skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's a little overdone for sure to an extent where its almost overhyped. It's going to be interesting to see if Apple can live up to the hype they are indirectly responsible for themselves.

What is interesting about "iPad being used as X" is that those types of users (doctors, real-estate-agents, politicians and children) won't need an iPad but simply just a tablet.

The iPad is a consumer product because it can be used for many different things and for that it makes great sense.

But I would rather have a much cheaper (and perhaps more durable) version for real-estate agents, doctors, children (someone really should make a tablet for children) etc.

So the hype IMHO really is about tablets in general, it's just that most people only know the word iPad, just as many thinks that the browser is google.
Seconded. The Innovator's Dilemma is a classic, and remarkably free of the usual business press BS.

It's particularly interesting today, as we're waiting to see who will survive the transition to SSD. Five years ago, who would have thought Intel would be king of the hill?
Yeah, doesn't look that bad to me either (but I'm getting an iPad, absolutely no question for me since I'm already heavily invested in Apple tech).

What I find a lot more scary is this: http://www.engadget.com/photos/joojoo-unboxing/#2855956

Vents? Seriously? Does it have a fan? Is it going to be noisy? Just imagine all the crap that can fall in there, all the stuff that can get caught on it.
But those types of connections you can easily acquire somewhere else no?
Rails 3 Beta 2 released
Not sure if a universal ban on software patents is ideal, but this is certainly a step in the right direction. Rather think NZ has just set itself up as a potential software development mecca.
I've actually been strongly considering buying one, even though a week ago I was pretty unimpressed. Some things you're right about, some things you are misinformed:

1. This bugs me too. If I do get one, I'll get a book stand or something for $5 at Target. I don't really see myself watching much stuff on it, since you can't plug it into a TV, and I hardly ever travel. My use case is centered around a couch. (Edit: you can plug it into a TV, I was misinformed as well.)

2. I just learned today that you can connect a keyboard to it with Bluetooth. This is huge for me, and turns it from "useless toy" to "something I might actually use". Whether I'd use it instead of my Macbook is what I'm debating.

3. I also have an unused Eee, but for me the problem was screen size and battery life and the fact that it won't sleep/resume quickly. The iPad supposedly fixes all these.

4. Yeah, pretty much. I dunno if I'd want an Android one, since I've heard bad things about Android performance/usability, but I'd love a way to load stuff on there without using the app store.

5. The glass screen on the iPhone is far more durable than the plastic screens on everything else. I'd imagine it's the same stuff.
An Android OpenGL Deep Dive
Ask HN: If you could go back in time and re-educate yourself. . .
If you could go back in time and re-educate yourself, what would your lesson plan look like?

I'm going to assume plenty of you 'financially fit' happy hackers will simply opt-out of this experiment altogether because pre-optimization is the root of all evil, and if you're content enough with what you've done and contributed to then there really isn't much to fix, right? Don't fix it (your younger and more incompetent self, or X) if it (the difference between your current level of competence and X) ain't broken?

Your lesson plan doesn't have to pertain to programming or coding, but it should instead refactor some negative or inefficient pattern of thinking. I am going to apply one constraint though, you must assume your former self has transcended the stage of incompetence of not knowing they don't know; so IOW, your former self is in complete submission to your authority since they realize what they want and know that they don't know what you have, which should essentially alter what your younger self will become, more efficient, better than you.

My original intention, of what started as a simple query trolling CS and EE types who have a lot of experience developing system at the level. Trolling or not, I really just wanted to induce some reflective discourse, insights, and words of wisdom to become more competent writing on a level I'm unfamiliar with. Instead I ended up with this very detailed, verbose, hypothetical, thought-experiment, which started to remind me, half-way through, of an xkcd comic on learning to program.
You know Alexis and Alexandria (the two HBS MBAs who are ostensibly behind Gilt) had almost nothing to do with the company's conception - right?

