skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I was having a hard time figuring out why I needed an iPad. Even after watching the keynote (besides the 'new, shiny' lust) I had no real reason to want one. Then I realized the 3rd party opportunities for this thing are insane. Yes, there have been tablets in the past but there has never been what basically amounts to a cheap, 10" piece of glass that can recognize all your fingers and an array of gestures. I am very excited to see what other inspired developers do with this device.
I agree. The experience at the Atocha train station in Madrid and on the Renfe train system is a dream. You go there, buy your tickets, spend maybe 30 seconds going through security, board your train, and enjoy a roomy seat while you're whisked across the country at 300 km/h.
How could you use this for manned flight? Assuming a (best-case) linear acceleration, accelerating to 25000 mph over 1 km would be 12736 g.
This is a good idea, but poor execution in that it's horribly ugly... very aesthetically unappealing. As you mention Pixar does it way better, and there must be a middle ground where you have something cost effective yet attractive to work in.
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You can make almost any business idea work if you're a good enough sales person, making a website and wait is not going to get you far. If you get enough people to use it, how do you plan to make money?
$33B for Afghanistan but only $2.25B for California?
You would use it just to lift the rocket fuel for manned flight. It would lift rocket fuel which would be stored in depots in orbit.

The astronauts would come on conventional rockets. But then they would be able to refuel from the orbital depots for the later stages of their flight instead of having to carry all fuel with them. Thus, you make the mission cheaper.

You still need really stable rocket fuel in order to handle those accelerations without exploding.
India’s tech workers are not as good as the country hopes and America fears
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I too think they're worth a few bucks. I found multiple releases of significant public interest there last year.
Why would it need to make any money? Look at roads: they cost huge amounts to build and maintain, yet the vast majority don't bring in any direct revenue whatsoever.

Let's turn this statement on its head, and reframe it as a question: why isn't all mass transit free?

(Yes, I understand economically why this isn't the case, and I still think it's a worthwhile viewpoint/question to ask.)
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It's actually not that minor...
Summary: A couple of US returned Indians are selling a GRE like exam to assess the "readiness" of graduates to work in the Indian IT industry. Meh!
10 Things Netbooks still do better than an iPad ?
but not with the iPad.
I wonder what people think of my PHP framework Swiftlet. The latest stable release is still missing some features but it works very well for simple sites.

http://swiftlet.org
Design-centric Thoughts on Apple's iPad by Chief Design Architect at Yahoo
Through your support we have exposed significant injustice around the world—successfully fighting off over 100 legal attacks in the process.

Perhaps legal fees? They have volunteers, but I imagine there are more fees than just lawyers when you defend so many legal attacks. Although I would like to know more as well.
Roads aren't free. You pay a toll to the government for their use every time you go to the gas station. And they shouldn't be free, although gas should be taxed additionally for its environmental externalities.
Looks interesting, but the documentation is still incomplete. For example, the zmq_connect() docs don't list error codes for name lookup failure, connect timeout, or connection reset. There also don't seem to be sockopts for setting timeout lengths.

Looking at the API, how could my application detect that messages aren't being delivered to a particular peer?
If I'm not wrong, I believe the 3g version has A-GPS.
hey, dont forget chicago!
Perhaps he cut it open.
Sadly, the new California "High-speed rail" is slated to go 75MPH.
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As annoying as all of the iPad stuff has been, no one seemed to have any problem with the pure rumor stories that poured all over HN in the days preceding the announcement.

And actually, as someone who first thought "Oh god, this thing sucks..." -- some of the commentary I've read has been quite enlightening and now has me considering an iPad for my girlfriend's mother.

The quality of the stories on iPads that are being submitted are not in question IMO. I will not be filtering them.

Finally, I will certainly not be filtering lisp or Clojure. If you want to keep your mind closed off to things you don't know much about, be my guest. If you've made up your mind on something and never want to think about it again, then again, be my guest. Not for me.
> It is not productive to spend an hour learning how to change the font on your computer’s clock.

Fair point. But is it better than not being able to change the font at all?

That's the Apple alternative. To have an idea in your head and not be able to implement.

Not because it's too hard. Because somebody simply doesn't want you to.
Perhaps not in this 1st gen version, but if it proves to be a success then just give it (and the inevitable competing tablets) some time before it does.
iPad, as a device is a new opportunity for developers. But not an incredible one. Open up the platform, and we can consider it incredible.

