skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm reading A People's History right now. Like others here have said, I don't agree with much of the underlying ideology, but I appreciate a different view of history that acknowledges that the study of history isn't as simple as "this is what happened". RIP.
The price of the unit is irrelevant.
If it has a 3G modem you will need to sing up for $100/month data plan for 3years (much more outside the USA)
So you are really buying a $3600 3year old computer
e-ink is the only real replacement for reading of paper (as of today). All other screens simply don't cut it - the resolution is way too low, they flicker, and you'll find that you can't read from them for too long without getting tired.
I love my vibrams. It took 3 or 4 runs to get my calf muscles up to any kind of strength to be able to run in them, but it completely vanished the knee problems I'd been having, simply by forcing me to change the way I ran.

I wouldn't wear them every day -- they are, as others have pointed out, not as warm as ordinary shoes. But if you're running or hiking, they feel great and are better for you.
I can hardly wait until some astute techies pop this thing open and take off its whalebone corset.
I considered emulation, but it's very hard to imagine that a PPC running an ARM emulator could be more power-efficient than the best ARM. Keep in mind that the PA Semi team has previously designed ARM, MIPS, and PPC processors; I don't think they have any particular loyalty.
How sad.
Because when the older ones die it seems for the first while like the rest of us have no one. No one to look up to, no one to stick up for us.
Companies can be successful and making a lot of money without taking away their users' freedom.
It doesn't make them evil, but it makes me loose any interest in their products.
I agree. I mean, I totally support what the FSF stands for, but specifically calling out certain products make me want to say "So don't buy one then!" I think all too often we complain about the ethics of companies, but don't actually care enough to change our lifestyle so as not to support them.
I fail to see the irony here. Apple is not trying to stifle innovation and control absolutely everything we do with their devices. As he points out in the article, Apple is the biggest driving force behind open web standards and their implementation in WebKit.

The motivation for the App Store is simple: consumers want an easy way to buy apps, and developers want an easy way to sell apps. If you want to take advantage of the payment processing, bandwidth, store interface, and marketing provided by the App Store, you have to adhere to their ToS. I'm sure Yahoo! Store has ToS as well.

However, if you want to roll all that on your own, go right ahead. As pointed out in this article, no one has done more to support you in that endeavor than Apple -- including a lot of support in WebKit and iPhone OS specifically for web apps on these devices.

It's not just a question of web vs. native, either. Even if all iPhone apps were HTML5/CSS/JS, you'd still have to adhere to Apple's ToS in order to sell through the App Store, and you wouldn't have to adhere to them if you sold through your own store.
Arena football ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arena_football#Rules_of_the_gam... )fits that bill, though it would be nice if we could also have NFL-caliber players, full-size field, etc. Sadly, the long and frequent delays allow for the spectacle at the stadium itself (cheerleaders, dancers, contests) and advertisements elsewhere, so I wouldn't count on the NFL itself doing away with them.
Do you mean hand-egg or actual football ("soccer", bleurgh).

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Handegg : didn't notice sorry, NSFW due to ads.
> UI is a matter of personal taste.

Like drug effectiveness, UI preference varies among individuals. But in the same way, it is no mere matter of personal taste.
Macs were also expensive, slow, monochrome, and you couldn't buy them from IBM or Compaq, for example.

All of those issues are precisely because the Macs were proprietary. If they hadn't been proprietary, none of the issues that made them lose to PCs would have been issues and they may have won the war. In the 80's, every school bought Apple IIe's, so they had the foot in the door.

Then, under the leadership of Mr. Jobs, apple slammed the door shut on their foot and here they are doing it again -- also under Steve Jobs.