The real founders are Kevin Ryan and Dwight Merriman (the founders of DoubleClick). They created and funded Alley Corp with their Google money, which runs a whole bunch of really great startups (like 10Gen, the company behind MongoDB). The story about Alexis and Alexandria dreaming up the idea in business school is just for PR purposes ...
Sinatra = iPhone

Rails = MacBook Pro

Padrino = iPad?
Maybe, perhaps, possibly, or maybe, perhaps, possibly not. Without data, it's all just speculation.

"It's that maybe, there just isn't a market for the kind of entertainment Dancing with the Stars represents."

The irony there is that Dancing with the Stars represents an extremely successful attempt on the part of television networks to cut costs and increase profits. "Reality TV" costs far less to produce than dramas or sit-coms with real actors and directors, but remain perplexingly successful at attracting viewers and profits.

What I find more interesting is the remaining opportunities for dis-intermediation. I went back and forth between the TV and the computer for the NCAA basketball tournament games. The online version allowed you to pick any game at any time, including previous games. Why should watching an NCAA basketball game take me to the channel of the local CBS affiliate on my cable system, instead of ncaa.com? Why are there bidding wars to carry the Superbowl, instead of the Superbowl being broadcast at nfl.com and the NFL taking all the revenue for themselves?

I'm curious if there are still any reasons for networks to intermediate between content producers and consumers, or if it is just an anachronism we have not yet moved past.
Amazon Halts Sales of Some eBooks in Publisher Pricing War
Ubuntu's window buttons to stay on the left
They must have read that book.
This is a joke, obviously, but there have been a couple occasions where Canada has seriously looked into making the Turks and Caicos islands a province. So, it's not far off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turks_and_Caicos_Islands#Propos...
Using the Gilt example I don't think I'd have the chops to do so. If someone was able to rally that kind of talent in NYC without an MBA, they'd have to be pretty amazing. Pedigree is still important, esp. with a Fashion startup.
That was neat. I tried to do it recursively. Doesn't seem to work, unfortunately.
Why Congo is the world's most dangerous place for women
Humans may have evolved to prefer logarithmic estimation
I think I need to hand my geek card in - I only caught the Doctor Who one.
There may be a better case for simplicity on the server side. Sun made their original fortune from selling ever bigger and more complex machines, until people figured out they could get equivalent or better results with multiple cheap Linux boxes.
The JooJoo is Atom-based; it's basically a netbook. It's probably a lot higher-power than an ARM tablet.
I felt for it until I did a google search to see: one single news item.

Maybe that kind of reflex will be useful when some botnet makes an attack on the nytimes or the wsj.

(who knows, to mess with the stock exchanges or something, just throwing ideas here)
I'm a big Apple fan and I must say that this looks very cool as well. Great job. Love the backstory too with the CrunchPad :-)
If they botched the details that I've pointed out, what does that say about the rest of the product?

Nothing at all, actually. Maybe it's just me who doesn't think that the marketing copy for something actually says anything about the value of that thing, though, no matter how many extra commas it might have.
Headline from here:

http://lwn.net/Articles/381546/

and to move them back:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/13535/move-window-buttons-bac...

or

gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout --type string "menu:minimize,maximize,close"
Ask HN: Is my website growing through word-of-mouth?
25% of my website's daily visits are new visitors. Only 6% of those new visits are referrals.

Does that mean my user base has mostly found my website through word of mouth? (150k+ users)
guest@xkcd:/$ xinit

Unrecognized command. Type "help" for assistance.
Rails 3.0: Second beta release
Are You Satisfied with Windows 7? (Poll with results)
Ummm... laptops have had vents on them for quite awhile now and we've all survived alright. If this is your subtle way of saying this isn't an iPad, we knew that already :)
I did not know that, but thanks for the heads-up. Sounds like there's an interesting story there...
You are under the assumption that it matters.

There are going to be hundreds if not thousands of tablet brands out there that are going to be doing just fine and deliver great products. JooJoo might or might not be one of them but they are at least of to a good start.
Enterprise Chatroulette
If your not Indian/Chinese and your wife is EB2 then you should be able to apply for a "EAD - Work permit" as soon as your wife files for the 3rd stage of the green card. Using this you can work. Wiht the present system I dont think it should take more than 4 months to get to the 3rd stage.

