skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You have a point regarding pathological users, but this promotion also draws in people who might have already played or heard of one or two of these games, and are willing to drop $30 or $40 to check out the remaining ones.

Also, even a cost of $1 incurs the friction of the transaction. That ought to turn away a significant percentage of the freeloaders, who probably paid 0 on pirate bay a long time ago anyway.
Well, most things will have some non-zero magnetic susceptibility that will affect an ambient magnetic field. Ferromagnetic materials will have a larger effect.

I just loaded "Metal Detector" on my Nexus One and played around with it. It seemed to only detect ferrous metals. For example it picked small steel tools fine, but couldn't sense an entire plastic bag full of (US) coins or aluminum objects.
It seems like pretty expensive advertising actually - a normal sale makes them $x minus the ad or whatever that brought them the customer. Now $x is somewhere between $0 and $1.58 where it used to be up to $20 minus whatever advertising.

They're not making more they're just selling more.
I'm not sure exactly what hardware that entails, but I'll guarantee you can at least play the game. Perhaps not with every setting on Ultra, but with some fine tuning I'm sure it'd play fine. The game scales well.
Unlike other commenters I actually do see some useful results from this study. At what cost though? I can understand the argument for animal testing but something seems just that little extra bit off; when you're trying to study depression you end up having to inflict emotional pain, which is as literally torture as you can get. I've seen enough of the Internet not to be shocked often but this managed.
Perhaps that's the case with rational people. People who do malicious things may not be too rational in the first place.
I run an ecommerce business that sells jellyfish aquariums: http://www.jellyfishart.com

I know, weird. But jellyfish are a hot new trend in personal aquariums. We just started an affiliate program that is doing really well. Our affiliate commission is 5%, conversion rate is 0.25% and average purchase is $198. Would you be interested in signing up as one of our affiliates? We have banner ads you can run.

http://www.jellyfishart.com//affiliate_info.asp
The phrase "personal computer" was chosen to sound kind of edgy and futuristic at the time (remember, computers were big basement-sized things then). That's sort of how "personal robot" sounds now.
Interesting. Does the import feature screen scrape then (fill in credentials, act 'as' the user'? Doesnt sound very scalable.
Say you leave your phone at a bar and some guy finds it. He then calls you, and asks how to send it back. You tell him to fuck off.

Is it still stolen?
The purpose of SC2 is to keep your mind off Diablo 3. One day you'll wake up and it'll be there, and you'll be a very happy man
Seems like a great complement to Drew's other lessons learned deck: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1290303
I don't usually buy things on the internet. Mainly because it requires money in a PayPal account or similar, and it's very hard for me to get that (I have some dollars from a freelancer work, but it's a hassle to transfer between my bank account and PayPal).

If I had heard only about a "indie game bundle" containing those titles, I would probably have run straight to The Pirate Bay. But this one caught my attention.

The devs are willing to give five high-quality games for whatever I want to pay. The guy even sang a song for the advertisement, for god's sake.

I loved the ad. I loved the bundle. I even loved the website.

This selfish pirate is reaching for his wallet. I will not pay the full $ 80 sum (though more than the average, for sure), but I'm one that would probably not have paid a penny otherwise.
Washington to award $1 million in tech challenge
This is by far the biggest argument in favor of the "pay-what-you-want" model. It's an efficient way to capture customers that would have been priced out of your product. The other edge of the sword is the tendency of customers with the cash to skimp.
That trend may or may not be happening, but Blizzard has always released their games on Mac, so I wouldn't use this for evidence one way or the other.
Create a graph for number of Facebook Likes for your page over time
Probably the single thing that keeps me using Firefox is its address bar. It's a much nicer experience than Chrome's, with its user-friendly auto complete mechanisms.

