skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'd like to put out a bet:

By April 1st 2011, Doctorow will have an iPad. He'll argue that it's more important to be on the cutting edge helping to shape the community rather than to sit back on the porch and complain like an old man. He'll probably like the device, and have a list of apps that he feels exemplify his vision of the device's potential.

I guess it shouldn't confuse me why people are so eager to comment on what or why the iPad is the best/worst thing ever. We're looking at an attempt to completely change the way folks use a computer here; we're looking at a whole new product. To say, “I can forsee this impugning freedom!” is to claim to have a crystal ball of epic proportions.

Given the incredible, measurable, financial success of IP that has shed DRM, I don't think the industry is entirely behind locking up things in the way Doctorow predicts.
Help Community Support for Linux
But of course, nobody's feet are actually covered in shit. They have walked on the same planet as shit, of course, but that's about it.
Except that Apple specifically prohibits interpreted code. You'd have to do a web-based Javascript version which could be interesting, but performance would be much worse than a native app.
Its interesting, i have been using swype beta on my droid for the last month or so, and it completely changed the way i type on the phone, i just had to type again on the iphone, and it struck me as almost anachronistic.

A Swype like feature on the ipad can have great potential.
> I've seen a lot of great "website designs" done in Photoshop that wouldn't make terrible websites due to load speed, structure, or other unconsidered elements.

Agree. We've had designers deliver good looking stuff to us that ended up being unusable because they put a lot of time into delivering what they thought we needed instead of just reading the instructions. Tech knowledge helps eliminate communication problems.

The approach that works for me is keeping things simple and only adding graphic detail when it improves the look of the service. It helps to give developers examples of existing graphics to work with when you want a certain look. When you're looking for something very, very specific you can get an outside designer to put things together. I'd be surprised if you don't get responses from this post.
Would my wife use this to optimize her husband? I mean, is the optimization mutual?
Of course you can.

But isn't the entire point of Ubuntu supposed to be that things "just work"? Most people don't go searching through settings to fix annoyances--they just get annoyed.
How to Find Web Design and Development Work
It's a monstrosity because the underlying language design makes it necessary. A whole class of bugs could be eliminated if the language didn't allow you to have null references, and instead, made you explicitly state your function might not return an object, for example, the Maybe datatype in Haskell.
You have to go a step farther, if you agree that the model is flawed, don't buy the device, and tell others why you've made that decision. Which is exactly what Corey is proposing (and doing).

We won't see groundswell against this kind of thing, unless we help to create it by educating potential customers.
It baffles me how people are willing to forego a life just so they can own a big house. Tho two-body problem I can understand, but wasting so much of your life so you can own a house you can't enjoy seems so senseless.
On a semi related note, Jeff Jarvis book What would Google do? put me off pretty much anything else he ever had to say in about 2 or 3 chapters.
Of course I'm not confused. I was just pointing out it was mildly amusing that the publication highlighted links to an opposing viewpoint from one of the other producers of the very same site.
If anything, shouldn't they fly their airplane into the ones who sued them? Getting angry at the patent office by the time they got their head on straight seems the wrong target at the wrong time.
I don't think that these voices are useful. I don't claim they are right or wrong, but I think they are useless.

If the iPad is such a bad platform, developers/publishers/users will understand it and abandon the ship.

But, for now, it does not matter how many times these concepts are reiterated. People already have decided wether to buy/develop for/publish on iPad or not. Very few will change their mind reading these pieces (or the opposite sided ones).
Don't ask people to play a role in your company unless they're going to work for it. Once you start growing people will want to be associated with your success and you won't find it hard to engage.

Asking for recommendations from people who know what they're doing is an entirely different matter. I'd guess that's what they're looking for -- social proof you are reliable and not/crazy.
But I don't want a keyboard on the device all the time, else I'd have bought a notebook.

So I can use it the vast majority of the time without having a keyboard attached. And I can make edits or small additions to my novel from anywhere in addition to all the other things that I do, the vast majority of which aren't typing-heavy. Then when I want to sit down and focus on writing for a long time, I put it in the keyboard dock or use a wireless keyboard.

If all you ever want to do with the device is to type your novel, yeah, just get a notebook instead, it'll be better for you. Which is fine: they still exist and nobody that's buying an iPad is buying it only to type their novel on the thing.
My kingdom for an iPad
hypercard was never about performance
Article Summary:

Definitely not. Since 1971 the increase in postal rates has increased more slowly than inflation measured by the CPI. This means that despite the numerous rate increases over the years stamps have actually been getting cheaper relative to the purchase power of the dollar.