Your wife's employer will have a lawyer working on all these cases and they will answer your questions for free (its their job!).

If your indian/chinese/mexican/philipino or EB3 category your basically screwed and the best way would be to put together a business plan + funding, incorporate and then try to get the USCIS to give you a H1 to work on your own company.

When I didnt have a g.c I could never really solve this problem (as my visa was employment based and not marriage based) and that makes it even more difficult. Its a toughie. But since yours is marriage based, you have a better shot at solving this.
You shouldn't be thinking languages, you should be thinking concepts. Take a look at your course schedule, find books and papers on those topics and get cracking.
Your software development skills will probably be superior, or at least way more than is needed for a grad program. If all you know is how to write code, you'll have a tough time expressing the concepts you are learning in the classroom.
Current business models reach their complexity specifically because of the technologies and social pressures they've evolved into - it may be that the only way to adapt to new technological paradigms is to start completely over.

A critical rupture from the status quo seems necessary. Right now, what we're doing is trying to attach a rocket engine to a canvas-and-balsa biplane when we really should be designing around the engine instead. And the design for that only superficially resembles the Kitty Hawk glider.
I agree. If you cant get a H1 for yourself, at least learn everything there is to learn about starting up a company and create a strong network for the future. Talk to founders, talk to VCs/angels.
Ask HN: Am I the only one who doesn't give a crap about shiny gadgets?
including: all Apple products, smart phones, watches, big screen TVs, etc.

Sometimes the news here look like a byproduct of some ad campaign
No, you are not!
But it is a great lesson about PR and marketing.
Think of blogging about your company as a form of content marketing. Writing posts about your product and/or industry and using some basic seo practices in the posts can help people(customers??) find your blog.

For instance if you were selling a service that does online analytics for the music industry, write posts about the music business using the data you collect. Include relevant keywords such as 'online artist tracking' 'statistics for band', etc. Those keyword phrases revolve around what potential customers would be searching for in Google when looking for a service like yours.

Outside of organic results like above, drive traffic to your blog by producing content that is meaningful, useful, and interesting to your readers. You want your content to have value to your readers.

Join the conversation on other blogs, through commenting. IMPORTANT don't spam..add value.

Tell good stories.

Check out http://www.mint.com/blog/ the used their blog expertly all the way through their exit and to this day.
A bit more, but not much [1].

[1]: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/03/joojoo-preorders/
Thanks. Seems the (currently leftmost) 'menu' button is gone, and we need that fix to get it back.

I use that button to kick windows to the correct workspace. But it seems a righ-click on the bar also works. One of the things Ubuntu was better at than the Mac ...

The application icon in the button was pleasant too. I also liked a few colorfully distinct icons in the tray/notification area in 8.04, currently drab grey a la MacOS.
hehe, go scare yourself. I liked the music.
I so wish this was true, wouldn't that be an epic step in the web?
Not april fools.
Well, at least they decided to go with the order "close, minimize, maximize" which follows Mac OS X's standard rather than creating a third standard.
Mathematical April Fool Results
1) How can you be so sure without ever having tried it? It's not just a PC without a keyboard - it's a whole new carefully tuned experience. The closest parallel right now is an iPhone, of course, but this is much, much larger. I've been developing for it since the SDK became available and believe me, the size alone has extremely significant ramifications on design once you unlearn the "old ways" of thinking about application usability.

2) The iPad comes at this from the other angle: Why should I have to sit down at a desk or carefully balance a 5lb. machine on my lap just to check the weather and update my friends on Twitter?

3) It remains to be seen if the iPad will suffer the same fate. I personally doubt it will, but we can't know that yet. As for typing, most reviews I've read agree that portrait mode kind of sucks but they were all pleasantly surprised by landscape typing. I don't think Apple has ever claimed that touchscreen typing would be as fast or as nice as a real keyboard (indeed they even sell a physical keyboard iPad dock). This relates to #2 in that the iPad asks the question: How much typing should you really need to do for common computing tasks?

