skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
See, what I would like to know is, what aspects of keyboard design actually make the keyboard more efficient? Most discussions I've read about QWERTY vs Dvorak, etc. eventually turn into personal anecdotes or debates about economic ideology, which has nothing to do with keyboard design.

Optimizing keyboard layout to have common letters on the home row and alternating hands during typical usage seems like a reasonable principle. Dvorak is significantly better at that than QWERTY, at least for English text. (Neither was designed with Norwegian or C in mind, obviously.) Years ago, there was a website* in which the author used genetic programming to evolve better keyboard layouts, seeded with QWERTY, Dvorak, and a few others. Dvorak was never best, but tended to place highly. But the more important question is, how should you score keyboard layouts?

* My wayback machine bookmark says the author blocked it with robots.txt.

Is Dvoark an objectively better keyboard? I don't know. I've typed with Dvorak for about three years, and I strongly prefer it, but it could probably be better. I also don't care about typing speed - I already type fast enough to not mind getting briefly sucked into QWERTY/Dvorak threads before breakfast. ;)

I haven't ever used any of the really funky ergonomic keyboard designs (the Kinesis, Maltron, etc.), but that's another option, and possibly more important than layout.
Windows build already?
Are there any Online Communities for Web Dev / Entrepreneur Types?
I love HackerNews but an online community geared towards conversations pertaining to entrepreneurial ventures for web developers it is not.

Does anyone know of any websites that fit this bill? I am looking for a few to join.
Popular guy :)

It depends, from country to country and from company to company it changes.

The nastiest bit about that is that you end up fielding 'air time' charges in some countries as well. In others you don't pay for incoming calls at all.
Tweets From Space Will Not Fix Twitter’s Problems
Interestingly enough, George Washington did the same thing when the delegates begged him to be king after the British defeat.
My point was more in relation to potential customers, which from an entrepreneurial view is the interesting metric.
First time I've come across the setup. Here are some interviews with a few other HN regulars:

http://paul.graham.usesthis.com/
http://aaron.swartz.usesthis.com/

_why is listed on their mainpage too but his interview seems to have been removed
Which, based on what RMS describes, is perfectly fine for his needs.
> an online community geared towards conversations pertaining to entrepreneurial ventures for web developers it is not

It is, and more than that.

Your account is 80 days old, you've commented four times in total one of which scored a -4, and you've submitted - this entry included - twice.

And you're already ready to pass judgement on what HN is or is not.

HN is what you make it, you'll find that if you participate in stories related to the subjects that you indicate and if you post more stories related to those subjects that it is indeed exactly that - and more.

The 'more' is all the other stuff that you are apparently not interested in.

Like any other forum HN is scoped, it is scoped narrowly enough that it is possible to say what does and what does not belong here, and the stuff you indicate ('entrepreneurial ventures for web developers') is about as on-topic as it gets here.

Don't say the cake is not to your taste before you've at least done more than looked at it.
We see 2 very different futures then.

I see a future where people just access 'the web', via whatever small thin client web browser device they like.

The vast majority of software will be running on servers, and end users won't really care if it's open source as long as it does what they want it to.

Real people use web browsers.
Kngine Launch The First Version Of Kngine : Web 3.0 Search Engine
> An aside: what is the psychology of someone who perpetrates something like this?

For some great insights on that mentality read Joseph Heller, Catch 22.
I'm so glad you didn't post it anyway...
the dzone refcardz has been the best I've found thus far.
I love OCaml. But its standard library has always struck me as... less than perfect. Batteries is definitely a big improvement though.
I have enough RSI that I don't do SMS or instant messaging. If I wanted to talk to you, but it wasn't worth a phone call, I'd punt.

My solution to many of the general set of problems with email you cite was to get a Fastmail account (https://www.fastmail.fm), which does a fantastic job of spam filtering and would allow you to filter the email from those pesky relatives.