This is not going to change either. In December of 2006 George Bush signed a law requiring the increase in postal rates to always stay below an inflation based ceiling.

http://hnsummary.com/2010/04/02/should-i-invest-in-forever-s...
HTML 5: The tipping point is with developers, not browsers
Not really. It's a consumer electronics device, not a religion. If you don't like it because you can't (easily) open it up and change the battery, you don't have to buy it. Only geeks care that geeks don't like the iPad -- and from what I can tell, it doesn't bother Apple much, either. They're selling plenty of iPads to the other 99% of the world.

My grandfather used to complain that "cars these days" can't be repaired without taking them to the shop because of the "damned computers." He was wrong, too.
Kanban: a lean approach to agile software development
Testing Late Stage Traffic Improves Conversion Rates Quickly
> The web has made producers of us all.

Not even close, and the imbalance between creators of content and consumers of content on the web is growing every day.

> If the iPad is just another consumer platform for consuming and not creating content, then it will just be another way to watch TV or listen to music or download information. Convenient, yes, but just another device.

The iPad is not a TV or an iPod. It's already a two way device.

> To be something different, the iPad must not be just a delivery platform but a creative one, offering professionals and amateurs an opportunity to create a unique experience with interactive media.

The device isn't creative. A piano isn't creative. An iPad isn't creative.

The iPhone has Ocarina, or Layers, or Everyday Looper, and so on. There's no reason to think the iPad won't run such apps, and better.

More importantly, most people don't think of themselves as "creatives", but there is content they do want to create and share such as email and photos or Facebook statuses. The iPad makes that easier than ever.

iPad lets anyone easily express themselves to their social circle.

PS. Speaking as a former Hypercard programmer, seems to me something as simple as iWeb can meet casual "info app" creator needs, while HTML5 + Canvas feels like today's Hypercard on steroids: http://www.canvasdemos.com/
When I launched it, it was drawing fps already.

The command to show FPS is "/fps 1".
The way you improve your iPad isn't to figure out how it works and making it better. The way you improve the iPad is to buy iApps. Buying an iPad for your kids isn't a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it's a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals.

Because there's no powerful, intuitive, and exhaustively-documented SDK built on a robust set of APIs?

Yes, the fact that it costs $100/year to do anything useful with it is a problem. But these characterizations of the iPad as a consumption-only device, when the platform it's built on has sparked a creative, entrepreneurial revolution on mobile devices, is complete nonsense.
This kind of crap drives me nuts.

There are completely legitimate reasons to be opposed to the concept of the iPad, or to suggest that people should not buy one. When you construct an argument with stretched truths and hyperbole, you just weaken the entire position and make people who agree with you look like fanatics.

In other words, if you have such a good argument, why are you employing Rovian tactics?
He doesn’t omit Apple’s DRM past, he merely accuses Jobs of hypocrisy with respect to DRM. Jobs seems to hate it if music labels use it (“… whose CEO professes a hatred of DRM …”) – all the while he has no problem with much of the Video content and all the Apps keeping their DRM.
I'll agree with your latter point, he does seem a bit sensational in his claim that the device will be physically useless in less than 24 months. But I disagree with your first argument.

You're correct that he omits that they have removed DRM from their music, but not their videos. And I think you can safely argue the point that if Apple had started out with iTunes without DRM that they never would have made it off the launchpad. He also specifically used the term "entertainment industry", which is still true. Apple still uses restrictive DRM on it's videos, as well as it's i(Phone|Pad|Pod Touch) products. The latter are definitely marketed as "entertainment devices".
More Struggling Borrowers Face Pay Garnishment
The author is so gonna get laid after writing this! He should publish it in Vanity Fair.
How about using a Sudoku captcha? ;-)
As for the fabrication charge, that's at best an unfortunate choice of phrasing. His point is that when an iPad battery fails (it will-- all batteries do fail), you have no choice but to throw away the device or to send it back to Apple for them to perform the battery replacement. What happens when Apple decides that the current model of iPad is too old to bother replacing batteries on? You can no longer maintain your own device. This is quite different from not being able to repair your own device, as it has long been the expectation that users are responsible for changing out batteries. By locking down the device, Apple is promoting the production of more e-waste. Regardless of any unfortunate phrasing, the point remains valid.
Subversion Vision and Roadmap (spoiler: no DVCS)
This is getting uncomfortably close to debt slavery.

In ancient times, or less ancient times in some countries, people who got into sufficiently large debt to someone had to sell themselves to them. And since credit card lenders' ideal situation is when someone can pay the interest on their debt but not the balance, if they tuned the percentage of the garnishment to do that, the debtors would end up paying them for the rest of their lives.
If they supported closed captioning, that would be more of an option for all of us.
My comment wasn't directed to this one article or its author, but to the situation in general where I see more people complaining now about the iPad's lock-in than I remember complaining when the XBox360 was released.
There is a huge difference between 8 hours before bed and "the morning", which was your contention as the only time caffeine should be used. 8 Hours before bed is roughly 530 pm for me. And it coincidentally, is very near the end of the workday for me.

