skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Often. Long-term parking can run $600-$800/mo in many areas of SF. While a ticket can be up to $50 (sometimes more), you won't necessarily get them every time, and it's often hard to find legal, convenient parking, or you'll pay $20+/day for it.

So yeah, it can be, particularly when convenience is figured in.

Parking fees are one thing that put me off the Ruby on Rails startups in the city :-)
> Apple didn't set out to create a tablet as other companies had in the past, the same way they didn't set out to create a phone the same way every other company had in the past. They set out to fundamentally change the way we interact with our computers.

Most 'smartphone' prior to the iPhone did much the same thing, they just failed at it. Please don't act like Apple is the lone-wolf when it comes to 'trying new things.' They are just good at creating successful new things.

> Apple didn't set out to create a tablet as other companies had in the past

This part irks me most. Apple just created a larger iPhone. That's it. Sure they added features like iWork, but things like iWork just didn't make sense on the smaller form-factor of the iPhone. That's it. Sure they had a different approach to the problem (making a larger iPhone rather than making a smaller touchscreen desktop/laptop), but it's not like they created a new experience with the iPad. The iPad is just the iPhone experience with a larger screen and some extra apps.
And really, any time that you say "I won't use one... but I might get one for my Mom" should set off The Bells And Whistles On High.

I think that's a little unfair. I would characterize most of the negative responses I've seen on HN as more like "I won't use one... if it had a camera at least I could get one for my Mom to use Skype on... maybe rev 2 will be better".
> Eventually, it'll have a camera and multi-tasking

Maybe the camera, but the multi-tasking might not happen. The reason they don't allow multi-tasking on the iPhone is due to battery life issues (or so they claim). I would assume that they might leave multi-tasking out in order to deliver longer battery life to their customers (or else allow it only on apps that have been vetted for their power usage during the AppStore approval process).
Would this matter on electronic media? Typical color LCD/CRT screens have only red, green, and blue pixels - a tetrochromat wouldn't get any signal on the fourth channel. Computer displays increase the number of colors by increasing the number of bits per channel, but with 24-bit color (8 bits per channel), you're already showing 256 different intensities of light, while the human eye can only distinguish 100. You'd either need special displays or an eye that can pick up more gradations of color per channel to increase the color bandwidth.

I think this effect may be because of another phenomenon I heard about in my psych class: females tend to have larger vocabularies for color than men do. Whether that means they can see more colors or say more colors remains to be determined (and my philosophy class said it can't be determined ;-)), but the net result is that you get better color feedback from a woman.
I don't know, I use my iTouch around the house a ton for browsing/twitter because it's easier than whipping out a laptop, but something that was a) much faster and b) had easier text input would get used a lot more for both of those things. Even if all the iPad did was instant on, fast rendering of web pages, and reasonable two-hand typing, it would be a game-changing experience. Sure there's the RDF, but I believe it really will be the best web browsing experience, just like iPhone was the best mobile browsing experience.
Ask HN: Review my startup - Praux.com, The Last Resume You'll Ever Write
Done deal. If you are interested, send me an email w/ resume. Ba dump ching!
% file deletion complete.
This is why Adobe really needs to open-source the Flash Player. What do they have to lose from doing that at this point? The player only stands to improve, an improved player drives adoption, and with the install base currently in decline, I think they might want to consider all their options.
OS X gives you the option to submit a report to Apple after an app crashes. The report contains stack traces and you can view the traces in the dialog box before sending. Every time Safari crashes for me (and for anyone else I know) it's within the Flash plugin.
Probably my favorite paper of all time, such a small paper yet so mind-blowing when you first discover it.

http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html
It's an open question just how many of the skills of both developers and designer are "inherent".

I've certainly noticed that the designers at my company operate on a different design plane than I do. However, that could be because they're designers - this is what they devote their professional life to, just like how I devote mine to programming. Immersing yourself in anything changes your perspective.
Maybe it's hindsight, but the Apple TV seems more like a peripheral than a platform - the Airport Express streams music and the Apple TV streams video. I don't think it was ever intended to be a big hit, but an Applishly elegant solution to a specific problem. Viewed from that perspective, it wasn't really a failure - they sold plenty of units and have many happy customers. The fanboys may be let down that it didn't revolutionise television, but I don't think Apple had any such aspirations for the device.

I think the same gap in expectations applies to the iPad - we were expecting a conventional tablet and Apple delivered something that was tailored to a smaller, more specific set of tasks. Although as geeks we naturally prefer devices with lots of functionality, Apple prefer to deliver something that does one thing well. My mind is naturally drawn back to the Slashdot thread on the iPod - people criticised the lack of features, but the iPod came to dominate the market because it did one thing better than anything else could.
I would second this one, but I would just let the HR guy know they are a friend of a friend and you cannot vouch for them. No more no less. You are helping, you are getting to the right person but you are not putting your name on the line, they cannot ask for more than that.

