skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I find this very interesting because (as mentioned in one of the comments) it seems that running anything with saved data on a computer could potentially constitute 'running interpreted code'. And that is really the thing that has bothered me about the whole fiasco. The policy seems to come from a fundamental misunderstanding of how computers actually work.

Normally we think of there being a huge difference between code and data... psychologically we categorize notepad.exe and a .txt file differently from a scheme interpreter and a .scm file.

But really, at a macroscopic level, they operate in a very similar way. If I open a text file in notepad, notepad reads the binary data in the file, and interprets it as ASCII or Unicode, and then prints it to the monitor.

And the same process takes place in a scheme interpreter. I open the file, binary is read and interpreted as scheme code, and the results of interpretation are printed to the monitor.

(This is even more obvious with something like html).

You could easily think of different file formats as different programming languages, and different programs for opening them as interpreters for said language (what is MS Word but an interpreter for .doc codes?) Every time I save a file, I am having the computer generate a little interpretable program. (A continuation?)

But when you realize this, it seems like any policy banning interpreters logically collapses. If I can't have an interpreter, I can't save files, if I can't save files, what is the point?

So you could look at scratch as something that allows you to save scratch files, or you could look at scratch as something that allows you to interpret scratch code... it doesn't really matter.

Saving and compiling are the same thing, reading and interpreting are the same thing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this would mean that between their rules, they can (theoretically) outlaw any program that does much more than cause the device to become warm.

Granted, they won't, because they have a certain notion of 'how computers work', which is generally shared, but it isn't particularly true..
I assume competitions like this have a liberal policy about using pre-existing game/rendering engines else you could use up all your time piecing together the low-level foundation and not get to any actual game design.
The article said they had several million more users so it's not really a sleeper; it just isn't bouncing around the Silicon Valley echo chamber.
Hood: Haskell Object Observation Debugger
right...that's a valid concern. i think however, when weighing the options between releasing something that's fully robust and polished (say 12 months time) versus a minimum viable product (say 3 months time) most would lean towards the latter.
there is just too much rapid iteration that can (and probably) will occur after releasing the minimum viable product. if you wait too long, you'll be behind in the race.
Sorta OT: Pomplamoose Shreds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKD07BYcreg They're talented, but the description cracks me up..
It's simple, but that doesn't mean it's easy.
In "Peopleware" by DeMarco and Lister, they report the results of various studies on programmer productivity that showed that the best are an order of magnitude more productive than the average. Similar results hold for companies as a whole.

Bezos was not being unrealistic in seeking programmers who could do things in 1/3 the time of what most competent people would think is possible. They are out there.
>I might be fine with restricting the right for others to sell pharmaceuticals based on the same compound for the same purpose, but certainly not to bar general research into what other effects it may have.

There is a general exclusion of the monopoly right over that of the right to continue scientific research. One could find novel uses, but unless the patents have been poorly drafted it would be impossible to exploit them - you're simply finding more reasons for people to buy your competitors drug.
Objectified is really great documentary, highly suggested to whoever "make" stuff.
No, they're separate things. Price segmentation is selling marginally different products, but making each product available to everyone. So you have Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Home and Windows 7 Home Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate Home Datacenter Server at separate prices, and even though the only difference is that you run a different build script, it's not the same as price discrimination because you let the consumer choose. I interviewed at a company once that made a home-architecture CAD tool. They sell about 20 different versions of the same software, all at different price points, each generated by different build settings from the same codebase.

Price discrimination is when you sell the same thing to different people for different prices. It's technically illegal, so universities get around it by sending you a $50,000 tuition bill and a $40,000 need-based scholarship instead of just sending you a $10,000 bill. Other forms of price discrimination include student discounts and senior discounts. Health care in the US thrives on price discrimination--the simple words "I don't have insurance, can we talk about arranging payment" can knock off 50% or better of your bills with some doctors.

Price discrimination at elite colleges means "rising tuition costs" are really much ado about nothing. The nominal tuition only represents what they charge rich people, which is often independent of what they charge not-rich people.
Khosla And RRE Lead $16.2 Million Series C In Xobni
Microsoft Kin: everything you ever wanted to know
Tell that to Toyota.
To be honest if I ran across this ad in the wild it would turn me off. Maybe I've just been burned too many times, but when someone suggests things like "do it in one-third of the time competent people think possible", that is a huge red flag to me.

