notphilatall

I've always figured (at least for former soviet states) that it's a combination of:

+ a rigorous STEM curriculum

+ limited conventional job prospects

+ a social/business environment in which exploit-selling is a respectable profession

This seems quite backward - if France wants startups to succeed, why would they block a majority buy-out for nationalistic purposes?

It's a cool project, but I wouldn't necessarily call it a start-up. How will you monetize while depending on FB? Is this currently a pain-point for people, to the point that they would pay money for it?

I was pretty excited about SocialCam when they first launched, and sad when I saw "OMG SEE THIS" type videos spreading via their app on FB.

Why can't we have an instagram of video? It sucks to see my friends tricked into clicking on racy videos on FB and sharing them accidentally, a group of folks as awesome as the SocialCam team shouldn't have to resort to this type of trickery.

That's an interesting reaction, and someone else said "This would be great were I a stalker."

It comes as a surprise to me though -- all of these photos are already public. Do people not expect this degree of discoverability with Instagram? Do you think FB will consider this potentially sensitive angle post-acquisition?

"3) ... There are plenty of parts of the country where you can earn a combined six figure income while spending less than $100/sqft for a home in a good neighborhood."

Where are these magical lands? I've lived in Atlanta and the SF Bay Area, and the salary difference between the two for engineers is around 30%, although house prices aren't much cheaper in the former - unless you want to live in the suburbs, and then you make up the difference in gas.

Medical specialists are tied to hospitals, some of which may be more affordable areas, but technologists (who this site arguably caters to) tend to be bound to tech hotspots, where house prices near $1MM don't raise eyebrows.

From what I read, Instagram faced major challenges scaling their service to meet the demand of their growing iPhone user base. My guess is that iPhone growth just now plateaued enough to allow them to release their android client.

What amazing proof of Apple's marketing savvy.

I last used instagram with a second-hand iPhone 3G, and stopped using it when I upgraded to a Galaxy Nexus S. I never thought I downgraded myself into being a second-class mobile citizen in the process.

That's only an option if you're shuttering the product of your own will. If you're part of a talent acquisition (which is the case with Posterous and Milk), the purchasing company would have to make that call, so you should really address the blog post to them.

It's unlikely any of them would: they just paid a bunch of money and acquired the team plus source, and even if they don't use the acquired source, open-sourcing it is extra work and/or a liability. The team, on the other hand, may still have faint hopes that the company will do something with their product.

In the cases where it's clear that the team's energies will be focused elsewhere the team could try to include it in the terms of the acquisition, but were I in those shoes I'd probably not want to risk souring the upside or acquisition as a whole.

Quick explanation: In orthodox judaism, one is not supposed to operate a light-switch on the Sabbath.

I'm not jewish, but some of my friends are observant (but progressive) and use the Sabbath as a day of reflection. This seems to completely go against the spirit of the rule (to spend a day living simply with friends and family, without technology for maximum reflection, introspection, and rest).

I don't see how this gadget would catch on -- unless someone is bound is follow the rule to the letter, but doesn't really want to (but then at that point, they should just stop adhering IMHO)

Again, hashing won't do much except make you feel fuzzy inside. Since the hashing mechanism is stored on the phone and the possibility space for US phone numbers is extremely limited, it'd be trivial to hash all possible numbers and then do a reverse lookup of the hashed values of your stolen address books.

You can usually assume that the non-country/area-code numbers have the same country/area code as your current user, if you know their phone number (good thing to get during registration).

It's mostly a question whether they store it or not -- although they have to store it in order to support notifying you when new users who are in your address book join the service.

If their servers are compromised, a cracker could still get MOST of the info. Since the hashing function (and salting mechanism) lives on the phone, she could generate a rainbow table of all possible phone numbers and a set of emails for common domains.

How do you expect the app to find other users that are in your address book without uploading your address book? It can hardly send all other users to your phone in an attempt to match them up.

I agree that the second notification is a little bit annoying, but in the case of Voxer you DID have a chance to cancel out -- it didn't secretly do it in the background, which Path apparently did.

