skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If I had to pick a single dichotomy between, say, a MacBook and an iPad, it would be that the latter is optimized for consuming content in a way that the former is not. The iPad is primarily an output device.

The fact that the keyboard is a bit of an afterthought is telling. Yes, you can create presentations, spreadsheets, emails and documents, but there's no denying that it's awkward in a way that reading a book or surfing the web on the thing is not.

It's a bit like when the Walkman was introduced without a record function. It didn't spell the end of tape recorders, but it recognized that people spend vastly more time consuming music than producing it.

I think the fact that it's locked down the way that it is is orthogonal to the consumption versus production question. It's as though this Walkman will only play studio-mastered tapes. Which is why I'm rooting for some credible competition to come along and force the issue.
Yes. He has a bunch of existing points (the deals) and and a new point (user location). Deals are the known points, which can be represented any way you like. lat lon, vectors, cylindrical coords, you name it. The thing not known in advance is the user location. And don't umm... me. It's rude and stupid, especially when you don't seem to know what you're talking about.
Chromium nightly?
What is the algorithmic complexity of your trie code compared to Norvig's example corrector?
I didn't notice anything. Then again, I have tynt adblocked.
Dear Google,

I love you.

Signed,
Web Developers Everywhere
So install one:

http://www.winsplit-revolution.com/

http://jgpaiva.dcmembers.com/gridmove.html

As described with screenshots/animation here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000928.html
App stores: a threat for µisv's?
Toolbars really ought to be on the bottom rather than the top, so that you don't cover half the screen with your arm (although I suppose you could come in from the top or the sides to avoid that). The left and right sides might also work, but then you get into dominant hand territory, which Apple consistently avoids for good reason.
In a multiple monitor discussion, it's never inappropriate to link to Stefan Didak's home office: http://www.stefandidak.com/office/
not me - though I wrote in.
Yup, you're right. I had my concepts in a twist.
"A great example of where a desktop application would actually be better on the iPad than the desktop."

Yes, exactly. I first "got" the iPad when watching the introduction keynote video and saw iWork in action. This can truly be a better experience than the Mac for many, many things.
Nothing unusual observed. I browse with Javascript off, btw.
Maybe, maybe not. I can certainly write straightforward little algorithms, but I always get lost when I want to hook them up to anything useful (writing algorithms is still hard, though, especially if you don’t do it constantly but only from time to time).

There is no easy way to do this at the moment. Not if you want to ignore details, just write something and have it work. The best I can do at the moment is guess if something is possible to do, guess the amount of work and tell someone (who’s an expert) what to do.

You are probably right about scientists, though. It’s a pain to see social scientists working with the mess that is called SPSS when r is so cool. I don’t know why that is but when toying around with r I feel for the first time that I am able to actually do something useful with what I know about programming.
Ask HN: iPad can run my existing apps, so what about app distribution rights?
If Apple is letting people run apps they bought for their iPhone/iPod touch on their iPad does that mean they could release other platforms which users would automatically get their apps for without giving the developers any more money?

For example, could they release an "app emulator" for Mac which let you play your games on the desktop, etc. Most licenses either explicitly license to a person, or a device. Does this mean all apps are licensed to people?

Any thoughts/ideas about how the app store licensing actually works?
> "The cool thing is, Replica Island ran on all of them without complaint. That's not to say it was playable on all of them"

But wait, isn't that the entire point of a standardized platform? The ability to guarantee some minimum of user experience quality?

The splintering problem is real, and add it to the propensity for OEMs to add all kinds of (mostly poorly thought out) UI tweaks to Android, and what you have is something that really shouldn't be advertised under a single brand name.
I could see feeling like they were "too close" if they were at the bottom. And if you're always reaching over them you might feel worried that you might accidentally hit them. (Just speculating without having used one.)
"But the bigger point is: the Constitution's purpose is not to protect individuals from corporations -- it's to protect us from _Government_."

Although technically correct, I think the insinuation of your phrasing is misleading.

The Constitution does 2 things:

a) establish the federal govt

b) delegate certain, limited powers.

Does the constitution not provide the platform for how citizens' natural rights are protected (Article 3)?
Thanks for the reply!

I guess I was a bit one-sided on my keyboard judgment. However, could you elaborate on your emacs chording remark? How exactly is it easier? (I'm not an emacs user)

This may be a bit off-topic, but I've heard stories about people suffering from eye strain due to bright LED lights and/or smaller font sizes. Have you ever suffered from eye strain due to extended use? How does coding on a netbook feel if you use it for an extended period?

Lastly, I'm concerned about performance issues. I've heard that netbooks are notoriously slow, which implies slowing down the coding process? Is that true for you? Does it allow for virtual desktops and is it fast (enough)?
The fears about Android fragmentation are, in some cases, overblown. The point that concerns me is that this guy has, or has gotten his hands, on every one of those Android devices.

