skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My principal exposure to Chris Messina was his 50-minute long, rambling vlog about Mozilla's future direction—one that seemed really poorly thought out and ill-considered to me. It apparently irritated a number of folks at Mozilla as well.

I wrote a long, rambling piece about the whole episode: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2007/5/14/184745/679
"Therefore the idea of passing laws that say some kinds of algorithms belong to mathematics and some do not strikes me as absurd as the 19th century attempts of the Indiana legislature to pass a law that the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is exactly 3, not approximately 3.1416."

now that is a real gem
The screen response is around 1 second.

Fail!

If a selling point is to be able to display the "documents you use at work" then you need to be able to interact with them. THis means searching, zooming, and scrolling at a minimum. 1 second response time is way too slow to do that well.
I think its interesting to see the features they are pushing here:

*Work with the documents you use every day at work

*Put you in control of your documents

*Let you quickly transfer files from your computer or BlackBerry® smartphone

*Connect via WiFi and Bluetooth®

*Access the QUE store. Complete with the best business section around

*Feature the largest touchscreen in the industry

The iTouch/iSlate is going to kill this thing on all these features. It seems like a device that is confused about whether its a book reader or a tablet PC and instead of being good at one, it fails at both.
I'm in Irvine but I would be willing to make the trek up there.
I don't suppose this type of crime is common, but to the extent that it happens, it's probably an inevitable consequence of people walking around the mall with a bag that screams, "Hey, I'm carrying $1500 in unopened electronics."

In any case, you're better off buying computers from Amazon just to avoid the ~$50-100 in sales tax.
What really amazes me is the fact that even on this site, the discussion barely touches the app store issue.

It might be true that the tablet will have a significant impact on tomorrow's computing platforms. But what really scares me is the prospect that it might become more and more accepted that the user will loose the freedom to decide what software he can install and thus what to do with the machine.

This is something that goes against anything we learned from the open web and, of course, from "hacking" (jailbreaking does not count here). It goes against the central things I value at computing.

By comparison, _I_ could not care less whether this thing comes with Flash or not.
Yes, I believe it's called 'false precision': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_precision
exactly. it's nice that AR makes it easy to go down a layer, but then you're no longer abstracting away the database.

edit: to be fair, I was less than precise in my earlier post when I said that ActiveRecord wasn't totally transparent. I was specifically referring to AR as an abstraction that can be used identically across various different databases.
Could you (or anyone else) elaborate on the issues with super() as described in this article? I'm having a hard time understanding what's going on between the complex details of the problem and the author's cumbersome syntactic choices.
For some reason I was under the impression that web apps would replace the app store apps. However like you I'm concerned that Apple will try to squash this in favor of controlling the entire app 'chain'.

Our only hope is that web apps can be accepted before the idea of a 'pc app store' really takes hold.
Wait so what you are trying to say is that in 1994 we already knew that patents on software are going to kill us, and someone spoke up against it, and nothing was done?

Yes because enough people were not pissed off. This is changing now (sort-of-kind-of-maybe-is) because a company like Red-Hat was ticked off well enough. I give the current movement a 30% chance of success and a 80% chance of a success with no real good impact that was intended by something like this letter.
Abstractions are tools. Very powerful tools. And like other such tools, they can be misused and you can get yourself into deep &^%&^%#.

Very smart people can think about problems at varying levels of details. They know how to use abstractions properly. Sometimes, this means not using them in certain situations!
Palm Developer Program Now Open
You need to watch a couple of their time travel videos. The time travel is flexible and the time steps are tiny. Because you can move forwards, backwards, pause and fast forward time you can try several strategies until you find the best one for a given fight.

Your objection about spending a lot of time fighting AI is a valid one, it was my main objection too. It seems that it is so easy for the actual player to go back and tweak the battle if they didn't like the results that the AI complaint is moot.

Also, you can provide pretty rich standing orders and hierarchies for your troops. If anything, you will fight AI less than in a typical RTS - since a normal (not superhuman) opponent cannot manage all their troops at once, whereas in this game any opponent can slow stuff down until they can manage everything.
In line with this, I recently have been trying to exit grad school. I applied with a large tech company (within the top Fortune 20), interviewed, and got an offer. The problem was that they offered 15K less than anyone else, and refused to negotiate. I feel like they took advantage of the economy and their name. I turned them down, but I can't help but wonder how satisified I wouldn't have been if I had taken that job.
Wonder if they're going to use this venture to put some funding into LFTR projects (LFTR was the topic of a Google Tech Talk from Feb 20, 2009: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F0tUDJ35So ).
There's probably elements of his personality that aren't being relayed properly, and I definitely agree that personality a key elements for a hire.

But your presentation of this story suggests astonishment that someone coming to you for the honour of a job on your wonderful team would have the nerve to care a lot about the environment in which he was working.

