skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The article makes it sound like much more than a novelty.

I don't have an iPad yet, but I do use my Cuisinart bread-maker twice a week to make delicious and substantial wholewheat bread for way less than you would pay at a store.
"Ok, but then is there a reason to have immutability with collections that aren't shared by multiple threads?"

I think so. What about this scenario:

Point foo = new Point(10, 0);
frob(foo);
zap(foo);

What's the value of foo.x? foo.y?
I have no idea.

In Clojure:

(def foo {:x 10, :y 0})
(frob foo)
(zap foo)

What's the value of foo? {:x 10, :y 0}

That certainty is valuable.
Having moved to a new country myself recently, I would have loved the opportunity to talk to the locals about life in general - where to live, where to go out, etc (though in my case I moved between English speaking countries so the language wasn't such a big deal). I could see the same working for travellers.

Also the chance to make some contacts in the country before I arrived would have been good - making friends in a new city is hard.

I would have paid for that kind of service.
The (relatively) gradual rebound in price suggests the trades actually happened. It's not a removable discontinuity, so to speak.

And, frankly, if you were coding an automated trading system, it wouldn't be that unreasonable to write a "sell at any price" algorithm that doesn't cover the eventuality that a stock with a market cap as large as these might have literally no bids higher than $0.00. (My highly speculative amateur theory is that this is what actually happened: The NYSE froze trading on these stocks for an extremely brief period, as it did with many stocks today, and a handful of automated trading systems scrambled to electronic exchanges, where volumes were low enough that a $0.00 bid issued by some cleverly well-prepared hedge fund was the best around.)
In the very near future the "TV time" of many families like this will be all of them sitting around watching separate movies or shows on individual iPads or similar devices. The shared family dinner has already fallen victim to modern ways. Now the traditional TV-watching paradigm of the past sixty years is going by the wayside.
My issue with article is that it makes arument that programming style is decided by the interface or the device which in case of a device like IPAD is totaly false!

Yes Thinking in Scheme is different than in C++ but Some programs are more suited to be written in a functional language. And that has no bearing on whether the device is an ipad or a PC.

Interfaces dont define the programming style to be used!
Underlying Problem does!
And thanks to Apple you cant use a FP language on ipad!
A Big Slew of Updates from SpaceX
As a consultant to the dot-com industry around the turn of the century, I traveled a lot. I took a lot of long cab rides from airports to downtowns. I talked to lots of cabbies. At some point, I knew the end was near. I knew the end was near when cabbies started asking me if it was a good idea to invest in some particular technology stock or another. Why are cabbies investing in Juniper Networks?

Recently, I started another side business. One of my cousins who knows almost nothing about technology came to me and said, "Let me tell you something. I know how you can get your business started and I want to tell you about it."

At this point, I was already skeptical, but she continued... "There's this thing on the internet called Facebook and millions of people use it and you can make millions of dollars there..."

Oh no, I thought.

But I knew the end was near for facebook. I've known for quite some time. Years in fact. I can't explain to them why I don't join facebook anymore than I could explain to those cabbies why they shouldn't put their money in to Juniper Networks or pets.com. Decisions like that can't be rationalized to those who see a bright future in their bets.

But history tells us a lot and history moves very fast on the internet. Facebook is not sticky. Share prices are not sticky. Users can leave and investors can sell -- and they do. And they will.

Facebook will fall far and it could, and I suspect is falling fast.
Ah okay. Then yes, I agree with you in in that case. Going from an expected single day 10% return to not a single day 10% return is unpleasant.
Sothey’s[sic]:

While the other companies on this list hit zero briefly, Sotheby’s went in the other direction. After opening at $34.61, its shares briefly touched $100,000 before closing at $33.

What is that about?
I hid the left sidebar and expanded the results column by adding the following snippet to 'userContent.css' in my 'chrome' directory (for Firefox).

