skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
His thoughts make a lot of sense, but I really wonder if he's not missing the forest for the trees, like a lot of writers on this subject.

It's not the little hacks (e.g., font organizers, window minimizers) that are going to make or break this platform: it's going to be the immersive apps that capture people's imaginations. (And most "real people" don't care about OS hacks.)

I know I've already got way too many killer ideas for this platform, really the first to incorporate touch computing in an intelligent, affordable fashion, and I suspect many others are in the same boat.

So the lack of hackability may simply not be an issue. Within a given app, the world's your oyster; you can do just about anything.

The gatekeeping problem may be the bigger issue, but there are so many great apps waiting to be built that are completely non-controversial from Apple's point of view, and that will fulfill the promise of the platform.

The recent sweep-up of semi-porn and cookie-cutter apps makes complete sense to me; as a retailer, who wants all that crap on their shelves? And as a developer, why would I want to be doing anything in those areas (unless it's simply to exploit people for their money)?

I do have some areas of concern that affect my plans: Will Apple ever permit a full-blown non-Safari browser app in the store? That's a biggie. And will Apple ever permit an interactive programming tool like Smalltalk adapted for the touch screen, or (one of my ideas) a graphical meta-calculator building tool that ultimately allows the user to do "real" programming?

Ultimately, I think the answers are yes and yes, but the unsureness of those answers is troubling.
What he neglects to mention is many of the games on Steam include DRM of their own, from Securom to Starforce.
FathomDB and SQL Azure are heading into that direction but both are still in their infancy, i.e. don't even support replication.
But at least there's hope that these will offer a solution in the not-too-distant future.
You still can't install any application on the device. You could easily argue a lot of things but what on earth are you talking about, as far as the initial success of the iPhone is concerned?
I agree. I should clarify that the data reviewed should be limited to before the story broke.
Review my startup: ThatHigh.com
Imagine a world with appstore as the main way of distributing software for any kind of devices.

I think such a world would be much better for most end users. And a lot of people have already voted with their wallet that this is so.

If there were many App Stores, then market forces would come into play. Someone would figure out how to get developers paid without mistreating them. Then really smart devs would start flocking to the other App Store, forcing Apple to reform or lose mindshare.
Hmm, I have not encountered a suid login. Since login runs passwd, and passwd uses pam, and pam is heavily based on demand-loaded libraries, that would be rather hard and big.

Static shell? Sure, sash. Also helpful when ldso or libc is busted via non-rootkit means.
Fruux - Just Sync, No-frills (MobileMe alternative)
Slicehost and Rackspace are the same company, by the way. They share datacenters, and a lot of the support infrastructure.
That was a thought, but I'd rather find someone interested enough to look under the hood and give me more concrete feedback.
It's favorite investment, Zynga, is a notorious ripoff artist and he has supported them before and after it was made apparent that their revenue model was a scam.
As far as fulltext search goes, have you looked at Sphinx? http://www.sphinxsearch.com/ Plugs into MySQL and Drizzle, works really fast, and has awesome extras like stemming support.
There should be a lot of other evidence of Toyota's quality falling off if that is the case. If 2005-2010 Toyotas end up rusting out faster and burning up transmissions faster then that might be the reason, from what I understand they have so far been amongst the most reliable cars ever made. There have been some suggestions that they are using lesser grade plastics and metals in some of the bodywork but I'm not sure that actual quality issues have been raised yet.

We're talking about freak accidents though. Even if these issues could be attributed to a real electronic or mechanical problem they still happen with a frequency which is probably remarkably close to the frequency of similar human errors. The successful Japanese company that has knocked off GM sure is an easy scapegoat. I wonder if there is a racial component to the complaints as well.

It's ironic, Toyota has a very long history of improving. GM is coming out of bankruptcy, as is Chrysler, according to JD Powers, Ford is the best quality American car maker and their quality is "average." I'd double down on Toyota going back to the drawing board and raising the bar even higher. If the media or congress was trying to get some American pay back they might have a window but I expect it to get substantially more difficult to compete with Toyota. Not that we should ever fear to call a corporation to task for their faults but this is one that has held overall quality in such high regard for so long and it's such a key part of their culture.
If you are interested in more details, here's one:
http://serrastreet.blogspot.com/
My feelings regarding downvoting are that downvotes are virtually inconsequential, aside from the rise they get from some as a result of bruised egos.

I also think that it's kind of silly to try and establish upvote or downvote "guidelines" because there's no way to ultimately control or accurately measure what upvotes or downvotes are being used for. You could put big, red text in the HN Guidelines that instructed people to upvote or downvote in a certain way, and users would continue to upvote or downvote however they wished.
I've read that the system that Goldman Sachs built with their proprietary programming language Slang is one of the things that kept them from failing.

