skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Eh, it seems fairly unobjectionable if a bit overly simplistic to me. I did testing for about 7 years prior to dev, and my take is that it a) depends on the size of the team and b) a fully fleshed out QA team needs a variety of skills and fills several roles:

On the one hand, you need 1) grinders who can do the sort of boring, script driven sorts of regression testing that are essential but difficult to automate.[1] You also need 2) people with a good eye for usability and with a good overview of the system who can provide the sort of feedback Joel mentions. A certain amount of creativity and exploratory skills helps with ad hoc testing and devising test cases. "I wonder what happens if I push this button and then that one."

Then, 3) someone who can read code and who understand lower level (OS/database) stuff can come up with some interesting test cases that a black box tester may miss. As in, "what happens to temp files/tables that are created by the app? are they ever deleted?" And finally, 4) if you can find them, you need someone who can program in order to build test tools and automated frameworks (that's mostly what I did). The goal of the latter being improving the efficiency of the entire team. Finding all of these wrapped in a single person is almost impossible, as #1 tends to be incompatible with the rest.

[1] Obviously, if you can automate these in a way that's cost effective, that's preferable, but that's not the typical case.
Yep, basically, it makes me want to be childish and support closed software simply because of how simperingly idiotic they come across as.
I'm starting to see Google search results based on my social circle
>it being about my Mum being able to use it without having to phone me saying that it's all gone wrong again

You're confusing correlation with causation. The fact that your Mum has been unable to use devices in the past is not _caused_ by the devices being open platforms. Lots of people can't even operate a dvd player and they are certainly locked down devices. Being easy to operate and being locked down are mutually exclusive.
You want fries with that?  Or, Software is Hard
That's very true. It may very well have a net positive economical effect.

But the problem with that kind of reasoning is that if it is going to have a net positive economic effect that we can rape & plunder mother nature to our hearts content and that simply isn't true.

Economic advantages are not all there is to look after, long term effects are important, and the absolute effect on economies is also important. In other words if our economy goes up because of doing something and some poor country loses all they've got then you could argue the net effect is positive because they didn't have much to begin with.

But that's definitely not how the world should work.

So we need to look past purely economic motives and at humanity (and to some extent the biosphere) as a whole.

Beancounters are bad stewards of ecologies.
E-book Battlefield: Kindle DX ($489) vs iPad ($499)
Well, like all metaphors, it's only an approximation. However, the laws don't dictate that I keep my car on public roads, they dictate what I do with my car when I'm not on my property. And while those laws are enforced by a higher authority, if you follow the chain up in a democracy, you come to me again, in theory.

To your other point, Windows is insecure, not personal computers. A true personal computer is/would be owned by me, not a corporation, not a hacker.

Hmmm... Seems to me I've seen this freedom vs. security argument elsewhere...
But you have to be inspired to make great tools- the medium itself must be inspiring. That was the whole point of Dynabook, tools that are inspiring enough to want to change them, figure out how they work. I'm sure there are many young hackers looking at the iPad thinking, "man I want to make some great stuff for that!". I know I'm thinking that.

When I look at a shitty netbook what am I supposed to be inspired about? Tinkering with Linux is no future of computing- it's nigh time to get out of that pipe dream.

Though, I expect and look forward to Linux to be installed on the thing within two weeks of it getting to the stores ;)
The specs:

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?co...

Also, an article saying they have it running android, chromium os, and ubuntu:

http://www.liliputing.com/2010/01/freescale-tablet-running-c...
The iPad’s name is a joke
My Friend, Steve Fossett
That's what I refer to when I mentioned lost opportunity, the same goes for Nintendo with the advent of Genesis and PS one.

Apple and Nintendo aren't young start ups; they've been around for decades with closed systems. A closed system like iTunes is a big reason Apple has even gotten so successful in recent times; it works I.e they have made tons of money with a closed sys and they probably will continue to do so. Marketshare is another story.