@-moz-document domain(google.com) {
#leftnav {
display:none !important;
}
#center_col {
margin-left: 0 !important;
margin-right: 0 !important;
}
}

I think the ads to the right were already hidden by adblock, so you may need to tweak this if you want to preserve ads for some reason.
to try this add watexy@appspot.com to your wave.
I don't think that is being critical at all. I think the iPad looks very interesting, but I am also waiting to see how its use settles over time.

Honestly, though, looking at some of ways I've seen people using them in the very short time since its release leads me to think it is going to be a likely purchase in the near future.
+1 for J/K. J and K for navigation is becoming quite prevalent, as seen in websites as varied as Google Reader and The Big Picture.
Just looking at the stuff I'm running right now and wondering how I'd do without:

- xchat (maybe that does work on the iPad, it could be)

- thunderbird

- varicad

- 20 or so terminal tabs logged in to just about as many servers

- about 20 browser windows, each with multiple tabs

- an ide (currently intellij, I hate it but that's what I'm using)

And I'm not even programming right now (haven't touched the ide in a few days, but it's still running), just staying informed, in touch and doing some systems maintenance.

Just thinking about having to 'downsize' to a single non-multi tasking machine without a clearly defined local file store that I can back up to a server gives me headaches.

edit: I missed open office and okular, different desktop, same box.

It would be like looking at the world through a very small key-hole.
Even as a computer enthusiast, I've been noticing this trend in my own working styles.

I just assembled a new (fairly top of the line) computer at my house. And for the first few weeks I played on it, installed software, tweaked, etc.

After that I just started using it for email and the web.

Then I got an ipod, and I do all my facebooking, light websurfing, emailing, etc on there. I only power on my computer any more when I want to get some programming done. I don't even use Word all that often -- generally only to open a file that someone has sent me, or is a legacy file from my old computer.

While the general computer will never be replaced (especially at work, or for work-at-homes) I'm seeing a real trend in the desire for single-use, no-fuss hardware applications (the post on Hacker News about TurnKeyLinux is a good example).

For me:
Watching Movies at Home: PS3 and a NAS
Listening to Music at Home: PS3 and a NAS
Music/Video on the Go: iPod
twitter, email, facebook: iPod Touch
light web browsing: iPod
Showing pictures: Net-enabled Photoframe
About 9 months ago one of the Scribd cofounders emailed me to follow up on comments I made on HN tearing his product to shreds, and while he was surprised that I had detailed answers to his questions, I think I was even more surprised that he was up for a long involved conversation about the problems, given the sorry state of his product. I got the impression at the time that they were focusing on the site and community to the detriment of making the content actually readable.

Now the product is finally living up to the founders :)
Wow. This is the 5th post of the demise or disgust of Facebook -- today. Are we just hating on them, or are these posts signaling a drastic change in our posture towards them?
I don't know, but I suspect FB will have to respond to these cries, or risk their hacker users.
Programming language to be used is determined by the underlying problem to be solved and not the device interface (touch, keyboard or a Mars rover!).
If some app is more suited to be written in an FP language that choice is independent of device that app is being run on as long as the machine code is Turing complete!
Interesting, so you really are becoming more YouTube-for-documents like.

I prefer to upload a video clip to YouTube and then embed it on my site vs. hosting it straight on my site, because if I upload it on YouTube, I get more visitors who may learn about my video (that didn't visit my site), and those may eventually be curious enough to visit my site.

So "discovery" is the big deal here, the "Scribd gets me [document] readers", like "YouTube get me [video] watchers".

Good to know :) And def +1 for doing your market research / cust. dev!
Maybe he should rename it to "Eyjafjallajokull"... all the Icelandic people have no problems with it.
Thanks for this! Now my only problem is being able to sell my apps. I'm from a country where we can't create Google Checkout merchant accounts so I can't sell apps in the Android Market. I hope this changes soon.
I understand why it's fun to play with a new (limited) device. I have an ipod touch. But I worry when people rush to buy $500 devices without being able to articulate why they need it. It sounds like good marketing and impulse shopping. I'm very curious to see how this plays out in the long run.
C Language Quirks
You gotta understand, for hackers, most things are binary: black or white. Either facebook is great, or they are evil and the switch just got flipped.

