skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Note you used supporting

Note that I used "go out of their way to support". The active role was clearly implied, and consistent with the context.

ZeroGravitas described Apple and Microsoft's choice (to use h.264) as an "anti-competitive action", and in contrasting that choice with an alternative, I thought it was obvious that I meant choosing (acting) differently, i.e. using Theora, in spite of it not being in their own interests. What else might I have meant?

If we were talking about a passive role of "supporting", then Apple (and possibly Microsoft) would have to be excluded, as their <video> implementation (at least on the desktop) allows for installing additional third-party codecs, such as Theora. In that sense Apple supports Theora, but clearly that is not what we're talking about.

I know of no other sense in this context that Apple or Microsoft could support Mozilla without also aiding them.

(The reason I stated this initially in terms of "going out of their way" was to distinguish this situation from situations in which self-interested competitors benefit each other directly, such as how Apple's work on WebKit benefited Google's work on Chrome (and vice versa). There was no argument made to suggest that choosing Theora would have been in the interests of Microsoft or Apple, though, so this was (I thought) redundant, hence the change.)
It think they'll need to do some A/B/A testing to be sure.

Switch back to the original shade only for those that experienced the new shade. Maybe they'll see another multi-million dollar increase? That way you could further prove that it's indeed the color that made the difference and not simply the fact that the page was changed at all.

Added:

The Hawthorne effect is a form of reactivity whereby subjects improve an aspect of their behavior being experimentally measured simply in response to the fact that they are being studied, not in response to any particular experimental manipulation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect
Answered on their FAQ page:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/chickenfoot/faq.html
We don't need you to design anymore
RCS, CVS and SVN are in a real sense the same thing. You can view CVS as fixing a bug in RCS (it doesn't have concurrency), and SVN as fixing bugs in CVS (it doesn't have atomic commits). That is even how the SVN developers themselves marketed it.

Hg and git are different. It's not like SVN has a bug "it isn't distributed". It is fundamentally not distributed.
So the progression is:

1. Stop manually backing up versions, it sucks. Use RCS/CVS/SVN.

2. Stop using RCS/CVS/SVN, they suck. Use git/Hg.

I can easily imagine a new DVCS system that would fix bugs in git or Hg. The git UI sucks for example. But I can't easily imagine a fundamentally different successor to DVCS.

(Not that such a successor won't happen - of course it will. I just can't imagine what it will look like).
I suspect you're right on. The rest of this story is just some made-up huge number that would get people talking about Bing.
// Missed to read your comment earlier. For further interactions mail me at r.rajkumar[at]gmail[dot]com

The app (http://crm.ifreetools.com) is in alpha and the feedback till now is encouraging. Users have already started mapping iFreeTools CRM to their sub-domains, using Google Apps.
This is not true for git's object model (which I believe maps to Joel's "user model".) Quote The Git Book:

"Subversion, CVS, Perforce, Mercurial and the like all use Delta Storage systems - they store the differences between one commit and the next. Git does not do this - it stores a snapshot of what all the files in your project look like in this tree structure each time you commit. This is a very important concept to understand when using Git."

Source:http://book.git-scm.com/1_the_git_object_model.html

However the diffs are there below the snapshot-based model as means of effectively storing and transmitting the snapshots.
The first example is a red herring, and the second really doesn't have anything to do with the change vs. revision dichotomy.

If you want to split trunk into competing experiments (and eventually discard one) using a "traditional" RCS like Subversion, you can do that. Easily. Worrying about the linear history of rev numbers would be like worrying about the ordering of hash tags in git. Just ignore them -- you always can get the change history of the branch on which you're working.

