skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Is your mom qualified to make the choice? Does she know what impact it will have to install it? Chances are that's a big NO. Implications of this? She will install it because uncle Joe's crappy photo gallery site needs flash, and then she'll proceed to complain about the iPhone crashing, go to Apple for support because "her battery life sucks", etc.

Apple makes consumer electronics devices, you can't install new codecs on your DVD player and you can't install new VM's on your iPhone.

I prefer it this way.
Hah, right, I came expecting some really innovative new way of handling SQL injection attacks.
I think the answer is pretty simple: Back compatibility!
Two points:

1. You can abbreviate the SHA-1's in git

2. When you are collaborating on code, it's much more common to use a global identifier so that people can all know which commit is being referenced. It seems like you are making things needlessly complex when you are trying to maintain local and global revision numbers, for little (in my opinion) return. Sure 'r37' is easier to remember off-hand than '5b98d8f' (a shortened SHA1), but if you memorize 'r37' it only means something locally, you'll still have to lookup the global revision id when you want to communicate with others.
Mongoose: MongoDB ORM-like utility for Node.JS that makes async easy
I think the implication that was people who program in just PHP are bad.
"Some of the best programmers i've worked with were weird dudes who learned how to program in college.

Agreed - in fact I'd say out of the best programmers I've worked with almost all had CS degree's.

"Starting early doesn't mean you're any good. 4 years of a serious, programming intensive CS degree is better training than 20 years of farting around with PHP."

Never implied 'programming for 20 years' made you better than a person that has a CS degree. I actually meant that all the good programmers I know - CS degree's or otherwise - started before college and did it because they loved it. Same guys that go home and read regular expression books for 'fun' in their spare time.

"We don't apply this criteria to other endeavors. I've been playing piano since I was 5 and I'm still not good at it. You're either good or your're not. Sometimes experience helps, sometimes it is a hindrance. Bad habits form early, too."

True, but again I never said that simply programming for 20 years made you a great coder. I simply meant that someone with this trait, who then pursues a career as a programmer (through a CS degree, or whatever) is going to have a leg up on someone who isn't really into it.

"It's also curious that programmers claim that programming since they were a kid makes them a better programmer, but they also complain whenever a job advertisement requires years of experience."

Not sure what you are talking about here. When I've had to hire a junior it seems like a lot of people with the wrong skills apply for the position, but experience-wise, if you have been programming for 20+ years that's not the issue for me. It's if you have the skills the job I'm looking to fill needs.
Git workflow used by git.git
Hash signalling (history support) seems not to work?
I always assumed it was Matt Maroon punking us.
Actually I found that link useful. I hadn't read that post. I was referring more to his book on getting traction from which he has links to a bunch of interviews.

Link I'm referring to so the original commenter doesn't have to re-edit: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/04/ways-to-get-100-...
give them to your underfunded local school.
Looks awwwwesome. Why do the rotated pictures look a little aliased?
No. He was giving them amazing PR. Anyone who's against getting a giant piece of positive PR on one of the world's biggest blogs is a total idiot.

Added: There was a documentary recently about an old-time woman's magazine in the UK. They'd brought in a new, modern editor to bring the magazine into the modern era and to increase sales. One thing she landed was a mostly positive write up in the Sunday Times (the UK's biggest Sunday paper). One of the owners was not particularly impressed because a few negatives were portrayed in the piece and she went nuts because it was, clearly, one of the biggest PR coups the magazine had ever had.
As maxklein himself states on this page "My business model is easy to duplicate and posting something like this is not good for me If he wants his company and what it does secret that's his choice - and a perfectly valid one.
Diaspora: so moved
I respect your request to keep your business private. It's just that when you write post after post, comment after comment, which I enjoy often, about your startup experiences without actually touching upon what exactly it is you do, it gets rather irritating. It's like someone telling you stories about how some product has helped their lives dramatically with tips on how to use it, without actually telling you what the product is. After a while, it starts to raise questions.
Not disputing that but sometimes the org around a PM just won't allow for it.
NIST Digital Library of Math Functions
it's using the native browser's css transforms, which unfortunately don't always look so hot.
I'm glad it's "plain poetic" and not "plain pathetic" (as I initially read that sentence!) Thanks. Yes, it's my own.
It is a strange thing to say given that your products are already in the market. You sound very confident in your posts and you sound awfully scared in this comment of yours. Are you particularly scared of HNers?
> I doubt 98% of enterprises rely on Photoshop.

True, although those who do rely on it could factor in another way of getting the job done. My point is not directed at the total % use, rather the reliance of the software at all.

---

> What is the enterprise use case for Flash again?

I would venture to assume it would be the same as video distribution, podcasts, ads, pdfs or any other format to distribute content.

---

The case for enterprise software use (especially for content) pretty much applies universally.