Hackers are trend setters on the web. Watch them.
My advice, which isn't so much advice as a recollection of what worked for me, on my own self-taught journey to programming enlightenment:

Before learning any language, first learn some DSLs, like ActionScript or Processing; they'll give you 100x the sense of "instant gratification" (really just a good feedback loop, to avoid learned helplessness) of general-purpose languages.

Then read a book on C; but don't bother trying to "learn" it yet. You won't get it, not at first. Then learn Javascript and PHP (and SQL), and use them until you get tired of Javascript's missing standard library and PHP's disorganized one. Quit using PHP; quit using Javascript for now. Read the C book again. Also read a book on Lisp.

Learn Python or Ruby now. Now read the C book one more time. This time you should understand it.

Now's a good time for a university education, if you'd like, or algorithms/data structures/discrete math books, if not. Become really good at creating normalized data structures and efficient indeces for them (to the point where you stop craving ORMs and NoSQL.) Learn to cache data.

Learn the sundry unix shell scripting languages (basically trying to live anything resembling a normal life on a non-GUI Linux set-up will force this on you, so that's a good proximal reccomendation.) Try to code some sort of compiler. Realize that, despite knowing however many of the algorithms involved, there still seems to be something magical about them. Learn an assembly language, and how the dynamic linker/loader, executable object format, and virtual memory subsystems of your OS work. Grok that compilers just do clever string processing, and write a simple one. Learn to cache instructions, and make your compiler do a few optimizations.

Keep learning other languages until the Lisp book makes sense. Then pick a language to work in, for you are now a Journeyman.

(If you'd like to like Javascript again at this point, learn Smalltalk or Lua, or look at how MOOs work. If you'd like to ever like C++, learn Haskell first and treat C++ as a compromise between it and assembler. Don't bother liking Java or C#, but learn some language on the JVM/CLR so as to like managed code in general.)
Not only better, but also factual. Even Neal Gafter agreed with it: http://twitter.com/gafter/status/1739264519
Launching real products for real users it major :) Good luck.
If I had to compare Facebook to anything, I would say that it is turning into Microsoft Project 2003

I'd more compare it to windows 95.
It sucks but is ubiquitous, so you can't stop using it.
Kindle 2.5 hands on: social networks, passwords, and more
Good idea! The preview pane only worked the second time I compiled though. Exporting to pdf gave me a broken link however.
Facebook is not sticky? hundreds of millions of people logging in every day and consuming the site for a high number of pageviews redefines sticky.
Slick Operator: The BP I've known too well
Looks like we are pretty much on the same page then.
Andersen.

Yeah, I worked there. For about 11 months.
There's at least one big difference. You probably didn't make bread before and now aren't making bread without the bread maker, while the iPad lets people do what they're already doing all the time, better: looking at pictures, watching youtube, browsing facebook, reading email, etc.
You know what, you guys should collect these social proof points and feature them prominently on your first page. So that content creators visiting Scribd for the first time can immediately understand the value proposition right away. This link is a perfect proof point - and priceless, because for the sheer fact that it wasn't written by Scribd itself. You can write anything about yourself, but it's what other people write about you that matters.

Your brand is what other people say it is ;) You guys should leverage such proof points more in your marketing effort.
Did it have an Internet connection? (sent from my iPad Nano)
Wow, judge much?

Throughout time, people have used technology to incrementally make their lives better. Not everybody has the skills, goal, or even desire to found the next Facebook or Google. The people who make the most money in the technology space recognize this about their customers and don't look down on them about it.