The second example is a feature provided by distributed version-control, not the choice of "changes" over "revisions". It's maybe easier to implement distributed version control with the former paradigm, but it's not impossible in either case.
Nokia asks the Internet to help design a phone
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"ideal leader to be narcissistic, self-centred"

Perhaps many people who end up being leaders can be described this way, but I've always considered an ideal leader to be one who makes decisions based on the big picture and doesn't let self-interest cloud his/her judgment.
Mesofacts: slowly changing facts
* Taught myself pascal at 12 and many other languages since
* Skip a grade in primary school
* Got a 82(top 10 uni in UK) for MSc dissertation
* Discovered the British museum algorithm while meditating
* Sold tamarine balls when I was 5 for a quarter
This is interesting. Were you neighbours or something?
Ironically, the teeth brushing thing is a good example - it's the simple routines that I latch on to; going to the same places each day at the same times, etc. Not obsessively, but just automatically. I don't even know how some habits began.

Sometimes the things I do aren't even that enjoyable by themselves. (Why do I bite my fingernails? I certainly don't enjoy that but I can't seem to stop doing it and I've tried several techniques.) I feel like I program because I need to and I need to because I feel like it. Or something. There's a logical loop here that I can't seem to break out of - but it makes it hard to get me to do things I don't want to do and it's even worse when I know there's something I need to do that I don't want to do because I'll put it off as long as possible (and sometimes slightly longer).

What's weird (to me) is that the trait will even infect the things I enjoy - like programming. If there's a certain "big" thing I need to do (maybe it's a bunch of boring boilerplate or adapting old code to some new use-case) in order to progress on the part that I consider to be the real problem that I'm working on, I'll put it off and comment on Hacker News instead - sometimes for days. I feel terrible about it and it nags at me the whole time, but I still do it. Why?! :P
Why does noscript warn me about an XSS attack on this page?
I'd like to know how James Murdoch manages to reproduce and distribute Pringles with virtually zero cost as compared with traditional manufacturing? I'd sure like that app, "click to create a new pack of Pringles".

He's either being naive or intellectually dishonest; and I don't think he's naive.
Charlie Miller on Mac OS X, Pwn2Own and Writing Exploits
I am intrigued that it means so much to people that their opinions are accepted by everyone. Perhaps I don't understand completely, but when you wrote that you "got over it" that surprised me as I couldn't imagine there really is anything to get over.

I appreciate your reply though, I am always interested to understand peoples frustrations with such things. Whether it is with my own applications or other peoples.
I'm glad to see some brainpower being thrown at the washing machine.

I'm sure that there are a lot of smart people at the established brands working on improving these devices but they all seem to be falling into the "cell phone" syndrome of adding features w/o fixing the root problem (i.e., dropped calls).

I hope to be contributing to this or a similar project soon.
Fastest site on the Web: The IRS? | VentureBeat
Affluence and obesity tend to be inversely related in modern US culture. Affluence and Hispanic origin likewise, I suppose; though I do remember that when the big rush of immigration began in the mid-1980s that poor Hispanics in the cities tended to be quite healthy compared to others of similar income, probably because of farm or village eating habits carrying over.
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I play in a band, and last night we posted our first youtube music video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-KbQv9qB9o
Old technology that has been surpassed should be stabbed in the back. That doesn't mean the old technology can't be appreciated, just that it's place in the world has changed.

Nobody is driving 55 Chevy's around anymore. Some people dedicated aspects of their lives to appreciating the time and space when that technology was dominant, but their glory days have passed.

So has subversion's.
>What can one do with such ideas, except patent and try to market them to the most probably beneficiary?

That's your answer though. Or if you're feeling benevolent you could just publish them.
* Graduated university at age 16, Math PhD at age 20 (RPI)

* Performed with New York City Ballet

* Sang with Placido Domingo

* Founding investor in Napster

* Credited as a pioneer in social networking, founding
pioneering one in 2001, which heavily influenced Friendster which led to myspace, facebook etc.

* Acted in Sundance Feature Film competition selection

* Now doing next big thing, hehe ;)
http://www.podblogr.com
Needs more upvotes for figuring out how to ride a rare form of Malaria.
Exactly -- For the average PC user, the amount of effort required in switching to linux is more than the perceived benefit (if any) of using linux.
Actually what's happening is the way you work mirrors your tools.