Networks exist to help one another out, while friends may not be as discerning in their selection they do share a common bond of a mutual friend. You may one day call on your network for help whether it be work or personal life related and I assume you would be pleased if a person in your distant network gave you the opportunity to stand on your own in front of the decision maker. That little advantage can at some times make the difference. But still you are standing on your own accord asking them to extend their credibility without intimately knowing you would be wrong on their part so your should not be expected to do it in your instance.

Now if they have over the top personality flaws like being overbearing, I personal would not want to even make the connection.
Why Is Apple Banning Location-based iPhone Ads?
Processing real world HTML as if it were XML in scala
Red Hat is hiring: https://redhat.ats.hrsmart.com/cgi-bin/a/alljobs.cgi?qty=25&...

(Don't worry much about the location as you search -- most positions allow working from home too...)
What you can't do is take money from non accredited investors (ie., the public). But announcing in public that you'll be looking to raise money from professional angels (who are accredited) is ok.
I hope it doesn't get application multitasking.

We know by now that multitasking is a myth. Yes, your computer can do it very well, but you are not a computer. You are a human being, and you can't really multitask (even if you tell me that you can, I won't believe you).

Now, iPhone OS is actually perfectly capable of multitasking, and it does run many processes in the background, but the one-application-at-a-time choice is a UI experiment. It is the idea that people can only do one thing at a time applied. There are certainly cases for leaving running applications in the background, but those are mostly limited to power-users.

As a developer I need to be running a shell and a text editor and a database server all at the same time, but anybody can stop watching a YouTube video to write an email.
You do feel the difference when you are on a Mac. I was using a Windows 7 netbook for a couple of weeks and watched flash on Youtube.com without any issues. Last night went back to my Macbook Pro and the same flash video turned my Macbook into a jet plane. I can imagine the amount of energy is being wasted on the processor and the fans to cool it while it's being worked by Flash.

Adobe is finally moving some of the flash processing to the GPU. Too little, too late? Or better late than never?
Free Flash games directly compete with the iTunes App Store. Apple could loose thousands of paying iPhone developers, with Apple hardware, if they added Flash support. And suddenly the exclusivity is lost since the Flash game runs everywhere else as well.

Would any flash games really compete with stuff in the app store? Games in the app store are made for the iPhone's touch interface, the flash experience would most likely suck in comparison. The only thing free flash games could compete with is free app store games.
BackType is hiring software engineers. Our tech blog has a small glimpse at some of the tools we're working with:
http://tech.backtype.com

We're also contributing to some cool projects:
http://github.com/nathanmarz/crane
One of the defining characteristics of fractals is that they are self similar, meaning that a small part is similar to a larger part, or to the whole. The authors argument is that there is a self similarity in the quality of restaurants, by looking at a small part (in this case the napkin) you can with a some certainty say what a larger part is like. Fractals don't have to be geometric patterns, in this case it's the quality that's self-similar. Fractals aren't pictures, they're a mathematical concept. In this case I think the analogy is a good one.
From http://weitz.de/starter-pack/:

>This is an attempt to help Common Lisp newcomers getting started.

That appears to be just a bundle to get new Lisp users up and running with an environment they can start developing in, similar to http://www.gigamonkeys.com/lispbox/.

The original link posted is a Google AI Challenge Lisp starter pack. It is a starter pack for a specific application. Weitz's starter pack wouldn't be as helpful to someone who is trying to get up and running with the Google AI Challenge.
That is a known best practice.

The problem comes when two people are developing stuff in two branches that conflicts. When the first merges in, the second now faces the huge painful merge.
http://www.betterplace.com/

https://squareup.com/

http://www.onlive.com/

http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/

http://www.firstsolar.com/en/index.php

That is a quick list off the top of my head of companies that are doing new and innovative things that have the potential to seriously disrupt some existing industries.
Whatever transpired could have been far more subtle than, "gimme macbook, get story". For example:

"So glad to meet you. So happy to be your friend. Is there any way we can help each other out as friends? I love to help people out. I can give slots at my conferences, and I know a lot of bright kids looking for unpaid internships, and oh by the way I do some writing for TechCrunch too. Do I need any help? Well, I always want to hear about good story ideas and meet other interesting people. As my boss Michael Arrington has said, send us scoops and we'll think fondly of you and be more likely to report on you later! Also my side projects are hurting for equipment. You know, Company X gave us a projector when our old one broke. Why, yes, that was the company I wrote about on TC last month."

