skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Eh, actually, I think that most of the logos you cite are fairly unique, and even their amateurish style added something. I would argue that a memorable, unique and ugly logo is worth quite a bit more than a perfect, beautiful and forgettably generic logo.

I had this discussion with chris a while back... he came up with a rather nice web 2.0 pastel logo for prgmr.com. I stuck with figlet. His argument was that a generic logo made people more comfortable, while I thought that the 'rounded corners' made me look like a knockoff. I'm pretty invested in my brand; like me or hate me, I want you to remember me.
Indeed, this search term has been uncensored when searching google.cn from outside of China for some time. I'm surprised it took Tom's Hardware so long to get onto it.
The last line in the article sums it best:
"Why wasn’t this inventer 50 years ago?"

Exactly my thought, this is a bit like inventing a better cd/dvd case now.
Twitter's constraints cajole content
I have thoroughly enjoyed your point-by-point rebuttals regarding the historical facts and their many interpretations, etc. However, the crux of your argument is essentially, "Well, you guys (Brits, Americans, et al) admire bad people too and we don't say anything!" And frankly, it misses the mark entirely.

This isn't a question of whose 'wrong' is right or even whose 'wrong' is a little more right. It is a question of 'is it wrong at all?' And it is. It just isn't possible to argue that Hitler effected a positive (or even net neutral) change on the world - hence he is worthy of no admiration, regardless of what nation it comes from.

That's basically what it comes down to - 'Is X praiseworthy?' If X is not, then ultimately it doesn't matter a bit where the praise comes from. To say otherwise is to be an apologist for evil men and evil actions (as being evil makes an X not worthy of praise.)
Apple's really getting out of hand in their assertions of ownership.

Could you be more specific?
Right. I thought you had misread my sentence, sorry.

I phrased it this way because I felt saying that it is 'consistent' might give the impression that I see it as some kind of proof of my theory, while 'not inconsistent' suggests it is simply not disproved by the known data (which may not be totally reliable either).
> The patent licensing is dirt cheap, the people paying in are almost exclusively hardware makers

That is absolutely incorrect. The MPEG-LA even wants per unit royalties on decoders (as well as on encoders AND content providers).

This is simply incompatible with Free/Open Source Software, at least where SW Patents exist. Note that Chrome is not F/OSS even though it's 99.9% identical to Chromium that is. Firefox is 100% F/OSS.
Favorite quote:

"According to the star of both movies, Sam Worthington, some movies have things that just shouldn't fly at your face."
Check out this "quine relay!"
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/ku-ma-me/20090916/p1

The Ruby program outputs Python that outputs Perl that outputs Lua that outputs OCaml that outputs Haskell that outputs C that outputs Java that outputs Brainfuck that outputs Whitespace that outputs Unlambda that outputs the original Ruby program.

(I was unable to get it to work when I tested it, but I still find it quite impressive!)
Are they not making the mistake that Microsoft made, by trying to push Android into too many different hardware situations.

I forget what the name of the head Windows CE developer was who told Bill Gates that devices needed their own specific platform, but I feel Google should heed that advice.

I have no doubt that Android will be fine for many hardware applications, but the question to my fell HNers is, should it?
I was wondering, what do you personally do when shirt buttons come off?
Digital economy bill passes the uk house of lords - The Inquirer
It's really a giant game of Chess, here. Apple can't possibly expect to win this lawsuit.

Jonathan Swartz, former CEO of Sun, had an excellent blog post on the subject: http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artis...
"the crux of your argument is essentially, "Well, you guys (Brits, Americans, et al) admire bad people too and we don't say anything!"

No that is not my point at all. I said explicitly I think Hitler is an evil person. I am not trying to defend Hitler at all.

My point is what is "good" and "bad" varies from person to person and country to country and is rarely a binary judgement (and history is rarely "black and white" wrt good and bad) and where it is , it keep shifting with time.

Germans cringing because Pakistanis(!) don't see Hitler as completely evil makes no sense to me. Their historical "experience" of Nazism is too different to expect a consensus. Complete with a picture of kids making a swastika (the Swastika is a Hindu symbol of good fortune btw) that article is ignorant and supercilious.

Germans don't cringe about "bigger" murderers. Why should they hold Pakistanis to an unattainable standard? Rank Hypocrisy and sensationalism(imo).
URL Shorteners Make the Web Substantially Slower
That's not necessarily the case.

