novum

This is chock full of platitudes and obfuscation. Pinboard appears to have participated in good faith, as you admitted yourself. It seems rather like HN/YC had never intended to allow Pinboard to win, even before any votes had been cast.

If your aim with this contest was to pilot something new and unique that might further distinguish YC, I suppose you've done just that, even if in the opposite direction. Sometimes karma is more than just a column in your database.

(Disclaimer: I did not vote.)

Parent is most likely referring to the telnet GOAHEAD character and its related SUPPRESS GOAHEAD protocol: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc858

I am the author of a MUD client for iOS[0] that, like most other clients, will capture and silently discard the GOAHEAD character. GOAHEAD is most common on MUSHes but I've seen them in a few MUDs as well.

[0] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mudrammer-a-modern-mud-clien...

    A Facebook spokesman says the company “doesn’t have shadow
    accounts or profiles – hidden or otherwise – for people 
    who haven’t signed up for our service,” and a 2011 audit 
    by Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner confirmed this.

Does anyone really believe that Facebook is not assembling shadow profiles for as close to 100% of the human population as is possible?

Sure it could be a cron job, but using Jenkins adds some conveniences: a nice UI to browse projects, plus it archives the output of every historical build, locally-archived build artifacts, lots of extensibility with plugins, and so on.

CI means knowing that your product is always in a releasable state. Green tests is only one small piece of that.

I have an iOS app or two that I work on independently, as side projects. Even though I am the sole developer on these projects, CI saves me dozens or hundreds of hours of time. My CI script[0] downloads provisioning profiles from Apple's Developer Center, installs them, runs my tests, builds my app, archives the resulting IPA and .dSYM.zip to Amazon S3, uploads the build to Testflight, notifies my testers, then sends my iOS devices a push notification with an ultimate success or failure message.

And it does all of this every day at 4am, while I'm sleeping, and I don't have to think about it.

How much longer would all of this take if I were doing it manually each time? Time is the only infinitely valuable scarce resource. I don't want to spend time mucking with codesigning and provisioning profiles; I want to spend more time coding.

[0] I've open-sourced my iOS build script! https://github.com/splinesoft/SSBuild

I have mixed feelings here.

On the one hand, the announcement is correct that "email is here to stay" and it's exciting to see innovation on top of an ancient protocol that was never intended for the abuse it receives today (IMAP).

On the other hand, the announcement is correct that "email is here to stay" and because my entire life runs out of my inbox, I am almost certain to never grant an arbitrary third party like Inbox access to my mail. How does Inbox make money? And Inbox fully intends to store my mail; why should I trust them?

On the other other hand, I have been a long-time happy customer of Fastmail.fm and I am both amused and disappointed to see that Inbox does not support an arbitrary IMAP connection (e.g. to support Fastmail).

Data Scientist (noun): A statistician who lives in San Francisco.

(only half joking)

I think I can also attribute my initial interest in programming to MUDs. Funny how, all these years later, they still give me satisfaction albeit through a much different tech stack. :)

     > recite ritual of reminiscing

My personal side project, a MUD client for iPhone and iPad, is not even remotely profitable. That's right: online multiplayer text-based games. There are still thousands of them online today, set in fantasy, sci-fi, absurdist, and many other worlds!

I knew before I started that it wouldn't make much money. That's not why I wrote it; I wrote it because I wanted this app for myself.

It expands to fill much of my free time, driving my ROI even further negative, but I sure do enjoy it. :)

By Great Odin's Beard, a free copy! http://tokn.co/msvuyzp8

I have also open-sourced many of its iOS bits: https://github.com/splinesoft

Hard to say. Sounds like you have until 2/26, at which point something(?) happens: http://help.testflightapp.com/customer/portal/articles/14527...

They already have gone away for Android. On iOS, it looks like they won't allow new apps to be created but existing apps may continue to upload new builds.

This looks really neat. Thanks!

I wish I could self-host this on my own server. I also wish it did not rely on Github as I also self-host my own repos.

Thanks. I signed up for an account, but everything I'm seeing is about A/B testing, in which I am not interested.

Mega points to you for having a Jenkins plugin. Awesome!

Is your framework required for beta distribution? Your docs are inconclusive on this point.

If the framework is required, would you consider adding a Cocoapods podspec for it?

Sounds neat! But I must be missing this free service on your pricing page? It seems to start at $150/month: https://www.vessel.io/pricing/

Bummer...but also exciting, since Adhoc/Beta distributions and access could be massively improved by being handled first-party by Apple. Maybe now it will be!

I've long been using TF for adhoc beta distributions of my iOS apps. Looks like there are only two options left for that:

    * Hockeyapp, starting at $10/month
    * Host your own IPA on S3 or elsewhere. 

The downside with the latter is where TF added value: per-build access settings, notifications, teams, and feedback. You'll have to approximate this now by mucking with which devices are listed in your provisioning profile.

I open-sourced my iOS build script recently. It'll take care of everything for you -- downloads your provisioning profile from Apple's dev center, builds, codesigns, archives, and uploads to S3. https://github.com/splinesoft/SSBuild

Almost certainly a shared keychain.

Travis CI (for now) is stuck on iOS 6, so you're out of luck if you're targeting 7. They expect to resolve this soon. You must also subscribe to a paid plan if you want Travis to build your private repo. That said, I use Travis for all of my iOS 6-compatible public cocoapods on Github.

Xcode 5's built-in Xcode bots require OS X Mavericks Server ($20) and, in my experience, has a very brittle setup if you're using Cocoapods. It's probably fine for simpler projects.