I spent years using CVS, then years using Subversion, now I have almost 2 years of git under my belt. There is something appealing about numbered versions, but there is no significant benefit over unique hashes of versions, or rather, any small benefits of sequential numbers is vastly outweighed by the tremendous benefits of unique hashes.

I don't think any developer would disagree that the ideal workflow is to do one thing after another sequentially. It's just that in the real world, reasons come up where you might need to create topic branches. Even if you rarely need that functionality, there's no reason to stick with a crippled system like subversion unless you really need the one feature that it's entire design philosophy optimizes (partial checkouts) more than solid fundamental changeset tracking and manipulation.

I'm no zealot—you won't catch me advocating linux vs mac, emacs vs vi, or ruby vs java. In most technology choices there is a wide range of tradeoffs and considerations. However Subversion is one of those rare cases where the tech is fundamentally flawed and serious developers need to move on, whether it be git, mercurial, darcs, or whatever. Subversion has a few use cases, and if you are not a professional developer then maybe it's deficiencies aren't very relevant. However, if you're slinging code all day, version control is your bread and butter, it will stay with you across languages and platforms, so it's insane to stick with a crippled platform that will always be that way due to fundamental design flaws.
btw, Kiln looks really cool, especially the visual code tree. Your interns deserve a pat on the back for that.
When coding sites I always follow the design pattern of, how do I return this HTTP request as fast as possible. That's my number one priority, get the HTTP request back to the browser before doing anything else.

All other work to be done because of that request, that can be done in the background, will be done in the background.
firefox can't ignore dns. on windows, you have to do

ipconfig /flushdns

to clear your dns cache, then restart firefox
I would move Windows Forms to a higher level of project manager anxiety; this chart may have been correct in this regard 10 years ago but most PM's I've worked with are afraid to do anything that isn't "on the web" (including mobile apps) anymore.
Intelligentsia isn't bad, but there's always Metropolis and Asado :)
Why try to compete on the old platform niche from the 1970s? Technology is opening up new platform possibilities. Actually, they've been around for awhile, but the tech has reached the level where we can do really slick and convenient implementations for a reasonable price.

Also, don't discount the power of the marginal.
http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html

The inherent advantage of Linux is its openness. M$ and Apple can never match this. It is an inherent quality. How can it be turned into an unassailable advantage? One thing for sure, we'll never do that by playing Apple's game or Microsoft's. How do we play our own game and stop playing catch-up in theirs?
What is a Monad? An Explanation That Makes Sense
...with an applause meter running the whole time

Good point. That said, at a crude level Karma works for telling the user what kinds of comments are expected. I am tempted, for instance, to make funny one-liners on some HN topics. Karma makes me rethink that decision, as in: does it contribute to the discussion? The posters here seem to reward intelligent analysis, so maybe a one-liner isn't a smart move ... and so on so forth.
This was why I always had an order of magnitude more respect for Wozniak than jobs. I could never understand the level of admiration for the prototypical managerial leech over the honest technical genius.
Or where rude just means "rude".

Certainly, various geek social dysfunctions tend to get a free pass (empty snark, ridiculously aggressive tone, ignoring most of what someone's said to knee-jerk on minutia, etc.), but you'll get that in any geek crowd. HN does tend to react properly to other forms of rudeness.

I like votes as a clue to the reactions of the people reading threads, myself. I don't always agree with or approve of the reactions (this place is not exactly great when gender issues come up), but that's just dealing with people.

Mind, sometimes it just isn't worth dealing with people - there's nothing wrong with skipping the chatter if it's not useful to you.