The example questions you bring up seem like perfectly reasonable questions to me and I'd be loathe to work somewhere where the manager didn't want to answer them. You'd maybe be surprised by how many places don't use source control at all, or don't have any kind of development methodology, let alone Agile.
The Other HP Slate Runs On Android
Heh. I had this conversation with a Google recruiter (paraphrased):

GR: "Hey, you seem perfect for a position I have in mind. Want to chat?"

Me: "Sure. What's the position?"

GR: "Well, what do you want to work on?"
It's fairly unsurprising that an expensive computer left in a parked car gets ripped off in an urban center.
Why is this question being voted down? I think it's interesting, from a marketing perspective.
The above article (http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html) is excellent !
Thank you very much for the link.
I have a vague feeling a Mark Jen episode could be forthcoming.
I agree, I've worked as a help desk person and a developer and I personally enjoy development type work. A lot of satisfaction comes from working at the right company too. I've worked at many companies and I finally found one I enjoy working at. The company I work for is within Fortune's top 100 companies to work for: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/2009/fu.... I'd suggest going through the list and trying to find one of those companies. If you can't find one, make sure you do your home work during the interview process. I believe Joel on Software has a good article about what to look for when considering a new employer.

Finally, happiness is a choice. Go into your job each day telling yourself that no matter what happens you’re going to find something positive. It’s a lot of hard work to be happy.
Introducing the Google Chrome OS
In the coming years I do hope to see Flash die, but it's not going down without a fight, and it certainly still maintains a chokehold on almost the entire video delivery market which gives it massive leverage.

7 million iphones sold is great, but pales in comparison to how many pcs/macs are sold which come with full Flash support out of the box.

The poor iPhone users with no Flash support deal with it because they bought an Apple product and know 'the deal'. If you're going to buy Apple products you buy what they shit out, and complaining doesn't do a damn thing to sway Mr. Jobs and his crew. With any other provider the uproar over no Flash support would be deafening.

You're probably right, most iPhone users probably don't care so much about Flash support because they don't really have a choice and would rather have the good points of an iphone rather than ditch it just for that one feature (look how many stuck around with no MMS).

Flash blows, and I curse the day my clients discovered it but its not dieing, dwindling or fading .. yet.
This is how the EPGY software (I think? It might have been Hopkins CTY, this was over a decade ago) taught factorization in algebra: it was incredibly effective and simply made sense, and was IMO far more effective than what I saw being taught in the classrooms.
UntitledStartup.com - The Anti-Stealth Mode Startup
I read (somewhere else) that this is the 4th of the TechStars class of 10 to be acquired. Obviously, "acquired" can mean that the founders got a fat signing bonus and an unusually large options plan at the acquiring company, but I still think that's impressive for TechStars. It's still early to judge, but the % of TechStars companies that get Series A funding and the % that have been acquired is starting to look pretty impressive, especially considering that it's in Boulder.

/respect to Filtrbox and TechStars both.
Too bad they're not so open at the Royal Mail. Regardless of the wikileaks.org publishing of the data, their charging money for a canonical table of postal code data is shameful at best.
I thought this was discussed earlier this week, but I can't find a link anywhere. The representation of the date is ambiguous about decimal/hexadecimal. So some devices are reading "10" as equal to 16, yielding the year 2016 instead of 2010.
The Harry Potter Theory of Programming Language Design
> The iTouch/iSlate is going to kill this thing on all these features.

{{This article does not cite any references or sources.}}
this is the fundamental flaw in e-ink.

the que does allow you to search, zoom, scroll and manipulate. You can even type or draw annotations.
I understand that people at Google are allowed to work on whatever project they want, at any time. If an employee working on project X decides they want to switch and work on project Y instead, they just inform their manager and then make the switch.

If you assume that:

a) people are most productive doing something they're passionate about; and

b) the set of Google employees is smart and creative enough that what they want to work on is probably the right thing to work on;

then this is probably the optimum method of allocating developer resources.
Fowler on Dependency Injection vs Service Locator
Am I mis-informed?
Are homepages dead or are we missing the boat?
Back in 2001 I was working at a little pre-press/imaging shop and I decided I really wanted to go work for a top-notch MS shop in town. I was the only developer and was pretty sure I wasn't going to grow unless I surrounded myself with great developers.

But I didn't know where, so instead of going to monster.com I just searched for all the Microsoft partners in the area and cold-emailed them to see if they were hiring or interested with a quick little bit of information about myself. I ended up with two interviews, both with great shops. I ended up taking a job at G.A. Sullivan (later bought by Avanade) and was thrilled.

Neither of the places I interviewed with had job openings posted and I never posted my resume on monster or other sites.

To this day I think this is the best way to find a job, seek out where you want to work. Don't wait them to come to you or find you online.
I'd wager the vast majority of YouTube users watch videos in their browsers.

