skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm curious if knowing cousins is more likely if the amount of children is smaller.

Such as on my mothers side families often consist of 4-7 children for each couple, like my mom is one of six, and I don't really know any 3rd or even 2nd cousins; however on my fathers side families usually consist of 1-3 children and I actually know almost all my 2nd cousins and some 3rd cousins.

This may be a little off topic considering the subject is on dna relations though.
same here - I just wish skype (with webcams) was better supported.

For a lot of people (and businesses), that is a blocker. I managed to get a UVC webcam, but still had to get a PPA v4l repository and build some drivers.

I think it is good that ipods will be supported out-of-the-box in Lucid (Rhythmbox). The same should happen for Skype.

On that front, one should get rid of all the useless games and instead have :
1. a nice Twitter app
2.Scrivener-like app

These are killer apps for a lot of people who use a Mac - especially the young student demographic.
Isn't it risky to extract cash/goods from a credit card?
I realize that one can do that, I'm just wondering what the default setup will be. Based on those screenshots, there will be nothing to show you a window list (other than the Compiz window switcher). They have to have some sort of solution or reasoning, they wouldn't leave the default setup broken until someone configured it.
I used Droid for a long time and now am using Cantarell (another GPL font) for my interface... along with Inconsolata for monospace.
The author captures the sentiments of a generation of programmers quite well. In the 80s, at the beginning of my 'professional' programming career, I wanted to not believe those who foresaw our careers as being like engine and automotive engineers of the early 20th century. That is, destined to become "parts changers".

Early-phase technology workers with those sophisticated machines were true 'engineers', and were paid well. Over time, things evolved (of course). That history confirmed and taught that as technology matures, it becomes commodity. Economies of scale emerge, markets develop, etc. make it such that the technology practitioners ultimately become installers and configure-ers. I think it started to go awry, in my timeline, when the term Application Programming Interface (API) hit the streets. :-)

However, the above is really only true in the 'application development' space. Most software development opportunities are in that space; and therefore, yes, most opportunities to develop software are boring, non-engineering jobs -- rather blue-collar, in fact. To one steeped in a true CS background, that's a real disappointment when considering a lifetime career. This is true for those in their 20s as well as their 40s.

So, I agree with other posters here: get creative! Reject the direction of the herd, if it seems fitting. Do it anyway, just to experience and learn.
That wasn't at all my meaning.
>NAPTR is already misused for sip location imho

Why?

>Could they make it any more complicated than this?

It may look messy, but complicated? You can write a parser in a few minutes. It's simple and it works.
I owned one of the first Nokia 770s through their open source developer program, and it was a useful handheld computer but it was no iPhone.

iPhone features that the 770 anticipated well:

- Full-featured web browser.

- On-screen keyboard.

- App development based on a full-featured desktop toolkit adapted to a handheld screen.

Things that make it a strikingly different experience:

- Not a touch interface. The resistive touch screen on the 770 was really only usable with the stylus, and their interface designs reflected this. This didn't really start changing until after the iPhone was released.

- Not actually pocketable. To deliver a full-featured browser, Nokia used a screen with almost twice the area of the iPhone's. They didn't figure out the tricks Apple used to get a near-desktop-class web experience on a truly pocketable screen.

- UI conventions. The original Maemo tablets had a fairly desktop-like interface. Menus, dialogs, a Windows-like task bar. Plenty of hardware buttons. In contrast, the iPhone made a much cleaner break with previous UIs, popularizing things like multitouch gestures and momentum scrolling.
Thanks for the essay. It's unfortunate Rand and Objectivism are so uncompromising. I guess that leaves the debating and exploration of ideas to us laymen, and we all know that won't go anywhere productive or intelligent :)
This is the advice I've seen from just about every financial adviser, for anyone not near retirement age.