Every time I've taken a gig with someone who has said this I've found it to be at least literal, though often you have even less time than they list. It's not just a fancy way of saying "can do work quickly" in most situations, it's more a declaration that "ignorant people are going to constantly and unreasonably hound you regarding completion of the project and they won't be satisfied when you get it done". I once had a guy who was looking for "rockstars" expect me to finish what is reasonably about a month of work in four days.

Aside from that, it's typical corporate-speak: "excellent communication skills", etc. Not very attractive as a whole imo.
Most software engineers at a company like Amazon or Google never start Apache or see a line of HTML. Bezos knew exactly what he was looking for.
One javascript implementation is the lively kernel, here
http://www.lively-kernel.org/

I'd bet there are others.
Electronic books? I have no time for such nonsense.
SysProf - Kernel Based Profiler for Linux
Monk: Ruby framework based on Ohm (Redis backed object hash mapping)
This app would've been rejected even before the changes to 3.3.1.

It wasn't rejected. It made it into the store and was removed later.
The risk is probably not a legal one, but rather simply that someone might do it themselves.

Of course, you don't have to give away everything about your idea.

It would be a great experiment though. Go for it.
You're taking that in a way I didn't mean
Not working in Firefox 3.6 on mac
It just occurred to me you officially cannot make an iPhone app that displays PDF documents - because rendering a PDF involves interpreting a program written in the PostScript programming language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript#The_language).
IE7 mode seems to catch 95% of the cases, but I have had issues crop up in "real" IE7 that were not present when tested under IE8.
It would be great if someone could copy the text of their post. My developer account recently expired and I don't really want to pay $99 just to view one forum post.
Ha! I didn't even notice this got submitted here.

Background, for the record:

1. It is alpha alpha ALPHA.

2. We built it for the iPad specifically, and Safari/Webkit generally.

3. It has no images. All webkit-specific CSS. All those gorgeous gradients! I gave Thomas and a PSD and he made the magic happen.

4. It has no JavaScript framework.

5. It gzips down to under 3K.

This evening Thomas added Firefox support. Naturally, Firefox's CSS styles for gradients are not as nice (and, naturally, different syntax) than the Webkit ones.

We plan to do more things with it. This was really a proof of concept. I was surprised it got such wide circulation already...

... although considering the alternative "tools" in this space, I guess I shouldn't be.

Thanks guys!
Inappropriate. There are better way to announce jobs on HN.
Computer science is a necessary and essential component of software engineering.

Designing software properly _is_ "proper" design. Just a different set of variables.
No, it looks related to divide and conquer, as the article says.
I plan on migrating some Fat client apps to Pharo in the next 2 years as Sessile web apps.
OT question for entrepreneurial LinkedIn experts reading this thread: what would you do with 9 InMail grants to advance your project or startup?

Regarding the group, I'd love to join it but I don't have 20 karma points on HN.
I would like to know the percentage of tweets sent as SMS.
>simulating intercessions from the cosmos on computers is hard.

Cosmic ray radiation affects computers all the time.
Now if only I could paste screenshots in.
We are currently focusing our efforts on the Performance Insightful Query Language portion of the project. Some more detail on the ideas and some initial results will be presented at SOCC in June. The paper can be found at: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~franklin/Papers/socc10armbrust.p...

The current state of the code is that it is pretty much Research-Ware (i.e. probably not stable enough to be useful outside of the lab). However, as the project matures we will definitely be open-sourcing any useful components that are developed.

For instance, checkout a project by an undergraduate in our group that implements the record serialization we will be using for the system as a scala compiler plugin.
http://code.google.com/p/avro-scala-compiler-plugin/
> Build for free software platforms like Linux or the Web and these issues go away.

Is this statement true or false?

> Being outraged at Apple policies when the web is free is like being outraged at your employer when you are free to start your own business.

Does this statement say you are not entitled to be outraged at Apple or at your employer? Or does it merely say that being outraged at Apple when you have alternative target platforms is like being outraged at your employer when you can start your own business?

Making money from the web appears to be more difficult that making money from iPhone software. Starting your own business appears to be more difficult than working for yourself.

Don't these statements support the simile?