Silverlight runs on top of IE6. Silverlight 3 has support for "plugable media codecs", which means that you can stream Theora/OGG content in Silverlight (I don't know if it can be hardware accelerated ... but it would work for non-HD content anyway).

Silverlight also has good browser/JS interoperability, which means it is possible to add support for HTML5 Theora in any IExplorer version without even asking the user if it wants to or not.

I couldn't find better references, but see here ...

http://www.atoker.com/blog/2010/02/04/html5-theora-video-cod...

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Mar-23-1.html

Penetration is already pretty good, and I'm pretty sure that within the next 2 years all IExplorer users will have Silverlight installed (Microsoft can always push it using their update mechanism).

You could do the same in Firefox ... add support for H.264 by using a Flash or a Silverlight applet in combination with a JS script that manipulates the HTML5 tags and communicates with the applet.

Since Silverlight is also running in Safari, you can add Theora support to it too (wouldn't work for iPhones, but still, it's pretty cool).

And it's all transparent. No confirmation dialogs.

It all depends on penetration rate of Silverlight of course, but recent stats (from riastats.com or statowl.com) puts it at ~ 45% ... jumping 10% from September (probably because of events like the Vancouver Olympics requiring it).

So web developers that are looking for a solution to streaming media that's standards compliant, can just do something like this.

Pretty ironic that the technical solution for this new format war comes from Microsoft.
Thecopypasteblog.com is under maintenance
From the article: "[The parents] soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young."

In other words, the albatross fly over the water, and when they see small, colored things floating near the surface, they assume they're small fish or other edible things. Up until quite recently (on the scale of albatross evolution), this was a pretty safe assumption.

So, no, low intelligence and/or desperation aren't implicated; rather, it's a matter of habitat and how prey are identified.
Apple has had a history of thinking it invented something (when it, itself, was inspired by another product) and believing they own it 100%

A good example is Keynote. Sun/Lighthouse developed a great presentation app called Concurrence that ran on NeXT's set of computers. When Steve sold NeXT to Apple and they went on to develop Keynote, he thought that was his invention, when really it's rather obvious where he got his inspiration from.

Plenty of other stories like these with Apple (and for that matter, all the other giants)
Wow. So easy to exploit...
I recently sold my Kindle DX because I planned to get an iPad and I was sad that I couldn't read all the Amazon eBooks I bought.

The first time I saw this headline, my reaction was: "Great! Yes! This is what I've been waiting for. Now I can just read those items."

After downloading it, I am so deeply disappointed. This app is so horrible, I would question why they released it. There's no highlighting, note taking, searching, nothing.

I question how Amazon thinks it can seriously compete with Apple & iBooks when they release things like these. Ugh.
Much better. Google Reader, for all its fame and popularity, really falls short in my eyes.

It's painful to go from NetNewsWire on the Desktop to Google Reader online.
Design doesn't have to be planned in advance, hence no contradiction. :)

If you are disciplined enough (and you should be), design can effectively happen as you go.
Hackers Lurking in Hotel Networks
Good point.
I'll answer with a question - what do you personally do, when your shoe need repair?
Usually one would not leave a DSLR or any digicam unattended, so you if you have an extra laptop laying around this would be an easier solution.
There is now: http://groups.google.com/group/play-framework/browse_thread/...
I would expand this further and say that the more margin you want, the more you need to spend on marketing in general. Marketing a product that is obviously similar to but cheaper than the competition is easier/cheaper than marketing a high margin product.

Note, I would be careful to not confuse margin and profit. Volume can often make up for a lower margin.
Ask HN: Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread)
I thought I'd start a "brag" thread. I know there are some really interesting and inspiring people here and I want to hear all the cool, unusual, unique things you have done.

Examples:

* I've travelled to all 7 continents
* I've won an olympic gold medal
* I've built a start-up from scratch and sold to Google
* I invented a consumer electronic device that has sold 10M units
* I've produced a feature length motion picture [Insert Title]
* I had this ... funny life experience
* I went drinking with Vladimir Putin
To be fair, the Kindle iPhone app is reasonably decent for reading. I can only hope the same person?/group? that worked on the iPhone app will also work on the iPad app, so they'll still be somewhat of a competitor. Especially since Amazon does sell a lot of books :p

The Mac OS X app is just an utter disappointment, and I ended up deleting it right after running it for the first time. Wonder why they even bothered?
'really bad' is 'really bad', independent of country. What we fear is that there are people in other countries who see him positive for example based on looks and fashion. That would be stupid. What's worse is if there are people who adore him for what he stood for. He stood for death, killing, torture, slavery, war, racism, race struggle. There are no positive values or positive motives to learn from him.