Another nice thing about a Roth IRA is that you can withdraw all the principal (the part you already paid taxes on) early with no penalty. (Actually, you can withdraw the interest from individual accounts -- you just can't withdraw more than you put into ALL your Roth IRAs.) Although my bank seems to not understand this very well, and the government forms aren't very clear on it either.
Looks like Valve is not going to be DirectX showcase anymore. They went all in with DirectX9/10 and were started by Gabe Newell who worked at Microsoft and on Windows itself.

OSX is huge for developers and is gaining. Since going Intel and nix based it has attracted developers and is the prettiest distro of nix you have ever seen. If Steam and Valve aren't going to Mac someone will.

This is so huge because it also cements OpenGL (since they will need to have a OpenGL renderer in their engine) as having a resurgence and no longer makes the major decision point for many people on their next computer due to Windows still being seen as a gaming machine.
IMHO, the UI aspect that makes the single biggest impact is high resolution icons.

Take a look at the 512X512 OSX icons (or Win 7 ones) and compare them with Ubuntu ones.

I think moving the top buttons is a terrible idea
My mom is over 2000 miles away and she's had Ubuntu for over 3 years now. It has been really easy to administer and help her use it. Every time I visit I upgrade the version of Ubuntu and make sure that networking works reliably, after that anything can be done remotely.

She is quite comfortable with it. What was interesting is that this is the first computer she has really used. Most people I know started on Mac or Windows then saw Linux. She is the only person I know that started on Ubuntu.

For emergencies I keep extra boot-able OS partitions including the original Windows XP that came with the machine. When I show it to her she thinks Windows is not very easy to use and looks clunky. That always make me laugh.
Nexus One's multitouch confused more easily than Droid's?
"You must learn to take a philosophical attitude," said Dr. Simon Pritchett to a young girl student who broke down into sudden, hysterical sobs in the middle of a lecture. She had just returned from a volunteer relief expedition to a settlement on Lake Superior; she had seen a mother holding the body of a grown son who had died of hunger.
"There are no absolutes," said Dr. Pritchett. "Reality is only an illusion."
Libraries were created so that you could focus on mastering new and unexplored territory, not to replace programmers.

As a beginner, I didn't appreciate big libraries (like Cocoa). I couldn't wrap my head around the idea of having tons of prewritten code and stitching it together - I understood programming as writing code - so I wanted to write my own damn code, not just manipulate massive libraries.

So I turned to PHP and developed my own webapp (a stripped down Google Docs), from scratch. I quickly stumbled upon the purpose of frameworks and libraries. After writing my 20th SQL query I realized I was wasting time. About 10 hours later, I made my own light PHP framework. Now I didn't have to worry about my SQL syntax (it was automated based on the data model variables) and I got to start working on really cool/interesting programming issues rather than the mundane blah code.

Now I've started to investigate Cocoa again and I realize that libraries and frameworks have not hurt programming, but dramatically catapulted it into the realm of science rather than plug-and-chug. Today, our software is more complex than ever and it will only get more complex in the future.

I think if you see programming as just "stitching libraries together", then you've lost your passion or never had any to begin with. Programming has evolved into a science where you have to learn the foundations (languages) AND the pre-existing solutions (libraries) in order to figure out what's been done for you so that you can focus on exploring new and more complex issues.
Oh I don't disagree with you that IB can be annoying, and to a part-time Mac programmer like myself, not as intuitive as I wish. I only meant that the full-timers generally seem to like IB (warts and all), or, even if they don't like it, they still nearly universally use it instead of doing all their layout in code.

The same scenario has repeated itself for many years: a newbie gets annoyed at IB and says "I'm just gonna do it all in code!" and all the graybeards say "ur doin it rong."
So how would you communicate those sentiments? By pointing and grunting?
Just means they don't know enough about the acronym to say 'WAMP' instead.

Theoretically, it could mean they want to switch. Theoretically.
There are certain levels that people require to not work for a company and though this action may only stray away a few extremists from wanting to work as the amount of ill actions perceived by the public increases the amount of people willing to let those actions slide will steadily decrease.
thanks man
Yes they do.