(Personally, my main gripe is that people tend to vastly prefer a short, pithy remark over a clearly-written and more nuanced bit of, say, anything more than this comment's length. To see an offhand remark I spent a second typing get double the votes of something I've more seriously considered irks a bit.)
If we had a company that sold Linux desktops, provided good tech support, ensured most devices/cameras/printers etc. worked out of the box, marketed the online software side correctly, (because your average person is not aware of Google docs for example) - and this unfamiliarity of Linux came at a reduced price, people would go for it. I don't think they'd care. ( e.g. most people can switch cell phones without thinking twice because they know it does photos/calls/emails/SMS)

But there won't be a company like this. Because it doesn't make business sense. We don't pay too much of a premium for Windows when it comes pre-installed. And if the demand conveys that even that premium is too high - Microsoft can comfortably reduce that to maintain share. So the company that gets into the Linux desktop game is never going to win.
What developers need to always understand is that the PM's view is the business's view.

If developers have a tough time with developing Windows Forms and would rather use Python daily, they should found a start-up and create a business that is inline with a developer's view.
I'm no color theorist, but it's confusing to me why he would think the numbers for the perfect blue have to add up to 255 across all three channels. By that logic, wouldn't the perfect color white would be R:85 G:85 B:85 (or #555555)?
This is the key point. Many inventions are 'obvious in retrospect'. The Amazon 1-click patent is one of those annoying things where it seems obvious, but no one had ever done it and it's a huge boon to businesses (it makes impulse buying almost automatic).

For many of these patents, people will say it's obvious, but it's only obvious now that we've seen it all. No one else had ever done it before, so what's obvious about it?
Hardly a new phenomenon. Back in the day (the rotary phones, a dime at the booth day), I noticed that I knew the telephone numbers of quite a few persons whose street address I did not know; I knew perfectly well how to get to the corner of Easy and Mean Sts., and that my friend lived in the ranch house with the juniper halfway down Mean going west. But could I give you the 100s part of the house number? Probably not. Did it matter? Only if I were mailing Christmas cards.
I wonder what new words they can come up with. Thief does not really work because for centuries it too obviously meant something very different.

Maybe one could find some good word in world of sex offenders and perverts?

How do you call jerking off to someones picture that had not been explicitly sold to you for that purpose either by model, photographer or someone who has agreement with both of them without informing any of them what you are doing especially if some people buy exactly this picture from them for exactly that purpose?
I'm UK too and have no A-levels or Degree. I studied and dropped out of performing arts!

No issue in getting a job though. It's the experience, passion and determination that counts IMO. And only a few monolithic companies have those checkboxes.
So basically Silverlight loses out because Flash was first-to-market? They're essentially the same thing.

I mean, I don't do Silverlight either, but your reasoning seems suspect.
Time Seem Right to Spin Off PayPal
Ask HN: Startup advisors
Are there any companies that specialize in being startup advisors, that a startup can hire to help them with product definition, product/market fit, customer acquisition, traction, etc?

I guess this is somewhat similar to what YC and Techstars do, for a share in the company. But are there such services for hire?
As a Peace Corps volunteer, I lived in Botswana for a while in the 1980s. My village was right on the border with South Africa. Aerial photos show a dramatic "step function" in how green each side of the border is (even during the dry season). I always heard the difference attributed to the free-ranging of goats and cows in Botswana, versus managed livestock in South Africa. From my experience (the goats are everywhere), may be.

There also may have been large effects from burning wood on the Botswana side, versus gas cylinders in RSA, but that was outside my direct experience.

I believe the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic shows a similar effect.
* I biked 5000+ miles across the US, in high school

* I've traveled to 6 out of 7 continents

* I've managed to stretch undergrad out into a seven year fiasco
Mercurial, and the others of that ilk.
I really don't understand the whole controversy around piracy. The fact of the matter is, it's a real hassal to purchase and use physical media and the respective industries are spending all of their money suing the consumer instead of listening to what might make them spend more money.