He calls the demand for open-computing and removal of restrictions a "nonsense" .
I absolutely dispute our armed forces as "essential government services" in it's current incantation, especially the TRILLION DOLLARS of our federal tax money that has been used to fight two needless wars in order to increase oil profits.
Ah okay, thanks for the explanation.
The Apple iPad: It's just ahead of its time
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I do wonder how important the highway system is to our economy. It used to be a great boon to commerce because we made a lot of goods and needed to get them to other regions, and to ports for export. Now we import everything, and the highway system just aids our increased consumption without actually helping create jobs.
WTF?

I'm seriously confused here. Is this the same guy who thumbed his nose at Microsoft and instigated the creation Mono?

If so, isn't he at least a little conflicted about the closed nature of the platform?
I've been looking at beanstalk, and I like what I see.

Simple protocol, main implementation 6000 lines of non-awful C, libevent... What's not to like?

http://kr.github.com/beanstalkd/
There's a difference between the droning white noise of conversations not fighting for your attention and having people pester you directly because they want to ask you a question and have zero respect for your zone. Your coffee shop is an example of the former, but I believe the parent to your post is talking about the latter.
I switched to forefoot walking after having some serious foot problems, but it was really difficult to learn how to do it in shoes. Once I started going barefoot, it just came naturally. http://suburbiaRebooted.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-i-became-ba...
Your company doesn't waste 15 hours a week, you do. If you weren't commuting, would you work an extra 15 hours per week? That's 15 hours of your life that you're losing, not 15 hours of productivity.. But otherwise, I do agree with you.
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He is well aware about the closed nature.

But he has plans for it http://monotouch.net/iPad (found on HN)
Reading this decision, I would say you're likely to run into issues with the FCC if they were to find out about it:

http://www.fcc.gov/eb/Orders/2008/DA-08-167A1.html

Relevant quote:

If the radio frequency equipment is modified by any party other than the grantee and that party is not working under the authorization of the grantee pursuant to Sec. 2.929(b), the party performing the modification is responsible for compliance of the product with the applicable administrative and technical provisions in this chapter.

In other words, if it's a certified device (has an FCC ID number on the label), you would need to obtain a new certification (new FCC ID) after making your modifications. Doing so would probably eat whatever profits you stand to make (and then some).
Don't panic, I just meant there was nothing for rent on my nearby zipcodes so it was quicker to read about the site than to try it out, being that I couldn't remember any of the major metropolitan zipcodes (which presumably would have had some kind of listings).

I'm in rural Hawaii so I often have this problem - I am thinking I should memorise some Silicon Valley zipcode just so I can use it to try out websites :-)
s/Hacker/Cracker
That's a very apt analogy. I've got nothing against kitchens, but I think it would be nice if there were cheap gourmet lessons out there also. (My analogy is much worse than yours.)
I know; I was informed of that after I wrote it. Shame. Web-accessible runtimes are still a possibility, but certainly that's not as cut-and-dry as having one in the App Store would be.
The essay is a little bit on the light side. For starters I dont think you bring the reader in with your opening paragraph.

I would start with the second paragraph instead. It's much more interesting.

Since you dont reveal how old you are I'm assuming you are < 25. Speaking as someone thats older than that I would say that I have been feeling the same as you do from time to time in regards to the "I must be doing something". And I agree its a problem if you dont know how to "turn it off".

If its any comfort I do know that excellence and aspiring to great things are a universal truth however. There is no such thing as a lost generation or losing the ability to think. You might look up to great individuals that seems like they are towering now, but trust me, in years to come you'll realise they are just as human with weaknesses and flaws like everyone else.

It's what you do at your best that counts.
Gas taxes pay for the interstates, but they don't cover the local road network in most parts of the country. Road maintenance is a massive part of most municipalities' budgets and it comes from general tax revenue.
> We lose nothing by having closed systems.

For good or for bad, for the past 25 years or so, programmers have effectively been subsidized in that the tools to design and create programs are effectively the same as the tools to run programs.

So every system, simply by installing a compiler, is ready to write computer programs.

Early computers didn't even have that step. They had assemblers and basic in the ROM. It was assumed that you were going to be writing programs; how else were you going to get computers to do what you want?

The iPad/iPhone is the latest and greatest step in that huge gap. A little uneasy, for some of us, perhaps, who grew up with QBASIC on-device-coding and can't imagine any other way.

But that is sort of a straw-man issue. You have to buy a real computer, so what? There's a closely-related, but way-more-troubling problem.

App review.

App review is painful. I've had two apps axed by Apple not for bugs or for security issues, but because, quite simply, Apple didn't like them (technically I had 3 such rejections; one was "reversed" on "appeal").

Think this doesn't affect you? It does. Google Voice found out the hard way. It was easier for them to rewrite their app in HTML5 then to talk Apple into letting it on the app store. Same goes for Google Navigation, that will never see the light of day.