Whether it makes geeks happy is also another story
What is the appeal of e-ink? I breathed a sigh of relief that it was not based on e-ink - a technology that isn't up to the task of doing what this device can do.
Whoa... Any idea how to turn this off? My friends have terrible taste.
I get what you are saying & I agree. There are huge advantages in doing things this Apple way. Your Mum gets to have something that works for her first, the 4% of people that have a preference for Thunderbird over Mail (just an example) because they like the way that it handles their profiles (again, just an example), well they are not the no. 1 concern. That makes sense. A product for the majority.

But, it is not just alarmist. The iphone has catalysed lots of innovation. Great innovation. This will too. It is all sanctioned innovation though. Unsanctioned innovation is important too. As things mature, it will become increasingly important.
Supporting under-represented students in technical education
Define "power users".
Price looks really good until you think about the following:
No SD card slot, no camera (can't use it for video chats), no USB. And of course, the killers are: no multitasking support (yet) and no HDMI port (how are you going to hook it up to your TV?).
I still want one, though!
Nobody asked any questions at that demo. A demo is a highlight reel of what your product does, not a list of pros and cons. It's all pro.

You can safely assume that a device like that will list Flash as a capability if it has it at this point.

If it was on purpose, it almost has to be some sort of dig at Adobe. I can't rationalize that one, but perhaps.
Very small Hyper-V Manager
It might be a bit early to trot out the word "crippled" in this context. Wait until at least one other rendering engine isn't eating WebKit's dust.
Funny thing that under the article advertisement for this appeared:

http://www.ideal-case.com/demon-silicone-series-case-for-iph...
I don't know about you, but I am not a designer, I don't have years of experience creating usable interfaces. I do not have the ability to make a graphical user interface that is useful and intuitive.
I think it's worth pointing out that with many companies, testers do as much (if not more!) programming as programmers do. I know in our company we have a metric that tracks what percentage of tests are automated, and guess who writes the automated tests? Testers. Granted it's a different kind of programming since it's Perl rather than C, but our testers crank out quite a bit of code.
IPad: What Developers Need To Know
I'm a no name iPhone developer and the most recent app I released was approved in ~2 biz days. This was my second app. The first time it took over a week (around 6 months ago).
They'll still be invented, just somewhere else.

The iPhone is a good example of how this might play out. It's a locked-down system full of problems for developers, but that doesn't mean innovation in the phone industry stopped.

You had a dead/slow industry, Apple woke it up, and now everyone is moving forward quickly. The customer wins.

Open phone platforms like Android will enjoy growth because of that open platform, even if Apple remains closed.
It's a bit like cars.

Cars used to be 'user servicable', you could take them apart and put them back together again, or repair them with simple tools.

The further you integrate something the further away you get from 'user servicable'.

Due to emissions controls cars were equipped with injection systems and motor management, and then car manufacturers discovered 'lock-in', how to make money on obfuscation in stead of openness.

Computing is doing the exact same thing.

Gone are the simple serial and parallel interfaces, and in their place you get undocumented docking connectors and other 'magic'.

The only thing that keeps things open to some extent is the fact that the internet arrived just in time to save us from complete lock in hell. The protocols are standardized enough to let devices talk to each other.

So that's where you're going to find your new 'openness', at the protocol level.

Serverside it will take a long time to go 'closed', but on the client side I would expect to see more and more devices that are closed as much as possible.

Gaming hardware has already gone that way, mobile phones started out closed ('to protect the networks', as if client side security would be good enough for a carrier).

It's not a good development, but it will happen.

Tech savvy people can only push back by releasing their own open devices, the open source variety of hardware.
You've never even held and iPad. How can you come to either of those conclusions?
According to the official JooJoo website (thejoojoo.com), the JooJoo is priced at...$499.