Sure the word sounds glamorous if you're a blithering idiot. When someone downloads a torrent, they aren't thinking "Damn I'm like Johnny Depp!" They are thinking "This is so much easier than dealing with 15 FBI warnings and a stack of previews I can't skip before I watch this movie."

Think about it: You know the guy selling screeners and movie copies in the subway for $10 a piece? ...the same thing you can buy in the store without all of the copyright notices and advertisements and $30 cheaper. Which one would you rather buy?
Begs for ClearMaps http://www.sunlightlabs.com/blog/2010/clearmaps-mapping-fram...
I don't like branches either (we've been using git for maybe a year now at justin.tv, so I've definitely had the opportunity to grow to like them).

Actually I think one of the biggest reasons I don't like them is that they're a kind of "hidden state". If someone made a VCS (or just an interface to an existing VCS) where branches were just represented by different subdirectories in the filesystem, then I might use them more.
Ask HN: How many startups exist in the US?
Any idea, estimations, links? How many are web-startups?
All the farms and all the water on both sides of the dividing line deteriorate in quality. If the detrimental effects were the result of the redistribution of land, then we should see a disproportionate decline in the green farms on the right.

Since all the farms declined in fertility and water containment, it appears to me that there was another factor affecting the deterioration than just new owners.
Is it that "piracy" is too sexy, or is it that DRM and the alternatives those companies offer a bad deal?

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/steal_this_comic.png

Also, being forced to sit through stuff stinks. If I am offered an alternative, I'll take it. I'll even pay.
I don't really get that part, at least not with the way I use svn. I branch, I tag and I use patch sets, which have some similarity to changes. I read this bit http://hginit.com/02.html from Joel's Mercurical intro, and it sounds a lot like how I use svn, except that the branches are on the server, so they are probably a little slower, with the positive tradeoff of being available to my team. The other bonus with dvcs is having local history without doing pushes, which I think is a bigger selling point (although I get something similar from my IDE).

I generally hew to the extreme programming view of branching and continuous integration. Push early and push often. Browsing github, I seem to find a preponderance of projects where the branches are never push-ed back to a master copy. No matter what tool you are using, branches can introduce semantic changes that are hard to merge.

To sum, DVCS not that big of a deal for the way many people already use CVCS, when you end up working with a centralized copy anyway.
The Three P’s of Enterprise Collaboration
Whatever new word they come up with, it will eventually sound sexy, too, assuming it sticks.

Rebelling against self-destructive authoritarianism == sexy, no matter what you call it.
Kindle on Mac Desktop: Too Little, Too Late?
I did recommend to the Io author that he create a Hash literal syntax because I like the fact that Ruby has one ;-)

To be clear, I think that it is great that you created this book. I just responded as I did because I'm often frustrated when I use Ruby APIs that sacrifice good design (imo) for syntactic terseness.
I mostly agree with you, but, just to play devil's advocate...

How exactly would you propose cramming a usable Python runtime into a download that was substantially less than 1.5 MB in size? On the OS X 10.5 box I'm sitting at right now, the 'libpython2.6.a' static library from my source build of Python 2.6 is over 6 MB. The actual 'python' binary is nearly 2 MB, and stripped of all debugging symbols, still comes in at about 1.4 MB.

If you had some really good compression, and included only a small part of the standard library, I can see getting a CPython package in around the 2-3 MB mark, but not much more.
The music industry is probably happier with their choice of label in Germany. Pirated copies are widely called „Raubkopieren“ (lit. robbed copies) and pirates are widely called „Raubkopierer“ (lit. people who rob copies).

Just as the pirate label that‘s a pretty stupid description. Making copies might be wrong but it’s not robbery.
Yes. Before Amazon, if you asked any software developer of average competence to create a one click order process, they'd have it for you in a few days. Yes it was a clever idea, but ideas by themselves are not supposed to be patentable.
Setters are composable and you can modify their behavior. Hash literals ... not so much.

It would seem you only see the surface beauty of things. [redacted -- good point]