That is, the behavior could have been on the same continuum of "we know everybody, we trade favors, the old rules of fastidious disclosure of every slight-conflict-of-interest can't possibly work in this new world" that Arrington himself has used to defend his own practices. The companies that did 'pay' may have thought of it as just cementing an important friendship, not an explicit quid-pro-quo. Brusilovsky may have gone too far, but in the ways 17-year olds often do, because they understand only some of the patterns of their role models, without all the subtleties and limits.

That would explain both Brusilovsky's vague 'mistakes were made' and 'a line were crossed' phrasing and TC's reluctance to be more specific in allegations or shaming the favor-traders.
An inside look at Justin.tv (YC W07)
Justin.tv is hosting its first annual hot dog eating contest. Please come cheer us on, we need it.
Ah, I didn't realize that. My point was that in the absence of boundaries, suburban detached housing will be cheaper without zoning that restricts density to an artificially low level.
It is nice indeed to see a perspective on this that isn't either smugly dismissive, jumpy and defensive, or in denial.
If you plant fruit trees, be prepared to kill every squirrel in a two mile radius!
In my experience becoming a good designer takes as much learning as becoming a good coder. Every designer at Sofa has an unhealthy interest in composition, color and typography and studied years before getting good at it.

That said, a few things that I've seen working with coders starting here that at least their recognition/understanding of great design got better by:

- Hanging out with designers and discussing their work. You will find out you will sometimes understand them as hard as they do you when taking code.

- Learning about typography; it's a part of design that has more universal true rules then any other aspect of it, and therefore is easier to study.

- Looking at pretty stuff on a daily base. Fffound is a great place to start. But great application UI's/marketing stuff works too, if you want to keep it close to computers.

- Start learning photography, and study how compositions of objects in a frame can make an image interesting.
Jason, I know you don't post here all that often but please don't sign your comments. The guidelines ask users not to, and more importantly it takes emphasis away from your (very useful) comment and places it on your signature instead.

From the guidelines - Please don't sign comments, especially with your url. They're already signed with your username. If other users want to learn more about you, they can click on it to see your profile.
Are airlines adding more buffer time to flights? Not as much as you think
IANAL, but I would be careful making such a public post, due to SEC regulations disallowing public notice of equity investment opportunities of private companies.

I've seen people point to Section 5: http://www.law.uc.edu/CCL/33Act/sec5.html
It's hard to make a lateral career move in a weak jobs environment. It seems to me he might be better off finding a job that needs his technical background, but also has a PM component where he can develop those skills and maybe grow into doing it full-time. Being a developer does not necessarily prepare you for being PM any more than the reverse is true; they are separate and unique roles.
I want my iPad.

I dont want to labor to use my computer.

I couldn't agree more. My progression was very similar: WIN->LIN->MAC4EVER.

I simply became exhausted with fighting with the registry, viruses and reinstalls. I just want my computer and OS to work so I can be productive in other areas while i'm on my computer.
HarQen is hiring. Venture backed. Working on a web telephony platform. We hope to be to voice what Oracle was to databases.

We're looking for a Java Ninja.

More info here: http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddrmdxkz_107d7szcqfw

Plus test out our flagship product here, incidentally an interviewing tool: http://interview.harqen.com/interviewnow/2113/2965

Bonuses points:
- Member of an above-average band
- Like Indiana Jones 1-3
- Invisibility
I am an active contributor to www.RosettaCode.org where I browse many languages. What I have seen of the functional languages doesn't make me want to switch.

Despite knowing Pythons functional tools, it wasn't Python that introduced me to that style. I find Pythons mix comfortable and happily switch between programming in Python 3 and Python 2. Maybe the OP hopes to start a trend?

- Paddy.
Just because one is bad doesn't mean the other isn't. I'd argue that neither are particularly desirable, however, there are less reasons to kill content than there are to promote your content to the front page. It may make sense to kill content in the narrow band where that content competes with your own startup and/or blog, but beyond that there doesn't seem to be much reason for it.
Actually, the securities laws do permit investments by non-accredited investors within limits. For example, California has a so-called limited offering exemption by which a corporation can issue stock to up to 35 non-accredited investors in any given round who have a pre-existing relationship with the company or its founders and who warrant that they are acquiring the stock as an investment and not for resale (federal law also supports investment by non-accredited investors, as for example under Rule 504 of Regulation D). This exemption would generally allow, for example, for a company sale of stock to the employee who saves up $10K and wants to buy in an angel round.

Though the law allows limited avenues for such non-accredited investments, the securities law rules nonetheless operate in practical terms to bar most such opportunities. VCs, for example, are very hesitant to invest in a company along with a lot of non-accredited investors. This means that startups will hesitate to open up such opportunities.