And, just because you are ragging on intelligence, it is "want"...
Like Microsoft is dying?
Good job! Bits of feedback:

'Back' doesn't work. When I got to the bottom of the intro link, and clicked the upload button (just because I could), and then hit 'back', it brought me back to the top of the document instead of where I left off, which breaks normal browser behavior. I'm not sure what's causing this, because when I hit back, I do see the page counter at the bottom show 20/22 briefly before getting reset to 1.

Others have already mentioned not putting the navigation at the bottom so it doesn't look like spam.

Is an Arc90 readability-like feature in the works for those of us who want to read and not fight the designer who thinks grey-on-slightly-darker-grey with a hard-to-read font is edgy? (Site is currently broken when trying to use readability.)
We're all dying, but that doesn't mean we'll be dying tomorrow.

Titles like that should come with a qualifying end-date.

Otherwise it's just about some undefined point in the future.

If facebook is dying I'd like to see some proof. I'm very much of the opinion that facebook is transient, but I'd be very careful to stick an end-date on it smaller than at least 5 years in to the future, and a lot can happen in 5 years.

In my own circle of friends facebook is definitely past its prime, indicating that there is a lifecycle to a facebook account, if that is a universal truth then we should see a downturn in facebook traffic in the next 12 months or so.
If somagrand is asking a question of if this is using javascript, I'd say yes.

Looks like an iframe with some animation.

It seems quite usable for images and video, not so sure about text though as you're squeezing content into a frame which is potentially smaller than anticipated.
Since I got my iPod touch eight or nine months ago, easily 3/4 of my recreational web browsing has moved to the Touch. I frequent a couple of VBulletin-based sites that are just too painful to use that way, and I still use the PC for a lot of things (Photoshop, cataloging & ripping CDs, pulling down media to watch via the TiVo, etc.) but I've moved everything the mobile platform is capable of handling over to the mobile platform.
I think whether it is sticky or not is not the right item to focus on (though it obviously is). The question of whether or not they have serious user churn is the interesting one.
For an overvaluation this high, I can only presume their stock was mistakenly priced with an algorithm meant for their paintings.
Nice work guys!
How do I make a GUI in 5 minutes using python. Can you please point me to a link / blog post. thanks.
Turn any Linux computer into SOCKS5 proxy in one command
Stop-loss on your time and effort is at times a smart business decision. There is no point in sugar coating it. That being said, a failed business does not make you a failure. Not at all.
Right. You're not the normal use case though, even at the office.

At work I probably have SQL Server Management Studio open, a tabbed text editor, Visual Studio, a Terminal Services client, an IM client, Chrome and MSIE both open, Outlook, several internal apps developed for our trading workflow and monitoring, internal design documents, specs and documents from data vendors... etc. My average window count is probably 16 across three displays, and I'm just a developer. Even in most offices that's absolutely abnormal. Heck, in your average office multiple displays is incredibly abnormal. I've worked in other quant shops and I remember in one even the guys driving the company's bottom line were given just a single 19" display.

But that's fine. I don't need most of that at home. At home I get by with a browser, iTunes and occasionally a Terminal Services client.

iPads aren't going to replace desktops for doing real work. They can't. They never will. However the average user -- and the average power user most of the time -- doesn't need a desktop either. I'm pending a home hardware refresh. I'll still get a decked out iMac, but I have a gut feeling it'll mostly be asleep because 95% of what I do at home is with a web browser. And my lounge chair and sofa are much more comfortable.
Until now!
They are now competing with cheap labor/intelligence from India and China.
And Later worse with machine intelligence!

Frankly the inly "skill" that you could rely on 20-40 later is programming and creativity.
One data point: management at my large government enterprise are suddenly getting all jiggy with social networking and want to do an internal Facebook (for no discernable business reason).

