skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's very very slow, it crashes often, the UI is weird and hard to figure out (maybe it's more intuitive for Mac users?) and it has several annoying bugs: when syncing with my iPod it often marks podcasts I've listened to, or partially listened to as unlistened; it often hangs when trying to connect to the iTunes store (this is remedied by running "ipconfig /flushdns" at the command line); if I buy something from my wishlist it only removes from the wishlist about half the time. And every time it updates itself it tries to install Safari...
Not a purely hardware company: Apple is already calling itself "Mobile Device Company". They already work hard to start making devices that fit best to the described future of computing.
Google Maps relies (currently) on a connection, but there are plenty of map applications for iPhone and Android that will let you pre-download maps and then track your location via GPS.
Apple: "Think Evil"
Apple's agility is owed to its smaller installed base and more technical end-users. It is notoriously difficult to obsolete something upon which many users are dependent. A large part of Windows sales comes from the ability to run old, often proprietary or unmaintained, software. People would be mad if things stopped working and they'd investigate other techniques -- as Windows's featureset is much smaller than its competitors', drawing attention to alternatives like OS X or Ubuntu is the last thing Microsoft wants to do.

tl;dr backward compatibility keeps customers, no backward compatibility makes them flee, for Windows.
Translation of the translation: "Flamebait makes for great page impressions"
Incurable gonorrhea may be next superbug
A Robot That Balances on a Ball
Don't fool yourself. All three, Microsoft, Apple, OSS, are there to do nothing else but survive in a Darwinian sense.

The only way to be free of artificial restrictions is to be technology agnostic, to not subscribe to any one camp for religious reasons, and to simply use the right tool for the job.
I don’t follow — are you saying I don’t understand his critique because I only look at this from a developer’s point of view?

He is seeing “the web” as an easy way to deploy applications. The app store is exactly what he needs, easy way to deploy stuff to users and no cross-browser requirements.

He makes the argument that while the app store is great in that regard, it sucks because he is locked to one mobile phone (OS) — at the same time, he is making the argument that the Cocoa platform is so much better because individual browser vendors did not (and were not allowed to) innovate, he downplays the compatibility problems by saying that users can just launch another browser (and indirectly, buy a new computer / OS if the browser is not available on their platform).
Isn't offering a similar service prerequisite for anti-competitive doushbaggery? Otherwise it's just traditional douchebaggery.

The non-evil thing to do would be to convert Lala web albums into iTunes Cloud albums or whatever they eventually offer.
Creative types are a bit temperamental, everyone knows that.

And that's very naive thing for her to say... Weird governments don't let you just "opt out".
And how can we communicate the desire for more education, more sustainability, less consumerism in order to better the world without reeking of progressive utopianism in our message? Sincerely doing this may very well benefit society and allow us to focus on the really amazing progressions in society and technology (like space colonization), but it's going to upset a whole lot of people who have invested time, money and energy to protect their anti-progressive infrastructures along the way.

I'd very much like to see us focusing on improvement of our societal and economical infrastructures (education, sustainability, personal growth, pursuit of happiness and purpose, medical & technological advancement, etc) than to stay victims of our "evil" infrastructures (overly influential political lobbyism, corporate en-slavery of its workforce, and greed/thirst for financial domination). But this isn't something that can happen until there are several societal shifts, and perhaps some cultural memory loss.

(Please note that my use of progressive and anti-progressive are apolitical references and should not represent actual values of political parties or interests!)
I love this. Steve Jobs is a pompous idealistic windbag that needs to stop pushing 5 (or 10) year old hardware onto rabid fans as new and the greatest thing ever. Oh Multitouch! Give me a break. Sure HTML5 is great and I use it for video on my site, but why not support both until all the millions of websites using flash actually convert to HTML5? Android is going to put Flash on phones and that will be a game changer (as if Android isn't already chewing away at the iPhone market). Jobs can be all high and mighty about forcing people to use an unfinished spec that's open, but Android will give you both, and that will matter. Then when everyone knows, uses, and fully supports HTML5 in 10 years, and Flash is dead, they can simply just remove Flash support from Android and be done with it :) </sensationalist_rant>
"As the father of a 9 1/2-month-old, I prefer to have a level playing field when taking the time to teach my children how to eat healthy. If Ronald is giving toys with his meals, I have to work that much harder to get my children to eat what is best for their self-interest (which is also best for our economy and society). Personally, I am sick of having to compete with the lowest common denominator when it comes to creating a healthy environment for my family."