For every app that you hear about, there are hundreds (I suspect more like thousands) of developers who had an app rejected and quietly went away.

That's the danger in these new devices. Not that you need a computer to develop for them. Not that the apps are sandboxed and you can't animate your icons or you require some ridiculous API nobody should ever need.

The problem is that Apple can--and, in fact, does--reject well-behaved applications that it simply doesn't like. Not just the buggy ones. Not just the malicious ones.

That's a thought that should chill every developer to the bone.
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I'm not sure if you are familiar with Joe Hewitt's backstory, but he's been very vocally against the app store policies. In fact, he left the Facebook iPhone application team over this:

"My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple’s policies.” – Joe Hewitt"

ref: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/11/joe-hewitt-developer-of...
Its time to accept that the meaning of the word hacker has changed.
Tips for a new Django developer
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Probably because all the Android tablets that have come out so far have been pretty terrible. The Archos device got slammed pretty hard. I haven't used it myself but checking out the specs it's really just not in the same ball park. Slower, smaller, lower quality display, stuck on a year old version of the Android OS -- in fact it got the 1.6 update 8 days ago and it's fragmented off into it's own Archos App Store/Market/Catalog/whatever. Not encouraging. In fairness the Archos device is primarily a PMP and has some unique features that might make it a better choice for some people. This seems to be the direction most of these Android tablets are taking. I don't know of any tablet running Android that is directly comparable to the iPad.
I've been playing with it and so far I'm impressed. You still have to learn the individual iPhone API calls and adjust to the new environment but once you get past that it's actually quite easy to use.

FYI: This e-book has helped a lot: http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/Building-iPhone-and-i...
$100 is only required if you want to publish your apps on Apple's App Store. If you just want to tinker you can build the apps for yourself and let friends use them also. I don't recall what the limitations are on that. As for the requirement to own a computer to develop for it -- yeah... that's common.
Maps and mapping technology are ones that do sharply stick out as more than a natural fit for the tablet form factor combined with touch screen compared with today's mobile devices. This space has plenty to gain in innovation with the iPad.
According to the CA High Speed Rail Authority [1], a trip from San Jose to Los Angeles is 384 miles and will take 2hr9m. That is an average of 180 MPH.

[1] http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/map.htm
And that is truly unfortunate. There should be a tax on gas (mostly) and automobiles that completely pays for roads, and compensating tax cuts should be made against whatever the municipality collects; perhaps property or sales. Above all else I think we can all agree that people should be taxed especially to pay for what they use when it is possible.
We actually had "houses" for a while in our studio (Treyarch) - long time ago. They were used by the sound designers, and were sound proof (all computers (mostly Macs) were actually outside).

It was really hot to work in such office - the air conditioner was... isolated from these "houses"
You are correct: http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/ (left-most column under "Location")

It looks like both the wifi and 3g versions have a digital compass, as well.
The argument I put forward (and I completely respect people that disagree with it) is that yes, it's okay to let somebody else control the clock font, because the clock font doesn't matter. I'd rather not have the choice to change it, because I've got twitchy fingers and am terribly good at procrastination.
Here's another throwback: http://web.archive.org/web/20011024015856/www.apple.com/ipod...
The gmail web interface? It might require a complete mental context switch, but it does not require closing of one program and opening another, then back again.
good article about the journey of a CS project from a university research lab to a profit-making company product
Steven F on the iPad: Old vs New World
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Three hours a day five times a week?

If I were in that situation, I'd either move closer to my job, or find a job closer to where I live. Unless the train had wifi...
Sure, the clock font doesn't matter. But the limiting form of the formula ("It's OK to let someone else control X because X doesn't matter") for lots of values of X is a recipe for total disaster.

We're watching this play out right now with Letters (http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/01/rage-against-the-m...) because apparently Apple Mail.app isn't good enough for power-emailers.

Nobody expects Letters to become the new default OSX Mail client. Rather, it will probably be a successful niche app for power users.

An app like Letters would never see the light of day on the iPhone because it "duplicates system functionality." Mail is good enough, so the logic goes.
I went from the University of Arkansas (sub-top 100, electrical engineering) into the direct Ph.D. program at Purdue University (top 10, electrical and computer engineering) with a three-year fellowship. Among my classmates were students from Michigan Tech, Tennessee Tech, University of Kentucky, Southern University, Florida A&M, Iowa State University, Colorado State University, and UTEP. If I were in your shoes, I would:

1. Volunteer for undergraduate research.
2. Get those letters of recommendation lined up, especially from your research advisor.
3. Identify professors at each school you'd like to work with and contact them directly* about your desire to work with them. Be specific about what you want to work on.
4. Ask your research advisor to review your research statement. Be warned that he/she may try to talk you into staying.