This is a feat that most Amateur developers cannot afford to pull off. It is, however, a feat that any iPhone developer can manage (there are only a handful of devices)

My fear, with platform fragmentation, isn't for the people who do this for a living (I do, and platform fragmentation is just one of the many problems we already have systems in place to handle) My fear is for the people who want to do it as a hobby.

So for us professional folks, the platform fragmentation issue is very over-blown. But if you're a one-man shop who wants to make some mobile software in his/her spare time (for which there is a thriving market on the iPhone) then this is actually a huge hurdle to get over.

Sure, if you have access to all the Android devices, you might or might not have to make code changes to support specific handsets (yet). But if you can't get your hands on every Android device...and you want to develop a paid app in the evenings, get ready for a deluge of angry users for whom your application is just too slow to work. Further, these will be problems you won't be able to debug _until_ you get that email from an angry user.
Some articles say they have lots of comments, but then, don't:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/08/why-is-dell-really-disc...

Others, like ilamont's link, have the counter reset:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/scamville-the-social-ga...
if they discontinue support for IE6 on Google.com home page, that would really kill off IE6.
I was expecting to see an attribution link, but it didn't work. I don't block JS or anything; turns out this doesn't work if you copy-paste via drag-drop.
I really don't understand the wave of alarmist posts on the 'end of a tinkering era'. Today, we have more communities and devices for tinkering than we've ever had. Magazines like Make, sites like Hack-a-day, platforms like Arduino, and countless open source projects that are simply there to be messed with, and one device that comes out with a (probably) justified need to be locked down, and everyone raises panic? If I ever have the desire to mess with anything technological today, I can literally get my hands on anything, from affordable FPGA boards with great I/O, to open mobile devices, to even RF hacking! (GNU Radio's great.)

The iPad will never harm anyone's ability to tinker with technology that want to. There will always be platforms that are open by design and always be platforms that have been rooted/hacked/jailbroken/etc. Being a geek/hacker today is far more socially acceptable and wide-spread than it was in the 80s. I'd even argue that it is doing much more to advance the technology than a completely open device like OpenMoko. Completely open devices are rarely better designed than their commercial counterparts. They don't inspire complete neophytes ("I have to do what just to get a decent resolution?"), they don't push boundaries -- they only appeal to people who are already waist-deep in tinkering.

Frankly, if anything, all of this comes off as elitist. God forbid people get their hands on technology that doesn't have a steep learning curve or require you to write BASIC to be useful. Well-designed products that have a lot of concentrated money (and more importantly, talent) inspire people much more so than completely open systems. I think of them as (and please pardon the extremely hyperbolic analogy) well-polished, completed works of art. They won't teach you how to paint or let you alter them, but they'll show you what's possible with the canvas and advance the art.

I'm actually now thinking back to a discussion with a friend of mine, who's a collector of 60's-era oscilloscopes. He was raving about them as being the pinnacle of electronics engineering. Not only were these scopes beautifully designed, but their manuals detailed everything about them, how they worked, what tricks they used to function, what micro-components they used. Their documentation authors really wanted you to understand exactly what made it function. Maybe that's the ideal, but I still believe that beautifully-designed products, even closed, further the state of hacking far far more than completely open platforms. If you don't believe in it, don't buy it.

If you believe they're a step in the wrong direction for open platforms, make another blog post tomorrow when you have less open platforms, less hobbyist projects, less educational materials, and less hobbyist communities than yesterday.
Applefritter
Unfortunately, as is the case with Mahalo, when one is both the CEO and "public face" of a corporation's brand, it is difficult partition the two relms outside of clearly personal matters (e.g. health, friends, family, etc.). A classic case being Martha Stewart.

In some instances, with morality and 'key executive personnel' insurance clauses in compensation agreements, they are, in fact, inextricably contractually coupled. As the saying goes, "it comes with the territory" and I'm sure is adequately reflected in his ownership of the company and current compensation.

Also, FWIW, I don't believe this was his original plan (e.g. Mahalo Daily's original format hosted by Veronica Belmont). Nevertheless, that's been the situation for years and Jason, and his board, have apparently seen no good reason to change it.
The iPad is great technology, to be sure. And a lot of that technology may be incorporated into the future of computing. However, I'd suggest that the shock comes from the fact that this particular iPad is a computer for the past, not the future. It's great for moms and grandpas--people who grew up without computers. The moms and dads of my generation--people who are in their teens and twenties now--are pretty comfortable with the computers we have already. We want a computer that incorporates the technology of the iPad to enhance the power and flexibility that we are used to, not cripple it. That's why the iPad is disappointing--because we wanted the future, not an indicator of the future.
Virtual machines are against Apple's App Store's TOS?
I can't upvote you enough.

