skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
One thing we have to think about with this is that Jobs is not afraid of a wholesale platform change.

This makes me think that his is really a quiet thrust back into general computing, from a platform, hardware and software ecosystem that's been very successful and is wholly owned and controlled by Apple.

The current Mac ecosystem is basically no different, or just a variation on, the PC open platform. Jobs has stated many times in the past that he prefers to "control the end-to-end user experience" which is code for "prefers to control the margins on Apple products, from hardware to software".

Everything in the iPhone ecosystem allows Apple to control the end to end margins retrievable from the consumer. The Mac ecosystem lost this message a long time ago and this seems to me like a soft-shoe effort to turn the Apple consumer onto a new computing platform that's on the Steve Jobs "margin controlled" message.

It also cleanly gets the moved away from the Wintel style computing and back into proprietary and incompatible land. Within two years, people will be using these things for general computing, with mice and keyboards and webcams and all kinds of specialized docks and iPad 2nd monitors and such. Within 5 years they'll offer a complete out of the box computer running in this constrained ecosystem and traditional Macs will be relegated to some type of "Pro" offering targeting writers and artists.

Already it's principle release feature is the presence of 140k apps, ready to roll with it that you can purchase only from the Apple controlled online store. And there's discussion on porting more traditional productivity apps (iWorks) to the platform.

Effectively, this puts the iPod/Phone/Pad derivative products into direct competition with Apple's own products, which already have plenty of competition from traditional Wintel boxes, Netbooks of all varieties, other tablets, the upcoming Chrome OS machines, and Android computing platforms. But because it's so tightly controlled the intersection in the primary computing ecosystem is minimal.
I don't understand why so many people are getting their panties in a knot because somebody is selling another non-general-use device with a processor.

They actually are general-purpose devices, just deliberately limited by Apple. And I'm sort of ok with that; I'm not ok with them actively trying to stop you from removing those limitations on your own device, and calling you a criminal if you do. A seller trying to control how you use a product after you've bought it is an attack on your property rights.

This is not undermining constructivist education, free culture, decentralized power or open systems in any meaningful way.

Not by itself. But if closed devices like the iPad marginalize open devices, it becomes much easier to enforce user-hostile laws like CBDTPA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Broadband_and_Digital_...).
> Are you indicating that my belief that Ubuntu is close to the usability of Mac or Windows is false, or that being easy to use is a problem?

The former, of course. Being easy to use is wonderful and important. :)
... And to use the iPad she still needs to have the laptop to sync it to.
I always hate seeing this argument. Using back of the napkin calculations, that means Google is getting out of China because it's down to 50 million users there. I guess we should expect them to be leaving Canada soon, since they only have about 19 million users here. Not to mention that the number of internet users in China is growing by about 80 million people per year at the moment according to the world bank, of which Google was presumably getting their 17% as well.
Assuming that internet connections are usually available ensures that your device will be utterly useless in many rural areas. In some places around my city, there is no broadband internet available at all, perhaps even when considering offerings from cell phone networks.

There is one place in our city that offers free wifi, and few people are aware of it because they do not advertise it. Our library has computers one can use, but no wifi.

People living in and around major cities may want to pretend that everyone is able to have nearly continuous internet access, but that's not the case. Even assuming one has a smartphone, Edge isn't a pleasant thing to attempt to even browse the internet over.
But people will buy it. Everything Apple sells can be categorized in that way "less functionality at a higher price point".
Nope, oddly enough it looks like iPhone OS 3.2 (in its current incarnation) is not for iPhones.
Keep Asking Yourself Is What I Am Doing Now Productive?
Ballmer: Microsoft's business 'must respect the laws of China'
Amazon stock outperforms Apple after splashy iPad debut
I agree with ddemchuk. It's not just for presentations using Keynote. These things would be fantastic for any kind of web-based demo, video preso or walk-thru where you are doing it one-on-one. Basically, where you're showing, rather than typing etc, and where the environment is intimate.
That's a bad analogy. A better analogy is, "Imagine if Microsoft told all video game manufacturers that they were no longer allowed to sell Xbox games without having them approved by...oh, wait."

