skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
X10 is one way (old, standard) to do this. It works by transmitting a couple of bits at each zero-crossing of the 60Hz house current. IE, it works over your existing electrical lines.

I set up a system in my house, controlled partly by controllers in the switches themselves (push a button on a wall-mounted switch inside, it sends an X10 signal thru the house wiring to a listener in a box in the back yard). Also controlled by an always-on computer which can turn off lights at given times, or respond to scripts, or pokes over the internet.

The potential is huge. But the reality, with X10, can be a bummer. At first the system worked quite well -- lights on and off at the correct time, good response to button presses. But for reasons not clear at all, the system performance gets flaky. I put in a repeater/phase coupler (e.g., http://www.smarthome.com/4823/Leviton-2-Phase-X10-Coupler-Re...), changed out some of the off-brand switches with Leviton parts, etc. This helped, but did not make the system solid.

This turns out to be unacceptable. When you press a light switch, you need the light to come on (even if it's just a driveway light). Nobody in the house but me has the patience to use the X10 switches any more. But now, it would be a major pain to replace the X10 components because the cost and re-install time adds up. (E.g., one X10 dimmer is about $70. I have almost 10. One multi-unit wall controller is about $50, and I have almost 10 of those too.)

I put this stuff in myself, but I don't think the problem was with the install. I'm an EE, I'm used to lab work, and I'm familiar with the NEC for home wiring.

Perhaps a Zigbee, UPB, or Insteon system would be better.

My lessons learned:
X10 doesn't work in my (modest-sized) house.
Don't commit to any home automation system without a long-term small-scale trial.
Don't use these components for critical tasks (like "turning on the heat so the pipes won't freeze", or "turning off the sprinkler system").
It's not true that Apple isn't doing multitasking. They do plenty of multitasking. They just don't expose it to third party applications.
>due to improving know-how

The biggest factor is educated manpower. That is more important than any other factor by a fairly large margin. Not least because increasing manpower even without education increases market size, which is an independent benefit of its own.
The NYTimes piece linked to in this article is a shorter read, although it focuses on the environmental impact of mining the rare-earth metals :

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/26/business/global/26rare.htm...
Multi-touch support is a necessity if you want a screen keyboard.
Actually, that's pretty much because cars got computers. No one person knows how to completely fix a computer.
5 Free Online Services to Send an Email to a Fax Machine
Useful!
It's not ironic, it's a blessing. What better place for rare earth metals that help reduce pollution than in the most populated place and next to the other one.

And referring to the altruism quote, do you really think if those rare earth metals were in the u.s. they'd be shared with China?

Copenhagen was a joke from the get go. It's all about powerful compan... I mean countries taking more resources from poor countries, restricting their people's desire to grow and live a good life while putting few restrictions -- and none that would be followed -- on those countries that have had good lives for decades already.
Ask HN: Will you use this Groundhog Day web service?
I love your description of Scribd - does anyone here know what audience scribd was intended for or what problem it was supposed to address? I can't see any possible benefit from the way it works and wonder what I am missing.
Most people do need computers. I'd say the majority of computer users are younger people and there's not one young person I know that uses their computer only to read new York times. Most computer users use it for work, and that's something the iPad is not optimized for. It's an entertainment casual device, but it's not mobile. I think there's a nice use for it because it let's you walk around your house with some of the information you used to have to sit down for. But to think it's really for the people who use 10 year old computers is naive.
Why should a javascript library defer to the abbreviated name of a minor python-land command line tool?
Kanban, Event Modeling, and GTD
FYI, I am also an OS X user. (MacBook, iMac, iPhone) The fact that you felt you had to mention this and a few other things make me think you didn't completely comprehend my idea.

It's still a jail, and if Apple officially removed it - you can still say 'jailbroken' but that's a minor point.

I never said about removing the jail. Just building a cozy luxe visitors center just outside the wall.