For several years, I have had an idea for a nonprofit that would bring top next-gen leaders & influencers from the USA over to third world countries (in Africa, in the current plan), to open their eyes to conditions so they can learn the point you just wrote, maxwin. We're all human beings, and we need to do all we can to help our fellow (wo)man. The hope would be, these people would go on to become the Bill Gates of the next generation and would use their influence to do good.

Check out http://www.africafellowship.org/ (ugly design, I know, but it's a work in progress)
I didn't know or care about Lady Gaga until I heard this mashup: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEx-JW49mNg
Websites are built on standards. Standards make them usable across lots of browsers. IE 6 doesn't adhere to standards, therefore deserves no special treatment.
> Another example is chicken pox – the symptoms are mild (especially in children) and you get immunity from one instance. I had chicken pox and it wasn’t that big a deal.

Not big of a deal, until someone who is pregnant, immunocompromised, or of adult age with lowered/no immunity to chicken pox gets infected from a child that wasn't vaccinated. It's not mild, it's severe and possibly life threatening at that point.

So okay, I can understand a parent's concern over all the vaccines out there, but it is quite selfish to think it's only about the child in question. It affects public health overall no matter what you want to think of it, unless you're suggesting that people should just not interact with anyone in-person ever.

> 4.	Since vaccines are widely used (all small children) the bar for new vaccines should be higher. New vaccines should not be mandatory or on the list.

This I'm torn over, because the newest vaccines to make the schedule for teens in the US and some other countries are Gardasil and Cervarix (the HPV vaccines), which are very new vaccines that were fast tracked for approval because they were just so effective. I only have a gripe over the unknowns like how long immunity will last. But parents will take that as an excuse to not vaccinate their kids until their kids have probably had sex, at which point it might be of reduced use as your kid might already have been exposed. Is that really something that should be acceptable?
Exactly. When a minimum wage is higher than market rate, it costs jobs.

When it is below market rate, it has no effect on jobs (or wages); it is essentially a law saying "keep doing what you are already doing".

So tell me, what is the purpose of minimum wage laws?
موقع عبير
Neat touch: the full-size keyboard of iPad has actual
tactile ‘nubs’ on the F and J keys, like a real keyboard.

Are the nubs always there? Or do they pop out only when the keyboard interface is shown?
منتدى عبير
منتدى عبير
Where's the one where the Python programmer has to make something go fast and needs to write a C module?
Know a Chrome Flaw? Google Will Pay You…
"1) It ruins your neck."

In what way, by what mechanism, over what timescale and possibly, demonstrated significant in which study?

I've been using multiple monitors on my home computer since 2001 and at work since 2005 and I attribute my neck crunchiness to general physical atrophy due to aging and desk driving.

Usually people advocate movement, saying people weren't built to stay still for long periods, multiple monitors require head turning but not as much as walking requires leg join movements (and neck movements for that matter).

"because it doesn't cause neck trauma."

'Trauma' is a scarily strong way to describe "turning your head".
Nope, in most states it's legal. It was widely publicized, and the Kerry campaign wound up hiring her, if I'm remembering the right story.
CBS Sez : Keep your $2.6 Million
Y in Practical Programs [pdf]
Doesn't loading the extra co2stats script and image from each page use more energy/carbon? What's more, it reloads itself every 5 minutes, even with no activity by the user!

Carbon preacher hypocrites! They probably heat their homes with coal-fired Franklin stoves, too.
There's been no update to their original post, but the comments are still there:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/26/techcrunch-hacked/
I recall reading an article a few months back that MS has begun their own campaign to get IE6 users upgraded (to IE8 of course). This is really not a big blow to Microsoft.
That's not to say it was playable on all of them--the Covia SmartQ5, for example, has no keyboard, trackball, or even orientation sensors, and you have to use a stylus on the screen (it also has no GPU so the game runs extremely slowly). And some devices (like the LG Eve) have directional pads that are really poor for games.

In other words: Fragmentation is a bit of a problem on the Android platform.

Sure, your software doesn't crash on any Android hardware. Good for you! But there's a big difference between does not crash and is useable.

Fortunately, your software is also usable on "average" Android hardware. Great! But there's a big difference between usable and useful, and an even bigger difference between useful and elegantly designed.

