skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I still think comparing the App Store to physical stores is a flawed analogy:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1272433

Jobs emphasizes this by pointing out that Android (or, non-Apple) is the only option available for mobile software if you disagree with Apple's app store policies. Why not allow people to download/install apps outside the App Store? They do own the phone, right?
Could be interesting. I'm at Sydney Uni - so inner west or Sydney CBD would suit. Please e-mail me any more info :
SydneyHN@CyberFonic.com
So we've established that there is a continuum between reporting all the facts and reporting none of them. As we've said, legally reporters are bound to stand at one point on this continuum (report most facts, but no names of abuse victims, no names of children in the police blotter, etc). It is a reasonable belief that ethically reporters are bound to stand at another point closer to reporting less facts, including omitting the name of someone who lost company property.

There's no proving or disproving points here, as you seem to think. It is a valid belief that ethically the name of the engineer should not have been reported. You might not share this belief, but it is a valid belief to have and it cannot be disproved. Your ethics are simply different.
You could be a bit more civil in your comment and you are certainly entitled to your opinion.

I never said that Apple had pure or angelical motives for not wanting Flash, I just pointed out that many sites are stripping out Flash, because Apple doesn’t support it, which is quite true. There are several references in this blog to sites that have started or completed projects to remove the need for Flash.

I’m sorry that I’ve upset you with my opinion. I’m sure that if you wait long enough, a tablet that meets your standards, from a company that doesn’t have any kind of monopoly market position such as Microsoft or Google will come along and that it will be all that you dream of.
Ask HN: Does anyone else miss "Ask HN?"
Hey gang,

It seems that fewer and fewer discussion threads are prefaced with "Ask HN." I'm not sure if it was ever a formal rule, but I find it much easier to parse through the headlines when "Ask HN" clearly marks all discussion-only items, while its absence indicates a news item.

Are other people feeling the same way?

If so, how do we encourage this practice to continue?
Yes, Can we do this till they apologise publically and withdrew all links to this story please?. Let's do something than just talking.
Being from the UK I've always been rather puzzled by GPA - we don't mark degrees that way at all. Traditionally there are only four possible values for a honours degree (3 years in England 4 in Scotland) - First, Upper Second, Lower Second and Third. And the bias in most courses is usually to have this based largely on what you do in the final year.

The idea of being evaluated as an average of every class for the length of the entire course would fill most people here with absolute horror - it being fairly common for people to scrape through the first year of a course and then do really well in the later years.

[NB Degrees in Scotland are 4 years because entrance is based on exams that are done a year earlier than in England, either that or to allow for the extra drinking that is required].
agreed, plus by my understanding it is also already fairly popular in the financial programming community.
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Thanks for the feedback. Its been a while since I was last in Europe, I probably just didn't remember that being so.

It certainly isn't so in Brazil. Those other mp3 players normally can only be found in small, not so reputable stores here. Mostly they are from unknown Chinese brands.

Other than that, I only remember seeing a model from Sony, this year, in a large electronics store, as you put it. Everyone has an abundance of iPods, however. There is also an abundance of very cheap iPod clones, in those not-so-reputable stores.
They could have just enabled it by default for new documents.
I had a chance to meet the devver guys, both very engaging and intelligent people. I know shutting down devver has to be incredibly painful, but I'm sure they'll put the lessons learned to great use in the near future.

All the best to both of you guys.
> You haven't voted on any of the stories currently on the frontpage.

You do realize you're effective saying here that you monitor the personal voting record of users, and that you're willing to disclose that record without their permission?

Also, his whole point was that he didn't vote for those stories. There may be others that he did vote for but that didn't make it to the front page because of all the apple drama.
I don't know if I fully understand or agree with their proposal but I like the fact that they are trying to innovate.
Hiding the border on a Spark List control in Flex 4
Extramarital sex cause earthquakes
Modern Mobility: Palm WebOS Dev accounts Now FREE :) Get it
Heck, just pushing up the demand for Python devs is a good thing. Rising tide lifts all boats. Probably indirectly raise the boats of non-Python devs as well.
Wow, this is an awesome service I wish I knew about previously.