4) The controlled experience is what makes this all work, IMO. Without it, you'd have a mess. (See: all other software markets.) Apple still approves a lot of crap apps on the App Store that don't seem to "get it," but at least they can't kill all the rest of my apps or ruin the overall experience. A lot of people seem to feel there's some kind of tyrannical evil purpose behind the App Store wall, but I think it's why the App Store has been such a success in the first place. (As annoying as it can be at times...)

5) Keep it away from kids?! Are you crazy? This form factor is, in all likelihood, the future. My 16mo son may grow up never owning a clunky desktop or laptop. My shiny MacBook Pro will feel like a dinosaur to him someday, I'm sure. Could it get broken? Sure. Could a laptop? You bet! What's the difference? Kids will be kids - buy insurance. :)
sometimes the most important decision is just to make a decision, and not leave it on the plate.

not hot about the left hand move, but I like that ubuntu is moving towards thinking about the ui, and I rarely use those buttons anyway.
I did't really care much before but with Netflix, Hulu, ABC, and CBS offering streaming videos, part of me now wants to get an IPad.
In my experience, a high percentage of b-school students are aspiring entrepreneurs (although most don't pursue directly after graduation). Last year there were 100+ teams in the HBS business plan competition from a class on 900. Several grads have since closed on funding, including RentTheRunway who closed Series B last month http://su.pr/25JmSw.
Did you look at the project?
It looks... plausible.

http://code.google.com/p/quake2-gwt-port/source/browse/src/c...

there's a bunch of cool gwt client stuff in there. but... maybe i'm just a sucker.
It looks much nicer than I was expecting. I'm glad to see that Apple's success is causing other companies to take design seriously.
I think we would all prefer to have a late book that you approved of than a timely book that you disliked.
Yes, I consider this to be a big plus of at least just getting something going.

(PS: Can someone please mod keeptrying back up, I meant to click upvote but instead accidentally clicked downvote. Argh. Sorry about that.)
The thing I'm finding interesting about this: There are a whole world of devices that could have had essentially the same effect if they could have attracted this much attention. Somehow though, it seems like Apple's brand manages to get everyone on board, both consumer and developer.

I'm not being dismissive. Apple's brand seems like a great tool for moving the industry forward. Changing the way people use computers requires both consumers and developers to agree that this is a platform worth investing in, and Apple consistently pulls that off.

What other company could have convinced the entire industry that they needed to port some version of their product to a new proprietary platform?
Why today of all days?
Because everyone knows rails is a joke!

... I'm kidding, I love rails. I'm really looking forward to v3 being in production. :)
I'm not sure what you're getting at exactly, but I would suggest that such people need to brush up on their definitions. Creative destruction is when an obsolete industry or practice is allowed to fail. Some people lose jobs, and find other ones later. It hurts.

Societal collapse is when we all starve to death because we are all critically dependent on modern industrial agriculture. It kills.

There's a difference. Preventing creative destruction is choosing to avoid pain now with death not-too-far-from-now. I am not being metaphorical. The article cites examples where just that happened; all those collapses were accompanied by carrying-capacity reductions, which is a rather dry technical way of saying "lots of people died".

A society full of people who don't get this distinction is a rather scary prospect, but alas, more people now than ever before get this and it's still probably nowhere near enough.

(Questions about whether our society is facing just such an inflection point right now left as an exercise for the reader, as well as what "pain-avoidance" measures are currently floating around that might qualify.)
Unfortunately Hulu don't have The Daily Show or the Colbert Report anymore :(
Overhaul Will Lower the Costs of Being a Woman
The Importance of the Right Product Name
Check out http://webstartupgroup.com

These guys are based in Utah and have frequent events at Brigham University. Mixers are great for meeting your future employees, partners or collaborators. Get in involved and definitely start building a personal/professional brand from day one.

In Toronto, we have the MaRS Discovery District. Which is a mix of private and government money funding startups, hosting entrepreneurship classes for free, office spaces, mixers, cash prizes for app. competition, keynote speakers etc. Outsiders may also find the content useful http://www.marsdd.com

It shouldn't be hard to locate a similar program in your region.