The speed of the browsers is rarely the bottleneck for me anymore. I'll switch to Chrome for intense javascript experiences, but that's about it. I feel like chrome needs to start focusing more time on the experience - these speed improvements aren't paying dividends anymore.
Do both?
Insert Clojure rant here :)
Just installed and tried on Win XP. It definitely feels faster than Safari and Firefox.
2v2's are fantastic, but sometimes a chosen team gets matched against a random team, which usually results in a lame game. Hopefully this is due to the beta having fewer people
Cities have about 50% of population worldwide, but they do have much more of the wealth. Wealth and energy and pollution are highly correlated.
"kill-region"?
What kind of specific improvements are they making to the JavaScript engine that is leading to such dramatic speed increases?
SA vs. USA Web Traffic, And What This Means For Us
Except that some languages encourage sloppy programming. Haven't you ever looked at some Java code where two (or more!) functions do exactly the same thing except that the types are different? GZip would compress that down to almost nothing, but you still have to deal with the complexity, maintenance burden, and API bloat of having multiple versions.

It also doesn't account for language misfeatures that introduce significant additional cognitive burden for the programmer but don't appear much in source code. For example, manual memory management in C++ results in a bunch of "delete x" calls in code, which would get GZipped down to very little, but impose a very high cognitive cost on the programmer. PHP's inconsistency in argument order doesn't show up at all in code length, but also presents a big cognitive tax that sends you back to the reference manual all the time.

Personally, I think that the best metric of language productivity is "The amount of information you have to keep in your head in order to write code as fast as you can type." Unfortunately, that's nearly impossible to measure.
And a pretty misleading one at that.

"The iPad team worked with the SproutCore team to provide native hardware acceleration to the JavaScript layer..."

Yeah, that couldn't be further from the truth. MobileWebKit has had hardware accelerated 3D transforms since before SproutCore existed. And that's the only part of the entire equation that is hardware accelerated. Plus, you can also do it at the Obj-C level, it's not something unique to MobileWebKit.

For many things, JavaScript on these mobile devices is fast enough. But let's not pretend it compares to native app performance. It is, in fact, 50-100x slower. It just turns out that in a lot of cases you don't really need that speed (which is true in lots of environments -- look at ruby).
So the solution is to fund defendants so they can stand up to this abuse. Wear the trolls down. Easier said than done, of course.
I have a boat, and live on it for extended periods of time (minimum still 2-3 nights a week in the summer, longest stretch was around 2 months). While we have hot water, it is in short supply. We have around 25 gallons at a time and it takes a few hours to recharge.

However, after 20 years of doing this I can tell you that you can get by using only a few gallons per shower. If you want to do this for enviromental or budget reasons, these are my tips.

1) Use luke warm rather than hot (cold is for masochists). Cold water is usually relatively unlimited.

2) Turn it on to rinse, turn off to soap, turn it back on to rinse again.

3) A hand held shower head is better than a wall mounted one, you need less pressure to affect the same amount of showering.

We also have a solar shower bag to augment the water heater, you fill it up with 10-15 gallons, leave it in the sun for an hour and rinse off with it. We would shower every day and use barely 25 gallons of hot water for 4 people taking showers. Contrast that with at home, taking 10 minute steaming showers where I'm sure I burn through 25 gallons of hot water myself each morning.
I have to agree that even thought STL is extremely powerful, it makes program extremely verbose.

But, in my opinion, the real reason C++ code seems so verbose is because of the lack of closures. In C++, when you need one, you have 2 choices: either manually coding everything that would be in the closure or create a totally new function.

In fact, in the new c++2k10, it could be interesting to have a STL-like but with closures instead.. so one can do:
some_sequence.sort_by(_1 > _2);

or: foreach(sequence, cout << _1 << endl); that's, again in my opinion, way better than:
for (int i = 0; i < sequence.size(); i++) { cout << sequence[i] << endl; } and again still better than:
for (list<int>::size_type i = 0; i < sequence.size(); i++) { etc..}
You are not making any sense, and seem to be too defensive. Where was "decent" healthcare system 40 years ago? Where was job security during the dust-bowl, depression, the beginnings of the industrial revolution?
Here's how I would have done it:

http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/hn/deep-disc...