Are there open source alternatives? Our full suite can take considerable time to run, and it would be amazing to reduce that time.
Can this be patched through a software update?
The question is whether naming the guy contributed anything to the story and was in the public interest, or whether it was a purely vindictive action by Gizmodo. Considering the fact that the main story is the existence of the prototype and that it's authenticity has already been confirmed by Apple's response, I'd say it was the latter. Revealing the guy's identity added nothing to the story, unlike in your example where the lack of WMDs would be the story.

Gizmodo have chosen to not only imperil this guy's current job with Apple but also his future career prospects. First by providing a market for stolen Apple secrets and being a willing buyer and publisher of the prototype and its details and second by splashing his name all over the internet. Count me amongst those who will boycott Gizmodo and all other Gawker sites from now on.
If you can get (or write) a lexer/parser to generate an AST from the code, can't you easily translate it to any other language?
No.

E.g. The ludicrous bashing of Gruber for not maintaining Markdown for the purposes of StackOverflow by Atwood.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/12/responsible-open-so...
Get a hold of an Apple prototype - Awesome

Tearing it apart to expose new features - Awesome

Posting it all online for the world to see - Awesome

Exposing the employee who lost the prototype - Major dick move
pg recently created this page: http://news.ycombinator.com/ask
Are publishers running scared? They should be
It really doesn't apply to games because often people simply don't bother to port them to the Mac. And a regularly given reason, beyond the obvious market size issue is that Apple simply doesn't support game developers, often to the point of being antagonistic. Déjà vu, all over again?
There is a vast difference between believing that the guy did nothing wrong and believing that he didn't deserve to get his identity made public even though he made a serious mistake. I think most people responding here would understand if Apple decided to fire the guy, as he was clearly negligent. What many of us are upset with is Gizmodo's revealing of his name which will cause the guy harm that's far in excess of the severity of his mistake.
Why 42? - Douglas Adams breaks the Myth
I thought it was funny in the story where they were talking about the company that had all this code locked in this old legacy language called HPS Seer or whatever, and wanted to upgrade it to something more modern with more programmers available.

And it was COBOL.

This article was only written in 2001. If it was written in 1985, maybe, I could see that making sense. And even that would be pushing it.
Setting the symbol color on a Spark RadioButton control in Flex 4
There are many journalists in Iraq. And you know why that is? Because if there were only one of them, he might make wrong judgments. Yeah, there might be wrong judgments when humans are involved, no one could disagree with that. The way out, however, is not to force journalists to report everything, the way out is to make sure there are always a good many journalists writing about the same stuff.

Journalists have to make judgments all the time, they have to decide which parts of a story are important and which parts are irrelevant. If they didn’t do that – if they weren’t allowed to do that – they wouldn’t do their job. Reporting whatever you hear and see is not what being a journalist means.

You can have nice arguments about which judgments are the right ones, which are the wrong ones. Saying that Gizmodo should just report whatever they know is not such a argument.

(You actually start to make the right kind of argument in your last paragraph which is nice but I don’t see how there is any evidence at all that hints at the scenario you are describing. There are always many things which are possible but that’s hardly a convincing argument. Evidence is what’s needed.)

Note please, that the New York Times [1] doesn’t mention the name. Apple engineer is all they write.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/technology/companies/20app...
article title is wrong, this isn't Ruby.

should be: "Will Wall Street import Python?"
It's a good move if sites move away from flash.
But it's another matter to disallow flash and air applications that could be a used to write platform independent applications.

There is just a lot of assumptions and unproven statements in your post. I've heard that so many times, it sickens me.