And as gexla notes, you must have a working email address to do a whole bunch of things on the net.
Crassus?
Hi-Res Flyover of Haiti Aids Recovery and Research
So presumptuous.

Does anyone else have any links to web dev / entrepreneur type communities?
The Bat* names strike me as a little odd. Does OCaml not have namespaces?
Kenya Hara On Japanese Aesthetics
other staggering numbers:

148,000 - New zombie computers created per day

81% - The percentage of emails that were spam
I haven't been blown away by democracy's ability to build competent governments, and the self-selection biases are terrible. Hard to see how chance could be much worse.
I thought the benefit of wakemate versus other similar gadgets was the price. When premium features are included, does it really win on price?
95% of email is spam
Modification suggested: A corporation that many people feel has something of a "do be evil" attitude does all this.

Google's imperfect but still clear bias towards "don't be evil" helps them to avoid poisoning the well; if Facebook maintains its current culture, it might not end up well for them. Victory can be fleeting (e.g. see MySpace).
Designers Unearth Apple Tablet Prototypes - From 1983
I think trademark only holds if you use the name for a similar thing like the trademark holder?
Hey, corporations are people too! The Supreme Court said so! Be nice!
Your shareholders might disagree.
Simple Moving Average
It's sort of .Net or Java-like. Each source file is its own module. However, when you open a module, you import everything into the current module.

You can also use dotted notation: Module.thing
IMUXIC
What happens when (say) a car company designs a car whose fuel tank has a tendency to explode, or for the whole car to flip over in accidents? What happens if these accidents end up killing the driver? Is it manslaughter or murder?
Beat me to it. Maybe Trajan, depending on how your accounting systems attribute what belonged to the Republic and what to Trajan the man/military commander/later emperor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trajan#Maximum_extent_of_the_Em...
Every time I hear one side or another of this argument, I think of Accelerando. First corporations gain status as individuals, then they become self-aware computers and ultimately convert all the mass in the solar system into a giant computer to run their simulations, expelling humans in the process. Maybe I'm just taking it too far...
you have implied that they lied about ever having a product and that their company is falling apart behind the scenes because their shipping was delayed and mentioned they have premium features. both of which I think everyone expected anyway.

I dont think they announced their premium stuff in the best way, but you went well past the stage of giving constructive advice, or "tough love"
Good point, this is one of the things that always bothers me too.

Real apologies don't start with "I'm sorry that you.." Real apologies start with "I'm sorry that I.."
I fully agree.

Facebook will eventually be supplanted by 'the next facebook', in whatever form it will come.

Lots of people disagree with this, but I feel that the root of their demise is in the seed of their origin. You can go a long way on a bad mentality but eventually it will catch up with you.

That said I don't think they'll ever die completely, just very slowly wither away while one or more other networks will take its place.

I believe facebook does not partake in open social precisely because they are afraid of that.

A really good social site has no fears of losing its users and so does not need to lock them in.
Because that's what they are.

From Wikipedia: "Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, ideology or any kind of organization: it is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted or diverged from."

Some examples:

* 4 rights constitute Free Software, not 3 or 2 or 1 but 4.

* Free Software is equivalent to Civil Freedom and Human Rights.

* Distributing software without any of these 4 rights makes the act unethical, immoral and evil.

* All software should be Free Software.

Doubt any of these and you are no true believer of the Free Software Movement.
Learning from Wakemate - Smart announcements
Anne from Davao Penal Colony, Philippines
I guess it depends in part on your approach. I promote dietary and lifestyle changes as a means to treat chronic illness, which isn't subject to the same regulation as "medical" stuff. If you want to create medical stuff, then you are talking heavy regulation. If you want to create or promote alternative stuff, you are likely to face less regulation. Study after study after study shows that chronic illness is significantly influenced by diet and lifestyle. Encouraging dietary and lifestyle changes to promote wellness is usually not considered "medical" per se.