That's a sure sign that something has passed it's prime.
My technically inept family members have been using Google for years. But I don't see their shares tumbling.
Fair enough. Not sure why you think I care how Murdoch runs his paper though.
This one got better after they added snap to alignment in the latest version:

http://www.ipadworkapps.com/2010/05/imockups-killer-wirefram...
What the recent neandertal genome sequencing means to us
WATCH UFC 113 MACHIDA VS SHOGUN 2 ONLINE STREAMING
The game visuals in Japanese games are very pretty and stylistic. However this is just the surface and the game mechanics itself is poor. I find the Japanese games are typically a grind, collect them all, or single path perfection.

The game software reflects back on the real world. Lots of style but no substance. Example, the typical Japanese offices have very shiny reception area but where the real work gets done is a cramped, uncomfortable place.

Indeed Japan feels like it's run by a committee. I worry that Japan is like General Motors. Some very interesting products, some very passionate capable people, but the culture doesn't allow innovative things to happen.
Codeless web development
That conversation was one of the pieces that led to this change. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me about the product.
I hope they were at least being paid for becoming part of a TV show.
What a crock of shit. Pardon my french.

If you're going to close your account, the world doesn't need to hear about it. Those of you jumping on the bandwagon to close your accounts probably can't come up with a real reason why you joined the service in the first place. So stop your whining.

2 bloggers ranting about their demise doesn't count for the rest of the population.

Facebook is here to stay. you know why? because it's the only app that you, your mother and your grandmother (mine anyway) are on and navigating with ease.
But back to your point, the toll roads I travel on charge more for semi-trucks than they charge for passenger vehicles.

Yes, because the semis cause more than their share of road-maintenance costs. This is akin to charging me 2x as much if I want to upgrade to a pipe that's 2x as fast. Nobody has a problem with that.

The problem happens when the government sells the tollway to a private corporation, who then starts up its own trucking line. The road's new owner charges its own trucks $0.25 and everybody else's trucks $5.00. How could you defend that?

I wonder why we believe it is okay for the govt to meddle in some areas and not others? Where and how do we draw the line?

This isn't even a new question. There are some interesting parallels with the early telephone switching system. About a hundred years ago, an undertaker named Strowger noticed that his competitor was getting all the calls whenever someone kicked the bucket. It didn't take much investigation before he discovered that Betty the Switchboard Operator was the sister-in-law of Bob the Undertaker at the competing funeral home.

Nowadays we're faced with the exact same scenario, but due to the logistics of the last-wire monopoly, we can't solve it by inventing a new switching system like Strowger did. That's where the government has a legitimate role to play.
The money and the taste is all well and good, but the real reason I kept using mine (until I started travelling): the smell. Waking up in a house that smells like fresh baked bread is just heaven.
That's a great idea. We could definitely do a better job of surfacing stuff like that.
Of course, a brokerage like Citi will run most of their trades larger than 1000 lots through their program trading, which splits the order into lots of smaller trades of 100-200. I agree that it sure sounds suspicious, but I seriously doubt the exchanges saw a single bid for 1.6b shares of the e-mini.
Mobile Phones Around The World (Infographic)
I'm sorry, I don't see your point. Could you elaborate?
Qt is also available under LGPL 2.1. See http://qt.nokia.com/products/licensing for details.
Makes you wonder why they never did more with all the stuff they've got, it seems like they were seriously under-using it before.

The other stuff was, likely, a lot more cumbersome to use. Waiting for machines to warm/boot up, waiting for software to start, etc, adds friction that can have bigger than expected effects on how often devices are used.

The iPad is far from perfect, but an almost instant-on and rapid interface, along with the form factor, makes for a game-changing device that's perfect for checking something on the Web, checking e-mail, or updating Twitter almost anywhere in the house or garden. Phones could do some of this before but the form factor provides a similar friction to usability.
This look like an absolute nightmare to use, who wants to drag stuff around in a GUI interface instead of writing some easy to read HTML or script.
Funny, I was doing live market commentary on stocktwits when this happened. It's pretty interesting to see how I reacted to the voodoo.

One point: it's my belief that if we didn't have HFT and the quants, this would have been a move like 1987.