Some anecdote: A few months back, when Adobe announced Flash support on the iPhone, basically everyone in my circle of friends was like "woohoo, soon i'll be able to play those flashgames!". Now, everyone is just repeating the marketing talks, that flash is bad and whatnot.
Basically i have the feeling that many people don't reflect what Steve is saying, they are just repeating the marketing talks. Basically, that's what is driving me mad.

Also, i don't see a reason why a desktop OS wouldn't work on a tablet (except for the aforementioned appstore lock in). Display too small? Nope, works on small netbooks, too. Can't hit the buttons? No, i am currently sitting in front of Windows 7 and i can't spot a button that i couldn't hit with a finger. Links in Websites are usually way smaller then the buttons in the OS and you still can hit them on the iPad, don't you?

Also, a few months back it was "oh no. Multitasking? That's sooo draining the battery, we won't allow that!". Now, that android poses a threat it's like "uhh, we miraculously implemented multitasking!". The real move behind holding back multitasking? Get people to use apples notifications, another factor that ties developers to apple and sends user data through their system. Another move to more lock in.
Given, and it surely promotes their visibility when you're looking for discussion threads explicitly.

However, I find that when discussion/ask threads are mixed in with the aggregate, it's easier on the brain when they're clearly labeled as such.

Maybe I need a cognitive tune-up, but I find that I often will scan through the headlines, notice an ambiguously-titled thread, and have to do a quick judgment call: "Hm, is this a poorly-titled discussion thread or a rhetorically-titled headline?"

My argument is simply to remove those minor hiccups to improve the experience of digging through the firehose of content that comes through HN.
I think the poster's point was that "Ask HN" posts are becoming less common (either posted less frequently, or just aren't voted up to the front page as often as they used to be).

I'll admit that I miss this a lot too, to the point where I often just go through and upvote all except the most trival "Ask HN" posts. The ability to ask for good advice from a very smart group of people was once one of the best features of this site.
Wouldn't it be funny if people did just that, by the millions?
French is still spoken in many African countries although its not likely to translate into economic benefit anytime soon. It can also be useful if you want to do business in Montreal, Canada, which is relatively big in the video game industry. De mon côté, j'aimerais bien apprendre le Mandarin :)
arguably "legal English" is already a DSL.

A DSL whose programmers are lawyers and whose interpreters are courts.
One possibility would be for the HN code to somehow visually distinguish them, with a slightly different shade or other indicator.
Ah, thanks, I missed that. However, while I'll agree that controls for "smarter", I would point out that by the test's very purpose, it shouldn't control for "harder-working".
I'm a bit confused. Did the iPhone also have pictures of this guy's girlfriend?
The pragmatic programmer tips
31 Steps to a Financial Tuneup
Excellent idea.

This would be a good solution if pg has the time to hack it together.
I love douglas adams, but I don't see how this is vaguely news worthy...
> Yes I've misplaced things that are valuable to me but when I did I only hurt myself.

What a responsible human being you are. You probably don't have kids though :)

People lose their kids in places like supermarkets all the time ... I haven't (yet) but it's a possibility (because kids by definition don't stay put) and I'd appreciate that if you found my child instead of stealing it from me to sell it to the highest bidder, you'd return it to me, because otherwise I might just burn down your house with you in it :)

Yeah, it's a bad analogy because for most people a phone is not equal to a child, but for passionate engineers the line is kind of blurry, isn't it?

> the attitude in this comment thread has been that being drunk makes it ok to be derelict in your duties

No, the attitude is that it's not OK to steal property, even if that person you're stealing from is drunk ... and to make matters worse the buyer also made the story public, for no public good whatsoever.
Who cares? That's what a browser is for. + vids+pics.

What utility would be added by making an 'App'?
REST wins. Hands down.

I generally find it very tedious to work with web services using soap. Arbitrary variable types, complicated error reporting etc. You can fall into all kinds of problems with different standards etc...