Not true. I can't officially run OS X on non-official Apple hardware with official Apple suppport.

In my idea, people would be running non-official Apple software without Apple support.

iPad will eventually have the same 'freedom' as OS X and iPhone. Nothing less, and nothing more; and certainly nothing new.

You're dead wrong. If the iPad is to become as pervasive as they would like it to, Apple is going to have to open it up enough so that it can operate as a general purpose computer for the small segment of the populace that wants it.

The key is in the italics. There is no technical reason why Apple can't have their "walled garden" and still let a few people do dangerous things if they want. Will it be what the FSF calls "free?" No way.

Actually, they are already doing some of this. It's called the "iPhone SDK."
How Fred Wilson Won Jerry Colonna As A Partner By Canceling A Meeting With Him
Within a year of the age of Louis Auchinschloss, also just dead. Yet what different writers.

I liked the story called (I think) "The Laughing Man" in the nine stories. The rest less so.
How an Innovation Leader became FedEx’s ‘Secret Weapon’
Genetrix? Oh, mama.
Hitler responds to the iPad =)
Arizona Charter School
Arizona Charter Schools. AmeriSchools are a tuition-free Arizona Charter School System for grade levels K-12 in Phoenix, Tucson, and Yuma.
RIP. However, I hope this will make it easier for derivative works to be published. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/books/02salinger.html
Commodore 64 emulator written in JavaScript
I'm not positive that the jailbreaks will come as fast as they used to.
Am I the only one that's happy with no flash on the iPhone or iPad? After seeing what flash does to the CPU of both Macs and PCs, I definitely don't want flash running on any mobile device. Also, my AT&T "3G" connection is slow enough that loading extra flash would make page loading times even worse.
Bright people fooling themselves ?
Maybe they can do something with sunsolve next. That site and the backend has been terrible for at least a year due to the failed backend change they were working on forever. No one on the Sun side knew where my cases were half the time.
The past two events have been great. There is a surprisingly high concentration of startups in Indy and the evens have made it easy to connect with others starting companies or working at them.
It is weird to see "75,000,000 people already know how to use it" as a selling point for a device that is also sold as extremely intuitive to use.
Looking forward. I'm sure it will be a great event.

@agouty
Does anyone else think Catcher in the Rye was a load of rubbish? I had no sympathy whatsoever for the main character and found the book frankly boring.
I need to use one before making up my mind, but today I use a Macbook Pro as my production device (code, music production, presentations, other high volume content creation) and an iPhone for mobile communication and very casual short bursts of consumption. What's missing is a pure casual consumption and occasional production device. This fits in quite well. Netbooks are just not the right form factor for many of those tasks.
So let me get this straight. I want an ebook reader so I will buy an iPad which is not one but could be used a bit like one (if I did not mind the fact that it was not actually an effective ebook reader).

Erm... I don't think so.

"And One More Thing" - The Kindle is about reading - which sort of correlates with books. The iPad is about Steve Jobs which is about something else - maybe some other sort of media but not books.
The website has a full-screen intro ad, and the article itself is broken down into lots of pages.

Page 2 is "burst training" (excercise for 30-60 seconds to burn a bit of sugar)

Page 3 is to move around, go to the bathroom at least (!), walk more during your commute

Page 4 suggest changing the chair for a phisioball or working while standing up for some stretches of time

Page 5 suggests Wii Fit and the like

Page 6 suggests some Social Networking sites for health & fitness
School, before "Catcher in the Rye": "Children, listen to us and do as we say. This is the way the world is."

Life, after "Catcher in the Rye": "The world is not cast in concrete. It's OK to question authority. You're not the only one."

I've been living my life like that ever since. I don't know if that was JDS's intent, but it sure was the effect.

RIP
Yes. That's also part of the issue. I feel that if I get a good seed round from a reputable investor, I'll have a better funding profile. (I'm PMing you to figure that out... wait how do I PM?)

