to contribute but keeping the book in a good writing format.

I hope this won't sound wrong, this is mixergy's about page:

   ...I used credit cards and ingenuity to create a $30+ mil / year (in sales) internet business... 

Maybe he has a grand master plan to make more 30+$ mils with mixergy ....

I've recently read the book actually only first "20~ things" out of it and it's a pretty bad book. I stopped reading after 20.

On paper "97 things" idea seems great but in practice it's pretty much rubbish. I've read 97 things a project manager should know as well and that wasn't good either.

There is nothing wrong with chit-chat :) Actually I do love chit-chat.

I didn't mean bad, what I meant they are conversational interviews, they are not focused on teaching you something. The very nature of these interviews is the reason that I wouldn't pay money for them.

I'd pay for MIT Startup Bootcamp videos because they are solely focus on something which directly potentially almost instantly will effect my business (if the topic is relevant). In these interview I'm lucky if I can pick up 2-3 things by pure luck.

So again I don't mean bad, I think they are really nice, but it's like renting a video from a video store. Not great for business but great to watch and have a good time.

However if I'm going to pay I expect the get some more actionable outcome from it.

What about interviewees ? They spent an hour assuming their video would be available by anyone but later on they found out he started to charge of it? Does it fair? (I assume that he didn't inform them beforehand)

Finally I'm sure out of thousands people 10 will subscribe but potentially that's pretty much it, that model wouldn't work unless you got something crucial. And to be honest this is just chit-chat. Yes I love to listen Paul Graham talk on stuff but none of the interviews are actually ground-breaking or great, it's just good time.

That's why I doubt if anyone would actually bother to subscribe.

Give it 3 months then I'm sure he'll change the model.

How sad, one guy has guts to spend his life and others can't even keep a letter online.

exactly my thoughts :)

Awesome! To able scroll with the mouse wheel you need go through the whole menu, figure out that the "switch" is about scrolling, swear quite a lot and switch it. Revelation(!) <-- as you see I don't need a sarcastic font, I can just type it and in this context it's plain sarcastic .

Reinventing usability FTW! (and yes still sarcastic...)

They already have an API and which is good. Because in products like this (without millions of admirer) open sourcing the application won't help.

They can open source the application but not add any new developers outside of the company (which wouldn't mean anything, other than good faith).

They can open source it and bunch of people might send stuff in an un-organized way, it never ends good. There are thousands of open source projects some serious usability issues because no one cares and it's hard organise people in open source projects and consistency is the key for usability. So open sourcing projects in this scale, %95 of the time won't be better than what it's.

I can't even recall one successful product that area.

Although publishing more document, samples etc. about API definitely helps.

BTW open sourcing their app wouldn't make a difference at all, actually it doesn't even make sense.