It's fine when you're a little experienced with SOAP (which I unfortunately am), but I don't think it's a format for the future.
Stewart Brand: From hippy icon to nuclear enthusiast
I do have a problem with going to say a programming conference and seeing that all the programmers are men, while those serving them (like receptionists and waitresses) are women. And generally these women are managed by men...
Agree. I wouldn't have entertained switching from my previous or current laptops (1400x1050 and 1680x1050 pixels respectively) to a 15" MacBook Pro with a lower resolution screen. The recent refresh suddenly makes them more tempting though.
The 'new' pages are a pretty dire sight (yes, I occasionally submit stuff, and even go there without submitting). One gets that Augean stables feel, but the guy who cleaned them up was a demigod.

I actually signed up here, after just reading for a few years, because I thought the site was good and I could help a bit, instead of leaving quietly when it soured.

I have two suggestions:

- Put up a minimum threshold for submitting and voting.

- Charge a fraction of a point for votes; perhaps with a daily maximum. Erode karma stashes.

Thanks for the site, and best wishes any way you play it.
With Twitter’s Official App Looming, Seesmic Revamps on Android
That's breaking a cardinal rule of artists - maintain mysticism. It's the reason the inspiration for American Pie will never be known. Collective human imagination can come up with a far more interesting opinion than any individual can, regardless of how talented they might be.

Mr. Adams, with due respect, I don't know what the Tibetan Monk explanation is but it sounds way more interesting than your garden.
I didn't say Flash was bad, though I've had some bad experiences with the oddest bits of it consuming 30% of a code duo CPU.

The article just states that sits are dropping flash, because Apple doesn't support it. It also states that people are not stopping to use iPhones because of it. If you know some people that didn't get an iPhone because it doesn't run Flash, okay. Apple's sales numbers say that those people aren't all that many.

I've personally never seen anyone that avoided an iPhone because of that, though I'm sure these people exist.
'Eddy' by Stamen Design to license tool to visualize realtime online interaction
Id be keen! peterwnicholls@gmail.com
California's or Texas's?
The locked-downness is part of Apple's approach to entering the corporate market.

Huh? Since when does apple even exist in the corporate market?

Last time I checked you'd not find many of them outside of design departments and hip startup offices.
I've seen a few bad lawyers and there are a million and one things they'd rather do before worrying about their typography. It'll be a long while before the bad lawyers' typography is as good as the good lawyers' typography.
Well I think it's all about touch-screens. Decades ago they sucked. Only recently they work great. So Apple jumped in at the right time.

As said (ZeroGravitas), people want a desktop in another form: laptops, smart-phones, handhelds, gaming devices (PSP, DS), MP3/MP4 players...

Others did not fail. But Apple is very good at creating wannahaves. With the iPad they created another one. People will pay lots of money for this device because it's a hype. And that is what Apple does. Creating hypes.

The iPad is nothing new. But it's got this 'look at me' factor. But try using it in the sun.... The Adam does a better job there.
eh, if the users don't want to maintain it, and they don't want to pay you to maintain it, it won't get maintained. The same is true (only moreso) for commercial software.
I'd vote Spanish (lots of countries speak it, which makes it a good language). Or Chinese - more people speaking it than any other language, I think.

BTW, I started learning Spanish using the "Pimsleur method". It's an amazingly easy and quick way to learn a language, If you're looking for a way to learn a new language, I recommend looking it up.
I'm one of those developers that frets over the small things. I'll spend what feels like hours trying to figure out how to name things.

I'm working on simply saying "that'll do. The end."

I'll get so much more done.
HTC Legend Smartphone now in India
The great NoSQL debate
A series of articles about NoSQL vs. relational databases
About the size of Sweden's population -- which also has a state medical system. :-)

So there is as much socialism in the US as in Sweden? :-)

This gave me a sense of wonder insight into how large the large countries are.
First impressions on the marketing (no time to test the software, sorry):

- I looked at the site and almost clicked away. There is nothing "grabby". Why would I use this? What would people that land on your site be looking for? Try answering some of those questions. Second thought: I see you have included this lower on the page. It needs to stand out more. Maybe something like "Create powerful data-collection web apps in minutes".