We're bootstrapped, so I guess our funding profile is... 3 partners, equal equity.
Introduction to Lisp: Heron's method
Medical Billing 
Providing <a href=http://www.billingparadise.com>Medical Billing</a> and Coding Services that allows you to save on overhead expenses such as salaries, payroll taxes, benefits, and printing/office supplies.
I recommend reading the actual documents the EFF is reporting on before drawing conclusions. I did so months ago and I think the EFF's reporting on it is grossly misleading.

The context is Apple's response to the EFF's filing for a DMCA exemption for jailbreaking as part of the DMCA rulemaking process. In other words: it is already illegal if it involves a copyright violation, and the EFF was trying to get it made a special exemption. Exemptions are considered based on certain requirements in the law, and a number have been granted. What Apple actually said was that jailbreaking should not be specially exempted from the DMCA for the reasons the EFF cited, because they don't meet the requirements in the law. If you actually look at the reasons the EFF cited, I think you'll find that they don't.

Again, I recommend reading the filings yourself, and the law on DMCA exemptions, and the list of existing exemptions, and make up your own mind.
Are you able to configure the touchpad to support right-clicks under Linux? I'm curious because that's one thing that's been a pain for me when running Linux on an Apple laptops in the past.
Is capthca even necessary?
I was telling a guy I sometimes do contract work for about one of my projects and he asked if I was interested in bringing him on as a cofounder (which I need) to take care of the UI/UX stuff and balance out my development load (which I also desperately need). I told him I'd think about it, but I'm honestly very hesitant to take on a cofounder at this point. My main hesitation with him is that he lives in another country and I worry about all of the complications involved with that (although I heard it worked out well for 37Signals). Another issue I have is that my project is still kind of my baby, and I hate to hand even a part of it over to anyone else just yet. I guess I need to do more networking before I make any decisions. It's lonely working alone, but it's scary trusting other people. Perhaps that means I haven't met anyone that I trust enough to work with as a cofounder.
http://gizmodo.com/5440207/netbook-tablets-get-capacitive-mu... looks pretty interesting.

You can argue the details about whether an atom chip is a good alternative, but as a whole it's certainly in the right size, weight, battery life, touchscreen technology, modern OS and price ranges to make a worthy comparison.
The iPad: A Year Too Early
Basically, "magical software" does not constitute software that already runs on the devices I have right now. Even without any of the other external features (front-facing camera, etc.), the fact that they didn't wait to release this until they had the 4.0 SDK ready was a shot in the foot. They would have had a much more "compelling" release otherwise.

(Actually, I think I explained it better here than in the blog post.)
Skirt the AppStore: Run Unsigned Code on a Stock iPhone / iPad
Merging two unrelated Git repositories
I did too. They had one of the cleverest logos I've seen. With this redirect dies one of the oldest sites on the web. Sun.com had the 11th oldest registered domain name (tied with IBM.com) https://www.iwhois.com/oldest/
Long-Awaited Barefoot Running Study Finds Sneakers Are Harmful
There are a few books whose everlasting fame eludes me. "On the Road" and "The Great Gatsby" and "Catcher in the Rye" all provided mystifying reads...because they are supposed to be great and manifestly are not.
Political Buzzword Correlations
> I'm sad he's gone, 9 stories upset me in ways few books ever have.

That's the most concise and accurate description of his writing I've seen. His works are... unsettling, and the value of reading them comes from figuring out why, which can sometimes be very difficult. I've read very few authors that can force introspection the way JD Salinger could. This is also why it's (rightly!) considered dangerous to read.
But something in me says it's partially Apple's responsibility to educate people about the devices they sell through proper marketing.

It is, but there are practical limits to that. We don't usually expect companies to highlight things about their products that some people might not like, we just expect them to not lie. Obviously they omit much, but omissions aren't inherently nefarious or misleading (I know you're not saying that), so we're talking about something(s) more specific than that. What should Apple be expected to make clear about their products that they aren't currently?