Trendy hate tends to be very specific.
I was confused for a moment, there's already a C HTTP server library called Mongoose: http://code.google.com/p/mongoose/
When you 'checkout' something from the library, you are not 'having a peek at it' in the 'Hey! Come check this out!' usage of the word. Words can have multiple meanings depending on context. 'git checkout' has no context, so you can't just assume what the author meant when the command was named as such.
If you have an object that's no longer referenced by anything you can lose it when you garbage collect, which was my point. I was only being half-serious, which is what the wink was meant to convey.
I'm hoping for the best here - your blog posts are great.

But it does seem a little suspicious that you can't talk about your business in public.

I can't think of a single legit business where talking about it openly didn't benefit the business (especially once the product is launched).
Here is a major trick to life that most engineers don't realize.

MOST college degrees are essentially useless. There are hundreds of jobs out there that don't require programming or a specific college degree. There is no reason to let your degree pigeon-hole you into a career path.

If you're asking for my advice, I honestly don't feel like you're going to cut it as a programmer. Sorry kid. A true hacker is going to run circles around you and you'll most likely not be able to compete if you aren't competitive after college.

With that being said, LIFE IS NOT OVER. Find a job that you like. Most people respect those that are able to complete a computer science degree and will hire you into a huge array of jobs (financial analysts, consulting, i-banking, technical sales, etc.)
I've always felt that Arrington is a pragmatist and rationalist working in a field made up of antiquated policies, back-stabbing PR people, and bizarre ethics that it would take a lifetime to learn. As a pro-blogger, of sorts, I can certainly sympathize.
Whatever you say, Arrignton has a point in this one. Web publishing is NOT the same as Paper publishing. No wonder News papers are dying; they refuse to merge and be innovative. Last cry always is 'copyright, copyright'!
I guess its a popular name :)
You didn't get banned about Clojure vs. ARc. You got banned because when you started talking about "casual sex" the editors knew you were the same guy who got his last four accounts banned for talking about the same thing (and harassing other users about it).
When we get to the point where two tools have legitimate, reasonable tradeoffs, then I agree with you.

However, your example isn't a good one because Subversion has serious deficiencies and Git works perfectly well in a centralized model. (Just "bless" one repo on a server and have everyone push to it.) I can't think of a single use-case where Subversion is a preferred way to solve the version control problem.
Being lean: Capital as a 'precious commodity'
If you're into this sort of thing, I highly, highly recommend M. G. J. Minnaert's Light and Color in the Outdoors: http://www.amazon.com/Light-Color-Outdoors/dp/0387979352

The harvest moon is one of his favorite illusions, and there just tons of little nuggets like this. It reads like an optical Wittgenstein: a series of short, numbered observations about the way light and vision work that you'd never have thought of, but once you read, you can't stop noticing.

E.g.: you can always predict exactly where a rainbow will be, you can tell leaded glass at a glance, wire meshes only cast vertical shadows, the green flash is very real, sunsets look exactly like sunrises, you can navigate by a polarized lens, hills look steeper from above for the same reason that steeples look shorter than the shadows they cast on a cloud (related to the harvest moon), and the line of the sun on the ocean always points right to you. Have you ever noticed atmospheric perspective, or how drastically colors change with distance? You will after reading this book.

Minnaert makes some interesting claims about the harvest moon in particular. For example, lie on your back and look at the sky for a while: the flattened dome effect tends to wash out rather quickly, and the moon looks roughly the same size in any direction. He also claims that binocular vision is closely related to the perceptual flattening of the celestial dome, and one-eyed people do not perceive the harvest moon. I'm not sure if he's totally correct, but it's interesting to think about, isn't it?

It changed the way I look at the world. I believe scientific consensus has moved on in certain areas in the years since it was originally composed, but Minnaert's careful thought has aged superbly. Definitely worth it.
Pretty defensive response. It's hard to see how you could interpret the evolution of Apple's products since Jobs and OS X and the iPod and the iPhone and now the iPad have taken root as anything but extraordinary. You kind of sound like a hater.
Why the secrecy then? Why the vague anecdotes? To what end?
Their github repositories are unimpressive to say the least http://github.com/danielgrippi http://github.com/rsofaer http://github.com/maxwell

Judging by their open source activities, they are not people I'd give $100k to.

I've seen much more impressive repositories from students.
I can tell you from the perspective of someone actively hiring developers, there's a total shortage of great talent. We're nowhere near satisfying all demand for really excellent engineers. Even if your point that she'll never be as good as you are is true (not that I'm supporting that point), it's just silly to say that she's in any danger of being pushed out of the market if she's still very strong.
Sounds like organized crime simply wants the largest note possible to reduce the raw size of their cash. Not sure how that translates to the fact that "Criminals love the 500 euro note."
After Diaspora works, it should be easy enough to standardize its protocol. Fixing a non-working, prematurely-standardized protocol is likely to cost more.
I wonder if this 'disturbance in the force' with regard to facebook is being felt only by us geeks or if regular people are starting to feel it too.