My current plan is to work on better ways to share my mental models and experiences/practices so people can more effectively implement lifestyle changes and protective practices that work for me. To that end, I intend to write a simulation at some point -- aka a game. I doubt I will run up against any medical regulation in writing a game as a means to promote health and wellness education.

FWIW: Tinnitus can sometimes be treated successfully with chelation and supplements. (Magnesium comes to mind.)
Related discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=888643
Yes, but that has never stopped parties from suing.

See the case of 'Nissan' vs 'Nissan'

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2001/01/40939

and:

http://nissan.com/
I don't believe he uses only his netbook. I think he also uses the public CSAIL computers at Stata Center in MIT. They have a KDE Linux on them.

I have used them from time to time, and as before logging in, at the username prompt usually you can see the last user that was on the computer. Many times it was "rms".
صفحهٔ آغازین موزیلا فایرفاکس
0 and the negative numbers turned up very late in our history

I believe it's also true that the ancients distrusted polynomials (e.g., x^3+7x^2+2x+9=0) because who would be silly enough to add a volume to an area to a length, etc.

If they had just done the mathematics without relating the numbers to real world, we might have far more advanced maths today. All the more reason to pursue topics for their own sake.
You can... sort of: http://ejohn.org/blog/ruby-vm-in-javascript/
CodePlex now supporting native Mercurial
well done. Admittedly I've read parts of Gibbon and still don't recall this.
I agree; I wrote something similar as a comment on the TC post. I really can't see a vanity URL on someone else's site that you got for free is really your property, so all this talk about Facebook 'snatching' it from him is over-dramatic.
5 steps to reorganize "Categories" on your blog
NO NO NO! The Citizens United case has had absolutely no change to "campaign finance", and the law and case law about campaign finance "reform" has always recognized its status as political speech.

What Citizens United has done is to return to "corporations" (including the non-profit Citizens United that successfully sued the FEC) the rights to free speech and freedom of association they enjoyed prior to Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce and McCain-Feingold. No longer can governments censor (in the real meaning of the world) their speech in elections.

In both these examples, campaign finance and election period speech, there are still "reasonable" regulations, like various sorts of disclosure (although Thomas disagreed, based on the nasty retaliation that's been seen lately against people making small contributions to causes that many don't like; I expect this will be revisited after the first murder that comes from this disturbing trend).

For those who think this is a bad thing, I say that the answer to speech you don't like is more speech, not government censorship of the speech you don't like. (Need I mention the slippery slope the latter presents?)
to go back and correct myself: a friend made clear to me that porn sites play video on the iphone already, via a quicktime player that loads up when you click on many videos.
we've been to this future before, when mainframes ruled. We called them dumb terminals. Not as sexy as small thin web clients using comet and ajax and other cleansers but they worked.

kidding aside, I don't buy it. P2P with local datastores will have a place. There's no way my tax returns will reside on google docs.
Actually corporations are more than people. This case is one data point.

I can't imagine Harman Int paid facebook so much money to be noticable when it's added to their pile.

We (many of us) just assume that a corporation has a right, stronger than an individual, to a name in a medium.

If I were human Harman I would have responded to corporate Harman that, thank you very much but facebook has already stolen my name on your behalf, and cc'd the LA Times in the response.
Latest transponder updates 23-01-2010 | fastsatfinder.com
3D Graphics for Next-Generation WWW
Probably the same way you compile C into an iPhone app.

But you said low-level. iPhone apps are high-level.
Raytheon is a defense contractor. In Antarctica, they support the National Science Foundation's work.

http://rpsc.raytheon.com/
The world's most evil entrepreneur?
I would take the "you feel that way" out and replace it by:

"I'm sorry with our miscommunication, let us refund you your money. However, we've developed some great premium features that you may be interested in; and of course our the main features are free. Can we convince you otherwise?"