(If console games were small enough for digital download to be feasible, do you really think Microsoft and Sony and Nintendo would let you buy them at every damn store? Would they even bother putting drives in the machines anymore?)
Oh and I forgot USB peripheral support, SD card slots, enough power to charge USB connected devices...
You know how there is the free-as-in-beer versus free-as-in-speech distinction? I think we need an open-as-in-I-can-build-stuff-without-your-permission versus open-as-in-consumers-theoretically-control-their-own-data distinction. I kind of like having the first type of open around. The second type, meh, whatever.

I make toasters for people who like toast. They pay me to make toasters so that they don't have to deal with the freaking breadcrumbs. The word breadcrumb sort of scares them, anyhow. They don't need open breadcrumbs. (Influential people, including many present here, think open breadcrumbs are a moral imperative. None of them buy toasters. I optimize accordingly.)

On the other hand, as a toaster maker, it is very handy for me that I don't have to apply to a Central Toaster Authority for a Certified Toaster Maker Certificate which will let me check out The Black Arts of Toaster Manufacturing from the library and use my Genuine Toaster Tools (cost $100,000 per set)) to start cranking out toasters.
There are a lot of problems with tree ring data, two of the most important are:

1. It no longer corresponds to the temperatures we measure (last 50 years or so)

2. It is based on very few trees,
The iPhone 3GS already uses a custom chip. It combines an ARM processor, a SIMD FPU, a GPU, and 128 MB of DRAM onto a single die. It's pretty neat.
Almost every non-laptop mobile device has an ARM in it... There have been more ARM CPUs built than people alive. It has been winning for a long time.
I've heard many such articles stating that exercising increases energy levels. However, they never seem to specify exactly what type of exercise.

Are they always referring to cardio? I tried exercising in the morning a while back, but I was doing weights. I felt anything BUT energetic for the rest of the day ...
I think more interesting than this actual article is Fog Creek's "QA and Test Specialist" job listing linked at the end: http://www.fogcreek.com/Jobs/QA.html

There are a bunch of small errors on the page that are the kind of things they'd expect a tester to catch and require fixing for. For example, "you've" is written with a backtick ("you`ve"), "valuable" is spelled with the letter L as a numeral one, "morale" is spelled "moral," etc. I wonder if in the phone interview they're going to bring these up. If they didn't notice the errors, they're probably not the right hire!
Fascinating. It's hard to believe that my Safari setup has a lot of entropy in the plugins, since I don't have anything special installed there, just Click2Flash and Silverlight. My system fonts, though, are more unique. Not many people have Macs with Consolas installed on them.
Health.com: Health News, Wellness, and Medical  Information
Apple lifts 3G VoIP restrictions
Obfuscated C code to approximate Pi
McGraw-Hill axed from iPad launch after CEO leaks on TV
As a lone developer, you should be in the best position to take that kind of risk. No?
Apple iPad's iBook rips off indie dev's creation
> Had this model of computing existed before the web browser was invented, we may have never gotten a web browser.

Assuming this had at some point become the only common model of computing, what would keep out newcomers from coming out with less locked-down systems? What about things like "many dealers started bundling the Apple II with VisiCalc" (http://lowendmac.com/orchard/06/visicalc-origin-bricklin.htm...); if there's sufficiently useful software that won't run on your computer, you (or your employer) will buy a new, working, computer.

> The problem with this model, is that we may miss out on the next "browser". The next huge idea that completely changes the world, because we have ONE party that has to decide whether it is profitable for them first.

General computing cannot be replaced by such devices, let alone by a single implementation of such a device by a single manufacturer.
This will led to more 'This video is not available in your country' shit.