I support your choice to push Apple for "progressive change." But just as you may choose to push them to change, I choose to push developers to change. I hope you accept the direct comparison I am drawing.
Ning cuts staff, free service
Get Immediate Value from Your New Hire
> The kids with the most to gain from an encouraging tool like Scratch can't afford iPods anyway.

That's why they have parents.
No. PDFs only uses the PostScript imaging model, not the PostScript programming language.
I've been doing that in firefox and gmail for a long time.
I've certainly built stuff with it that is useful, and some if it is even production, but none of it as complex as, say, the Clamato environment itself.

I don't know of anyone else who has.
From the article: "The company's staff reduction will take it from 167 to 98 employees". A sad day :(
I was going to comment here but I went off on a bit of a tangent:
http://jheriko-rtw.blogspot.com/2010/04/why-patents-irritate...

I believe that no scientific theory or logical argument can support patents - further I believe my opinion can be proved fairly rigorously. Although the utility of such proof is not obvious.
I suggest you try and find people who would either be prospective partners or clients of your project, write a brief message to them, and ask them to review your work and comment.

Also, answering questions relevant to your interest area on LinkedIn is a good way to make contact with people who have problems they are trying to solve.
On one hand, the name seems pretty obviously derived from iPad. On the other hand, I'm writing this on a Thinkpad; people other than Apple have been using "pad" in computer names for quite some time now.
If capital is used a metric in the invention an invention that used less capital could be viewed as a different invention.
"Free" is a term that always benefits from definition. How free am I to start my own business? Well, that depends on relative power, and how precarious my financial situation is, my debt load, my family responsibilities, and other things. It's not just a simple question of "is it physically possible?"

I don't have a point to make, but it is interesting that we are both far more free to start our own businesses than we are to develop iPhone applications in Flash.
Open source software that can make the text into speech
This is an example of a mechanical computer. There are other popular computer implementations in Dwarf Fortress, including fluidic (pumping water around) and biological (enclosing creatures in specially-designed mazes).

Once the basic logic gates are designed, it's easy (though tedious and time-consuming) to build arbitrarily large computing devices. One famous example is a multifunction calculator, documented at < http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/User:BaronW >.
That's because they're not designed to work, they're designed to confirm to what people think will work.

Losing weight is not a mystery: Take less calories in than you burn and you will lose weight (simple, but 99% effective). To do this you need to eat healthy foods and get active.

People don't want to do this. People want to eat crappy foods and sit around watching Grey's Anatomy (#93) and lose weight.
Why do cartoonists make apps instead of websites?
I hope not. Trademarking common words such as 'pad' is ridiculous. It's not like they invented some awesome word, like 'cromulent' and don't want others using it. Before we know it, they'll be going after MaxiPad, too.
Massive fireball reported across Midwestern sky
There's a much easier market than those:

#93 - Watch Grey's Anatomy

- An online Grey's Anatomy episode streamer and forum. This is the road to millions.
Ah, interesting - I always though PDF was just a superset of PostScript, but it looks like you are correct: http://www.adobe.com/print/features/psvspdf/
I imagine you will have better luck trying to found co-founders amongst the people you know and can trust that you've met in real life. Having said that, this is the Internet! Reddit named a whale Mr. Splashy Pants! There's nothing we aren't capable of.

Also be aware the the community here is not about advertising startup ideas or recruiting. This is a news network / message board for hackers to share interesting info they know others will like. I'm not saying not to go for it, but just be careful not to come off as too slimy :)
No, that's alphabetically worse, but good suggestion.
Skytap Cloud: http://skytap.com/
Starbucks' 6.5 million Facebook fan base worth $23.4 million in annual media
PDFs generated by Adobe Acrobat have Javascript in them (for forms mostly). You are free to not interpret it though.
I think LinkedIn is very useful if you sell to or deal a lot with medium and large corporations in the US (in Europe LinkedIn competes with Xing). I work in big-ticket B2B sales and LinkedIn is an awesome tool to prospect and research potential partners and clients.
You're clearly not the intended audience. :)
Turn on 'Inserting images' in Gmail Labs. And while you're there try 'Message Sneak Peek' too..
Minor nit: Orion wasn't going to make any sense financially. It probably would have eventually worked technically.
Except the part about building in 1/3 the time...to get away with that you need to have some kind of reliable reputation so it is interpreted correctly.
We do offer an enterprise product called GitHub:FI.