"I'm sorry you feel that way" makes it seems that it's the customer's fault and not their fault, it's demeaning to the customer.
Fixed media based pricing #fails, Market Knowledge Systems will be our answer
With the (welcome) move to web architecture, free software is not as important as free data, i.e. the freedom to move your data to another provider. We may all be slaves, but we should have the freedom to choose our master.

Like you, I would also rather that website owners had real incentives to please their users. I disagree on the solution: data lock-in _removes_ the website owner's incentive, instead they can just rely on the fact that you are stuck with them, rather than pleased with them.
Search Lean startups,Startups.com is pretty friendly but it's a Q&A site. Also local meetup groups, meetup.com.
Visit popular VC or Angel blogs, founders love to hang around and share ideas and experiences. AVC.com is my favorite. HN is a pretty large community so seeing the same commenter twice can take weeks.

Also learning how to ask a question is directly related to the quality of the answer.
"Democracy" (really small r republican government) is not designed so much to "build competent governments" but to solve nastier issues like the succession problem, the willingness of a current official to step down and allow his successor to replace him. You don't have to read very much history to see why solving this is critical.

I just don't see a coin toss conferring anywhere near the level of legitimacy needed for successions.
That almost sounds like a press release. Generally, "absolute power" is divested through the application of force, which begs the question of who/what forced the issue.
AT&T fires back at analyst who claimed its network investments were lagging
Chinese fiasco?
"I predict 500 years from now people will remember him. They won't remember Bill Gates."

That future is going to spring from this present, where N people use Windows and Word and know who Bill Gates is, but M people use emacs and know who Richard Stallman is?
Full screen Emacs on a laptop? I wouldn't want a bigger screen than 13' with that setup.
Simulators Prepare Soldiers for Explosions of War
But twitter.com/avtr is basically worthless for most people. Clearly noone deserves to earn millions just for registering /avtr. If they think it's worth less than promotional items, they're getting a good deal. There's no reason they couldn't hold out for more if they wanted, but they'd have to run the risk that at some point it wouldn't be worth buying.

Further, /avtr is probably not much better than /avatar, /avatarfilm, or a number of others. When the demand is for precisely one unit, and more than one unit of supply exists, it seems natural that the price is going to be low.
Idealism is an excellent way to loose users to Chrome.
Because there are (a lot of) people on the close-everything side of the debate it's essential to have at least a few people arguing that everything is opened so that the eventual compromise is somewhere in the middle.
sitepoint.com (?)
Mozilla's decision to push for Ogg seems like a classic programmer's response. They're attempting to solve the problem with an engineering solution.

Unfortunately, this won't be enough. If Mozilla want to usurp H.264, they'll either need a huge market share or budget (which they don't have) or technological superiority over H.264 (I don't think this is the case either). They're also fighting against Apple, who want H.264 to succeed.
What kind of conversations are you looking for that you don't see here? I don't ask to defend the utility of HN for All Purposes(tm), but to understand your question better.
As far as I'm aware, Stallman isn't refusing to use a web browser for ideological reasons. It's because: "Most of the time I do not have an Internet connection."

Besides, I seem to recall he uses Emacs/W3 for viewing web pages (offline, downloaded via wget).
YouTube Rentals beta released
I use it at work but not at home. At work, after searching the Internet for information I need to do my job, I routinely need to return to the departmental homepage of the company intranet. If a few clicks of the back button don't do it, I have to hit the home icon.
Because apparently they (Apple) took sides by ejecting one manufacturer. This might even be a conspiracy.

And more generally, because here in America there is little downside risk in filing a lawsuit.
Some very sensible reforms are:

If you cannot become eligible to vote, you cannot donate to any campaign.

All donations must be reported online with 24 hours.
As I understand it, most babies seem to just know. My oldest took a month to figure out the whole breastfeeding thing. I have teased him that he was a "stupid baby". The reality is that he seems to have less instinct than most folks. This has its good points and bad points. But I did not see a lot of the "normal, expected" baby behaviors until I had my second child.

