skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've used microsoft products from before 'DOS' was even around, and I quit around 2003. I would have quit earlier but I still had to support a bunch of stuff that was running on windows (the webcam.exe client side stuff to connect to our websites), and a bookkeeping program that was windows only.

I've had to re-install machines numerous times because they became unusably slow or infested with malware. We had one machine to which this never happened, nobody really understood what made it different from all the other ones (as much as 25 machines at a time at some point), that little machine just kept chugging away. Maybe it needed an occasional reboot, but even that must have been rare because I don't recall ever having to do that. It's not like it was build with premium components either, it was mostly built from leftover bits and pieces.

I was a licensed MSDN developer for a long time, it cost a pretty penny. You've never paid license fees ? Ok, that's your decision, I always paid for the ones we used, in fact I probably paid for plenty that I didn't use (aka the microsoft tax).

For the most part though, windows was nothing but trouble for me and the people that I worked with, and since switching to linux I haven't had any experience even remotely comparable to what used to be my lot when still using windows.

The machine I'm writing this on was bought in December, the 'vista' installation that came with it was wiped and replaced with Ubuntu. It's a fair sized machine, 10G of ram and an i7 processor, this is still the first logged in session on that machine since I got it. That's amazing stability. It's possible that microsoft has comparable stuff now but I won't be seeing any of it until I either absolutely have to or they do something unthinkable today to prove that they really get it. (Such as, for instance really opening up the source to windows or some earth shattering move like that).

I'm happy you're happy with either, I'm more happy with FOSS stuff, it feels like it is a more natural and democratic approach to computing than having my capabilities granted and removed by some corporation, especially one that has been a bad little boy in the class of corporations.
GoFundMe Simplifies Group Fundraising
Ask HN: How would you make Emacs do this?
For a long while now I've only used two applications almost all the time - a web browser, and Emacs. For reasons I can't quite explain but feel strongly about, I'd love to get that down to just one.

So I have the idea of being able to have a web site that's actually just a gateway to an Emacs instance running on one of my servers.

I don't have a problem imagining how I might do the web app itself - it would probably use html/javascript for presentation, and then a small piece of Flash code to give me a real tcp socket that I can use to talk to Emacs. No problem - I can do these kinds of things easily.

It would be useful to open and save-to local files in addition to ones already on the server. Again, using a little bit of Flash 10, I can make that happen easily.

Now the frontend needs to tell Emacs, via this socket, whenever the user presses a key. And Emacs in turn needs to tell the web app to update the display. I could easily decide on a simple socket protocol for these things.

But on the backend I don't have much idea at all - I've modified my own .emacs a bunch, but I've never actually hacked Emacs.

Does anyone have any pointers? Should I model this after an existing display toolkit (like motiff, gtk, etc)? Or would a different approach work better? Should I start writing this in ELisp, or am I very likely to actually need to drop down to C for some reason?
The reworked collections api is awesome, it finally feels usable (or it may be that I have finally gotten a little better understanding of scala it self).

Also tried the RC eclipse plugin today, nice to finally have the run test and application working directly without having to manually specifying the classes.
The integrated panel+toolbar doesn't really fit with the "windicators" idea, so I wouldn't be surprised to see that integration go away.
Has been discussed before: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1230099

I still think it's an awful idea to group content by type ("all photos are in the iPhoto app") rather then let the user choose how to group it.

Users usually put things together based on content, not type. They want to place that funny video in the same folder as the funny joke saved in .txt and that image of the cute cat. The document with a list of things to buy for the party along with the spreadsheet with the total costs.

And IF they one day decide they want to group by type, they do it. Abstracting the notion of files away is just removing options from the user, options that weren't even bugging them in the first place. I have yet to see someone having trouble understanding the concept of files and folders.

And don't even get me started on the fact that all applications will have to implement their own content manager...
I'm in the UK at the moment but will in Hyderabad soon and will be frequenting Bangalore. What is the hacker scene in Bangalore? Do you attend any other conferences/meetups?
This crap drives me crazy with my touch and is what's holding me back from buying an iPad.

Download file with browser, can't. Get app to download file. Want to view it with PDF app, can't. Cause there are no files and apps can't share data. Want to move it into my photo album or music or video or ebook folders, can't cause there are no "folders". (some newer API's might allow specific exceptions I've quit paying attention). Want to transfer it to removeable media, can't. Cause I guess that's too confusing. Want to transfer it to another device, can't unless task centric app supports that cause again no files, no sharing app data.

Every app is a silo. It's the diametrically opposite of *nix philosophy of small tools connected in myriad of ways. It maybe great for consumers who can't or refuse to learn. But for computer users it sucks balls.