Anyhow, the idea was to simplify the workflow and simultaneously abuse the power of defaults and user psychology. I also intentionally ditched some parts of the offer which I don't think add business value, such as fine-grained control on the split.

(I'd A/B test including "65% of people pay this much" on the #1 step, probably with a subtle yellow highlighting.)
Second that. These guys have really been working on their presentation. It's hard to believe they're amateurs doing it in their spare time.
What do you mean with the address bar? Chromes bar also has autocompletion. I even find it simpler to use. In Firefox, I have to press the down-key + enter to select a suggestion. In Chrome, I just have to press enter.

What do you think is missing otherwise in Chrome?

I think the overall user experience is probably much better compared to Firefox in nearly all aspects.
Any way to tweak the auto-update features for Flash? I want to have the debugger version installed instead, or disable it altogether. :/
Alternate title: How to burn bridges in one easy step
The iBooks store has the same problem; most books can only be found via search, making an already paltry inventory seem even smaller.

I wonder if this has been improved? (I don't have an iPad handy while I'm working, so I can't verify myself.)
I concur with rottencupcakes, the FF "AwesomeBar" is still a bit more... awesome than Chrome's. It isn't just auto-url completion, it does a fair bit more completion and analysis to suggest what you're trying to type.
Yes, I know about XmlHttpRequest, that's the guerrilla standardisation of Windows-only ActiveX features I was talking about. Relevant historical timeline is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest#History_and_supp...

You'll note the browsers implemented it before standardisation, as is traditional and sensible despite Microsoft's fervent myth-making to the contrary.

(I note that you now seem to be claiming that IE was simply resting on its laurels in a turtle vs hare fashion, rather than being forced into retirement by over-regulation)
I dunno what life inside other big companies is like, but Google uses compile-time metaprogramming all the time. There're tons (perhaps too many) "little languages" used inside Google. Some have even been open-sourced, eg. protobufs, google-ctemplates, Closure Compiler. And if their open-source output is any guide, FaceBook uses tons of little languages as well.

It's just that they're done the UNIX way, with a small miniature compiler or XML substrate, instead of the Lisp way, where you write everything in S-exprs. This tends to make the little languages easier to grok for users but harder to implement, which tends to be a good tradeoff, as there will be far more users than implementers of a programming language.
I was just trying to share my point of view (my opinion) of this whole situation. I'm failing to see why the down vote (maybe it was the radical redefinition of monopoly, but still it's just my opinion).

EDIT: Consider instead of buying it (which involves choosing), that it was gifted to you.
These tricks by combining parts of URLs to do relative linking on scheme, host, etc. are little known but useful; I was expecting them to show up in the article.

Going back to the debate over Chrome's potential dropping of "http:// in the address bar, if they were to use "//" instead they would have an argument for technical correctness because the default protocol of "http:" could be assumed. But having no leading "//" visually confuses it with a relative path omitting the host, because it breaks the signifier for the authority component of the URL. Just a thought.
World of Goo did the same thing a while back. They made an incredible amount of money and reached a large amount of people. Yes, many people paid 1 cent, but they still made more than they would have otherwise.

Read the attached article, it's their response to their sale:
http://2dboy.com/2009/10/19/birthday-sale-results/
That's true. My transactions aren't small ($250+) so the per-transaction fee isn't a huge part of the cost.
What don't you like about Chrome's address bar? It auto-completes as well, it will even auto-fill a URL for a site you've never been to before. Having search in the same box is usually faster for me, the only time I hit a snag is when I'm searching for something that can be confused with a URL.

I suppose it's all relative, but to me FireFox feels cumbersome in comparison to Chrome. I only open it up to test sites on.
Tron in 2:19
The Tron redux is coming this summer; this is a nice refresher to the awesomeness that is the original Tron...
In my experience, some level of similarity (colors) is all that really matters. People have no problem accepting that the shopping cart and check out experience might be a little different.