Has anyone heard something about Facebook and trust/privacy/openness from a non-geek in the recent past? Is this going mainstream or are we in a bubble?
Ah, cool. I'll have the Chromium guys get right on that! :)

Nice work.
U.S. risks China's ire with decision to fund software maker tied to Falun Gong
Because there is very little space for competition in what I am doing, and two or three enterprising souls could destroy my profits
Fortune is jerking him around.

I don't see how: at least in the emails posted, Fortune never authorizes Arrington to post the full excerpt: they talk about writing a post "on the book excerpts".

In any case, I think it is more likely to be a simple miscommunication. It would be more mature for Arrington to simply concede that -- the excerpts are their copyrighted material, and they have the right to control its distribution. Getting all peeved about being woken up at 6:30 AM is silly.
They make nice little servers and have a built in "UPS". asterisk, nfs, dns, dhcp, backups etc.

How about a carputer?
I didn't mean to imply anything. One of the best (and richest) programmers I know prefers PHP. I just don't think it's necessarily the case that you become good simply because you started programming when you were 16.

My comment wasn't great because I also didn't mean that having a CS degree makes you good. What makes you good is practice on hard problems, and a certain amount of "je ne sais quoi."
I thought C was totally terrifying and confusing for the longest time. I started in Visual Basic because it had WSYWIG forms, and I just couldn't imagine how someone would programmatically construct an interface. Feeling like you have no idea where to start is completely legitimate. I eventually faced it, though, and got through it. Of course, I was 11 or 12 at the time, but still.
Ask HN: User choice subscription rates
I was wondering if there was a service that allowed the subscriber to choose the price of their subscription to a website? For example, if you wanted to pay $5 for pro membership per month you can do that or if you only wanted to pay $1 you could do that.

I'm not sure I will go along with this plan, but the idea has me intrigued enough to see if it's possible. Thanks in advance HN.
He has clearly quoted a lot of material, and so what if they made a mistake. This is not how a blog post should be composed from the contents which are not yours. I say TC is in error again and is just whining.
What would a Mixergy interview accomplish? Max doesn't want to talk about what he makes on a forum, why would he want to do it on video?
NativeClient doesn't get access to the desktop file system just because it runs apps at desktop speeds. The sandboxing setup forces it to go through the browser to get to the filesystem.

Currently interfacing with JS is the only way for NaCl to do this, and in the future where NPAPI might allow to use browser APIs through language of choice, you'll still have to use trusted browser APIs for security.
You don't need mentors to have your company take off. You need a good idea, the ability (which includes runway, meaning cash) to execute, and the wisdom to learn from your mistakes. If you're a decent engineer with a little saved up, all you have to do is come up with (1) and recognize if you're capable of (3).
Another fluff comment about "apple fanboys". If you want to refute fluff, use substance.
I thought it was less adoration than it was exploration of process -- and context for where the iPad is now.
Yeah, this seems like an unbiased account. I bet there's NO information he left out of this story... Michael Arrington would never shade the truth.
I am going to make it public, I just was waiting till august, as that's how my startup plan is constructed. Now would be premature and have no benefit, but in august I would have a clear benefit.
"This is just an ad for a law firm."

Perhaps, but this is probably the single most important bit of unique to software development legal advice there is.

(Can anyone think of something else that's more important? Not counting the usual stuff that applies to all companies.)

And you're right, it's neither hard nor requires a lawyer, but you must know about it and do the right thing, otherwise the person you hire owns the code he writes.
John Gruber is an interesting writer. He seems to have access to sources and facts that most people don't. He actually is a reasonably decent writer. Yet his conclusions come out of left field, and always in favor of Apple.

The sad thing is I think Gruber would be a good writer for all things not Apple. But his ridiculously strong Apple bias makes it hard to stomach. After reading Gruber, Paul Thurrott seems like a bonafide Microsoft hater.
Agreed.

Get a challenging job where people can criticize your work and not a job where you can code and deliver with no feedback (except from users with no programming background).

In software, just because it works, it doesn't mean it is well done.