- The concept of the animated centre section is popular and works. I think the execution here is not so good. The slides are too busy. Instead, try putting concepts/features/testimonials on the slides. E.g. "With Dokuments we developed our HR survey in hours rather than weeks - Random Company".

- What's your market? I'm guessing anyone who knows the buzzwords near the top of the screen probably isn't going to buy dokuments (I could be wrong, though). Talk in their language.

I hope that helps.
I'm not a lawyer, but I would have thought that trademarks are balanced by common sense and context. So, if you have a shoe company called London, and I call myself London, you have no claim against me unless I'm also selling shoes (because it seems like I'm representing myself as you), because it's a reasonably common word that has meaning outside of your shoe-selling context.

In your case 'Lindblad' appears to be a reasonably common surname. It just so happens that one person with that name set up an expedition company - I'm guessing they're the ones that wrote to you. In this case I think the company has absolutely no claim over the name whatsoever.

So, here's what you do:

Post the letter on your site's blog. Write an article about how you don't comply with baseless legal threats, and instead you prefer to shame companies that attempt to terrorize individuals into giving up their legitimate use of generic terms (in this case, a surname). Submit the article back here and to other places that are interested in legal overreach (reddit/boingboing.net come to mind). Send a link to your article as a response to the lawyers who wrote to you (or write a separate response but add this to your articles). Keep updating the article/blog with any responses they send you.

Your customers will have increased respect for you for not giving in needlessly, and you may even get a few new users who found out about you just from this. Plus you'll have struck a small blow against the stupid use of legal threats by companies.
Ask HN: Getting on the "Ask HN" list.
I recently submitted an "Ask HN" item that sank without a trace. I shrugged - clearly no one was interested, and that was fine.

Then I noticed that it never showed up on this list:

http://news.ycombinator.com/ask

All the items there have at least two points. If something doesn't get a vote, does it not get on the "/ask" list?

(EDIT: corrected typo)
The problem with the law isn't the language of the laws themselves, it's the input.

I mean, please show me the typedefs for attempted rape and reckless driving.

Most of the time, the interesting cases are about figuring out who's lying, if there was intent, determining what's reasonably expected, how a certain condition might count as an aggravating circumstance etc. etc.
The semantics may be very, very different. Let's take an example with two similar languages, Java and C++. You have the AST for a piece of code which creates a struct, zeroes its memory, calls a function pointer, then calls Qt library functions to display a GUI with a few signal/slots to handle user input. How does a program 'easily' translate this into Java?

Now, imagine a similar problem with Haskell, Prolog, Factor or 8-bit assembly...
Free == Freedom to walk away from maintaining the damn thing. If other people can't be bothered to contribute, that's tough. A few dollars in the tip jar hardly counts, given what most coders could charge for their time and expertise.

I've given up writing free software since too many people want a free ride. Even after telling them "I have no interest in helping you fix your Linux installation on the way to making the software work", or "It wasn't designed to run with sqlite, only MySQL, and I have no time to change that", people keep keep keep coming back and demanding more time. "Which part of 'no' did you not understand?"

If an ecosystem doesn't develop around your software, if you have no other maintainers, and if you have a life, you should probably just leave it.
Amazon Germany's MP3 player category by brands:
http://www.amazon.de/gp/search/other/ref=sr_sa_p_4?rh=n%3A56...

Apple: 140 entries
Samsung: 106
Philips: 97
Sony: 79
Creative: 70
iRiver: 52
Trekstor: 50
...
Yes - I can find the articles online and pay crazy prices (at ~25$ per 4 pages or something similar) to find out the abstract was completely detached from reality.

I've tried the emailing author method before and honestly it works in maybe 10% cases. In the end you'll never get the quality material from proper journals unless you have the paid subscription or work/academia sponsored access.
The Ultimate Guide to e-Learning via the iPad: Apps, Implementations and More