Personally I want EVERYTHING in it, even if it's not notable, I don't care. The guideline should be: would 1 other (un-involved, un-related, etc) person on the planet be interested it? Then put it in.

I want to see a page on tips and techniques on laying brick, and page on the history of the coffee house down the corner from where you live. Everything.
Why would we stop purchasing their products if we weren't outraged or in any way angry? And I think there is human harm done, albeit possibly second degree or third degree, if progress and innovation are retarded as a result of their actions. I think there is some justification in labeling Apple's actions "evil".
He's had a bit of a change of heart about Cloud Computing since 2003, eh?

2003: "But the thing I'm most interested in is software as a service. That idea that every customer who wants to do accounting on computers, or every customer who wants to do inventory, or manufacturing, has to figure out what computer to buy, what operating system to buy, what Cisco router and switch to buy, what database to buy, is just nonsense.

Companies should be experts in their business, and computing should be available on the Net as a service. So more and more, our business is changing from selling our applications to our customers to: We buy the computers, we run the applications, and you use it. We'll be the experts. And you just pay us a monthly fee. That really is utility computing."

2009: "Cloud’s water vapor….Cloud computing is not only the future of computing, it is the present and the entire past of computing.

…Salesforce.com has been around for a decade. And so has NetSuite…and people are saying, “Well, that’s cloud computing.” Google is cloud computing. Everyone is cloud computing….Everything is in the cloud now….It’s this nonsense.

…But it’s not water vapor. All it is is a computer attached to a network. What are you talking about? I mean, what do you think Google runs on?…Water vapor? It’s databases and operating systems and memory and microprocessors and the Internet!

…And the VCs, I love the VCs. [They ask their start-ups] “Oh…is that cloud?” [And the start-ups go] “Oh! Oh! Microsoft Word! Change ‘Internet’ to ‘cloud’! Mass change. Give it back to these nitwits on Sand Hill Road.”

…What do you mean by “cloud computing”?…All the cloud is is computers on a network.

Our industry is so bizarre. They just change a term and they think they’ve invented technology….You can’t just come up with a [slogan] like “Let’s call that ‘cloud.” [But] it sure beats innovation.”
That's a circular argument. OSX apps solve the dependency problem because they have no other way of dealing with it. They have copies of the dependencies inside the app bundle because they have to be self-contained bundles.

But that's not solving the problem - if you have a defective library inside a bundle, upgrading the copy that lives inside the other bundle will have no effect on the first one. Programs are on their own and the provider must ship a new release of the bundle for each and every update on each and every library that gets bundled. Each program has to self-update and decide if the user will be exposed to a vulnerability while it self-updates or if the user will have to wait for the upgrade to finish before he or she can read his or her e-mail.

The idea that all shared libraries are in effect shared and updated at the earliest possible time, automatically, makes a lot of sense for desktops.

This is insanity. It only looks sane if you have never seen anything better.
Has anyone else besides you used it? Is anyone else on the planet interested? They yes, put it in.
In 2006 Apple controlled 88% of online music distribution, so they are clearly a monopoly in online music distribution.

In 2008 Apple became overall #1 in music distribution, beating Wal-Mart, so they have a chance at monopolizing the retail music distribution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Store#Market_share

Sherman's act declares a felony any credible attempt at monopolization, other than by merit ("superior skill" defense).
This is an apples to oranges comparison though because Amazon and Apple do very different things. The thing is that unlike Amazon, Apple is primarily selling a platform. To some real extent, hackers are their competitive edge. (This is somewhat true of Amazon now that they're in cloud services I suppose, but that's still a negligible part of their overall business and has been great PR for them in the hacker community.)