If Apple markets this ethically they won't mislead people into thinking this is a general-purpose computer.

Isn't it though? In the sense of 'tasks you can perform' or 'purposes you can use it for', it seems quite general. It has limitations in terms of what is available from the store, but how would you convey those to limitations to someone as being distinct from obvious limitations like how the lack of a camera prevents you from taking pictures with it?

I'm not sure if that's a clear question, but I ask because it seems to me that people with a less detailed understanding about how these things work tend to view software limitations as being just as real as hardware limitations, and that whether it allows them to accomplish the tasks they want to perform or not is vastly more meaningful to them than their control over how it does so. I just don't get the sense that people will be disappointed.
See, its so easy that 75 million people already learned how to use it.
Yes, that's exactly how it works. It seems as though the lower level tasks have the ability to push themselves in to the foreground when something happens that they don't know how to handle.

It's an amazing mechanism. Animals can do it too, birds can sing 'on the wing', there are lots of other examples.

Fascinating stuff.
>There's no reason why Apple can't sell "sandbox" versions of this kit. The hardware would be 99% the same.

Why would you do that? To compete with every other sandbox vendor that can simply copy all the expensive work that you put into UI and design and sell knock-offs at half the price?

Put yourself in the company's shoes. Your narrow interests are not in theirs.
Although I agree with the arguments, I cannot (yet?) agree with the final outcome.
Has Apple officially announced that they will sue anyone who develops a third-party external keyboard?

Perhaps, but I doubt it. Ergo, I suspect that there will be lots and lots of third party keyboards for those of us who insist on trying to write novels on this thing. Or, you know, we will buy laptops.

It's worth noting that the Atari 400 had a terrible keyboard because... it wasn't really designed for writing. It was a gaming platform masquerading as a computer. Of course, many people tried to make it stretch, because at the time actual computers cost many thousands of dollars more...
Startup Steps, Learned over 22 Years
The iPhone has one property that improves its keyboard that will presumably be inherited by the iPad: predictive algorithms make "more likely" keys have larger zones, even though the keyboard graphic isn't redrawn, so that if your finger hits an area between two keys, or even slightly onto an adjacent key, the "right" key will be interpreted instead. (The author also mentions autocorrection, which is not quite the same.)

But yeah, it still is just not going to be as good of tactile feedback as an actual keyboard, and virtually impossible to type on without looking at the keys---small hand placement errors will compound without constant feedback and will eventually cause "keyboard drift".

(And the most infamous example of a membrane keyboard that I'm aware of is the IBM PCjr... it's certainly the example that I use when I'm explaining to people why touch screens suck for typing.)
So, Apple will make sure any user accessing email from the iPhone/iPad won't go after the money he just inherited in Nigeria.
CoffeeScript is a language. It doesn't run natively on node.js, so I don't really see the relationship here.
For the iPad anyway, any bluetooth keyboard will work.
Indeed, CoffeeScript was built on Ruby, and its REPL on Narwhal.
Entrepreneurial genius consists of a knack for acing your competitors out of key markets through innovative means.

John D. Rockefeller did this by taking a nascent and highly localized oil industry (originally only in Pennsylvania and then Ohio) dominated by wildcatters and other independents and transforming it into a highly integrated and even ruthless competitive machine by which he could always beat his competitors on price while serving major emerging new markets. This was not based on any genius he had about the oil products themselves. He was not technically trained concerning such products. What he understood was business and innovation in emerging markets for these products. Hire the best talent. Gain control of the railroads that were vital to ship the products cheaply and efficiently, first by pressuring them through building a system of pipelines that threatened to undercut their business and then by entering into deals with them involving secret rebates so as to incentive them to deal with Rockefeller either alone or on highly preferential terms. Use legal innovations to set up trusts and partnerships that allowed a series of corporations, one in each state, to function as an integrated whole at a time when it was (people forget this) illegal for a corporation to do business across state lines, thereby gaining hegemony in the U.S. oil market that no other competitor could come even close to matching and eventually using this as a springboard for international dominance as well. The result (setting aside the illegalities involved): the building of an empire that grew exponentially in relation to anything else around it owing to its ability to offer quality and cheap pricing to consumers.