[edit: this is the point of iPhone and iPad. They aren't devices for computer users. They are the mass consumer device the generic/multipurpose/computer has and can not ever become.]
I didn't read the full article but I imagine this illustrates the darker side of CompStat.

Along the same lines, some book recommendations:

_Armed and Dangerous: Memoirs of a Chicago Policewoman_, by Gina Gallo

_Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District_, by Peter Moskos

The second title covers the real-life setting for "The Wire."
Anyone ever used Haiku? And what were you mostly doing with it? What are the advantages if any [for that activity]?

I've known about the project for quite a while, pretty icons and whatnot, but never fired up a vmware-like program to install it and check it out.
Nope.

He's expected to consult with the other guys under standing guidelines (as he did last night with the EU bailout fund), but the UK Government is still the same one they had on Wednesday until Brown goes to Buck House, resigns and points to someone else as his recommendation for the next person who should be invited to form a government.

It's considered critical that HMQ should not ever be asked to make a political decision of any kind.
Ask HN: Finding a business partner to sell my SaaS?
I have a fairly unique product offering that I want to sell to the health care device/pharmaceutical industry. It will help these organizations manage data they are required to report to the government soon and many of them have no way to do this now. Creating a system to manage and report the data could be quite costly, but I have a system they can sign up and start using with little overhead.

My question is, what is the best way to find a business person who would be able to bring this idea to the people who need it? I need help on the business side. The product needs just a little more work, but before I invest more time into it, I'd like to know I have a partner who can help sell it and create text and maybe even graphics for the website. A designer would be a good addition to the team as well.

I see a lot of business people looking for technical people to help found a company, but how would a technical person go about finding a business founder to help build a company?
I think the MBA gets an overly bad rap these days, but looking forward to reading the next installment.
It's not misleading. If he isn't leader of the labor party, he can't possibly have the support in the house of commons necessary to remain Prime Minister. Although there is technically a distinction between resigning as Prime Minister and resigning as leader of the Labour party, the latter pretty much implies the former.
How to Create Native-looking iPhone/iPad apps in HTML
Limesat Ultra
The Limesat Ultra PVR receiver has hit the market with a bang. One of the most versatelite and innovative FTA to date while still being one of the easiest to setup and use.
I agree completely. For what it's worth, I think webapps with import/export functionality are the future for almost all software.
People don't seem to notice that on the iPhone platform fragmentation is limited because people keep buying new devices.

Usage stats from my app in April (somewhat unscientific but illustrates my point decently):
iPhone 3G: 49 users
iPhone 3GS: 48 users
iPod Touch 2nd Gen	4 users
iPod Touch 1st Gen	3 users
iPhone Edge	2 users
iPod touch	1 user
iPad	1 user (might have been me...)
I know. I didn't intend mine as a counter-argument, but just as background for why I felt it was flamebait -- I have experience that indicates to me it's not credible to just uncategorically state that one is "far better." Like I expressed, it doesn't seem like there was much of an argument to make a counter-argument to.

I wouldn't have modded me up, either; in fact, I would have modded me down, because this whole discussion is off-topic and doesn't deserve attention. I think the majority of moderation on here seems awful and is rarely even vaguely proportional to the quality of the comments, and I agree that this is an example of awful moderation. So you're arguing with the wrong fellow.

EDIT: I amended my comment above to be irritating and sarcastic toward people who modded me up.
Not having worked much with Python, what's the * next to x in lines 9 and 11 about?
Hummingbird: Real Time Web Traffic Visualization
Well, the 2G is being phased out with the next OS release, meaning that even though people will still use their old one development will still be focused on a few core devices. The first major fragmentation will be with the new hi-res screen on the next iPhone, the 3G and 3GS aren't really that different to develop for.
Really? For me, the top result is an HN post from a year ago that precisely answers the question: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=554889
This is very annoying. If I didn't knew some one and he/she was following me I just blocked them. I just left Twitter some time ago (feeds are better) and I am glad I did.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LbbZ1HN...
Not necessary. Their strategy seems to be going for the mass market with their iPhone-OS-based products rather than a niche with OS X-based products. Look at their:

1. Pricing for iPhone (after the initial launch), iPod touch and iPad launch price. They aren't the most expensive "smartphones" and tablets.
2. App store app prices, especially for iPhones/iPod touch. They don't control the prices, but they provide a list to choose from and they indirectly influence pricing. See (3).
3. App store top X, what's hot, etc charts. Apps are sold exactly like mp3s.
This is a really good set of UX advice for any social network. I particularly like #4—it's what I've been calling Facebook's fundamental problem all along, concisely put.
I had a similar experience. No doubt, it's an expensive education, just a different kind.

If you set aside a $100k a year job to make nothing, you're "leasing-to-own" that equity and that education for $8,500 per month. Once you can pay yourself an insulting $50k salary, you're leasing it for $4,250.