'bad' cannot vary from country to country - Adolf Hitler cannot be seen anything but pure evil.

That the Swastika is a symbol from India, Germans know already.
Have decided against due to a recent development, but thanks for the offer!
Probably circumstance.
Buttons and shirts: I sew.

Shoes need heavy-duty (compared to a needle) equipment to fix, so they go in the garbage or get taken to a shoemaker.
Then why do they still allow me to use Adobe's h.264 license?
Read the news much? Apple's been doing this all over the place. It's not only technology.

Apple has gone after companies that used the letter "i" in their name, like DOPi, which is a iPod case maker. That case was just thrown out by the courts.
Amazing Bathroom Accessories
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Electronic Components Distributors
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It is interesting that religious/conservative groups tried to stop the .xxx domain. If this went ahead it would be excellent for them as they could push to move ALL pornographic content into .xxx and ban it from other domains. Maybe they are wise to the feasibility of this approach but with more top-level domains there will be more range for more restricted registration.
Yes, it did seem that they might come after Apple, not only on anti-trust but also on precedence, using Apple's case against itself.
What part did I get wrong? I'm not making any moral statements, just synthesizing some facts. It largely wasn't until after Hitler lost that the Western world really cared about condemning genocide.

I live in a country that was built through conquest by defeating its original inhabitants in war and either enslaving them, relocating them, or exterminating them so the conquerers could inhabit their land. I suspect a lot of us are, and we don't all live in the same country. That's how a frightening amount of history unfolded--and if you're alive today, there's a pretty decent chance your ancestors won one of those wars. Hitler's conquest of Europe differed only in his methods.

Again, I'm not making any moral judgments. It seems to me that centuries of history were made by some groups violently enslaving, relocating, or exterminating other groups, and no one really cared that much. Hitler, like most conquerers, thought it was perfectly fine to enslave, relocate, or exterminate other groups of people as long as it served the interests of his own. His philosophy wasn't unique in that respect, in historical terms it was probably the norm.

You and I are enlightened enough that we don't want to "repeat" those "mistakes", but only because Hitler was famously unpopular and lost the war. If Hitler cut a deal with the western Allies and satisfied himself with a large chunk of eastern Europe, I don't know how many of us would share the enlightened anti-Nazi attitude we do share.
Ask HN: how do you promote a niche socail network?
I recently launched a niche social networking site (lovelyco.de), but I have little insight into how to successfully promote it. What is the best way to do this?
Completely agree. The question now is whether Apple will approve an iPad Kindle app or not.
Twitter as a force for good?
> which either already ships a licensed copy of the codec (Windows and OS X)

Only Windows 7 does.
On #10. Capture video of a linux desktop you suggest removing -r and using -b 250kbit/s. Did you try that? ;)

Is there a way to use a better codec?
Can someone explain to me why is this a top story on HN, and why should i care?

This sounds exactly just like celebrity gossip, just substitute people with big companies. I just can't grasp why is this interesting and why people are upvoting this?
Could be, but the author wrote "startups are more like art than science" and didn't use the word "engineering" at all. Plus, the same thing could be said of craftsmanship, sports, relationships, and more.

But really, I was only complaining about the general misunderstanding of what science means.
Well obviously not "OK I give up" but it could (and often end up) as an out of court settlement before anything happens.
Web inventor calls for government data transparency
this is part of the general 'frat boy club' feeling that I think YC might have. Hell, even PG says he prefers to go with athletes.

I think this is driving off some people we probably don't want to drive off.

I went to one of the YC presentations a while back, and I took my girl (She's an embedded systems programmer who is actually a /whole lot/ nerdier than I am; both in the sense that she is more skilled than I am with technology, and in the sense that she is less socially skilled than I am.) Anyhow, one of the founders was impressed by her, and wanted to recruit her. She ended up meeting the guy the next day, and my girl was really irritated, because the guy trying to recruit her kept going on about how they needed a woman to help make things move more smoothly on a social level, to add feminine energy to the startup, and other bullshit like that, rather than respecting her (rather impressive) credentials as a technical person.