Steve is the problem. Eventually, they'll realize this and fire him again when people get tired of his antics.
Who said anything about secrecy or getting at their trade secrets? Aaron is sad that Apple’s long-term strategy, as far as he can tell, is to build locked-down platforms where they take control away from device owners. This makes those of us who like to tinker – who believe in constructivist education and free culture and open systems and decentralized power – sad, because the more successful these devices are, the more they threaten to undermine those values.
When Howard got done, 'his-story' was no longer his. So much for the painted-up, lying cheap tart once called history.
Steve Jobs doesn't want you to follow an ideology. He wants you to buy his products. Don't confuse the two things.
Better yet, this explains why football games are so exciting. Constant anticipation for the next burst of action. Enough action within those brief bursts to review, replay and analyze, just in time for the next burst of action.
Unfortunately? Yeah, how dare they want something different than you!
They are not evil, just a bit Authoritarian.

That dosn't settle well with many geeks but shiny can overcome that in some.
Aren't the terms for licensing ARM pretty liberal by CPU standards?
Oh yeah, it's used (it's the BSL sign for "good", I use it quite a lot) but it's kinda cringe-inducing.
A few lectures on the history of Mathematics
Apparently I have a unique browser fingerprint as well. With so many different plugin and font combinations, I think that there are bound to be quite a few uniques.

Kind of terrifying, really.
I dunno, mobile GMail on iPhone Safari is pretty impressive.
It's really easy.

You use the iPad to:

- read a book
- surf the web
- organize/look at/show off photos
- watch videos/movies/tv shows
- listen to music
- send/receive emails
- play games
- use maps/calendar and the 140k+ apps available in the app store

Anything else, use a Mac (or Windows/Linux).
Yeah, I guess HN readers are more likely than average to have unique setups.

"Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 48,820 tested so far."

"Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 15.58 bits of identifying information."
Was a reference to the no dedicated servers, but there are other issues. Arstechnica had a good write up.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/11/pc-modern-warfare...
Sure, and if the iPad succeeds, we will hopefully see more of them being fielded. This would be an opportunity for them to break the choke-hold Intel has over the processor market.

edit: I mean seriously, do you think Apple is going to sell the A4 and become a chip producer? This move is a win for ARM.
I know quite a few iPhone developers and they're finding approval speeds of 1-3 days since christmas. Not quite continuous deployment yet. I guess any approval process prevents that.
To me, your experience sounds an awful lot like not having much experience in a production environment.

Actually on the contrary, it comes from a growing understanding that the 'production environment' is in fact the problem!

In my experience, context-switching between programming and testing gets quite cumbersome with difficult problems, and can lead to overlooking smaller issues.

Whether or not a programmer or a designated tester is actually doing the work has no bearing on over-testing. In fact I'd argue that this is more likely to occur if you use a tester.

* If I'm busy testing every single edge case I can think of, who's doing the development?*

Nobody! That's the crux of the matter right there:

1. Testing sucks, so if someone else is doing it then it's better for you, and, more importantly

2. the pressure to continue to develop new features at speeds that are unsuistainable all but ensure that you'll eventually find yourself with so much technical debt that it will kill you.

What if I'm developing a new product that has a full specification and design document, and is expected to meet customer acceptance goals?

I'd say run away from this waterfall design process as fast as possible, to be frank.

I don't see a deficiency in the development cycle if I need someone else to help test my software in a manner that I simply don't have time for.

I do. I see a development cycle where you haven't been allocated enough time!

Does your assertion mean that any software that contains bugs is caused by lack of programmer skill?

No, because in order for a bug to be a bug it must not only exist in the code but also in the feature set. (i.e. it must be found) The fact of the matter is that nobody - not you, not your testers, and certainly not your customers knows exactly how the software will be used until it is actually being used.
Philadelphia to be included in Fast Company's best startup cities
Anyone ever play Myst? pretty sure they had the whole bookshelf and 3d page turning before DL or Classics...
Power User:

1) An account that is a member of a default privileged group present in Windows 2000 through Windows 2003. Has the ability to install random crap and break everything, but not the ability to fix anything (unless they exploit their breakage ability to escalate privileges).