In short: A sample of one does not disprove a generality.
A programming religion?
If a religion were to be based around computer programming, what would it be like? Who would be the main deity/deities, how would the worship be performed, what sort of buildings would the worship be performed in (e.g temples, churches, etc) what be the concept of afterlife (if any), etc?<p>I asked this on stackoverflow and they closed it! :(
Marine Heavy Gunner dev notes - 'Nobody picked up that it was a parody'
Your tax returns will reside on the governments web interface :/

In the UK practically nothing tax related is done via paper forms any more, it's all done via their website. Works pretty well.
General X's name is Major Gerneral Jihad Al Jahbiri. James Randi had offered him the million dollar prize he he could prove they were effective: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruTmqfGJhTI
>> "To look at page I send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me."

You have to admit that sounds slightly quirky? I assumed it was an attempt to maintain that his personal PC is free from any closed source software, since it's not even rendering websites, it's just receiving email.

Sorry, but to me it sounds like either someone who is so into ideals that they're cutting off their nose to spite their face, or someone who has simply failed to keep up with changes in technology.
A bit off topic but Facebook sends fake emails to me, claiming to be from my wife's Facebook account, inviting me to join Facebook. She actually doesn't use her account and only set it up as a test, months ago. I guess they can use paid-for email logs farming the to: and cc:, to associate her to me. Anyone else experienced that?
Or a way to make users even more die-hard Firefox users. I don't understand how this is extremely idealistic. This is an excellent way to show how software patents are bad.
Report : PS3 finally been compromised?
"Sorry everyone, we really fucked this one up! Chalk it up to a massive learning experience for our entire company. This being our first mass email, we didn't phrase anything well enough, we didn't check it thoroughly enough, and we didn't properly communicate our business model and what people are really paying for. Like I said, we fucked this one up.

Here's the deal- the hardware delays are due to us finding some very cool improvements that increase the accuracy of the device 50% and reduce power consumption significantly. Since this is a hardware product, we don't want our first users stuck with a shitty revision that's significantly worse than a version we ship in three months. To do this only takes a one month delay, and the logistics of shipping two versions, one for people who want the 'old' version now and one for people who want the 'new' version in a month just wouldn't work. There's only three of us, so we have to make some gut decisions.

However, we didn't communicate the premium features well at all- we haven't even begun working on them yet! They have nothing to do with the delay, and, though very cool, they don't affect the core functionality of the product- helping you wake up more refreshed every single morning. This is more for folks who love geeky graphs like us :) We'll be charging something trivial like $3.99/month, but felt it would be a nice token of appreciation to people who had to have their product delayed.

Again, my apologies for all of this- we'll definitely improve how we communicate with our customers starting immediately. And, if anyone has any questions, here's my email so you can get ahold of me directly : [ceo's email here]."
I think they should give the premium features to those of us who pre-ordered, for free, permanently.

It wouldn't cost them anything extra to do so (maybe a few dollars/year in server costs for the entire pre-order userbase). Sure, they will lose potential subscriber costs for some pre-order customers, but if they can't sell enough WakeMates to make the pre-order crowd an insignificant blip, then they are not going to be able to succeed anyway. Furthermore, the pre-order crowd is the group you really, really want to be happy. They are going to be the first to give their impressions to the world, and those tweets/reviews/blog posts are going to be at the top of Google's search results for near-infinity.

I feel like a pre-order was a commitment to Wakemate, and they are not honoring their side in expecting us to pay more to fully utilize the product. They can say that the premium model has features in addition to what was initially planned, but I think that anyone who planned to buy the product expected the free service to improve and add features over time anyway, so it seems that effort is instead being redirected to the premium version.
It was probably a TechCrunch typo, and it has already been corrected.
I imagine "temples" would include online spaces (like Hacker News).
_why's link works fine: http://_why.usesthis.com/

Drawn and quirky (or precious, depending on your taste or mood) as normal for _why.