I've personally been running Jenkins locally. My build script:

  - Downloads provisioning profiles from Apple's dev center using Cupertino[0]
  - Builds and codesigns my app using Xctool[1]
  - Archives the app with xcrun
  - Builds my app again with the Testflight library, then uploads the result to TF

[0] https://github.com/nomad/cupertino

[1] https://github.com/facebook/xctool -- the only Facebook product I use!

Edit: Jenkins has an Xcode plugin, though I don't use it (I use xctool instead). I do use Jenkins' Testflight plugin, which makes it very easy to upload your build to testflight and include the build's changelog in your release notes.

Not to be that guy, but since no one else has mentioned it: a file in Dropbox is a file shared with the NSA.

I was a happy paying Dropbox customer since 2008 but downgraded my account to the free tier a few months ago. I no longer consider Dropbox trustworthy for anything except (1) trivial files and (2) files encrypted client-side before they're put into Dropbox.

Even with the above, I had two specific use-cases that only recently did I resolve:

- 1Password Sync. Dropbox is no longer necessary here since 1Password natively supports iCloud sync across Mac and iOS.

- Arbitrary file-sharing between Mac and iOS. Dropbox is no longer necessary here ever since I've been running BTSync[0], which has worked flawlessly in my experience.

It might be time to cancel Dropbox entirely.

[0] http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync.html

TB3 uses the system font size that you specify in Settings -> General -> Text Size.

I do agree that the default is too large, and furthermore that some (most?) apps would benefit from an independent text size setting.

[Shameless plug] My app MUDRammer: A Modern MUD Client[0] is very text-oriented and uses its own text size control to allow for font sizes from 8 to 24pt, far more than would be possible with the system control.

[0] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mudrammer-a-modern-mud-clien...

Definitely seems sketchy to me. Particularly this line on the application form:

    Have you ever successfully released an app 
    on the Apple Market? *

The application form itself is an embedded Google Docs form with this unfortunate footer:

    This content is neither created nor endorsed by Google.

As an aside, I was watching BBT just yesterday (on a long plane ride with limited entertainment options) and I was reminded how uncomfortably awkward it makes me feel. In short, the core problem is that the characters are not sympathetic -- you're meant to laugh at them, not with them, to say nothing of the show's terribly backwards gender roles.

This essay was quite popular a while back and summarizes all this and more, quite well I think: http://butmyopinionisright.tumblr.com/post/31079561065/the-p...

Edit: Interesting to see many of you have a completely opposite take on these characters. That's fine with me, as long as we don't have to watch BBT if I'm over at your place. :)

Edit 2: Can we at least agree that laugh tracks are awful, even on otherwise-phenomenal shows (Seinfeld)?

Dungeons and world-of-webcraft developers. I slew my own personal WoW demon in '08 and this site, using the same skill tooltip-style as WoW, brings back memories :/

Yes. However, I believe Facebook has a history that shows it repeatedly failing to be trustworthy enough to make those decisions.

You are correct. Facebook was not the first social network and they will not be the last.

I guess I'm more concerned about the precedent they've set, in terms of (mis)handling user data, and how other companies seem to be falling over themselves to add 'social' features. Very few companies begin with a commitment to user privacy.

My fear is that FB has done some kind of irreversible damage, even if only as measured in terms of the attitudes other companies are adopting towards privacy.

I admire your positivity.

However, is it not the case that this:

  Don't code bad shit and compete against those that do. 
  Make the privacy destroyers lose.

...has been disproved by facebook? They are (one of the larger) privacy destroyers. They are not -- at present -- losing.

By what measure do you assess "quite many shadow profiles of you laying around" to be "much ado about nothing"? Isn't that exactly the problem?

What of one -- and one is all it takes -- company, disaffected employee, or black hat desiring to analyze, filter, or publicize data about me, even in aggregate? What of user preference or control? What of the right to be left alone?

Is this it? This is our brave new world of pervasive data gathering, social network analysis, and the dying gasp of any shred of privacy? This is the future we've built for ourselves?

I haven't had a facebook account for 3 years. I'm certain FB has a shadow profile for me today and there's nothing I can do about it. My friends don't understand (or don't care about) the implications of everything they do online being tracked, in minute detail, and stored indefinitely.

Real-time indefinite mass surveillance is a fact and yet failed to galvanize the public into action. What can I do other than allow the cynicism to take hold and become a recluse?

I earn my livelihood from technology. I want to believe technology has great potential for medicine, exploration, and improving the human condition. The cognitive dissonance has to give somewhere.

I live in SF and it's certainly far from perfect. California no doubt has its share of problems too.

But as noted in comments below, I would never -- not ever -- consider living in a state run by people like Rick Perry.

I don't think there's any malicious intent. In my demographic, (almost) all events are set up through FB because your friend graph, mass-invites, and guest lists are built in.

My flatmate's boyfriend is fond of throwing large house parties with hundreds of invitees, then hiring a doorman to check names off against the FB RSVP list. If you're not on it, you're not admitted.

My closest friends remember me and send me invites via email, but I can't fault them for forgetting now and then.

FB has, over the years, gradually lost my trust until I deleted my account in November 2010 after having been a member since late 2004 when FB was college-only.

As a 20-something living in SF, it's a daily thing now: I don't get invited to parties, I don't know about birthdays, I don't see my friends' photos, I don't have any contact with anyone from high school or college anymore.

There is a real social cost for someone in my situation to not be on FB. I struggle to quantify the harm, but it's there. I struggle too to explain to my friends why I'm not on FB. And yet I still think I'm better off without it.

The whole situation contributes to the isolation I already experience as an introvert and someone who doesn't much care for bars, clubs, or alcohol -- though I suppose I don't need to remind this audience that being alone != loneliness.

I guess it doesn't matter much anyway, since FB is still collecting information on me (and other 'shadow profiles' of users not on FB).