2) Someone who reads "top ten ways to..." articles on sites like Digg, Reddit, or Lifehacker and then blindly copy-pastes shit from <pre> boxes into their terminal. They have no clue how anything works nor the facility to learn, but they sure are earnest and they love to evangelize! They'll seize any opportunity to apply their cargo-cult knowledge to help you with the problems they think you have. They love to defrag and "Repair Permissions", but don't have backups. They're the audience/creators of 'themes' and 'skins'.

Historically these people (largely adolescents) have been know-nothing partisan tweakers of Windows, Classic Mac OS, BeOS, Amiga, or any number of 8-bit home computer platforms. Recently Linux has become the cool thing to wank over -- compiz and Ubuntu helped a lot with that. The Hackintosh phenomenon has led to a lot of them defecting to Mac OS X.
It’s clear that Apple plans for the iPhone OS to be the future of its product line.

I don't like that they are making such a big push with the iPhone OS either, but how is it "clear" that Apple plans to make it the foundation of its future product line?
They should stop complaining and release an UbuntuPad!
Exactly, it's an appliance like your microwave and refrigerator.
Despite Assurances, Met Finds Artworks Aren’t Restored Overnight
Broken Tablet [humor]
I like the name. When I see it written it conjures all the good associations I have with iPods, then I realize it's different--it's tough to explain.
Yeah, there are currently a ton of great ebook apps like Kindle and other ones for viewing documents like PDFs, and I'm sure an iPad optimised version is coming soon from the majority of them. I don't think we need to worry about iBooks DRM. The only real problem is the software/app issue in my opinion, but jailbreaking somewhat solves that for people tech-savvy enough to do it.
A little info on the iPad OS and SDK
Some people have savings for both groceries and electronic devices.

(And no, I am not going to buy one of these.)
EDIT: Sorry somehow I thought this post had no URL, I was making these comments purely on the title. Must have accidentally clicked comments instead of the title.
Headline seems a bit off, but perhaps only because I know quite a few practicing historians whose reaction to his work was "oh, so some guy just made a fortune packaging up all the stuff we've been writing about for years?"
Step 1) Buy an x86-based computer in the form factor you like.

Step 2) Insert an Android Live CD.
As a lone developer, I'm very hesitant to invest a significant amount of time on a project knowing that Apple can, in one strike, kill my project.
Great news. I like the idea of first planning for our long-term goals in space, then executing to achieve those goals. The early years were all about knee-jerk responses to politics and feeding constituencies. Lately we put up a $100billion ISS that no scientist could figure out a use for... even contemplated burning the worthless thing!

The fossil-fueled binging is over. It's time to spend scarce resources to maximize the benefit for science and humanity.
Indeed. This is a device for consumers, not for creators.
"I really don't understand the heel first running style."

Running heel first is undeniably easier than running toe first.

For a runner to switch from heel to toe running is straight out painful. It puts more than double the stress on the lower leg (calf, shins). Overtime, becoming acclimated to toe running is probably beneficial, but it requires a lot more lower leg strength and conditioning.

Simply put, people run heel first because it's easier.
One area in particular where iPhone web apps fall short of native iPhone apps is scrolling. This friction might make sense for regular web pages rendered on the iPhone’s small screen, where by “regular” I mean “not optimized specifically for display on the iPhone”. But it just feels slow — stuck — on iPhone-optimized apps.

That was the Daring Fireball page on PastryKit
What if they're simply aiming for a bigger slice of the PC market? They came to dominate smartphones (and Music distribution) well-after the fact by simplifying everything. I don't see why the PC market is any different. Apples were always supposed to be easy to use and they've made software installations and updates much easier by controlling the process. 8% of the market leaves plenty of room for improvement and I'd bet a majority of users would gladly give up freedom for simplicity.

http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2010/01/while-pc-market...
I would put an action call at the bottom of your price chart. while the user is there, get them to test the system or sign up. present an opportunity to make a decision.
I think it's perfectly clear why they're doing this: because they think it provides a better consumer experience. That, in turn, is what translates into more money and more sales. (I believe they said on their conference call earlier this week that don't make much off their cut of app sales).