I've noticed a pervasive attitude throughout the SF social app community that your app is at a disadvantage if it doesn't use all of the (potentially dirty) tricks that other apps use -- especially in a crowded space. If your app is the only one that doesn't do automatic friend discovery, or post to the Facebook news feed, your growth coefficient is going to suffer. Of course if you're the first to be found out doing these tricks, the backlash can hurt more than it helps. It's a gamble, and although the HN community is (rightly) in uproar, Joe average user likely won't care that his address book was uploaded unless he's explicitly told to be upset about it, or unless someone compromises Path's servers and he's personally hurt by it.

But Time Warner will know it was just you :)

Who on earth do you have service with that doesn't let you set your own WIFI password?

What amazes me the most is that recruiters today are largely as awkward and ineffective as they were ten years ago. Maybe it's just that the worst recruiters are also the noisiest, but I would think that enough recruiters would have learned that building relationships is far more valuable than mass-emailing.

As a developer, if you're in my rolodex as a recruiter / talent agent with a clue, I'll likely reach out when I'm considering career options -- even if it's several years down the road. As a recruiter, once you gather enough developers into that relationship, you should have your bonus-based salary covered... right?

Edit: I wrote a quick one-pager that I routinely send to recruiters who are particularly bad at their supposed job, http://notphil.com/recruiter_tips.html

Email me (address in profile), I joined Google in 2010 from Slide. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised :)

It's a shame, because UDID-based user blocking has been quite effective for a lot of apps and communities. I suppose users could authenticate via iCloud, and Apple has an interest in users doing this, but it's a bummer for UX.

What is going on with Samsung? This should have (a) raised all PR alarms as soon as it got traction on the internet, and (b) should NOT have taken >24h for someone to track down what they're installing in C:\windows\SL

At least it reminds us why the underdog sometimes has the upper hand, I suppose.

Right, and I could again disable your timer, which would just lead to a JS arms race. Why send the content to the non-authenticated client in the first place? Wait to get the confirmation that the person paid or is within quota, and then get the content via a POST request...

Edit: I'm not condoning stealing content, just wondering why you're depending on the client to self-censor.

Cute, I like the overall design a bit more than the voting to be honest. I did something similar over the weekend, plotting instagram pictures on a map. You can see it at http://insta.notphil.com/map.html - click on a place on the map and then on the pins that appear to see pictures taken there.

No option for "I know the basics, and don't immediately see the need to learn more?"

I'm currently hiring for a large organization and have received linkedin profiles (in lieu of traditional resumes) twice -- both times I was prompted to register a linked-in account in order to see the full details.

IMHO It's on-par with sending your resume in .docx -- finding a good candidate is hard, so I'll probably jump through the hoop, but you'll be mentally earmarked as "that guy who sent me the problematic resume."

Just do .txt / .pdf with the same info in both, and everyone will love you.

Edit: If you want to really stand out, provide an alias whose search results illustrate your domain knowledge and community participation. :)

I'd be concerned about my liver and kidneys. The author will probably survive this, but without nutrients the additional stressors will cause some damage. Did the author follow his own advice regarding talking to a doctor?

Who determines product direction? Aside from the challenge of estimating developer contributions ("I wrote the core services" vs. "I wrote the money making feature of the day" vs. "I wrote the analysis / AB test tools that let us optimize"...), how would you split revenue among non-coding contributors (including artists, for example)

Can you sort for music videos as opposed to static images with audio? I attempted to tackle this problem with youvj.com (a weekend project of mine) a while ago, filtering for music video, official, etc in the description and title (as well as popularity and other factors), but never got results I was truly happy with.

I lived in downtown ATL and worked in Norcross ~4 years ago, and had solid T-mobile coverage (better than I have with AT&T in SF now, but that's not saying much).

Is mensa generally respected? I've always figured it was a pseudo-scam for intellectually competitive people, since one has to pay to take their test (and no sample tests are available.