The iPhone before the App Store was either a middling failure or a middling success, depending on your viewpoint, but it certainly wasn't a slam dunk. It was on track to undersell the 10 million projected handsets by the end of the calendar year (about 18 months after launch) even after severe price cuts. See this chart for unit counts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IPhone_sales_per_quarter_s...

The green bar marks where apps came in. The app store is most, if not all, of what made it the slam dunk it is today. It's hard to argue that people cared that much about 3G back then, especially AT&T customers.

So alienate the people who make the apps, and you lose a lot of the reason for customers to purchase an iPhone. Hence I'd argue that Apple's image among developers is a lot more important to their success than Amazon's.
I’m not opposed to idea of the patent system on general principle (as Stallman, and many others, are)

I think the context of that quote refers to software patents. In particular, his two preceding Tim Bray quotes are clearly with regards to software patents.
sync != copy

The latter gives you control, the former "just works" (usually).
IPL-2010 Schedule, IPL Matches Dates, IPL Matches List
"For me, there is a sort of metallic flavour to most raw tuna;" - yes, it is called Mercury
You cannot even legally post on Twitter "I'm raising funding". Someone did this last year and got harangued for it. How can you crowdsource a funding round if you cannot do something that simple?

Also, I would never invest in a convertible loan like that, and if you talk to a lot of investors (even angels) you'll find that a common sentiment. Investors hate convertibles. A few have told me that if you do those, it's not a question of if you're going to get screwed but when and how.
It may not have affected Amazon negatively, but it has affected Barnes and Noble customers negatively. They haven't been able to do one-click shopping for over a decade. (I'm assuming B&N are still unable to implement 1-click under the settlement.)

Certainly it's not something that's on a lot of people's minds, but I think it's a mistake to say only the lawyers will be affected.
Repost but Larry Ellison, 2005 interview with SF Chronicle

The entire interview is interesting for Larry Ellison predicting the future and then implementing it.

"Q: Does that lead to a consolidation period?

A: The industry is maturing. It is going to consolidate. That's exactly what happened to every other industry. I didn't invent the idea of consolidation. What happens during a period of consolidation is (the company in) second place can suddenly move and become the winner.

One of the interesting things is (that) when you look at when the automobile industry, the clear winner in the early phase of the automobile industry was Henry Ford. Ford was the No. 1 car company in the world by far. Then a guy by the name of Alfred Sloan decided to get all of the good losers together -- Chevrolet and Buick and all those guys -- and built General Motors. Then General Motors passed Ford during the consolidation phase in the automobile industry.

So during the entrepreneurial growth phase, Ford won. During the consolidation phase, Ford lost and found itself in second place.

Q: So you don't want to be Henry Ford.

A: It's too late for anyone to be Henry Ford. That phase is over. We did pretty well in the database business. We have the No. 1 database in the world, and I'll argue that, at the dawn of the information age, that's not a bad position to have."

2003 - Peoplesoft acquires JD Edwards

January 2005 - Peoplesoft acquisition

January 2006 - Siebel acquisition

January 2008 - BEA acquisition

January 2010 - Sun acquisition

(via Wikipedia)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/08/...
It's pretty silly to have a serious dev machine without a package manager. What do you do when you migrate to a new machine? I like to copy a list of packages and then run an update/upgrade command. Linux wins by far. Copying a directory of self-contained apps is quick and easy as well... but if you need binaries for a newer arch, say x86-64, you'll have to download a new copy, whereas the package manager solution has you covered.
> it would be really nice if I only had one 'update' button to push.

No. If you are asking for updates and fixes, you are doing it wrong. It should be automated, because you shouldn't have to bother to remember pressing a button. I set up my mother with a Linux box and sure as hell I don't count on her pressing buttons without some prompting.

> As it is, 5 different things want to update practically every day.

If you have a defective library that's bundled in five apps and needs fixing, you will have five upgrades instead of one. And, possibly, an OS update and a reboot.

