franzus

Fun Fact: You can get the API secret key out of twitter's official client. Which will allow you to use their xauth system (no browser oauth required - only enter username/password).

Also great for spambots: Twitter can't ban the app because then they had to ban their official Twitter clients.

/edit: have fun

    'key': 'Fpl5UUVwvaczUzzpVJ8Rlw'
    'secret': 'z73HF21zCz5CaxzDM6M0OPeaCBYGfHUG3FYBgcMB2Y'

    'key':  '3rJOl1ODzm9yZy63FACdg'
    'secret': '5jPoQ5kQvMJFDYRNE8bQ4rHuds4xJqhvgNJM4awaE8'

One is for tweetie 1.0 and the other is for the official twitter client.

> man ssh

doesn't imply being "LEET".

If you don't know "tricks" like this ... what are you doing on HACKER news?

Great. I perceive webdev as pretty boring. I hope using an exotic language like clojure will make it a little more interesting for me.

Start writing a game. You will learn a lot more from the problems you have to solve for your game than from a dozen project euler websites.

Yep, I too don't understand the fascination with puzzles. I love solving real problems but I hate those idiotic puzzles.

> worked to get a high karma

Wow, why would anyone consider a score on any internet site so important? I certainly wouldn't "work hard" to get internet points.

It should be pretty hard to automate spam comments (without the comments getting downvoted to hell). Whereas automated submission of stories is super trivial.

> I think showing veteran users in another color would really help a lot to set the tone.

Why should we set apart veteran users? Only because they are longer here doesn't mean they have a more important opinion on a certain topic.

Setting them more apart is like having village elders. Even if they talk about something they have no idea of they are still right because they are so old?

> community leaders

That's where I stopped reading. I don't need or want a leader who can lead my thoughts.

Also: Meta discussions are never productive. They only waste time.

> market sabotage by people selling apps at 99 cents

The real sabotage comes from Apple who are encouraging 99c ents applications. It fits well in their strategy to commoditize software so their hardware becomes more appealing.

The problem is that this strategy works: For every "homeless" developer who gives up there are waiting 10 in line to flood the market with their 99 cent apps.

Hmm, getting me to buy a mobile app for $1 is really hard. I consider most of them time wasting toys.

On the other hand I'm perfectly happy to pay $15/month for a useful web service.

And on the desktop I have no problem with paying $50+ for serious software.

I guess mobile has (to me at least) that shovel ware image.

> Is There Hope for the Paid App?

Yes, there is. But not on a market where $2 is a premium price. If you want to make a living from software products you should stay away from mobile.

At least it plays out well for Apple who wanted to commoditize software for a long time.

> It's important to recognise that we're talking about a shovelware market

This. Where $3 are considered a high price you realistically can only produce apps that are worth their low price.

If you try anything different - making a great polished product and trying to strike a hit - all power to you. But then you are playing a lottery and not doing business.

> It's a shame that making any kind of high-end and higher-priced mobile app is probably a non-starter now.

This is what drove us (luckily I must say now) away from mobile to web based SaaS. When we build a mobile app now it's only a complement to our SaaS service and usually is given away for free to get users for our service.

Sadly the geek in me hates the web development stack ... but my inner business guy keeps the geek at bay ;)

Those guys are the typical case of the "free" brainwashing. They see taking money as something filthy and immoral to do.

It's how you start thinking if you grow up with everybody giving away their $product for free on the one side and the opensource/libre software hippies who give you a hard time if you try to make a living with software products on the other side.

Now if the results were just some homeless developers that wouldn't be a big problem. But it's far worse because the customer base has been miseducated and now awaits almost everything for free or for $.99.

/rant

> and sold to a corporate buyer for $120m.

That's a great business plan and not lottery at all!

> Literally anything can break with an update on Arch.

I can confirm that. After the 3rd time such a thing happened to me I switched to Ubuntu. Arch is a testing bed for people who like screwing around with Linux. Nothing against that but from time to time I'd like to be able to do actual work on my workstation :)

> specifically Zuck’s idealism (perhaps even naïveté) that focusing on building great products will lead to solid long-term businesses

Nothing against that. Also I find it a good thinh that he's still involved in the products ...

But what good products does he think does Facebook make? Quality does not really come to mind when I think about Facebook. This is common among my peers too. To us Facebook is the place where soccer moms get ripped off by clicking on pixel cows.

That's also why I'd never work for them. It's something my hacker honor wouldn't allow.

I bet this has been done before and is available as a C library ...

In these cases monetization simply means: sell the start up to a bigger idiot.

> Long Tail Market

Oh, don't get it wrong. The long tail market is there. But what many people get wrong is that you don't make meaningful money as a producer in a long tail market. The guy owning the store with all those obscure niche titles in it will make the money.

Yes, you can produce obscure apps (and music) and find customers. But it won't be many customers. You as the producer will be making only cents. The app store owner on the other hand will be making the big money because he can monetize the whole long tail with his indefinite shelf space.

The app store is a perfect example of missing competition. It's 4 years old now and has not been improved once inch since its original inception.

Search, discoverability and speed are still as bad as on day one. Paired with Apple's kafka-esque bureaucracy and indifference for developers it's a really shitty state the app store is in - and I don't see any improvements anytime soon.

I guess it's because they work.

> Do you think there might be a lot of interest in something like this?

I can only tell from what I know from my peers (mostly CS educated guys). Many of them are interested into hooking up stuff to their computers but can't get their head around the most simple electronic circuits. (Pull up/down resistors are pretty much irritating for example).

So yeah, there's definitely some interest. I guess hardware hacking is something many programmers are interested in (Software only gets boring after 2 decades of programming) but can't find some easy intro.

Yeah, I know what you mean. There's not much information about "electronics for software guys". Every resource I could find was "the other way around": Programming for electronics guys.

There were some promising videos on youtube but it all boiled down to: "Here's this simple circuit. <no explanation about the circuit> Now to the hard part: FOR loops. <30 minutes about for loops and basics of C syntax>".

I guess this would be a great topic for the pragprog-guys. If they'd commission such a book I'd buy a dozen copies ;)

Just another naysayer. At least he's not one of those "but H+ is unethical/against god's will" guys.

At our company we have beer and whisky stocked. "Project Friday" is a fun day.

We're in Germany and this is not usual here :)

Hmm, I can only speak from my experience where I checked domains with GD and when I came back one week later to register them I was greeted with a "this domain has been registered. but you can buy it for $50"-type message.

This was around 2003 and since then I'm avoiding godaddy.

> When technology inventors have to explain themselves to content producers in order to not have their product killed, something has gone horribly wrong with the world.

Not if those technology "inventors" want to make money from said content.