The iPhone and iPad are not computers: they're extensible consumer electronics devices. The iPhone sells so well precisely because it just works, and it's really hard to screw it up relative to a computer. How is creating a consumer electronics device evil? Because people want it to be a computer? Because it'll somehow erode the market for full-fledged computers? Because they're attracting developers to their closed system? How is this any more evil than Nintendo or Sony or Microsoft making their game consoles relatively closed systems?

We should all keep in mind that computers as such are a usability and maintenance disaster for 95% of the population who has no idea how to deal with viruses, install or remove software, resolve crashes or incompatibilities, or even navigate a file system so they don't lose their documents.

Maybe I'm too cynical about computers and give Apple too much of the benefit of the doubt, but their devices are good precisely because they exert so much end-to-end control, and computers are broken for so many people precisely because they're so open.
The smaller models in the iPod line -- particularly the Nano and Shuffle -- have always been priced rather nicely, able to take advantage of Apple's brand prestige in the market combined with a price point that makes them affordable gifts around the holidays.
I don't know the answer to this, but have we seen evidence that Apple's commitment to OS X is waning? They seem to have discussed multiple product lines today, one of those being the "computer" market, and the others being part of their new "mobile device" markets, namely iPhone/iPod Touch and the new tablet.

I do know that as far as tech support, I've had to help my girlfriend out a ton with her MacBook (curse you spinning beach ball), but the extent of support I've had to provide for her iPhone has been, "switch it off and switch it on again."

Perhaps Apple is distinguishing between full-fledged computers (for those who have the technical skill and desire to tinker) and consumer devices that are, yes, tightly controlled but less likely to get screwed up by your average person who likes to email, browse the web and watch videos.
...only if these tasks are varied. I don't think this works if you focus only on one area of your life.
Your claim regarding java on OS X does match my memory. I recall java beign one of the 3 core platform choices for developments on OS X since 10.0 (Cocoa, Java, Carbon).

Java still ships with Mac OS X (though you need to switch to 64bit java to enable the Java 6 version that ships).

The only thing apple have done regarding java is deprecate the Java-Cocoa bridge.
Wow, do people think if they say this enough times, it'll be true?

Apple doesn't give you access to the same experience from the web as from a native app, and simulations of such have up to this point been second class and will remain so. End of story.

A netbook-ish device with no way to put software on it except thru a proprietary corporate censored app store is a big loose. Beyond the hype, I think this device will be everyone's wakeup call. Noone cared too much about the iPhone app store problems because of its limited form factor. Truly, there's a limited number of things you can do with it in a reasonable manner and they were all covered generically about 6 mos after launch.

This device can do much more, but there's a lot you won't be able to do because everything must be vetted by Apple.
Perhaps you simply think that my company is placed in a less than ideal market. I assure you, it's worth being in the game.

I do, only in the sense that in your market, your costs can justify your operations in a way that not many markets can match.

Joel makes bug trackers, so I stayed in that context although I spoke in very black and white terms. I'm not intending to profess the ultimate solution to everyone's process, but I am trying to speak to a majority of start-up centric developers-cum-managers.

Doing what you do... hell hire 25 testers for every component; just don't kill anyone.
Speaking about taste.... they are your friends :)
According to Apple, as of today, 98% of new app submissions and 99% of app updates were reviewed within the last 7 days.
Lorem ipsum for images without a server
And unless they're in a no-huddle offense, there is usually very close to 30 seconds between the tackle at the end of one play and the snap of the ball at the start of the next. So, if you enable the 30 second skip button on your TiVo, you can watch an entire game in a half hour.
Wow, do people think if they say this enough times, it'll be true?