You either A> are being inconsistent, B> Don't understand half-life or C> are overstating your case. Look, you said before you think it's only useful in the morning, then you say:

>If I don't stop 6 hours before bed it affects my performance the next day.

So either you go to bed at 6pm, or you aren't saying the same thing about when you find caffeine useful vs when it effects your sleep as you originally claimed it was only useful in morning.

Additionally, the crash from stimulants is from adrenaline rush and a dip in serotonin.

If you're taking a modest amount of caffeine, you shouldn't be suffering a downswing. Only heavy users (400+ mg a day, usually addicts) are likely to actually have a serotonin dip, and only large doses cause a large enough adrenaline surge for you to feel a crash similar to what you'd feel on a stronger stimulant like amphetamines.

The best use case for caffeine is: No daily usage, less than 400mg per day when used, used as late in the day as required to stay awake (and remember it lasts for about 4-8 hours longer than you are drinking it), but not in the morning. Get your heart racing in the morning by a set of jumping jacks or something else, and watch for signs of addiction and tolerance.

And now, I'm invoking XKCD and ignoring the rest of this thread so I can get some code released: http://xkcd.com/386/
Beautiful. I suppose the function signatures would be:

peek : int * int^3 -> int
pos : int * int^3 -> 3*int^2
poke : int * 3*int^2 -> int^3

The functions would behave like this:

peek 2 (98,76,54) = 76
pos 2 (98,76,54) = (98,_,54)
poke 77 (98,_,54) = (98,77,54)

You could chain them like this:

poke 99 (pos 1 (98,76,54)) = (99,76,54)
poke 77 (pos 2 (98,76,54)) = (98,77,54)
poke 55 (pos 3 (98,76,54)) = (98,76,55)
I wouldn't class the hardware as entirely first-generation given the "big iPod Touch" aspect.
> "Also inexplicable is Apple's love of DRM"

Love of DRM? Hardly - Jobs was the one who wrote an open letter slamming the music industry for insisting the use of DRM. They also managed to completely remove DRM from the entirety of the iTunes Store (after Amazon did it first, to be fair).

As for the nonetheless strong presence of DRM on the device, there's nothing inexplicable about it: they don't own the content on the stores, and the people who do are unwilling to give up DRM. Kindle books are still entirely DRM'ed, and both devices support non-DRM formats for books you get from wherever. On this part one ought to blame the publishers, not the people who deliver the content - the moment publishers allow Apple/Amazon to drop DRM on e-books is the day it'll happen.
I like how people hold the freedom of the Android market against Android. "I want to force every developer to do things Apple's way, because change scares me." The solution to that is to write your own software, not to refuse to let people publish theirs. Want a consistent interface? Shut the fuck up and write some code.

Let me know when my iPhone (+) can turn off its ringer when I get to work, or when I can chat on IRC over ssh, or when I can share my location with my friends automatically. One app may have purple buttons or its own keyboard, but at least my phone can do something useful.

(+) Warning: literary device. I do not actually have an iPhone.
Speaking as a happy Android Dev Phone 1 owner, yes, I have looked at the apps on the marketplace. No, it's not perfectly consistent, but it's rather damn good for the most part. Moreover, it's improving all the time as Google improves the native keyboard and identifies what tools developers want. It's sheer hyperbola to say that there is "zero consistency" in Android apps.
Off windows, it probably takes more processor to run the youtube video than it would to run the game. I'm in.
Whoa, it's almost like smart people don't mind intelligent disagreement with their viewpoints! My world is shattered!
A Peek At iBooks Metadata
It's a little more difficult than simply "just copying" the technology. The Fingerworks staff had more expertise on the subject than pretty much anybody in the world.

Patents were put in place to discourage trade secrets. In the technology world, trade secrets are not quite as advantageous as they once were.

Somebody else could have developed the FW technology, at a certain cost and time spent. It still makes the FW technology valuable.

> Indeed, FingerWorks probably would never have been founded if it could not have differentiated itself with patented technology.

So by that argument, why do any software companies exist? Last time I checked, I'm getting paid to write software. You're just trying to spread FUD. Nice try.
The article was intended to convey two things:

1) For IMVU users who may not be web server gurus, give a peek into what goes into building a large, 24/7 website.

2) For those who already know memcached, provide some data on load capability for comparison and amusement.

This particular memcached is running an ancient version of Debian on a three year old dual-Xeon 1U box, and it is using TCP. (This is different from many users who move to UDP, to get more throughput but more loss)

The main tuning happens in the switches, where we attempt to have sufficient capacity to avoid packet loss except under the absolutely worst load transients.

