Hacker News Reader

applecoreon Accelerated Mobile Pages Project

Shouldn't this technology work just as well for accelerating non-mobile web pages?

applecoreon Silicon Valley can be beaten

There's a lot to digest in this article, but the section on growth rates was particularly thought-provoking.

applecoreon Alan Kay: Computer Applications – A Medium for Creative Thought (1972) [video]

This is a strange quote, since a Sistine-Chapel-Ceiling can only be painted by an individual with great skill and thousands of hours of deliberate practice.

applecoreon Don’t base your business on a paid app

The generalization of this statement: "Don't base your business on a fundamentally unsustainable business model."

applecoreon Blendle Is Up to Something Big

It's increasingly clear that the future of publishing—for content providers—will be to relinquish control and publish their content directly to third-party distribution and engagement platforms.

See also: Snapchat Discover & Facebook Instant Articles.

applecoreon The sky's gone dark

Do we really believe that science, if faced with the immense challenge of orbiting debris, won't find a way to regain access to orbit?

When did we become so pessimistic?

applecoreon Data first, not code first

The better solution is to start by designing the API, and to leave the design of the data model (to support the API) and myriad of user interfaces (as clients of the API) for later.

applecoreon Airbnb and San Francisco

> Airbnb has recently been attacked by San Francisco politicians for driving up the price of housing in the city.

The high price of housing in San Francisco is caused by one (and only one) thing: NIMBYism.

If supply is constrained and new high-rise developments are held back, there will always be higher prices and a distorted market.

In reality, Airbnb doesn't have any measurable effect on the price of housing. (Still, it may help alleviate the situation slightly for some people living in the city.)

applecoreon Goodbye, Native Mobile Apps

It's becoming increasingly clear that the future of publishing—for content providers—will be to relinquish control and publish their content directly to third-party distribution and engagement platforms.

See: Snapchat Discover & Facebook Instant Articles.

applecoreon iOS at Facebook [pdf]

This strategy was hugely successful for Microsoft since the early days of Windows NT 3.1: “What Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away.”

The performance advancements on the hardware side of the platform are almost entirely consumed by the ever-increasing complexity of the most popular app on the software side.

applecoreon More Startup Metrics

Previously: https://a16z.com/2015/08/21/16-metrics/

applecoreon Announcing Meteor 1.2 – ES2015, Angular, React, and More

It's not just useful for SEO; isomorphic React apps render much quicker on first load and for deep linking into your app.

applecoreon Unit Economics

In today's environment, it's better to be one of the "hot" companies with presumably poor unit economics.

Otherwise, your competition will out-market and out-sell you every month simply by spending more money.

applecoreon Node v4.1.0

Is v4 ready for general use? Or should we continue using v0.12? (The main concern is compatibility with all the popular libraries in npm, the Node.js package ecosystem.)

applecoreon Announcing TypeScript 1.6

With Flow and React DOM/Native, you already get complete type-checking across mobile, native, and web application.

applecoreon OptiKey – Full computer control and speech with your eyes

Yes. Open source is about way more than the finished product; it's about the shared community, techniques, processes, and tools.

applecoreon Profile of Lars Bak (2009)

It's pretty clear; browsers were too slow to run ads.

applecoreon The full stack developer is a myth

If you can design 1) the database schema, and 2) the application's frontend (either web or native app), you're essentially a full-stack developer. What's left are the operational details increasingly handled by service providers (like AWS).

applecoreon The Timeless Way of Building (1979)

Christopher Alexander's A City is Not a Tree is another great essay on systems thinking.

http://www.bp.ntu.edu.tw/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/06-Alexa...

applecoreon Features are Debt, not Assets

The double entry concept is a powerful metaphor for product development: in simple terms, every feature "asset" requires a corresponding and opposite liability to be recorded.

applecoreon Uber NYC Trip Data from April to Sept. 2014

City planners already know the bus routes that would best serve the city. Unfortunately, there's no incentive to improve service or increase ridership since it already doesn't scale: for every 30 cents that bus riders contribute in fares, taxpayers put in one dollar collectively.

applecoreon Imba – A new programming language for the web

The unless keyword is very useful for when you're testing an exit condition, e.g., return unless...

applecoreon Sharding Pinterest: How we scaled our MySQL fleet

This reminds me of how FriendFeed was using MySQL to store unstructured data.

http://backchannel.org/blog/friendfeed-schemaless-mysql

applecoreon Facebook creates preview photos that are just 200 Bytes for fast mobile loading

GraphQL doesn't transfer raw bytes, so they would save the 33% overhead if they weren't using Base64 binary-to-text encoding.

applecoreon Periscope by the Numbers

What happened in the last week of May 2015 that caused the huge uptick in growth?

applecoreon Study of Ad-Blocking Software Suggests Wide Use

This article makes an important point: ad-blocking is not just a means to remove annoying (and often disgusting) advertisements; it's also to prevent data being collected about you without any consent or oversight.

applecoreon The Post-Mac Interface

The Unix shell, one of the most successful user interfaces ever developed, doesn't support undo nor does it need to. It's successful because it doesn't presume to know better than the user.

applecoreon EFF, AdBlock and Others Launch New “Do Not Track” Standard

Your mind share is worth more to advertisers than your wallet. The consequence of advertising isn't getting your money; it's getting your attention.

applecoreon Atari founder Nolan Bushnell on why life is 'a game'

“Today’s ideal social form is not the commune or the movement or even the individual creator as such; it’s the small business.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/opinion/sunday/the-entrepr...

applecoreon Review: ‘The Economics of Inequality,’ by Thomas Piketty

Does one need an estate tax if there's either a tax on wealth or a land value tax?