The problem is least-common-denominator design: You can't assume a hardware keyboard, and you can't assume a software keyboard, and you can't assume multitouch, and you can't assume an orientation sensor, and you apparently can't assume a minimum level of graphics performance. So you design something that runs well on some hardware, but not so well on others, in a way that's not necessarily easy for a potential software customer to understand or anticipate in advance. And you're careful not to accidentally take too much advantage of some hardware feature that isn't widely available, lest you box yourself into a niche.
Gravitational acceleration (acting "down") is proportional to mass. Air friction (acting "up") is proportional to the velocity of the object. Terminal velocity is reached when the force of air friction equals the force of gravitational acceleration: gm = nv^2. Since g, n are constants, if m decreases, v decreases.
I guess to summarize, the only thing he did wrong was to be misleading about his exact knowledge on the topic of SEO. The thing is, you can start a business, and hire expertise. Thats not such a bad thing.
Nothing shady in that PDF. Looks like someone is holding a grudge.
However, making contrived examples, even if illustrative, does make students think math is pointless and detestable. Many high school students, in my experience, really do develop a belief that they dislike math because they are led to believe that math is only good for things as boring, useless, and contrived as solving a linear system to figure out how many cars and vans to bring.

In this case there are even many other simpler and faster solutions compared to the proposed one. The obvious solution if the problem actually occurred in reality, barring other unmentioned limitations, is to take five vans. In many math courses, if a student given that problem during the lesson on linear systems were to suggest taking five vans, the teacher would mark the answer wrong. Seeking the simplest solution involving the fewest and simplest steps(and thus fewest opportunities to make a mistake) is a virtue in mathematics. Is not a shorter and simpler proof of the same theorem usually the most well-respected amongst mathematicians? Likewise should our mathematics education teach us to seek the shortest and simplest route to a correct solution.
Library Explores Ways to Release Open Source Software - Digital Preservation
Anecdote: Wednesday evening, my younger sister's laptop crashed while shutting down. She pressed the off button, the screen when dark. The next day, she pushes the power button, screen lights up, displays the crashed logging off screen. She has to call me up to teach her how to use the power button to restart the computer - 1 sec for sleep, 10 sec for really off.

A few people in their teens and twenties are pretty comfortable, many more are not.
Because people are extrapolating into the future where these sorts of devices dominate the computing landscape.

Which isn't at all unreasonable, since that's what Apple is also doing.
How can you tell it was the diet without eliminating other variables? This is why personal experience is not evidence; in no way are confounding variables accounted for when you're just informally observing things.
No, a game is an entirely different beast.
Specially when using OpenGL. You start breaking things when you don't use the higher level classes and functions.
Meaning, the lower you get, the more you'll have to write code to support different platforms.

The Android API is indeed standardized accross all platforms.
Also, what's standardized is the java methods you use and the libraries provided.

Making a game, usually means you're rendering to hardware and you have to handle things like screen resizing, etc, yourself.

However, there isn't a standard UI definition yet like the iPhone has. If that's what you mean.
Bit of a stretch, like most predictions.
A lot of people grew up in 80s with computers used primarily for games. I was a kid in glory days of 8-bit computers (Atari, Commodore, Sinclair). There were many many millions sold of those.

So yes, many precocious youngsters of my generation learned to hack just because they happened to have computer (bought for non-hacking purpose) and it was tempting and possible to tinker.
2D Cloth Simulation with Canvas
Save pens - Use Garamond font
Heh, I find it funny how the media jumped into lady gaga and her 'european electro vibe' within the last year.
Any music enthusiast should have known about her long before that.
But the 'Seasoned Hacker' from the original article does something likewise with the Hello, World program:

% cc -o a.out ~/src/misc/hw/hw.c
% a.out

;-)
The "I find a way to use list comprehensions for everything" Python programmer:

def fact(n):
return eval('*'.join([str(x+1) for x in xrange(n)] + ['1']))
If a user is confused about all the choice they can just stick to the software Apple and a handful of popular vendors provide. It stays simple by the fact that they can just ignore all the other choices.
"... I was just about to post that link but you beat me to it ..."

Goldacre also came to my mind. I listened to an interview with Ben Goldacre and Robin Williams, his uncle discussing examples from his newly published book, "Bad Science" and MMR was the lead example ~ http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2008/2403358.ht...

Goldacre made the observation that while vaccination scares occurred in various countries a different layman explanation as to why it was scary occurred for each country. In the UK it was the link between MMR and Autism. In other countries it is something different. It's sad that mums are irrational on the subject of vaccination. It saves lives.

From memory the story wasn't helped by the UK PM appearing to dither vaccinating his own child, "Blair signals support for MMR" ~ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1803609.stm and "My son has had MMR jab, says Brown (in dig at Blair)" ~ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1509845/My-son-has-ha...

In the period January to September 2002, 32% of
the stories written about MMR mentioned Leo Blair,
as opposed to only 25% which mentioned Wakefield. [0]

So the lack of firm leadership was also a factor.

[0] The above quote is cited in wikipedia ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine_controversy#cite_no... and is from an article by Goldacre in the Guardian, "The MMR hoax" ~ http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/aug/30/mmr.health.med... which has conveniently been pulled for copyright reasons.
Why in the world is Safari not on the iPad simulator?! I'd like to believe they'll fix that during an update, but I hesitate to think that Apple would do anything I find sane...