Uh-oh.
My old laptop died so I've been planning/saving to get a new one recently. This could serve a lot of the use of a replacement laptop, but it is still heavily limited. So no I'm not going to buy an encumbered device when it costs half of what I would spend for my thinkpad.
Its kind of buggy right now. It's showing that I have lots of contacts, but my social search results seem to be based on a social circle of one: me.
People whose computing needs are basic enough that this can serve as a primary computer?

You say that as if it is a small market. It seems to me that it covers most of what most people do with a home computer today. What is the iPad incapable of that the average computer user can be expected to miss?

I'm a power user

What do you mean by this, exactly? I mean, how would I know if I am a power user or not?
Given the historical Western narratives on China (and all other Others), I think we can do a lot better than talking about China as a highly sexualized female seductress with ulterior motives.
I am Australian and am wary of investing in Australia, despite the many wonderful things about the economy over the last few years. The currency is at all time highs, meaning if you are a foreigner you are paying a historically high price for whatever you buy. The domestic economy is skewed toward resources largely funded by Chinese stimulus/speculation, which could turn on a dime. House prices are stratospheric and almost any rise in interest rates or unemployment (which are again at historic lows and have one way to go) will put the brakes on housing very quickly, leading to serious issues in the banking system and onward from there.

I am trying to persuade my parents to sell their house in Australia (which they no longer live in), diversify into beaten down currencies like the USD, and try to buy into a different asset class at the bottom, somewhere else. Possibly even US land or similar, if America takes its medicine.
Tax cuts in capitol gains, lowering the tax rate on income over $250k/year, and yet another protectorate to add to our collection.

You mean to tell me you didn't benefit from those tax cuts?
The first reason you need testers is that your programmers can't - for whatever reason - turn out code that works.
And it's pretty unreasonable to expect them to do so. They can run their own small set of test cases, but a full test of a significant program is a lot of work, which (as mentioned in another thread) includes a lot of hard-to-automate grinding. That grind work can be done much cheaper (and probably more reliably) by a dedicated tester.
That is for 1 month T-Bills. For 10 year T-Bills it is around 3.75%
I won't get one immediately. I might think about it a year or two down the line, after a potential price drop, and after I get to see how the whole extended DRM muddle / app store trouble pans out.
Looks like it would be an advanced coffee table book...that you have to charge...and costs $499. No thanks.
Your third paragraph sums up the link very well. Yes, many customers win in the short-term, but they will lose in the long run. I'm one that thinks web apps are the future, anyway, so Apple's focus on specialized apps that can't be ported to other platforms very easily and without having to invest a whole lot up front is going to bite them hard.

When html5 matures and is more widely adopted, developers will sidestep the ridiculous shackles of the app store approval process... effortlessly. At that point, it'll be a competition between the best developed browsers and the most inexpensive mobile devices that will still deliver a very good experience. Google, I think, will come out on top then w/ Google Chrome OS.
iPad + Bespin. Is anyone else interested in this potentially tasty combo-meal?

The App Store may not allow language interpreters, but as long as Bespin plays well with Safari and JavaScript, Bespin is just another valid webapp. And with a $30 unlimited 3G plan, I can code wherever I want (ok, wherever AT&T lets me). And to be very generous, the lack of multitasking would reduce coding distractions.

I'm extremely looking forward to trying this out!
Wish there was an "eventually" option. I will likely get one in 18-24 months, 2nd generation used.
Because Apple is too controlling, right?
"... The problem is not Apple's products but their policies. Fortunately policies are software; Apple can change them instantly if they want to. Handy that, isn't it? ..."

This has changed.

"... They treat iPhone apps the way they treat the music they sell through iTunes. Apple is the channel; they own the user; if you want to reach users, you do it on their terms. ..."

This has not changed.