Then don't got to McDonalds. I don't suggest banning The Huffington Post because it want to do for thought what whipping cream does for arteries.
That's not a reason to be angry at someone. If you're upset that they "sold out," go build your own. Most of us are in this to not only build cool things, but to make money.
> BBC has government funding ... I think the state controlling a big media institution is terrible

The BBC is independent of the government and the vast majority of its funding comes directly from the British public. From wikipedia:

According to the BBC's 2008–2009 Annual Report,[30] its income can be broken down as follows:

£3,493.8 million in licence fees collected from householders;

£775.9 million from BBC Commercial Businesses;

£294.6 million from government grants;

£41.1 million from other income, such as providing content to overseas broadcasters and concert ticket sales;
Yes, the PC era is coming to a close, and every company involved is panicking, EXCEPT for Apple, because they're clearly out in front with their iPhone/iPad OS ecosystem.

Also, Apple makes relatively little money from the App Store; they still make most of their money from hardware, even if its increasingly mobile hardware.

The real people they're trying to please are users. They only court developers to the extent that enough apps are generated that it enhances the experience for users. And as both a developer and a user, even though it pisses me off a little bit, objectively, I think that's a good business decision. A locked down App Store, while shitty for developers, does probably create a better user experience and sells more hardware...
And that's why iTunes is so bad - because it shares code with the Windows version that can't be Cocoa.
iTunes Cloud TBA at WWDC? I'm excited to free up some hard-drive space.
You can watch it right now with the free iPhone app. You get articles and can watch it live. Looks and works great.
That latest Apple multi-touch mouse is very nice.
Looks like an experiment, someone attempting to innovate.

From Rémi Forax's announcement on the JVM Languages Group (http://groups.google.com/group/jvm-languages/browse_frm/thre...):

It's as far as I know the first reboot of an existing language :)

The idea is to keep the spirit of PHP but change its syntax
to natively support XML, SQL, JSON, XPath/XQuery, Perl5 regex, etc.

Embedding those DSL provides several benefits:

- better readability

- variable values are correctly escaped by default (no SQL injection, etc)

- integration into a common runtime type system which avoid runtime conversions

Unlike PHP wich is based on C runtime, PHP.reboot is based on the JVM which natively supports unicode, exceptions and provides a runtime optimizing environment.

PHP.reboot uses a gradual type system (not yet finished) and will soon get a runtime compiler thanks to JSR 292 API. The interpreter already use this API to speed up method calls and member access.
Humor in the workplace is mostly a way to assert dominance.
- A respected users list; ie ability to track postings of a particular user.

- Sorting posts. ie Say I want to view only posts from New york times.
rbanffy is still an Apple shill.

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=rbanffy
Ill believe the PC is dead, and the cloud is the way to go when i get bandwidth in NYC like I get in Japan.
Though there is a degree of the desire to be persuaded in the first place that allows these sorts of people to actually become persuaded. Though because we live in a society, with others who are smarter or dumber or persuadable or not so persuadable, those that aren't easily persuaded are still concerned about the effects the persuadable have on the herd. The effect on the herd becomes a more meaningful point of interest than the persuadees themselves.
It was...and thanks.
Do something based on science, not on some kooky self-help guru.

The scientific literature supports only a few interventions that can measurably improve happiness:

- keeping a daily gratitude journal (in which you write down what your thankful for at the end of every day; there's a great iPhone App for this actually)

- giving things to others

- investing your resources in experiences versus materials (a new gadget eventually loses its shine, but fun experiences, especially with friends, improve happiness over the long-term)

- join a group that meets regularly (regardless of what kind of group it is); there's actually really strong evidence that this measurably improves happiness
"On the web, people still use plain text editors."

I use DreamWeaver, which I happen to think is quite nice.
Call me crazy, and I'm not a particular fan of Yahoo, but this little attack piece by TC came across as snarky and unprofessional. I didn't think any of Carol's comments were particularly out of line, definitely not given the kind of hubris we see out of Jobs and Schmidt etc. on a daily basis. Even if her comments were somewhat marginally out of line, the whole "pass the bong" thing wasn't really called for, and is a complete cliche besides.

Also: bongs, being large and filled with water, aren't usually "passed". They're usually set out on a coffee table and each person takes a turn at the trough. Joints are passed. Get your drug lingo straight, geeks.
People disagree but don't give a reason.

Maybe one of those people can explain why it's harder for Apple to develop for a single ecosystem on a closed platform then it is for someone like Canonical to develop on multiple ecosystems on an open platform?