I'd love to see other similar data from other sites, btw!
Actually, apple tends to reject apps built on app generating toolkits. You have to compile all the way down to code before you are passing that issue.

Appcelerator's titanium is looking to be a good choice for some people. It's a little light on video playback abilities for my taste, but it's showing promise (I'm primary using it for android but it's iPhone capabile too).
Javascript performance could easily exceed the performance of HyperCard back in the day, in absolute speed.
Ask HN: Review our app (To→done) 
http://todoneapp.com/

The premise behind this app is that there are a whole class of to-dos that don't need constant review, organization, prioritization and so on in list form. Personally, I've found that a list is great for decomposing a problem at work into steps, or remembering things when I'm shopping - but in terms of helping me get things done in my life, they're useless and somewhat oppressive. Weeds sprout unhindered, mom goes uncalled, flowers go unbought for the wife, the car goes undetailed, and so on. Pushing items around on a list doesn't get these things done.

To→done represents an intentional constraining of the 'todo' problem that I've found forces you into not obsessing over/playing with a list, and actually compels you to take action. Moreover, it attempts to create a mental contract with yourself by stating that "it will take me 30 minutes to pick the weeds" and later, when you have 30 minutes free, forcing you to acknowledge that if you just got off the computer, you could actually take care of those pesky weeds right now.

The app is dead simple. I'd love to hear from people if they think that a methodology like this could help them get things done in their life (or maybe it's just me.)

Thanks!
To→done
Why think he will buy an iPad rather than any one of the number of more open pads already out or coming out soon?
Try Searching Bing for This
I invested in six of those, would have on two others if I were better organized.

I have a similar hit rate on the NYC list.
Article Summary:

Two researchers at HP Labs have discovered that you can use Twitter mentions to predict how well a movie will do in it’s first couple of weeks more accurately than any currently used methods. The researchers monitored movie mentions in 2.9 million tweets from 1.2 million different users over a three month period. The tweets were regarding some 24 different movies including Twilight: New Moon.

They used “buzz” to measure how the first weekend would perform and then used tweets with reviews from people who saw the movie to predict how well the movie would do in the second weekend.

This method was 97.3% effective at predicting first weekend performance which is better than the currently used Hollywood Stock Exchange which is 96.5% effective.

http://hnsummary.com/2010/04/02/twitter-predicts-box-office-...
iPhone 3GS is the first really awesome iPhone, for me, and I had the iPhone 2G. Lack of 3G and the really godawfully slow UI (still faster than most Android phones today, sad really) made the 2G's experience a little less than stellar.

The 3GS is the first iPhone where I didn't get constant lags and skips in the UI.
> I might as well have taken $70 out of my pocket and set fire to it.

That was my experience with AdWords a few years ago.
Consequently, I haven't clicked on a google ad since.
I'm pretty sure they just pay the Post Office to put ads in every PO Box there.
Depends on what demographic you are looking for. I think the matches are pretty decent.

It definitely has a Web 2.0 feel that, IMHO, attracts the more intelligent demographic; people with the the ability to be introspective.

I haven't used any other sites, though. But I imagine OKCupid is not a representative sample of the population, and That Is A Good Thing.
Apple's application review process has as much, or more, to do with your success than whether your users love the app or not.

That is absurd. There are 150,000+ apps on the App Store. Those have all passed Apple's review process, by definition. And yet only a very small percentage of those approved apps are popular/profitable. Building an app that people love is much harder, and much more important to your success, than simply passing the App Store review. If you stay within the fairly well-known guidelines, passing the App Store review is a very low bar to clear.
And I still have a 1st gen Macbook Pro that's been going strong since 2006.
Agreed. I wish Eric didnt repeat so much of what he's already said. Repetition in an age of infinite content availability is unnecessary.

But if scoble had heard his other interviews, i doubt he would have been as surprised or asked those questions. Scoble is great but sometimes like all journalists he can forget to 'know his audience'. And for each of his interviews, he shares the audience with the interviewee.
Let me know how that goes.
There are a few ways around this:

First is to say "screw it" and interpret code anyway. Many apps do this. If the language was stripped down enough (say, like HyperCard) it might not be an issue at all.

The second is to run the code somewhere else (on a server) and return the result to the UI on the iPad.
Its bad in the sense that its a "closed" platform, where you are at the mercy of the manufacturer. Not bad in the sense that its a horrible product and developers can't make money from it.

There are some very good arguments both for and against ipad, and it is important to have these discussions openly as often as possible.

Popular game consoles like PS and Xbox are good examples of closed system that is good for business but bad for innovation. Price and market are tightly controlled.