Yes, but what are they actually doing? They're streaming the exact same h.264 video, except using the Flash plugin as a (buggy, inefficient) decoder.

they like Flash so it is important.

Not to users. Users are the ones who actually buy and use the devices that end up viewing the ads. No user buys a device for a better ad experience. That's nonsense.

nearly 100% market penetration

This is not going to hold true as more people browse the web on devices that lack Flash. Such devices may not be the sole or even primary way of browsing the web for some time, but in terms of total volume of web usage, it is already significant, and will only grow. It will make less and less sense to target a web platform that can't be reached every way that people use the web.
Yeah but take projects like typekit, for instance. Clearly there are businesses to be made in solving some of these problems, and smart designers understand the importance of web accessibility. It seems like as developers and designers we'll create much more wealth finding creative ways to abandon Flash.
Pretty hard to know without knowing the landscape.

Scenario #1: FiltrBox was almost out of money and wasn't doing well enough to justify additional investment. They had no compelling IP/patents. Investors make a few phone calls and get a CEO to "buy" the company, which really means $50k signing bonuses for the founders and a nice options package.

Scenario #2: FiltrBox was killing it, growing like wildfire. They had a great IP attorney and some really impressive tech. Jive wanted the team and the IP bad and put together a $5m offer (stock heavy, likely).

Or anything in between....

(or anything in between).
Do it, definitely.

About "wouldn't be that difficult": no, not given a good and appropriate recommendation engine. However, is there one? For example, in context, we're talking about DirectedEdge. It seems to be aimed primarily at product recommendations, not link recommendations. And I'm not sure these are really even the same problem.
You can put money into the PayPal credits system and buy things inside that universe, but I wonder if this hiring foreshadows the system's evolution into a two-way conduit. Is this the beginning of Facebook's competition with PayPal or perhaps Western Union? Facebook certainly seems like a fertile platform for easily sending money to friends and family.
Yes, thank you. Forgot to qualify that -i is only in GNU sed.

But I think it is in GNU sed for a reason -- it is a practical shortcut. The only thing I use sed for is to do search and replaces. If the command spanned 2 lines or had pipes and redirects a lot of people just wouldn't remember it.
Let's make a programming language
But there's a big difference between asking those questions yourself because you care enough about them to remember what they are and just handing a sheet or reading from one that was clearly printed off the internet.
Doing a startup is not unlike taking a long bike ride. You will fall off your bike time and time again, either due to inexperience or obstacles along the path. Now is the time to do an equipment check before you ride again. Don’t try to restart your journey right away unless you are confident that you have the physical endurance and the support of your family (i.e., your wife, as a business partner and as a spouse). Think of your family, your health and your startup as the three legs of your three-legged stool. If you wobble on one but solid on the other two, then at least you have a fighting chance. If you have any doubt on anything, now is the perfect time to walk away and blame it on a broken bike. But keep in mind that as I have learned in my recent climb in Africa, you don't get to the top of Kilimanjaro by stopping, you do so by resting.
I could see this technology being useful in windows but laptops?
If the app is out there now. Can you tell us which one it is? Perhaps all the people on HN with iPhones can donload it and check it out. I'm not going to say something simplistic like: "Competition is validation" but I'd love to see what your idea was.
CodePlex Foundation Reports on 100 Day Goals
Apple tablet shown in the visionary "Knowledge Navigator" video (circa 2005?)
Isn't it just a copy of punbb/fluxbb?
I see someone is getting ready for Cap and Trade.
I’m working to startup a web service called Catchafire that connects professionals who want to volunteer their skills with non-profits and social ventures who need them. Catchafire just finished a pilot program in NYC – I was able volunteer my tech skills then and it was a great experience – and we’re currently working on alpha. We’re always looking out for development help, so feel free to contact me (info in my profile) if you’re interested or have questions or suggestions.

Has anyone else on HN been able to volunteer tech skills directly? What was your experience?
It's also something to consider carefully if under a lot of pressure. It could scare away employers that may not be great, but would be better than nothing.

The immediate response when I mentioned this to a friend was that some companies might not "like you wasting their employees time while they are at work", to which I responded that I would probably not enjoy working there.
New PhotoCalorie iPhone Application May Change the Process of Dieting
Advanced StructureMap: registration conventions for partially closed types
According to Google their intent is not to enter the utilities market, but to be able to more easily manage their goal of becoming a carbon neutral entity.
I have seen that not asking for a raise or promotion is a good way to not be considered for one.

If you don't make it clear that you are striving for something more then people will assume you are happy with what you have.
I'm considering this frame of mind at the moment.

I currently have a job, but am looking for work elsewhere at the moment. I'm tired of the dysfunctional way we schedule, speak with clients (lack of respect from head of company) as well as the way we treat our best assets (developers).