At this point it's not a great language, but they have a system where the information about their "stuff" is not trapped in spreadsheets. So when the world changes and their leaders need to figure out "what does this mean?", "what happens if [fill in the blank]?", etc., the system can answer than question much more quickly (a few hours?) than sending out a query to all their business units which then manually compile the data from their (often wrong) spreadsheets, pass that up the line where it's again manually compiled, etc. etc.

Unfortunately this single firm type of system isn't a solution for Sudhakar Ram's desire for e.g. traceability in instruments built on top of multiple loans, and it would be quite hard to get there, given how much vital information is buried in dead paper (plus all the privacy issues, etc. etc.) But I would say we need to try.
Beyond black, white, and grey: the Yellow Hat Hacker
No one better to do that than a room full of hackers who are frustrated with the alternatives. Post a link.
It's actually beneficial to the investors if they keep paying their mortgages; they certainly won't foreclose an a home unless necessary. So yes, it matters.

By the way, didn't you see the "paid off" portion of their portfolio? It's quite big.
That's true. I suppose when you factor in all of the free promotion and help under the guise of a free service, it starts to look a little more unseemly.
Ryan King gave a good summary in his interview. (http://nosql.mypopescu.com/post/407159447/cassandra-twitter-...) Basically, Cassandra has the best answers to the important questions:

How will we add new machines?
Are their any single points of failure?
Do the writes scale as well?
How much administration will the system require?
If its open source, is there a healthy community?

(And I would add, is it _fast_ as well as scalable?)
There should be two sets of karma, one for comments and one for submissions
I think there are far more unsolved problems than just this. As Feynman said, physics is like watching two grandmasters play a game of chess. A novice might learn the rules by watching but wont understand why masters chose a move or know all the rules from watching one game.
I'm not a big fan of HTWFAIP. It's basically "don't be a jerk". A lot of geeks are good at that already, and could actually afford to be a bit more of a jerk.
http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html
Once downvoted to below 1, insightful comments tend to get ignored and this a real loss beyond bruised egos
Handmade IMAP
I don't think you understand my point: I agree that per-user karma records are worthless. However, I am not convinced that there is little to lose with bad comment ratings, since HN bases the appearance of comments on these ratings.
database error: here is the cached version
http://209.85.129.132/search?hl=en&q=cache:http://benfry...
Munis depend on the insurer. I'd feel very comfortable with Berkshire insured munis.
Nvidia launches anti-Intel Web site
Bilski Oral Argument at the US Supreme Court (Software Patent Case)
Does anyone ever worry that one of these sync services will be set up by scammers to steal personal info? I do.
I recommend to read the book. Without reading it is hard to understand the principles behind it. Book shows practical examples throughout and explains how other person feels when each principle is applied.
Privacy Concerns Put the Kibosh on the Netflix Prize
I'm not comfortable with a room (or more) of hackers going through it at this point. If anyone is interested, my email is in my profile.

Edit: When it goes into public beta, I'll be sure to post it here.
It's easy to get comment karma, as well. You just have to be the first person to post the generally prevailing opinion on whatever the current topic is. Then everyone who was coming to post the same thing will just upvote you instead.
What he actually said was that his consulting company told him not to use all of the process all of the time but rather to pick and chose the bits that were appropriate.

I'm not saying that you are lying about your experience, or that I have much respect for the big consulting companies or their business models, but your comments misleadingly characterize what he posted.

(In my experience the big companies I have worked for had better processes, and better guidance on how to apply them. But they had to have that to cater for some of their other issues.)
I just got done talking for an hour on my show about crap like this, so I'm in the right frame of mind to discuss this.

Munis are working right now because people with deeper pockets (pensions, institutions) are forced to allocate capital here. Essentially, cash is not an option. The risk for Munis on the short term is pretty fair, and we're probably not going to see a crash in the asset right now solely for the fact that it's so blindingly obvious.

Define "cash." Holding onto the dollar may not make sense in this interest rate environment because our printing presses are the fastest on the planet. Gold sucks when the yield curve is this steep. You could try a carry trade and pick up some AUD or NZD... follow the ticker DBV to see how that's doing.

Also, you could try LT government bonds-- the feds have had a crapton of auctions, and with the deficit is going they have an interest in keeping 30year rates low. The joe-retail trader way to play this is TLT, which is looking technically healthy.

But with all this financial rambling, this is Hacker News. I absolutely agree with you-- the best asset you have right now is your business, so I would claim diversification is stupid, don't focus on the market because you can get much higher returns doing something that doesn't require yield curves. Odds are, you don't have enough cash to worry about munis.
Most cancers are probably viral:

We know that cervical cancer is related to the human pappiloma virus, thus the annual "pap smear" for women. Warts and fever blisters are both caused by virii and cause growths, similar to tumors. I can't think of any parasites, bacteria, or fungi which causes similar growths -- and I've tried. (Anyone who knows of something else which causes tumor-like growths, please speak up. This question is of serious interest to me. Cancer runs rampant in my family.) Molluscum contagiosum is a viral infection which causes growths on the skin similar to skin tags. The cause of skin tags is "unknown" (yet it seems logical to me it is some other virus) but they are described as "benign tumors".