I mean, the guy ended up losing out on what would have been an excellent employee because he couldn't turn off his preconceived notions after meeting and talking to a person.

That's the thing about stereotypes. We're all a little bit racist, and we're all a little bit sexist, but if you can't turn that off after someone proves that they understand what they are talking about, you have a problem that will cost you money.
I am interesting in the correlation between the barrage of "China is melting" stories recently and the recent article on how a large percentage of news stories are given to the agencies by corporations/special interest groups (can't find the link). As new agencies tend to parrot each other it probably wouldn't be that expensive to start something like this.
Meanwhile, "[space]-[space]" rather than "--" for "—" is idiosyncratic

It’s not idiosyncratic, it’s British.
Massetti premiscelati per posa parquet
Didn't try it. It actually turns out you need -r. Seems like an exception. I updated the article to reflect that. :)

The output codec? Use `-vcodec <format>`, where <format> is a video coded output by `ffmpeg -formats`.

Update: The whole comment about kbit/s was actually unnecessary, so I edited the article and replaced it with a better comment.
I'm calling link bait. A more appropriate title would have been "the Americans I saw at GDC are narrow-minded in my opinion". The title is worded in such a way as to imply that this is some kind of "official" report.
Have you seen the needle on a sewing machine?

Yeah, you need to thread that as well.
Serramenti legno Roma
Azienda che offre una gamma completa di serramenti legno Roma.
Amazon are locking down publishers before the iPad hits stores
Hi.
We use Play! Framework in production since a year ago.

We have two sites, http://www.masterbranch.com which is a site to manage developer CVs and track your open source experience in your CV. The other one is a network about developers, sysadmins, web designers (this one is in spanish) http://es.debugmodeon.com

We are happy with Play!. It's easy to use, has lots of built-in features and Play! team is also awesome and their work is exquisite.

Cheers
borges was borges. a programming language suitable for a lone genius isn't that useful.
There are few scenarios where url shorteners come in handy... one being Twitter, and the other being times when you get an insanely long and unwieldily querystring moster like earlier when I was sending some directions from Google Maps to a friend. For the former [Twitter], I wrote about what I think could be a simple and effective solution on my blog.

Enjoi - http://whalesalad.com/blog/how-twitter-can-eliminate-url-sho...

TL;DR - Let's use the simple Markdown syntax to let users enter links in their tweets. There are a few downsides (larger columns in the Twitter DB) but Twitter wouldn't need URL shorteners any longer! Plus since they moved to Cassandra... maybe tweet size doesn't really matter anymore :D
So was Nabokov.

The intended meaning is of course "a novel written by a literary critic that is not primarily a writer" but that's a mouthful, isn't it?
The Story of the CDO Market Meltdown [pdf]
Kutoken Django Hosting now supports Nginx
Using vi to edit lisp is an interesting choice - I've got the vi commands hardwired in my brain now after using them for 20+ years and I've written a lot of Lisp but I don't think I've ever written any Lisp in vi.
German domination of Euroland is a disaster
The story behind the thesis:
http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2010/03/15/michael-lewiss-the-big...
My point was that the protocols could in theory be used across connections other than serial ports.
Being an European having lived in the states for five years and coming there often having great friends it's pretty basic.

There are morons and fantastic people in the US, just like Europe and everywhere else.

It borderline absurd to talk about American vs. Europeans unless you are talking statistics and even there is problematic.
But think about it, what will happen then?

You make it sound like this is a hypothetical scenario, but the codec mandate was removed from the HTML5 spec last June.

The reality is that Microsoft will support h.264, Apple supports h.264, Google supports h.264 (and Theora). Opera currently supports only Theora, but their implementation can support h.264. Mozilla is the only browser vendor that willfully forbids its users from viewing h.264 (or any other format but Theora) in <video>. In addition: Flash, Silverlight, and QuickTime all support h.264.

Bear in mind that the <video> tag has always been codec agnostic and able to support multiple codecs in the same tag. The codec mandate was only to specify a common codec across all browsers, but there is no point in mandating something that won't be implemented.
This press release didn't say anything. It could have been one line long. "We feel Apple's case has no merit, and we will fight it" or something of the like. That's the only interesting thing it said. Then it just went into "HTC is awesome", which has nothing to do with the case.
> I hope you can at least agree that going from two proprietary formats to one is a marked improvement.

I think I'd argue one proprietary format is worse than two in terms of lock-in, monopoly power and misaligned incentives.