Also, if you think you want a Ph.D., apply for the direct Ph.D. program. Professors are significantly more likely to take a Ph.D. than a M.S. because they get you for 5-7 years instead of two. You also get preferential funding opportunities. You can always change your mind later.

* Many professors will ignore you. Don't be offended. Professors at distinguished schools get dozens of these emails.
Wow. I never even considered that they would differ on something like that.

That's a substantial hit on the "it just works" front. Some apps will not be able to do anything useful without this. Some people won't understand why.
Also good: Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M&feature=fvw
[pdf] A Report on Internet Freedom (by Freedom House): Estonia #1
If by many you mean a very small minority then sure, it was hardly common for kids to have cameras; today nearly every teen has one in their phone.
I'm very productive on trains. Often more productive than in office settings.
They are free to use, which is what is relevant to the Gparent post.
"... Once I get the machine up and running I will be using it for small batch manufacturing of custom knives as well as prototyping all of my crazy ideas :-p ..."

be sure to check out vrogy because thats similar to what he's doing
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That's fascinating. If it costs even the same as air travel, I might just use it spontaneously. A 40 minute flight easily takes two hours these days.
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A while back I was getting depressed at the usability of tarsnap

Please send me an email with details about the usability issues you encountered.

[...] distribution of chunk sizes [...] I have no idea what Tarsnap does about this; I am guessing the blocks it hashes for deduplication purposes aren't the same as the ones it sends to the server, and I presume it doesn't stream stuff to the server as it scans the filesystem. And there are probably several other things it does that I wouldn't even think of.

The blocks Tarsnap uses for deduplication are the same as the blocks Tarsnap uploads; but they are encrypted (to avoid leaking file data), identified by HMAC (to avoid leaking information via hash), and the blocking is key dependent, so an attacker can't say "you have chunks of lengths X, Y, and Z, so you probably have this particular block of data". Also, the chunk size (64 kB on average, pre-compression) is small enough that there would be too much noise to pull off such an attack.
Also, not everyone is the same. I welcome collaboration, but when I'm working on my own, I need the isolation.

I don't spend all my time in isolation. But I need to be able to shut the door and make the rest of the world go away. After a while, I'll open it and come back out.

The worst is tuning out crap taking place 3 - 5 feet away from me, in which I have no part. All the more so when it is fellow employees socializing, while I'm trying to get stuff done and maybe waiting on work from them, as well.

And I agree, when the background noise becomes a din with little in the way of distinguishable, coherent threads, that's a lot better for me than a conversation or two, each of which is largely or completely intelligible (if not always intelligent).
Great tips. When I was starting, some of these didn't occur to me and the others I knew I should be doing but didn't know how.
The quality and quantity of feedback on this essay is a good signifier of a great HN community.
I can only see this setting things back, mainly because of all the talent, methods and previous effort already gone into constellation.

It's probably good in the long run though to work towards privatizing it all, it seems so political the way it is now, it seems like the support for the program comes more from certain states making tax dollars off the program rather than a real thirst to explore the unknown.
Interesting, I've long suspected some companies might engage in such practices... I guess one plan is if a domain you want is free right then, buy it immediately. Also, I hate GoDaddy so that takes of that issue...
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Taxes on something directly and irrevocably associated with the use of a resource _is_ a tax on the resource. But someone pointed out that gasoline taxes do not pay for roads in their entirety; the toll basically doesn't cover the expense of maintaining the road.
This is some really useful stuff. I learned a lot of this over time, and wished I had known it sooner.

The point about schema evolution is important.

I've taken to using a pickled python object in a text field in every model. That flexibility to store arbitrary data in a hash is amazing. I've used it to, for example, represent twitter accounts that are oauthed, with password, following the business account, or just nothing special. 4 kinds of accounts, with logic in the model to deal with it properly, all without evolving the schema. I only started with the first 2, and added the latter two without a problem.

I'm pushing this a bit further now, and transitioning away from models altogether, and experimenting with a non-relational database like couchdb. I'm debating moving to google app engine too, but found some details (like getting on your own domain) to be pretty annoying.
I think it's a defensible characterization. There were more iPhone-OS devices sold last year than Netbooks -- possibly a lot more, though it's hard to say for sure as Apple doesn't break out iPod Touch sales from iPods as a whole.
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Let's just hope that enough people buy it in its current form to make it attractive to app developers.
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