In my search I'm trying to figure out as much as I can about a company before I apply and being presumptuous may just help me find that illusive "perfect" job.

Thank you for stating this in this post.
Before I arrived I was told that it used to work somewhat this way way back when. But while I was there it did not -- for the simple reason that it doesn't scale and just isn't practical. Gmail can't take on a dozen new engineers every week, nor can it lose a handful of crucial engineers.

You're encouraged to move on to another project every 18 months or so, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't happen too often, either.
Right, and the question remains, are they after the right goal? I think the three I outlined above should be the real goals of a social network -- getting me in touch with the people that I don't know but should know.
http://www.volunteermatch.org/ is another one.

Not to mention that anyone who is a web jack-of-all-trades should find plenty of work with local nonprofits.
I'm not sure if this is really clear, but it's better:
http://docs.python.org/library/functions.html#super
CES Winners: The Great Partners Behind the Scenes
I agree. If only every client were capable of properly-configured non-buggy NFSv4... Hence why I say the "portable" method is with link(). There are a lot better solutions if you don't have to support crappy clients.
Ever since I got followed down the street after buying a mobile phone a few years ago, I've always taken one of those big reusable supermarket bags with me to buy anything pricey. People are far less likely to look twice at you if you've got a Tesco bag than an Apple or mobile shop bag.
How SparkFun (and 800.com) and small commerce or startup websites can scale
Right, thats why they have the google power meter stuff too. Having a large pile of statistical data, and realtime data, and a major statistical analysis engine AND the ability to buy low and sell high for power is not at all a massive money maker.
Alas, they want full-time personnel from Jan-Nov 2011. I often have 30 days at a stretch I could dedicate, but that's a bit much. (And the original poster asks about extracurricular specifically.)

That said, thanks for mentioning it. A revolving door to municipal groups with some support structure could get interesting.
Actually, as interesting and exciting as it would definitely be to see Google in the utilities market, I think it's almost as interesting just that the people at Google feel strongly enough about carbon neutrality being a Good Thing that they are putting a really significant amount of time and money into achieving it.
Directed Edge driving recommendations in Microsoft’s MediaRoom CES demo
Google's mobile hopes go beyond Nexus One
Look Inside The VC-Backed IPO Pipeline
Make that 1995(-ish).

Edit: Doh, me open mouth, insert foot. It's actually from 1987.
That's by far the nicest tooling for async I've seen in ruby yet. I've written a lot of async code in ruby and have tried to make it more accessible in the past and didn't end up with anything nearly as nice.
Correct my ignorance, please, but people are talking like cryptosystems using 768-bit keys have been cracked.

These folks showed that you can factor a single 768-bit number in under four years, if you have the computing power of a moderate-size cluster at your disposal and approximately one terabyte of memory. Interesting, certainly, but this exposes no vulnerabilities we weren't already aware of.

Brute forcing a 768-bit key would require multiple, potentially billions, of such factorizations, correct? Proving that you can factor an n-bit number in time t simply demonstrates that the time required to crack a cryptosystem with an n-bit key on the same hardware is an integer multiple of t.

Am I misunderstanding this, or are the people claiming "768 bits are not enough" just the usual paranoid element?
Yes and yes. The biggest part that's often overlooked in a product that does something new is how well it does it.

Don't worry about matching them feature for feature because they've got 20 people and you've got 2. Use your size and the fact that you don't have to pass ideas through a meeting to your advantage. Study their product. Find the weaknesses in their UI. Isolate the pain points. Make your product a breeze to use precisely where theirs is kludgy.

Ultimately, people will prefer the better experience to the more feature-rich one. If you can deliver the former, it doesn't matter how long they've been in the market.
I wonder if you can use that excuse for other purchases. Like buying a small country to more efficiently manage physical waste disposal, or something.
I tend to use a computer in one of three modes: coding/ops, information gathering/analysis, and entertainment. For the latter two functions the keyboard is superfluous to most of what I am doing; I will use it a couple of times but not enough that I would mind using an on-display keyboard if it meant that I was able to use the device in a more portable/mobile fashion. There is also no reason that such a device can't use a keyboard when one is available via bluetooth, with a tablet the keyboard is just an optional accessory.
Maxwell's Equations of Software
It's the same as Amazon selling both the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader: http://www.amazon.com/Sony-Digital-Reader-Touch-PRS600BC/dp/...

Different products, different makers, different brands. One brand is owned by the retailer, the other by a third party that sells through multiple channels.
"The search giant formed a Delaware-based company called Google Energy "

Gotta love those Delaware state tax laws
I'm not so sure that's true. I have flash block installed on all my computers. I've never had a problem surfing the web.
Congrats! That's great news. How'd that partnership come about? Did they contact you, or the other way around?