I think the basic idea that pg was getting at is "evil begets stupidity". While I'll reserve judgment until I see how media is handled & app rollout goes I don't like what I see with delicious monster ~ http://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/8289792566 because the stupidity button can still be turned on (and off).
Little bit of a coincidence as I was just reading his Coders At Work interview today. Good read.
Since the iPad can use existing iPhone apps, and other e-readers and dedicated eBook apps abound in the App Store, there will definitely be ways to buy books from other sources, or load unrestricted RTFs/PDFs/etc. I wouldn't put it past Apple to specifically block them, but I don't think they will.
How about a button that says "guess my location". Surely no one could be confused by that.
I think the biggest obvious point people are missing is that Jobs intends many, many people to own a MacBook and an iPad. Probably an iPhone, too. They serve different niches in the ecology of your technological life.

(Oh, and if you've got some other laptop and pick up an iPad just how long do you think the average user will last before drooling a little more over the MacBook lineup?)
this already happened http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pnorvig
Lets admit the iPad is an iLetDown
lame?
It will work with bluetooth keyboards.
I flushed out my list form this "tell hn" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081451) in a blog post.
let's be honest here, noone would expect something "affordable" from Apple, they are a premium brand. It's like BMW coming out with a ~12,000 car....just won't happen.
Samsung would be an obvious guess at the fab, given Apple's history of working with them.
iPad uses the ePub eBook format, which is free and open and does not require DRM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB
Well, according to supply-side economics, it reduced the deficit. That helped all of us!
* Apple's strategy is to not burden their users with the mental load of having to make that tradeoff. *

Haven't users been making that tradeoff for years with laptops?
Why the iPad is a killer for sales presentations and pitching
Voted no, but I'll get the 2nd gen when this 14 month-old macbook dies. It's a cheaper casual/home browsing device - nothing more.
Ask HN: Is there a HIPAA for dummies for medical startups?
We're kicking a medical product idea around, and my understanding of HIPAA is basically "that sounds scary". I know there are a few people around here who are doing medicine related startups, and I hope one of them can point me to some resources for understanding what a technology provider needs to account for.

I know step #1 should be "talk to a lawyer", but I'd really like to understand as much as I possibly can beforehand.
This works for me too. Working out in the morning (or whenever it is I decide to get up) _always_ gives me more energy for the day and it usually puts me in a good mood too.
Good point. And to add to that in order to back in the computer business and come back from irrelevance, Apple had to progressively give up on everything that differentiated them from PCs except for the two things they are actually good at -- the gui and the nice shiny cases. And they had to make sure they could run most PC software.

If apple think their iPhone success shows that people like closed systems, they are kidding themselves. Phones have never really been open (thanks to the carriers), so the iPhone was actually one of the more open phones out there. But once they start competing with actual computers, it is going to be very different.
Stanza is great, there is also GoodReader for PDF's, Wattpad, Amazon's Kindle app and the Barnes and Noble reader among others. Some of them have their own DRM, but there is definitely still choice.
I don't know much (anything) about relational algebra or breaking closure properties, so I'm glad my sentiment was clear despite that error.

Is project different from map because it can only output a subset of the attributes that go in, whereas an arbitrary thing can come out of map?
> "can do the same as the above"

I heartily disagree. There's a big difference, huge difference between "can barely" and "does it really fucking well". The iPad shoots for the latter (we'll see if it hits), the netbook's mere existence is predicated on the former.

If your definition of "can do the same" means "someone willing to bang their head hard enough and willing to live with a substandard user experience can do it", sure. But IMHO we need to strive for a higher standard than that.

After the iPod, the Mac, and the iPhone, I don't think geeks still get why Apple is successful: they build devices that normal people actually want. I think there is some collective head-in-the-sand in the geek community because what people apparently want is not at all like what geeks want. The average user doesn't want freedom, doesn't want an open kernel, doesn't give a shit about standards, they want to have a slick, usable, and intuitive user experience, and so far netbooks are failing hard at it.

The average user doesn't want the ability to hunt down zip files on obscure websites, downloading the file, and being able to run whatever app is inside. They like having a central place where all apps in the universe reside. This may or may not be good for the industry as a whole, but it is what our users desire.