It is not too far-fetched, I think, to say that Steve Jobs is doing something similar in taking on the wildcatters of today in a quest to win the major markets of the information age. He has so managed to unite amazing product development with tightly integrated and company-dominated distribution channels with ground-breaking arrangements with the telcos (who are the vital connecting links, or "railroads," of our day) as to build a formidable empire that threatens to crush any direct competitors in its field. The genius is undeniable, even down to having set up retail outlets of a type that everyone would have laughed at just 20 years ago.

Who can tell where this quest for hegemony in today's open-systems world will go but the implications are both intriguing and frightening at the same time.
Nine Stories is amazing. RIP
Speak Human
Here is what apple actually said:

"Congress did not envision the DMCA exemption process as a forum for economic restructuring of business models... As this submission will demonstrate, the evidence shows that a business model in which handsets can be widely jailbroken with the attendant problems that result would in fact hinder the creation and distribution of creative works for the platform."

I figure next up is the suggestion that Apple strongly lobbied against the DMCA.
RIP indeed, though I can't help but think of this passage from The Catcher in the Rye:

That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write “Fuck you” right under your nose. Try it sometime. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say “Holden Caulfield” on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say “Fuck you.” I'm positive, in fact.
Anyone know what's happening to the Sun research department?
The site is back up now.
I used to do this and I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, stress on my legs seemed better but my feet ending up hurting a lot after a while. I found comfy running shoes worked out best. Of course, I have a slightly abnormal bone structure in my feet that may make my observations invalid. Plus, after a slight tear in my MCL I rarely do anything but the elliptical these days.
About the only thing I can think of would be:

A website that you go to with a live JS edit/run cycle, saved on the server on the fly, EtherPad style.

An option to have it email the code to your iPad email address as a clickable link which is a javascript bookmarklet.

An option to have it save the javascript as a bookmarklet/link which you can on the home page.

This is a hack on the iPhone - encode a PDF into a Javascript bookmark and sync it to Safari's bookmarks (i.e. http://pimm.wordpress.com/2007/07/18/how-to-read-pdf-files-o... ).

Maybe if the server had a way to remember or reopen and tidy your code it would be closing in on PG's RFS#5.

You can't cron-job anything, and you can't work with any language other than Javascript unless you make a server side to->Javascript compiler for it. Another user suggested that there is now or soon to be inter-app file transfer, so depending on how that is implemented it might open other venues.
It's one thing to make great technology. It's another thing to market and sell it. Apple can do both. Apple really gets it. But what is it exactly that they get? Here it is, they can do 5 things very well:

- Hardware
- Software
- Human Interface Design
- Marketing
- User/Developer Ecosystem

If they weren't able to do all 5 of these very well, it wouldn't matter how great the devices are. Other companies do the hardware & the software. Some are even pretty good at the marketing. Very few companies do all 5 of these things as well as Apple does and make that a seamless whole.

Of these 5, the last two are often the missing secret sauce. Of these 5, the last one is the most powerful. They realize this. Why do you think they do everything that they do with the stores?

Open Source shows that you can have nothing but software and ecosystem.
Entertaining back-and-forth, but are there independent performance numbers published backing up either claim?
Indeed, screw all this 'democracy' business where I'm sometimes in the minority, and this 'free speech' nonsense where people voice disagreement with me. And screw these pointy-headed academics with their sinister hidden agendas, telling businessmen what to do. C'mon boys, let's get our jack-boots on and take care of this silliness once and for all.
This is a good and somewhat famous short story, pre "Catcher":

A Perfect Day for Bananafish
http://www.freeweb.hu/tchl/salinger/perfectday.html