Also, if you can't note a significant improvement
in your skills over the next three years after graduation, you're not going to make it big in this industry.
Contextual Discovery: The Next Generation of Location-Based Services
In a few months, when I have entered the second stage of my business, I will start talking about my products. It's just a choice. I am not marketing to the startup or hacker crowd, just to the normal people.
I don't support everything Michael Arrington does, but I love how he's never afraid of a fight. People who think they pwn you just because they have a couple of lawyers on retainer need to have threats like this shoved back in their faces. Whether it's a bluff or not, kudos to Arrington for calling it.
Btw, we like to say ORM-like because ORM is a concept for relational databases[1], and MongoDB is not one. However, if you're used to working with ORMs, you'll feel at home with Mongoose.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-relational_mapping
The concept does exist, and is essentially an exception to some of the normal securities laws: if you offer stock only to accredited investors, you're exempt from some of the registration/reporting requirements, on the theory that those requirements are intended primarily to protect non-sophisticated investors, so are unnecessary if you have only sophisticated investors. See: http://www.sec.gov/answers/accred.htm

Nobody's actually prevented from accepting non-accredited investors, but if you do, you have to comply with the registration/reporting requirements, which many startups don't want to do.
I actually found that the trackpad on my MacBook Pro scrolled much faster than usual.
Exactly. If you're having problem getting traction it cannot be going great.
Reprints are contractual matters. Draw one up.

This goes double if you're calling yourself a publisher and you're working with major print entities.
Not quite. The law enumerates the things that are automatically work for hire. Works outside those must be explicitly declared works for hire in the contract. If you have done any contracting you will find the phrase in your contract "work for hire".

Literary works are not automatically works for hire. I believe that software is considered a literary work, strange as it seems. (IANAL)
Click on the iPod in iTunes. Under options, deselect "Open iTunes when this iPod is connected" and (possibly) select "Manually manage music".

You'll still have to eject the iPod before you can resume listening but at least this will prevent iTunes from launching when the iPod is connected.
Okay, for the curious, I will make you a deal. Anyone who emails me today or tomorrow, I will provide them with a link to the things I do, provided you will keep it to yourself. I will make a mass-email tommorow and send it to everyone. Then please don't ask me anymore till August, I am not yet ready for the publicity.

It's getting late now and I want to sleep, I don't want to stay awake and be nervously watching this question all night, so just email me if you have any questions for me.
I get the impression that some non-geeks are starting to hear about the issue and wonder about it.
exit, are you planing to develop iphone apps ?
It's a little late in my life for Steve Blank to be my hero, but I must say he's provided the last set of organizing principles necessary for me to just about completely understand and organize the failures of the startups I worked for or that were otherwise important to me.
Interesting. Releasing in August will give you three months till November 5th, which is just enough time to manufacture thousands of masks, distribute them across a large metropolitan city, and purchase tons of explosives to rig the underground subway headed for parliament. I feel there's more to your story.
My hypothesis is that in order to build a cult following, you sort of have to alienate others. Maybe it's crude, but it's part of the equation. The alternative is to take the "corporate" route and build a boring, conservative 404 that could not possibly offend anyone, but would not possibly entertain anyone either.
Haxe is even better. Very similar to Actionscript but with more comprehensive type inference and generics, to be brief.
I'd argue that by the time a business reaches a point in it's lifecycle where it's established enough to need a Product Manager, it is not likely to need to pivot. Or with much less frequency than if it were a pre-revenue startup. I hear Product Manager and I think established product in market with substantial revenue stream and legacy customers to support.
I've bought my last four computers in cash, not in the US, though.
Or it could be that he just does not see how these new devices, which are today geared only to entertainment, could some day be used to further empower us. Perhaps, in the future we might see the iPad or other devices like it, be used in schools for delivering instructional, interactive content. They might serve as rich clipboards for carrying and streaming medical information in a hospital or other medical centers. As for Facebook and Twitter, while they are still mostly used for entertainment, they have also been useful for pushing up-to-minute status of things going on in places of political unrest or from the hospital rooms. When I was at the hospital with my daughter after her surgery, I used Facebook to provide continual updates to my friends and family about her condition.

So maybe Obama's comments simply lack imagination of how these devices could be more useful in the future. And I believe it's also true that some of the most significant technological innovations start out as toys.
Nah, I think the devices are great. Apple's got a solid OS platform on three different types of devices.

I see how it changes personal computing, in that it turns users into pure consumers of content. I mean, that's it. You can use a few apps to do this or that, but the iPad is primarily about consumption. I don't know that this is a "revolution," but it is certainly a step.

It doesn't change personal computing for me, but I don't passively consume content all that often (being a designer and developer).

So, maybe John Gruber pinned me right on thinking it's a glorified iPod Touch, and I'm not a hater; I just don't see what the big deal is. Maybe I've never found a device that made me breathlessly extol its virtues?
cherrypad.com is parked. I think you meant http://www.cherrypal.com/ .

That said, if someone legit was selling $100 netbooks, I'd definitely buy one. I do most of my testing on remote servers anyway; all I want out of a netbook is "an instant-on computing device with network access and a keyboard". I habitually stalk Newegg and Amazon's netbooks sections, wondering why prices are still so high above $200.
Yeah I made that comment before I read "My business model is easy to duplicate and posting something like this is not good for me." So, while such an interview might be of interest to people of HN, it doesn't sound like Max would agree to it in the first place.