Although conventional medicine seems to find viral infections extremely hard to combat, alternative treatment circles I hang out in find viral infections very easily treated and offer a number of different options for doing so. I believe that I and my sons have been killing off whatever virus or virii we carry which eventually could/would turn into a diagnosis of cancer. I get die-off rashes that include skin tags and brown and red spots of the sort which look like pre-cancerous lesions. My oldest son has a very keen sense of smell and has been around several family members who had cancer. He says he can smell it when we have cancer die-off. Given my experiences with him, I believe him.

I generally don't talk about this in public. My personal problem is that people tend to either call me "arrogant and egomaniacal" or "a liar, charlatan, and snake-oil salesman". "Arrogant and egomaniacal" is probably the better thing to be accused of as it suggests people think it can be done, just not by little ole me. "Liar, charlatan, and snake-oil salesman" suggests people think it can't be done at all, by anyone, regardless of the resources at their disposal, much less by little ole me and my limited resources. I don't believe any technology will solve my personal issue of being accused of such things. It's an issue of "the hundredth monkey" or "mindshare" or "groupthink"....something along those lines -- ie: No one else is able to do it, so you can't possibly be telling the truth. To quote an old TV show: "There's always a first."
Panic-inspired Dashboard Made From Photo Frame for ~$150.  Code is OSS.
This is the problem, most people don't even know if they are being a jerk or not. I thought I had good social skills until I read HTWFAIP. It made me realize how socially inept I was. Turns out the main message in most social intelligence books is the emphasis of empathy; it is actually a hard skill to learn and one that's usually underestimated by the majority of people especially geeks.
An agreement vote as well as a quality vote makes no sense to me. Trying to micromanage people's behavior doesn't usually turn out the way you intend. And besides, most people will just use both votes to express whatever general feeling they have about a post.
I have been without a contract for over a year now. I have been wanting an Android phone. I have been wanting an Android phone. However, each time I settle for one, a new and better one rises over the horizon. So I wait.

Contract-free Nexus One plus month-by-month with T-Mobile. There's nothing significantly better due out for several months, and if you want to upgrade in a year or so you won't have a problem selling it.
Oh, good to know - I haven't looked at jQuery since 1.2 since Prototype and MooTools where doing the job for me.
Presumably the Germans / French had a lot less to lose with a failed search engine, whereas the Chinese stand to lose control of the next medium of communication.

I'm sure in the minds of many of the people planning this, the idea is that the internet is just the latest iteration of communication technology (like the newspaper, TV, etc), and as such the government should have a significant presence there in the same way as it does with The People's Daily and CCTV.
i like the idea that it can be used to meet people at conferences - that solves a problem i've had in the past.

personally, i would like the ability to use openid, or just a simple password, and also to be able to use, say, a laptop (eg via a maps or lat/lon interface). but i guess i may be a technical luddite.
You can say it is ad hominem or you can say it is a matter of trust. I don't trust this man or what he says. He has shown himself not to be trustworthy and that is a serious issue of character -- not just some flaw in an argument to be disagreed with.

Look, humans can rationalize anything, so the rationality of the argument is less important than the motivations of the person making the arguments. Why are they saying what they are saying? At some point, you have to trust people and when someone justifies ripping off other people in the name of making a successful startup, then every argument after that becomes suspect.

He has done just that. Said it is okay to build a business based on ripping people off -- it's not.
OMG 14 hours 28 minutes 12 seconds left
My dad uses his GPS software almost every day (his GPS has Windows software) and likes 1st person shooters. My mom uses her quilting software almost every day. My uncle, a farmer in Iowa, uses QuickBooks for accounting. People have shelves of software that they use/love even if they aren't fans of Windows or OS X. Presuming they buy an iPad and lug their Windows boxes (which neither crash every day nor require reinstallation every month) to the garage, what are they going to do to?