But only if you are lucky and the publishers of the five programs are paying attention. Most likely, you will end up with five different bugs scattered throughout your system with many different libraries that really should be just one.
Here's an annotated list of Clojure introductory material and tutorials: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1033503
Facebook/LinkedIn and Google make this DNS trick superfluous, but also each has a vested interest in having people use the web, not a novel DNS-based registry, for such discovery. For those reasons, I pronounce .TEL dead-on-arrival.

(Web hits are even easier than DNS. Why not telnic.org/henri instead of henri.tel? Both could, at Telnic's discretion, imply the exact same thing. One just makes it even clearer you're bought-into a single company's namespace. But that's a bug, not a feature.)
Playlists and metadata aren't a better abstraction for me. When I delete a song, I want it gone. Period. I don't want to be synchronized to your buggy client code. If I attach my player to a Linux box, dammit, why can't I just move files and podcasts back and forth like any computerized device with storage and a sane design can? Why? Sansa may be an also-ran in this game but dammit, you could do those things.
This is a neat application of algorithmic landscape generation. It makes me think that there is room for something that combines this, automated building and a certain amount of clever desalination and civil engineering technology to build attractive new cities in currently lightly occupied places.
I can tell you how much - look at Microsoft in 1990s.

If there is an opportunity to make a lot of money by abusing the antitrust law, the money will be made and distributed via bonuses to the sociopaths. The sociopaths will infiltrate the company, any company, as soon as they smell blood in the water. The law moves too slowly to impede them.
* Most people don't own a .com (or .whatever) for personal use - and never will - so what are the advantages?

Whilst that's true, when someone decides to purchase a domain, why would they buy a .tel when there's other namespaces with more freedoms? I'd be surprised if .tel takes off in preference to .id.au in Australia for instance; — I know which domain I prefer and pay for.

* The suffix indicates the capability. It wouldn't be obvious that andrewtj.com contained your contact records. I'm not sure how you could change public perception of .com/etc, but you at least have a shot at it with a TLD exclusively for this purpose.

I'm not sure that this is as practical a benefit as it sounds. If you were to ask me what my ".tel" is and I responded, just use "andrew.tj.id.au" you'd plug it in and use it. If you were to use andrew.tj.id.au on a computer, you'd likely consume it without even thinking about it.

* TelHosting providers are obligated to provide standard public APIs, and there are also specs for consuming structured data from DNS. Would you use these, or create your own?

* For people who do own a .com they most likely won't be running their own nameservers, so you'd have to persuade nameserver operators to agree on API specs and run your management software.

* .tel has a system for brokering encryption keys used to encrypt/decrypt records - if you want privacy you'd need a system like this.

I've written a DNS server and run a DNS service so it's a bit disingenuous for me to answer these questions. That said, I would and am considering providing the infrastructure for myself and others.

* Using a common namespace offers us a publicly accessible zone - convenient!

I'm not clear on what benefit this outlines?

* Marketing. Hundreds of registrars selling a common branded product gives it the best chance of adoption.

* It's actually pretty hard to do by all accounts.

Agreed on both accounts. The later is part of the reason for my lack of enthusiasm for it.
Dungeons & Dragons  on Microsoft's Surface
1) Did they have to qualify, and was there a hiring process other than 'we have a spot and I've read some of your work and like it'?

2) How many hours were they expected to work? The only way to rope someone into, say ,20 hours or more a week without pay is under the flag 'intern'
.
It is worth noting in many other fields you ask for 40 hours/week unpaid in a remote city (and you don't cover living costs) you'll have people climbing over each other to get the position. I've never seen this with engineering types though. Perhaps this is because interns in other fields are like apprentices, looking over the boss's shoulder and playing gopher, while in engineering jobs an internship seems to be the same as a regular job, except paid less.

(can't say for sure that they actually want that many hours though)

Also notice they are not really offering a learning experience. They are asking for someone who has finished with the learning part to just come on in and do this task already.