Financially speaking, it's a helluva lot more painful than an MBA... But (for me) it was worth it.
Probably just rollback to a previous snapshot?
OTOH, if operators keep making the same mistake over and over again, maybe the UI should be changed. I think there's a fundamental mismatch in the EC2 control panel because it looks like anyone should be able to use it, but you have to be a competent sysadmin to use it safely.
An unfortunate reality of customer service: customers trust me when they have a good experience, and a good experience with Bingo Card Creator means that customer is nowhere near a computer and hence is not emailing me right now. If a customer is emailing me right now, that means they are still on the computer, and if they're still on the devil box, something has probably gone wrong.
It's much easier to have a higher ratio when the absolute numbers are higher. Fewer than 2 admins means no vacations, and a team of 3 is often more comfortable.
If you start a thread for each request in Java, you can easily run out of memory when serving large number of connections. This is because Java uses kernel threads, and the stack of threads are allocated from heap when created, usually around the size of 1MB.

This means that you will need around 10GB of memory when serving 10000 request, while an event based app can serve the same amount of requests with minimal memory.

You also have to take into account that thread creation and context switching is really an expensive operation (contrary what the OP is saying), so the thread-per-request app is adequate only for serving small number of requests but for large numbers you will need to use the event-based approach.

You might get along with a threadpool based approach, but take into account that if your protocol is not stateless, then you will need shared state which means you have to use concurrent data structures, which might complicate code.
Not quite. accept <username> is a perfectly valid command, but it is designed to allow someone requesting to follow you to follow you. Twitter needed to find accept requests which did not have matching follow requests, which is a bit more effort (but not much, I'd imagine).

As of now the problem appears to be fixed for a lot of people already.
I think the MBA in the post is just a story of "How I got into debt after some entrepreneurial education". It could have been "After my first 4 startups failed to go huge and I was in debt up to my eyeballs I decided to start another".
Thanks for pointing out the missing link for those not familiar. I updated the show notes.
Pirating to save a penny, the numbers on Humble Bundle pirating
>Perhaps a pull-up from the bottom for general actions?

Stealing part of the touch screen for consistent app-related behavior really limits what you can do with it I think. The menu button is great ui for games in particular that really need a button to differentiate from all the touching and tapping you'll be doing on the rest of the screen.
I agree with rarrrrrr, having been the only admin or in a team of two, vacations can be tough. I would gladly work in a team of three if I had the choice.
People like you should be banned from Twitter until you learn to behave better.
I wish you had said this in your article. This is a pretty good solution for the problem you described.

I've been thinking that a standard cloud-app-filesystem-service that any app could register to use would solve the problems with no-user-filesystem .
Ask HN: Is there any event going one during the WWDC week in SF?
I'm going to be in San Francisco during the week of WWDC but I won't attend to the actual conference. Is there any other event or gathering going on that week I should attend?
If Facebook doesn't work for you (and I agree that it is very complicated, so maybe not the best example), then choose another popular web application. My point was not that Facebook would be better if it used files, and I think you know that. My point was that abstracting away from files makes data lock-in very very easy. And that users are probably not well-informed enough to make a good decision about trading off usability with portability.
Yes, totally (that was my point). Not dissing the MBA -- it was also an amazing experience and investment / risk. My real point was about weighing the financial considerations of taking the startup plunge against the intangible benefits. There are many forms of "debt", from forgone salary, stress on one's marriage, sacrifices to personal health stemming from high sodium intake from top ramen, etc.
Enable emacs-style M-f, M-b, M-d, etc. in all OS X text fields
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/goldman-executi...
I disagree with the "it's only Twitter" because Twitter is becoming increasingly important to me, but yeah, not worth getting angry about. At least that's what I tell myself.
I don't normally comment on grammar, but you've made this mistake in both of your posts: "there needs" should be "their needs". "There" indicates a place, "their" is a possessive pronoun. It's common to also confuse those two homophones with "they're", a contraction of "they" and "are". Getting those straight makes one's writing more intelligible (and more native-sounding if it's being written by a non-native user of English).

Otherwise, I agree with what you're saying about letting users "design" the UI without actually asking them to design a UI.
Once a person has made the decision that they'd like to start a company, I only see one reason to consider an MBA, and that's the networking element. OK, a second could be to have a great support infrastructure during ideation, testing, development, etc.

But, the cost/benefit just isn't there, especially not for people who already have solid professional networks -- for those, they'd be much better off diving in with a good partner.

And, if things don't work out after 1-2 years, there's always the MBA option then, and you'd have so much more knowledge about how businesses work, and what makes you excited.
"what is the word for an argument premised on a proposition that is contrary to fact?"