Thus, the essential point of this piece is a good one. Why arbitrarily restrict the ability of individuals to invest in promising opportunities? The theory of the securities laws is that investor protection warrants the restrictions and this impulse, far from being on the decline today, remains strong (there are, for example, current attempts in Congress to increase the requirements for what it takes to qualify as an accredited investor). So the question becomes, in re-evaluating these requirements, should the law take a more, or a less, paternalistic direction. Protection is fine but it does have its costs in limiting choice.

While I have not given much thought to how the restrictions might be eased, I would definitely say that the efforts currently afoot to tighten them would be a horrible mistake for the startup world, for founders and investors alike.
First, learn to recognize good design. Some people claim that you can't learn good taste, but I disagree. You just need to pay close attention to everything you see on a daily basis and store it in an accessible part of your brain. Most people don't store design information, they just store whatever was communicated.

Formal training can be of tremendous value here, but in this day and age it's also viable to be completely self taught, especially with some good books.

Once you have an eye for design you can apply the basic principles as described in other comments here. Without the eye then the principles are meaningless. You also won't learn much by looking at your own work. You're too close to it, so objectivity is all but impossible. You need to leave it alone for a month, absorb as much design training as you can, then come back to it with a fresh eye and quickly critique it before miring yourself in the details again.
Yes, I live in the US. I haven't seen Fox support any attempted coups against Obama yet.
The analogy with manual/automatic transmissions is quite interesting. There are some terrains/situations where a manual transmission is far superior to an automatic, but the majority of people will never experience them. So, the convenience of the automatic works great for most people.

The question I have with tablet computing is this: my computer usage is extremely multi-tasking - I have actually tried to pay some attention to this recently. I'll put the pasta to boil or something, and then I will hit the computer for 8 minutes. During those 8 minutes I might contribute to a few IM sessions, set off 4 or 5 tabs loading with the top HN stories and scan them, check my RSS feeds, check personal and work email and reply to anything that can be dealt quickly, check the state of my gentoo compile, tag some photos in digikam and set an upload to smugmug, and look up a recipe for tomorrow's dinner. The only reason I can do all that in 8 minutes is by aggressive keyboard shortcuts and desktop-switching.

I do have an iPhone and I do really like it, but it's not a multi-tasking device - not due to the OS, but due to the UI.

So the real question is - how rare am I in my computer usage? Am I analogous to the rare driver that tackles unpaved mountain roads, and so need my niche manual transmission while the rest of the world is happy with their automatics? Is the multi-tasking a geek thing, or do "regular" people do this?
In a 10 hour day, 1500 lines is 150 lines/hour, or roughly 2.5 lines/minute, or a line every 24 seconds. That's theoretically possible, but I have trouble believing that you could keep it up for a whole 10 hours, unless the work you're doing is completely mindless. And if that's the case, why did it take you 1500 lines?

Now, I just mailed off a code review yesterday that probably has over 1500 lines of diffs (it's 44 files, and I could believe that each file is easily averaging 30 lines). However, most of those are just deleting a line or two and then changing the indentation of the whole file to match. The change as a whole is behavior-neutral: it doesn't actually do anything. It's pretty easy to get distorted statistics like that - often the changes with the most lines do the least.
> This part irks me most. Apple just created a larger iPhone.

Actually, this meme is irking me. Look at the interface on the iPad, it is not just a big iPhone interface. It has its own unique elements that allow it to work. There is real thought going into this.
No. That's simply not true by any macroeconomic definition of "value". You're making the classic (and wrong) assumption taht there is only a certain amount of "stuff" available, and spending it in one place means that you can't use it elsewhere. That works for checkbooks. It doesn't work for economies.
yeah, i read the whole thing. I'm not phrasing the post as if it was a response to the author. i agree with him.
How angel investing is fundamentally more pernicious to personal wealth than casinos, credit cards or time-shares I'll never understand.

Although you have to admire the tenacity with which our congress tries to legislate common sense....
Happy accidents: exploiting viral IP (content, not security) on the cheap
modern cars are much lower than cars from the 30s. the driveshaft pretty much has to be recessed into the body to give any useful ground clearance and to protect the drive shaft from speed bumps and road hazards.
You're allowed to put your money in public stocks that essentially go to zero (GM, Lehman, Fannie Mae), and you're allowed to gamble all your money away (and then some via borrowing) on negative-expectation government lotteries or licensed casinos.

So it's silly and unfair to then prevent regular people from putting a small portion of their savings in risky -- but possibly positive-expectation -- private investments.
The lawyers are coming
I think the startup scene here is just...wait there isn't one.
I'm still looking through the site, but right off the bat, I'd say I'm not sure about the name. What does it mean? It's pronounced "Pro", but it reminds me of "faux", which is probably not what you want. Just wondering where the name came from and if I'm missing something clever.