IMHO the constant spec-based wankery is why nobody has yet caught up with Apple. I'm seeing a lot of internet chatter about how netbooks do more (does more, poorly), how the cost is too high, how the CPU is too slow, blah blah blah, but conveniently ignores what is IMHO the one defining reason Apple has succeeded in the last decade: user interface.

"My Android phone isn't locked down!" <-- Your Android phone also crashes all the time, emits strange cryptic messages that only developers understand ("a process has been forced to exit"?)
Agreed. Few people went on about how miserable and useless and limiting the pocket calculator was.
As far as the 'thumbs up sign' goes, it's still common enough that it's hard for novice scuba divers to remember that it means 'ascend now' rather than 'everything's OK'.
There is also http://erlapi.prepor.ru/docs/
I'm basing this solely on Apple's size and age, but I'm sure they have their own internal QA and usability process that I'm willing to bet is far more stringent than the App store approval process (and it probably has something in common with the app store approval process.
Keep in mind, because the image involves an http get request, the host of said transparent dot can also dump a cookie on you; this is how a lot of advertising agencies track conversions for cost-per-action ads. They tend to drop them for cost-per-click ads too, just to be extra annoying :)
Its not just strings, all kinds of data structures are vulnerable. See: http://www.hardened-php.net/hphp/zend_hash_del_key_or_index_...
I don't think it's at all clear that people "went to PCs" because the Mac was proprietary. Macs were also expensive, slow, monochrome, and you couldn't buy them from IBM or Compaq, for example.

The elephant in the room is the iPhone, where "circle of one" seems to be working extremely well. Maybe the model just needed some fine tuning.
Probably will work on T-Mobile's EDGE, but not GSM (they use 1700 Mhz, and the iPad spec sheet says it supports 850/1900/2100 Mhz).
The First Hints Of A Dinosaur's True Colors
He sort of addresses some of that in his 'Comparing X to Lisp' articles, like: http://norvig.com/python-lisp.html
How does Apple get this domain without trouble? ipad.com
It's not a big deal, but the bills are a year or less, and the longest is fetching an awesome 0.3 percent

http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/rates/index.html
Interesting! Thanks for finding and posting that. I'd never seen that before. It must have been something I heard years ago and it's been sitting in my head so long I thought it was mine. :-)
Corporate IT departments have always been reticent on Apple gear. This is how Apple can get App Store apps and enterprise sales in through the back door. Keynote on the iPad is the gateway drug for sales teams.
There are already SSH client's available for both the iPhone/iPad and Android. Using that to run/edit all code on a remote machine seems like the only viable way of doing development on a mobile right now.

A set of sysadmin and server monitoring tools might be a more manageable intermediate step towards full fledged development on locals.
Upvoted for vocab :)
About Demi Lovato Info
Will there be an iPad App gold rush?
That's not actually true--when Apple innovates, they come with something at a higher price end, but they aggressively push downwards after that. The original iPod was $400. The closest functional equivalent to the original iPod, from Apple, is now $150 (but it's actually a lot better).
They cure cancer. Fair swap I'd imagine.
Why don't people understand what an incredible compromise e-ink is? It does nothing well except emulate words on a printed page. It can't be used for Web surfing, it can't be used for gaming, it can't show photos or videos, and you can't use it to implement any kind of meaningful user interface. It's too slow by two orders of magnitude for any of these tasks.

If you want to try to compete with Apple by building an expensive gadget that only does one thing well... good luck with that.
Just had one clear in 6 days with a weekend included.
If you want to write a native objective-c cocoa touch app, you need a mac.

However Novell and Adobe have alternative solutions:

here is info on mono/iphone dev:
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/01/open-source-...

here is info on flash/iphone dev:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/appsfor_iphone/
TTSMessenger:-A New Text-To-Speech(TTS) Iphone App
If I was an evil person working for the marketing department of an evil mega-factory-farm, I would hire you right this instant on the basis of that last comment alone. Evil genius.