Apple has been spending gads of time, energy and effort to make the web experience as close to native as possible. This includes giving access to hardware accelerated CSS animations, access to GPS, and access to offline storage (I outlined a bunch more in the article).

For instance, there is no reason the New York Times app they demonstrated today would not have worked fine as ipad.nytimes.com.
"That’s not to say the iPad won’t sell, or that I don’t want one. The scariest thing is that I think it probably will. ... I love Apple products. I’m a huge Apple fan. I’d buy an iPad right now if I could."

This is why Apple will continue to do what it is doing right now. People complain about its controlling policies. People call them "evil". But these very same people will not back up their words with action and continue to buy products made by an "evil" company.

As long as Apple continue to hit its peak in stock price, as long as it earns record-breaking profits, as long as it sells millions of products, it will not change its ways.

To the author, you can blog all you want about Apple's policies. The only thing that matters is for you to turn that into action. If you think Apple is "evil", don't buy its product. Stop patronizing "evil".
The are betting on their platform which should be more than enough for the average user, therefore the lack of Flash.
Whether that will fire-back to them remains to be seen. It probably wont for the time being.

But why is everyone making so important issue the need for Flash? Except playing videos (for which there are alternative) I don't see much other use.

The average user doesn't care what OS you give them as long as you are meeting their expectations. As long as Safari is full compliant with the web standards I don't care about anything else.

Anyhow, if this is going to be a successful product other hardware makers will follow and you will be able to install Windows.
I agree, but I still think the commercials are too much. It's a lot of fun to argue with friends about whether the player was down before he fumbled, whether they should go for it on 4th down, whether the ref made the right call, etc., which is all possible because of the breaks in action. But commercials after a touchdown and then AGAIN after the kickoff? Really?
I don't think it does. I am a potential buyer, and I could care less about the "openness" of the product.

I actually see it as a good thing more than bad however. With a PC, every time I run a new program, or get an upgrade, buy a new device, etc, I never know what to expect. With Apple, there's no question. It almost feels "safe".
I've heard it's 90% within 14 days; fairly certain two weeks is not the average.
If an iPad is their only computer there they will be limited to functionality avaiable on the iPad unless they shell out for another computer.
Yes, it's unfortunate that the system they want comes with apair of handcuffs. I guess there is nothing wrong with it if you don't notice it.
The more I think about the iPad, the more it looks like a computer to me and one that would satisfy a large segment of the PC market. I'm just not sure why Apple isn't marketing it as one and selling a package that includes the dock and keyboard and maybe even speakers. It's a PC but one that you can easily take with you, turn on quickly, and do stuff on the go. In a weird way, the history of the Tablet seems to have them responding that it's not a Tablet PC. But I see no reason, practically, why it couldn't be exactly that.

Otherwise, I agree with you completely. And looking at their 8% market share of PCs, there's a lot of room for them to improve in that category and do very, very well. They've already shown that simplicity sells.
So, what is the hourly pay rate of the players that are only really involved the plays, not planning/strategy? What is the caloric output during play of the typical NFL player? How does that relate to how much money they make and how does that compare to other sports, say basketball or hockey? I'd love to find some stats on this kind of thing mostly just so I could be more sick of football :)

I understand they make so much because the public 'demands' and they 'supply' but it seems almost grotesque how much some of them make and how little they apparently do.
How is creating a consumer electronics device evil? Because people want it to be a computer? Because it'll somehow erode the market for full-fledged computers?

Yes. Zittrain wrote a book about it: http://futureoftheinternet.org/

computers as such are a usability and maintenance disaster for 95% of the population

This can be fixed (see OLPC), but all the companies are just locking everything down rather than innovating. There's a huge lost opportunity here.
98% of smartphones use at least one ARM CPU. Intel is and has been for a long time a joke in the embedded scene. The only thing that's been propping them up in laptops has been the need to use Windows, IMHO; as such they're in trouble.