Eventually there might be good software to fill up these niches, but it's going to take quite a while. And people will constantly be assailed with web sites and software boxes that have GOOD SOFTWARE that they can't put on an iPad. The App Store Apple is competing against is the rest of the world--- millions of Apps (some of which are really good!) and gazillions in marketing dollars.
I had to find your article, make it free to post to other users, but have two type of in-box, one for premium users and another for everybody else,

how to make money, if you subscribe monthly you can post to anybody in box and they will receive it, along with 1000's of others, if you want to be notice you will be put in the premium box (premium box); charge to add features to your site like, color, multiple colors and the use of WYSIWYG editor, have everybody else use a simple editor no frills. If you want to discuss it email me: mykalmorton at gmail dot com
There should be third karma for indicating obviousness which also deletes some of your comment karma
A Dramatic Demonstration of the Power of Mental Frames by Simon Singh [video]
Wow. That's an even bigger set. I had been using these, but neither set is as comprehensive as Silk:

http://www.tutorial9.net/resources/108-mono-icons-huge-set-o...

and

http://prothemedesign.com/circular-icons/
As of this post I have 228 karma. I got the privilege to downvote at 201 (which I got to about a week ago).
also like recommendations on linkedin, have people comment on a person, (like i dated her and she was a real * ), a feature,

but don't charge people on sending info,

for example i will not pay $1 to say hi, and if i do, i would just give my email address out to that person, and you only made $1; thus subscription $.99 month for instant is reasonable, will not hesitate in sign-in up, 1000 ppl a month = approx $1000
Does it have any improvements on table locking during ALTER operations? Or are there any other engines capable of dynamic DB schema?
add a feature to sell things, a user, for instant a person wants to sell a watch a person can, need to make a hybrid of something else, cause dating is already done.
It was for us. :-/
You can do the same with Heroku:

sudo gem install heroku

heroku keys:add

heroku create

git push heroku master

heroku open
If you didn't know: Google is all about finding, sharing and publishing information.
What about dark matter?
this article by WSJ is more insightful: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870344710457511...
I know, I was only comparing the two services in terms of pricing. Slicehost is too expensive for a lot of needs (backend databases, load balanced app servers, etc) since these servers only ever communicate over the LAN thus not consuming billable bandwidth.
Hey Andrew, thanks for the feedback. Although the site is formatted for the mobile screen, it actually works just fine in a browser. Your location can be sent through FF, among other browsers, and our site will work just as it does on the mobile version.
We ARE thinking about the best way to allow people who don't have location enabled devices to use the site and we'll have some solutions rolling out shortly.
Could you explain better what you mean? (I think I got it, but ...)
This logic is poor. It's not the same because Mixergy IS his startup. It's not a promotional vehicle. What you're saying is that content (video, writing, etc.) can't be a startup but can only be used to promote something else.

There's no reason it couldn't be used either way.
I have gotten the opposite vibe, that Fred has proven himself as someone I can trust. What makes you think otherwise (I've been reading his blog for a little over a year, and he's remained consistent).
Nope, because I just ordered a Nexus One instead :)
ProShares UltraShort 20+ Year (TBT) is an ETF that moves inversely with US Treasury bond prices. In other words, if interest rates rise then you make money. I think it's getting harder (although not impossible) to envision a future in which we won't have substantially higher interest rates. Might be a worthy add to portfolios if you're concerned about this.

BTW, watched I.O.U.S.A. this week (http://www.iousathemovie.com/). If you want to have the crap scared out of you about the impending issues with the debt that's the movie to watch.
The infighting you fear is more a problem when most users are teenagers or just unthoughtful
Very cool that it's open source, but definitely not as eye catching as the Panic dashboard.
Do you really think the problem is lack of understanding? I mean, a reputation system is a pretty easy concept and I can't imagine there are people out there who just don't know what a Karma system is.

Which is the problem. If you understand what a karma system is than you understand you're doing damage to a person's actual reputation by down voting them. So the obvious conclusion for anyone who understands the concept of karma points is that down voting is an act designed to cause harm to the person not to express disagreement with the idea.

I can't imagine a person who doesn't have at least a subconscious understanding of such an obvious result so I don't think a notice when someone down votes would change anything
They had a small fraction of revenue from a questionable source (scammy sign ups). It was corrected immediately, Mark Pincus is an interesting guy, but I don't think of him as a scam artist. I think of him as a founder who wants to control the destiny of his company through revenue.
The title of this book always put me off - but I eventually picked it up and I'm glad I did. It is not a book about how to be a jerk. The content is excellent, despite the cheesy/manipulative sounding title. Available in audiobook too.
I think your point here is that this particular blog doesn't do ethical (according to your set of ethics, from my perspective, zynga is at least attempting to clean up their revenue model) analysis of companies prior to making investment recommendations. Honestly, though, ethical investments funds are somewhat of a niche (and I don't think most of them would have a problem with zynga anyways) - whereas most would not invest in tobacco - which in years past has been a favorite holding for Warren Buffet; I don't suppose you are going to besmirch him, are you?
I do prefer reading about this stuff and watching movies like the above over horror flics. :D
Merriam-Webter [1]:

1 : a body of methods, rules, and postulates employed by a discipline : a particular procedure or set of procedures

2 : the analysis of the principles or procedures of inquiry in a particular field

You're speaking of definition (2), but OP is using (1) properly, in my estimation.

[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/methodology