http://fi.github.com
Why is volcanic ash a threat to planes?
It became very clear with Meier's game and the Magician one, and it kinda make the competition unfair, but it didn't seem to bother anyone. Or at least not in front of the cameras.
$.delegate() and you
Is Computer Science Too Big For One Degree
>... pomplamoose is french for grapefruit

Actually, 'pamplemousse' is French for grapefruit, but yeah, phonetically it's about right.
if this is true, what gets caught in the crossfire? i imagine a failing regime would attempt to create unity by identifying some external enemy. who? taiwan?
This would be huge. Outlook 2010 has an Insert > Screenshot feature that easily beats Gmail in convenience.
Average course size: 25

This is at a "top" school? Even at the non-top college that I attended for my undergraduate degree, I had many classes with a smaller class size than that. (To be sure, in my professional school nearly all the classes were a good bit larger than that, but that is what I am trying to figure out, what is typical and best illustrates how showing up to teach a college class well prepared compares to showing up to do any other kind of job well prepared.)

So, if I may, could I kindly have an authoritative source cited for the statement that average course size is 25 at the echelon of colleges we are talking about (those with tuition of $40,000 per year)?

For you and several onlookers, I will note that everyone who looks at how well workers are compensated for their work looks not only at salaries, but also at all fringe benefits and other employer costs for compensation of the worker. One would look at funding of health insurance, paid vacations, sabbaticals, retirement benefits, and so on to see which jobs are comparable to which other jobs. I have not recently heard that jobs in academia are notorious for having meager fringe benefits in relation to salary, but rather the contrary.
You can render PDFs in a Webkit view.
plupload by the makers of tinymce (http://www.plupload.com) Allows you to upload files using HTML5 Gears, Silverlight, Flash, BrowserPlus or normal forms, providing some unique features such as upload progress, image resizing and chunked uploads.

Or uploadify (http://www.uploadify.com)
This is right up there with the Universal Turing Machine implemented in Conway's GoL (http://rendell-attic.org/gol/utm/index.htm).
Link to original: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/15/big-contents-dystopi.ht...

Edit: link to original original: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/entertainment-industrys...
As I understand trademark law, the fact that something is an obvious derivation isn't relevant (that would be a copyright issue). Note: IANAL

The purpose of trademark law is not to protect the seller, but to protect the buyer by preventing confusion. If there's potential that a reasonable buyer might see a "WePad" and think they're buying an Apple iPad product, then this would constitute a trademark violation. But if we don't think that a reasonable person would be misled, then there is no trademark violation.

EDIT: spelling
I like how the screenshots show a typical webbrowsing session: your main browser hidden, only the gmail message compose window visible and neatly sized-down so there's space for the folder window on the left.
Still, it appears to be 3rd party software proof.

Without farts, it does not exist in the teen crowd.
There are many counter-examples. What about the success of non-degree-driven companies like Microsoft, where the founder dropped out before completing school? Does that prove that degrees are silly and worthless?

The thing is that degrees might mean something or they might not; it's not too hard to get through higher education without retaining anything or even learning anything relevant in the first place, but by the same token, some people do some really cool and meaningful work at college and it means a lot. You just have to take it on a case-by-case basis.
google wave is the google wave killer
Because that's about what this is?
The best way is to have done it before. Its easy to implement something in 1/3rd the time as someone else, if you've done it before and they haven't.
I don't think that addresses the essence of SlackerIII's comment. You still have to go through the tedium of launching an external program to take the screenshot, choosing a filename/save location, and then inserting/pasting into Gmail. See my comment (up) about Outlook 2010.
ZingChart: Web charts that can render in HTML5 or Flash
The Next Big Thing: SAS and SPSS…wait, what?
Quite low on content for a 23 minute video, but entertaining nonetheless.

I would like to know more about their tools and developing/programming practices, this was completely omitted from the recording.
The Dangers of Building on Someone Else's Platform
This is not exactly what Alan Kay hoped for when he talked about the iPhone foreshadowing the iPad:

"When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it’s the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you’ll rule the world."

Source: http://gigaom.com/2010/01/26/alan-kay-with-the-tablet-apple-...

The iPad is no Dynabook: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook.

Perhaps a better name would have been:

-UndynamicBook

-iStade (See: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/stade )
Is online learning coming back?
If you ask the editor of Arstechnica, unless I'm absorbing the ads, subconsciously or consciously, I'm stealing.