I don't believe that there is a special word for that. Technically, it's not a logical fallacy to argue from faulty premises.
See How Drugs Get Mixed Up at Pharmacies - ABC News
If all you care about is number of potential users you should target either S60 or JavaME.
Good point, I've just seen a lot of 'screw business school, spend your money on a startup instead' type posts recently, which certainly wasn't the case in this post.
Sure; if every object was an ExpandoObject, the value of your "static typing" would be nil. The point is that you can just make an ExpandoObject if you really need ad hoc properties in one place, and it cooperates with the rest of your statically-typed code.

To illustrate the value of such a thing, I invite you to look at the ADO.NET libraries for data access, which provided a verbose, painful "dynamic property bag" experience as far back as .NET 1.0; you had DataTables with columns that you would pass a type to, and then you had DataRows that you indexed into with strings to put objects in and get them out, and you had to cast them back and forth as you did it -- all of it ugly, none of it checked at compile-time. The value of C# dynamic (besides interop) is that now you can have such a thing in a fairly concise form with syntax that doesn't make you sob uncontrollably when you use it.
This ruby comparison might make sense if people were to use C#'s dynamic all over the place, but it's just a single feature intended for specific situations. Most of the code will remain as sensibly static as ever.
There was nothing undemocratic about the way that Harper handled it. He had the confidence of the House and therefore was prime minister, if they wanted to lead a coalition government they should have lost confidence in the government and then proposed a coalition government.
Ask HN: Power of VIM?
Right now, I use Notepad++. I've been thinking of switching to vim. I'd like to know ... why? what's the power of vim? how can it increase your productivity?
> The product needs just a little more work

That's a thing I've heard many times before when 'a little' was eventually so long that the whole thing got scrapped.

Can you qualify that better ?

Maybe outlining what still needs to be done, you might really be within sight of the finish line and yet that single line might scare people off.
While front running may be illegal it seems that is possible to do front running if you’re properly placed in the stock exchanges. Max Keiser and Hellen Brown discuss this in the video [1] regarding how this can be done by “specialist brokers.”

For good measure read also Hellen’s article [2].

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5G7zBWMpIs&feature=playe...

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/stock-market-colla...
> what is the word for an argument premised on a proposition that is contrary to fact?

Fallacy? Counterfactual? Hypothetical?
This is anecdotal so grab the salt.

My brother in MI is doing $10/hr landscape work because it's the only work to be had right now (for someone w/o an in-demand skill) and he had to call in a favor to get it.
The part I fear most is that every object suddenly becoming an ExpandoObject; there will be someone 'clever' that will do that. I'm speculating, but when you have a hammer...

I think this also has to do with language expectations, express-tivity, and maintainability. A project already using a dynamic language will have some sort method to deal with the nature that certain calls will or will not exist. The addition annotations/conditions seem like optimizations, but doesn't fundamentally change how a programmer would go about using that dynamic language. C#, on the other hand, the language is more constrained to begin with. A (C#) programmer would normally expect certain things such as an interface having a certain number of methods with certain types. Just imagine a library exposing an api with expandos... =p
Wait, now I am confused. I thought your article was about the death of files, but you've just mentioned files twice in relation to photos on the iPhone, albeit files within a database.
The two subsequent Nobel Prize winners who were passed over by the Terman longitudinal study because their childhood IQ scores were too low were William Shockley and Luis Alvarez, both Nobel laureates in physics. No student included in the Terman study ever won a Nobel Prize.

http://www.amazon.com/Termans-Kids-Groundbreaking-Study-Gift...
So with a hung parliament and a national emergency he could just stay in power indefinitely?
Indeed. And that's why when a cop harasses someone, e.g. trying to provoke them into something arrestable, it's often "nothing personal", they're just trying to get enough points to keep their superiors happy, maybe get promoted, etc.
http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/TL16/
Although from 2008, this is still an interesting talk from Anders Hejlsberg - the lead architect of the C# programming language. He outlines the future (now mostly present) of C# and describes the many forces that influence and shape the future of programming languages and explain how they fit into C#.

In the end he talks a little bit about what is beyond 4.0 and he demonstrates the "compiler as a service", which is something I am looking forward to see :)
In fact guys from Mono already moved things forward a little bit: http://www.mono-project.com/CsharpRepl

I like where this is heading.
Someone has to create the wealth that supports liquidity.
Ah, the joys of in-band signaling. Now, where'd I put my blue box?
Introducing cssgen: CSS generation in clojure
Why not Emacs? Just kidding.

vimtutor will answer a lot of your questions.

The kernel of the matter is the ability to do everything from the keyboard. You never have to use the mouse. That allows things to be much faster.
That is a gross oversimplification, but I hope it helps.