You may feel different about it but the average person doesn't.
Those kinds of clauses are illegal in states like California and Arizona. You or your employer can terminate your relationship at any moment without cause.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment
Planning is guessing, Google. Didn't you read Rework?
Ask HN: VC funding competitors?
I'm in the middle of looking for Angle / Early VC investors for my startup. There's news today that a competitor of mine is getting funding from some big name VCs.

Is it worth my time to talk to the VCs that funded my competitor? Is it a good idea? Should I worry about my slides showing up at the competitor's offices?
You should be _prepared_ to leave immediately when you give notice, but wow, giving no notice is up near the top of the list in terms of dick moves. The exception to this is if you're being grossly mistreated (as in harassed or demeaned or abused, not as in underpaid).

I've given less than two weeks before, but it was a contract I'd only been on for 3 weeks, so 2 weeks notice was excessive. Anything else, 2 weeks is a minimum. If you're a key person at a startup or small company, 4-8 weeks is more appropriate.
Ah, I misunderstood; I definitely agree.
And people wonder what happened to things like "responsibility". This is a professor teaching this? Whatever happened to the golden rule?
How many ways can you get Android wrong in one article? - ESR
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legionellosis#Prevention_of_Leg...

"Legionella will grow in water at temperatures from 20 to 50 °C (68 to 122 °F)."

130 °F sounds like a safer compromise.
Most VCs won't fund competing companies, so it would be a waste of time at best to talk to them.
The line between hardware and software is very small these days.

Most devices you can render into useful bricks if you mess up their software.
> ...who almost certainly wouldn't have bought the games anyway.

Exactly. I just paid $15 just because I thought it was a neat idea. I don't know if I'll even play the games since I don't really play video games much any more these days. If I do, I won't spend much time on them, and I definitely wouldn't have ever purchased them. So my money to them is 100% money they would never have had otherwise.
Germany doesn't have a female president, yet. But the Chancellor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Merkel) has more power anyway.
While I use Chrome as default, I too miss Firefox autocompletion.

In Firefox, I would just start typing "Hacker News" and HN would popup as a first suggestion after first letter, probably based on usage frequency.

The only way to get the same result in Chrome, is to start typing "news.ycombinator.com", which means you have to remember url, not the name. Chrome, will surely find by "Hacker News" too, but I will need to type in at least 5-6 characters for that.
Google: Please Hack this Buggy Microblogging App
Let's assume for a moment that the critique is correct: macros don't scale. OK. The C++ templating system can be used to accomplish many of the same things as a good macro system (see http://matt.might.net/articles/lambda-style-anonymous-functi... for one example). Does the C++ templating system "scale"?

Or, to put it another way: lots of C++ shops ban the use of advanced templating metaprogramming. Has C++ suffered egregiously as a result?
Even large corporations aren't necessarily like that. When one of my contracts at Microsoft was up, they trusted me to pave my desktop and lock myself out of the building (by hiding my keycard in my lead's office).
In fairness, it's about as much "responsibility" as most companies show toward their employees when firing them. I don't encourage being a jerk when you can avoid it, but the generally accepted view that employees owe the business more deference and respect than the business shows them is downright feudal.
Only three or four days and that sounds like a whacked-out weirdo/dirty-smelly hippie?

So how often do you shower, then?
Why do you think you should listen to economists?
Can you explain to me how the developers of World of Goo, who field the support requests for WoG, are going to refund the bundle price despite a) having not actually received the bundle price and b) having no direct commercial relationship with the customer which would let them click the Refund button in Paypal?
I'd be curious to see other peoples opinion's on this article.

In my experience the moment you are an "anyone" in a company then your employment contract almost always stipulates the amount of time that you must give before leaving.

It almost always works both ways, with your employer being required to give the same amount of notice before letting you go, or severance in replacement.

I can't imagine any one other than an entry level worker not having a defined time to give before leaving.