This won't have any effect on it, actually. Servers that are targeting users by location use the IP sent with each request to do localization, rather than which server was chosen by DNS. Otherwise it would be trivial to choose a server in the appropriate country and add an entry to your hosts file, bypassing these restrictions.

You could try to argue that making it possible for global companies to make their content arrive faster is bad for net neutrality, but given that this doesn't adversely affect other servers (and possibly benefits them by reducing congestion), that would be a hard argument to swing as well.

Edit: and for your second comment, I have no idea how routing algorithms would work if that were the case.
11 minutes of action in the NFL would very compare poorly with a full contact outdoor grass field sport like Australian Football (aka Aussie Rules).

I suspect that the amount of action time in a full 100 minute game of Aussie Rules (taking the professional Australian Football League as an example) would be close to 30-40 minutes action time (with some of the midfield players racking up around 20 kms running per game).

It would be interesting to do a similar analysis to the one undertaken here.

NB: Aussie Rules in the US has around 60 clubs and 3000 or so players. Their website can be found here: http://www.usfooty.com/
It'd have to do machine-code translation, and so would be slow as hell. Try running windows in qemu some time to see what I mean.
What happens when they stop needing to invest huge amounts of revenue into their stores? Major profits.

Example: I buy a B&B and use the revenue from my rentals to expand the property to get more rooms (IE higher revenue) and I invest that too. 10 years down the road I could have the biggest hotel in the country, making record revenues but nearly zero profit, and then I stop expanding. I'm then raking in multi-millions from one-stop sales and my business will have operated exactly the same as iTunes and the App store.

Apple has the potential to make huge amounts of money off of iTunes and the App store. They're just delaying this to expand their market hold and look benign. "How can Apple possibly be evil?" you hear people ask; "They barely profit off their stores," they say. 10 years down the line, when no one cares anymore, no one will bat an eyelid when Apple is taking in over a billion dollars from its iTunes and App store sales.
Larry Masinter Musings: Over-specification is anti-competitive
Boracay weather forecast
Interestingly, the Australian Football Leagues three field umpires are mic'ed up as well.

It was also tried on a number of players but the constant grunting (from exertion) was seen as a distraction to the enjoyment of the game.
Here's where the FSF errs:

All media in the iTunes store (with the one exception of music) is DRM: well, I'd say music is one giant exception, since that's what 90% of its users buy from that store.

All applications must be signed by Apple, an unprecedented level of control for a general purpose computer: that's the point, it's not meant to be a general purpose computer, it's meant to be a device that lets you browse the web, read books and watch movies.
The NHL will often mic up players as well.

It's amusing to imagine how much editing must be required before they have enough material to broadcast without incurring FCC fines.
Node.js + V8 = awesome!

Comet not so
Has anyone not been unique?
I'll never give up my MBP, but I think the issues you're speaking of have more to do with the OS (cough Windows) then they do with the openness of the PC itself.
No. Please, no. I love my Mac to death for one simple reason: I can program it and distribute my apps to just about anyone without restrictions and without having to go through the abomination that is the AppStore. Why does the computing industry suddenly want to take the joy out of programming by pushing for closed devices?

No, I won't program for the web. Why? Because I don't want to write JavaScript. I want to write C, C++, Objective-C, Python, Perl, Haskell or any one of the thousands of programming languages I can run on my Mac today.
Outdoor Banner Colorado
Expandasign, an industry leader in lightweight portable advertising displays. We specialize in products for portable trade show displays, outdoor sign age, advertising displays, point-of-sale promotions and events.
No, the Cortex A8 hard macro was designed with TI as a lead customer, but is an ARM design.
I find myself wondering if this is something djb already put in tinydns. :)
If you are also into high speed, high action, full contact sports. I'd highly recommend youtubing Australian Football or Aussie Rules.