Good luck
If you don't like it, so why open another thread about it?

There are always people who like and people who hate. You don't like? Okay, don't up vote iPad Stories, don't read them, don't comment. HN users like? So they up vote, comment...

This is a community and everyone has a taste, choice, opinion... Everyone is free to discuss anything, if another one like it, he joins, another one joins, another one... made popular!

And now I want to say "I'm really sick of such posts, where a user want the whole HN community to behave in the same way he does"
I'd throw in Terminator for traveling back in time to prevent destruction of the world, and using garbage to fuel his blender shaped power unit reminds me of Mr. Fusion from Back to the Future III.
Official blog post: http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2010/4/1/rails-3-0-second-beta...
I clicked through and extracted all the changes since beta 1. This is probably only useful for people who have already spent some time with the first beta but haven't been following development since then:

ACTIONMAILER

* Added interceptors and observers from Mail [ML]

ActionMailer::Base.register_interceptor calls Mail.register_interceptor
ActionMailer::Base.register_observer calls Mail.register_observer

* Whole new API added with tests. See base.rb for full details. Old API is deprecated.

ACTIONPACK

* #concat is now deprecated in favor of using <%= %> helpers [YK]

* Block helpers now return Strings, so you can use <%= form_for @foo do |f| %>.
<% form_for do |f| %> still works with deprecation notices [YK]

* Add a new #mount method on the router that does not anchor the PATH_INFO
at the end [YK & CL]

* Create a new LookupContext object that is responsible for performantly
finding a template for a given pattern [JV]

* Removed relative_url_for in favor of respecting SCRIPT_NAME [YK & CL]

* Changed file streaming to use Rack::Sendfile middleware [YK]

* ActionDispatch::Request#content_type returns a String to be compatible with
Rack::Request. Use #content_mime_type for the Mime::Type instance [YK]

* Updated Prototype to 1.6.1 and Scriptaculous to 1.8.3 [ML]

* Change the preferred way that URL helpers are included into a class[YK & CL]

# for all helpers including named routes
include Rails.application.router.url_helpers

# for just url_for
include Rails.application.router.url_for

ACTIVEMODEL

* #new_record? and #destroyed? were removed from ActiveModel::Lint. Use
persisted? instead. A model is persisted if it's not a new_record? and it was
not destroyed? [MG]

* Added validations reflection in ActiveModel::Validations [JV]

Model.validators
Model.validators_on(:field)

* #to_key was added to ActiveModel::Lint so we can generate DOM IDs for
AMo objects with composite keys [MG]

ACTIVESUPPORT

* Reduced load time by deferring configuration of classes using
ActiveSupport::on_load(:component_name) [YK]

* Rename #metaclass to #singleton_class now that ruby-core has decided [JK]

* New assertions assert_blank and assert_present. #4299 [Juanjo Bazan]

* Use Object#singleton_class instead of #metaclass. Prefer Ruby's choice. [Jeremy Kemper]

* JSON backend for YAJL. Preferred if available. #2666 [Brian Lopez]

RAILTIES

* Session store configuration has changed [YK & CL]

config.session_store :cookie_store, {:key => "..."}
config.cookie_secret = "fdsfhisdghfidugnfdlg"

* railtie_name and engine_name are deprecated. You can now add any object to
the configuration object: config.your_plugin = {} [JK]

* Added config.generators.templates to provide alternative paths for the generators
to look for templates [JV]
It's because the Rails team knows they are about to lose a lot of people to Padrino. Got to act fast before people realize how much of a better framework it is!
Indeed. All we care about is the money.
Mflow, Twitter's hipper little brother
The controlled experience is what makes this all work, IMO. Without it, you'd have a mess.

The option to install non-market apps has yet to turn Android devices into cesspools of malware. Having the app store be the default source is fine. Forcibly prohibiting other sources is purely to make sure Apple gets a cut of everything and can prevent any threats to their business model from materializing. Good for them, bad for everyone else. As I've said before, if Microsoft had that kind of power 20 years ago the web wouldn't exist today.