I also think it speaks pretty poorly on someone to just announce that they are leaving as of today.
I also remember Pheonix. Where do people get the idea that it was fast and lightweight? All they did at first was stop showing the rest of the Mozilla suite, it was all still there in the code and the download.

People forget the userbase was mostly weirdos with strange ideas about an open internet in those days. I'm fairly certain anyone who was focused on speed would have been using IE or Opera. Having said that Firefox has been shrinking and speeding up ever since as success gave them the time to focus on those issues after fixing the basics like getting your bank website and other top100 websites to actually work.

They should have some early versions available to download and use just to shock the people who say stuff like this back to reality.
Yay! A jury acted intelligently!

Woohoo! The obviously-just outcome was reached in an unjust accusation!

Does it really have to be like this? How can we as a nation justify a system that forces entities that are obviously not in the wrong to spend a large sum of money in order to defend themselves from freeloaders who clearly are in the wrong? And even after spending all that money, we are elated when the correct individuals manage to win.

Why can't the patent office (if we must have one) actually employ field experts? Patent infringement cases would be submitted to the appropriate department, and the accused would submit evidence supporting their case. The case should have to go to court only in the case that the accused loses such an accusation and decides to appeal.
"Lisp has jokingly been called "the most intelligent way to misuse a computer". I think that description is a great compliment because it transmits the full flavor of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts."

- Edsger Dijkstra, CACM, 15:10
We suck at seeing blue.
I suspect that there're a lot of RFCs and W3C specs that could be paraphrased and get you on HN.

How many web developers actually know HTML, for example? In a few discussions here and on Reddit, it seemed like well over 80% did not realize that <!doctype html> is a valid doctype, or that you do not need to close many common tags.
Introducing Koala: a new gem for Facebook’s new Graph API
Has Joel always been listed as the CEO of StackOverflow?
It's not always at the top, though. Call it the reddit effect: sometimes the top-voted item is not the one that is the most informative, relevant or correct, but the one that appears so by virtue of being well written, backed by someone with sufficient karma, and clever enough to get upvotes. The asker may then mistakenly pick this as the accepted answer and the better but less hive-mind-friendly answers get pushed away.

When skimming the site I've occasionally seen better answers at the bottom of a page getting ignored while people shout about the top few answers. If I didn't know better, I would have ignored them too.
In most at-will employment states the at-will part cuts both ways - if they can fire you without notice, you can quit without notice.
Huge collection of webfonts by Monotype (Helvetica, Bodoni etc)
That's an interesting opposing view; because the thing that hooked me on Chrome was the address bar.

I can no longer function efficiently in other browsers because, for me anyway, it is so streamlined.
Our genes can be set on pause
Stack(Overflow|Exchange) is a textbook example of why you might want to take VC rather than bootstrap. Whether they succeed or not, they perceive that their chances of success are higher if they try to get big fast—and there's nothing wrong with that.

Oftentimes the bootstrap vs. venture capital debate gets rather heated and adversarial. But the dichotomy is a false one.
Other than the first suggestion, you have to use the down arrow in Chrome to use the completions. In Firefox, you cycle through them using tab just like completion in every other app (e.g, bash, ipython, anything using readline).
Prior arrangement with the organizers of the deal. I just don't think that this is a big problem.
Sales tax != income tax

While there is an interesting technicality in the "Rest of the world" region where the tax codes are somewhat ambiguous (some of those governments mostly run on bribes anyway), in all civilized countries Apple pays sales tax.
And if you're a consumer like me, you don't have a card in your wallet that's not paying you 2% cashback rewards.

Every merchant I visit is giving me 2% off with Visa and a bank in the middle to make sure of it.
I noticed Chris Dixon and Caterina Fake invested in Stack Overflow. They're the founders of Hunch. Is that different because they're playing with their own money?
Here is a follow up to this article where he talks a bit more about the ethics involved: http://wistechnology.com/articles/2786/
Weird, I just upgraded on Linux (from 5.0.342.9 to 5.0.375.29) and fonts on a bunch of sites (like HN) are different now. I wonder what did that.