Teams to watch out for who tend to play a very entertaining game is the Geelong Cats (last years AFL Grand Final winners). They are going through a golden era at the moment.
Likewise hockey. Lots of highly-engaged play for about an hour. With a DVR I only spend about an hour and a half per game including some interviews, maybe overtime/shootout, and replays.
Pick-off moves were the first thing that came to my mind.
Sounds like you're saying free software isn't quality software.

Some of the most robust, secure, and least-surprise software is free.

Can't have the good without the bad.
The iPad is optimised for these three things; simplicity, battery life and cost.

Multitasking and background apps kill battery life. Root access and other desktop features aren't simple. More disk space would be expensive -- being flash memory. Unless the author is suggesting a spinning drive, which will kill battery life.

These are completely valid complaints, but it helps to understand that these choices aren't random. Personally, as much as I want all of those additional features, I'm happy to consider buying and iPad for what it already does.
It probably depends on the type of company, but if there is a compliance/legal department, they're the ones looking for typos and stuff and even the marketing department. Specially when it's content (as opposed to a WinForms dialog box, for example) I don't think proofreading is part a tester's job, but correct me if I'm wrong.

Of course, the ones you mention are pretty blatant, so I would assume that it would benefit him to mention them since it shows great attention to detail and quality.
I think it's perfectly clear why they're doing this: it's a lock-in device. The more people buy these half-assed products that limit their choices and exclude 3rd party support and control of your own device, the more money they can funnel out of you. Oh, you want music? You have to buy it from us. Oh, you want a program so you can be productive? You better hope we approved a recent version of it. Don't like it? Too bad, you already bought the hunk of metal and silicon, deal with it. Make no mistake: total vendor control is not in your best interests as a consumer. It never has been, never will be.
This is true. After watching soccer almost exclusively for the last four years I find myself more attracted to hockey each time I catch part of a game.
I get where you're going, but the toaster analogy doesn't work. If you want to sell toasters (or basically anything that takes mains voltage) en masse in Western markets, you'll have to fork over several large to Underwriters Laboratories and go through their approval process.
I think that the big show companies are catching on to the new "natural" fad and trying to adapt accordingly to protect their business.

It's the same way McDonalds implemented a menu full of healthy options (called the "New Tastes" menu here in Australia).
Contest: write a Cocoa-based web application, win a free iPad
Constructors considered harmful
If I travel to the US again, I imagine I'd buy myself a cheap netbook, and take that with me instead. Although I'm happy enough with the security of my key chain while I have physical control of my machine, I imagine it isn't too much work to break out my remembered passwords from an offline copy of my hard disk.
I'm finding Google more and more intrusive. On their help page they say to log out of your account if you don't want this, but then I lose my gmail connection. I've tried switching to bing for searches, but it's not as good. So I am thinking of moving from gmail - does anyone have any good recommendations as a replacement?

[edit: anyone use runbox?]
I was careful not to say that. If it isn't a useful business tool, that doesn't necessarily mean that it won't be as successful as any gaming console/handheld.

They probably are limiting their market to gizmo-fans with a glut of disposable income, and that could affect their bottom line.
Yet, in the same article the author mentions Delicious Library's influence on the design of Classics.

Rip off, my behind. It's an _obvious_ metaphor. Commenters on the article even point out other examples like Shelfari.
Ticketmaster - Live Nation merger
I usually do pull-ups, crunches on the pull-up bar, and lift weights (in the morning). I don't do cardio in the morning. The boost of energy I feel isn't apparent immediately after the workout (after all, you should have worn yourself out). The energy I feel might be from testosterone or perhaps it's just the feeling of being relaxed with your whole body kind of sore (in the good way).
The Vibram KSO doesn't do a good job of keeping your feet warm in the cold and wet. I mostly run barefoot on dirt trails, but pull the KSO's out of my pocket when I hit really bad terrain. Cold is the one thing that stops me.

I'm moving to the Bay Area myself in a couple of weeks, and was kind of hoping that that was the solution to the cold weather problem. I am a little worried about finding good quality dirt trails.
Sure, I can definitely see a Marxist-like critique in his writings, but such a critique can be used to point to variety of alternative solutions, including a purer form of democracy than we currently have in the US.
Yah, its not a huge deal. But something I thought I would share with the community here.
From a purely historical context, you're right of course. I think the "challenged the status quo" part comes from the way he combined the popularization of a history that had previously under-represented in the mainstream consciousness with his activism in a variety of forums.
The first "gas-powered truck" was born one year after Ernest Hemmingway, so I'm going to say that it was something else. Likewise, the book-of-the-month club started in 1926 and their business model was basically the same as Amazon's, except they did the ordering. So, I wouldn't blame distribution systems of any sort.
It reminded me of Delicious too, but yes... books on a bookshelf and pages which turn like pages.
>It’s a frightening future

It's not that frighting, use Windows.
Obligatory challenging of the status quo about Howard Zinn:

http://hnn.us/articles/1493.html
Awesome mic'd up videos.

@3:05 Jared Allen says: "During a football game there are only like 14min of action"

http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-films-sound-efx/09000d5d8147c8...
Are you saying that you would get a netbook to get around them being able to seize your laptop? If so, I doubt any law enforcement will split those hairs for you.
This can't be right. According to that site, my HTTP_ACCEPT header of "text/html, / UTF-8,* gzip,deflate en-au,en-us;q=0.7,en;q=0.3" is unique. Uh .. is it? Looks fairly standard to me?

System fonts are a very telling fingerprint, though. I tried the test on two browsers; the first time it said I was one in ~60k, the second time was one in ~30k. So it is working.
Weaker software, lower build quality? Have you even used the ipad? Its a beefed up ipod touch, not a scaled down laptop. The netbook wins from many perspectives.

The multi-touch is sexy, i'll admit. but form is not greater than function. Imagine chatting, posting on HN, or uploading photos to Flickr. These 3 easy actions are not easily handled on the ipad.

<edit> I have never used it and cannot comment on the build quality (which is the point i was trying to make. Sorry!)
Women enjoy increased testosterone levels from exercise too (although not very much compared with men).
In the US it is MUCH more expensive my friend.
Well said.

This is a tool I think that sales people will love. A lot of sales people like to use book shaped visual aids (like books, for example). It encourages the right kind of gestures and positioning. You hold the pad while the guy looks at it. They look at it while the sales guy looks at them. You can pass it around.
I've actually been meaning to get an iMac or Macbook for my parents to replace the old desktop at home. BUT when I checked out the iPad today, everything just clicked into place - this device is perfect for them!

First of all, its cheap compared to a mac laptop or desktop. Secondly, it is great for surfing and checking emails, which is what my parents do 99% of the time on the computer. Any laptop or desktop would be an overkill for their use case. Thirdly, the iPad's zooming functionality is the best in the market now, and would be extremely useful for older folks with bad eyesight. The small screens on netbooks just do not cut it.

I think apple has again come up with a device that will revolutionize the way we use computers, just not the way all of us tech minded geeks wanted it to.
Buy a $199 dev kit, write an application, and get a chance at a $829 prize?

Do the people entering this contest expect fewer than 5 entrants?

Does Bombaxtic think their potential customers are idiots?
I've just thought of the first app I'll make for the iPad. It will be a version of top. Seeing as the thing only runs one process at a time, it should practically be a one-liner.
Even though I don't own any Apple products, I'm still glad they are around for this reason. More competition in the marketplace is good for me, the consumer, which should go without saying.

However, I'm not sure Android is a good example of your point. I think Android had been in the works for many years before the iphone was released (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)#Hist...). In fact, Apple multi-touch patents are holding it back at the moment.
It's ridiculous that the judge ACTUALLY said the $2MM fine was too much, and that it should be something reasonable, like $54,000 (to match the actual damages). What damages?

Retard judge needs to be out one job, among the other glaringly retarded aspects of this story.