Or maybe someone can explain how they are impressed that Apple is able to offer the performance they do in their limited environment when they control every aspect of that environment?

Or maybe they can explain why Apple shouldn't get credit for a final, polished experience? Maybe someone who disagrees can explain why they shouldn't live on DRY.

And finally, maybe someone can explain what boundaries Apple pushed when they came out with an MP3 player, a mobile phone, or a touch pad computer?
There have been plenty of good kings. I say we try a monarchy again. Surely choosing one good leader is easier than choosing hundreds?
The tiny wireless Apple keyboard is the best keyboard ever.
I have no idea what "Titan rain", or most of the rest of your second graf, is. I only know how susceptible our commercial and industrial infrastructure is to attack, because people pay me to find flaws in the software running it.
PS3 class action suit against Sony for dropping Install Other OS
Definitely email clients need to evolve. It's ridiculous that I still have to build email newsletters with table designs because CSS is not well supported. And in this field GMail is actually terrible, not even supporting well the background attributes... sigh.
Lala.com Service Shutdown May 31st
PHP is a language a bunch of people are familiar with-- and a "first language" for a lot of people. This could mean a great deal to some of those kids who started out as "Drupal Developers" and never expanded their skills past the platform.
The majority of people will be unable to work a shorter work week, even if they all wanted to. Our system isn't setup for shorter work weeks and less "productivity" hours. It's frowned upon by upper management at most companies, and is thus enforced by middle and lower management tiers.

Our system rewards timeliness over nearly anything else. Home construction companies bid on how quickly they can build the property while staying "on quality" and "on track." Therefore they're not going to let their blue collar guys work less hours per week. They want to churn out as many houses as quickly as they can.

This strategy of working less will only work for a select few, who have the nerve, smarts, and strategy to design a custom life that permits it. They'll have to be bold and push against the grain, and inform anyone they conduct business with how they operate. It won't be easy. And that alone will make it less likely that it will happen for a large number of people to do it.
7 Easy Tips to Remember a Person's Name
> if Apple can entice us all into their walled garden,

That's a pretty big if. I don't think more than 20% of all computer activities can be exercised in that 'walled garden', that's consumers only, and mostly media consumption at that.

There's a very large world outside of that.
IE snail-speed progress? The IE9 rending engine is impressive. And the work being done is much more impressive than with the other browser makers. Consider the amount of discussion they put out about rounded corners.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2010/03/19/the-css-corner-a...

When you look at something like this, you realize that it's not just the standard that needs to be finalized, but how the result should look. So while Firefox can say we support rounded borders, the net isn't well thought out. Browser makers are racing to mark of checkboxes of success. IE9 may not be the quickest to the block, but it's clear that the IE team isn't just trying to meet the standards.

Edit: I do want to point out that I think your question is a valid one, and while they've recently released updates to their browser rather quickly over the last few years, it feels like all together, they have been slow in releasing anything really impressive, or not just playing catch up.
I like Richard P. Gabriel's writing, his words influenced and inspired me.

His review is well written and the theme of "computer language evolution stalled after 1980" resonated with me. I have an idea of MOP now, but I'm still too limited in my thinking to fully grasp the possibilities.

I think I'll buy the book should I find a cheap copy. Anyone here who wants to sell me the book for ~20 USD? (Germany) Amazon(.de) doesn't list it cheaper than 32€. :-(
My gf is getting her PhD at Yale, and she studies the obesity epidemic with some of the field's leaders. As a result, I'm pretty fluent in the science of this issue.

All I have to say is, in 10 years I think we'll look back on fast-food advertising to kids like we do on cigarette advertising to kids. These companies directly target children with a product that measurably harms them.

And it's not as simple as not going to McDonald's. This type of insidious advertising directed at kids is all over the place, and it's difficult for parents to compete with hundreds of millions of dollars spent on carefully scripted cartoons and promoting appealing toys.

Check out http://yaleruddcenter.org for some facts.
It's refreshing to hear a point of view that isn't all doom and gloom about Oracle's Sun acquisition.
The connection is likely that the article bleeds the idea that most people are putting their dreams (and thus happiness and satisfaction) on hold while pursuing societally driven career choices, most of which are based on financial desires, which require (in most cases) excessive dedication and time commitments that further pull people away from what might really make them happy.
Silverlight is more than just for the browser. It's also for application development, and for places like on the Windows Phone. It's acutally pretty cool stuff.
My Droid is actually faster than I need it to be. I just want a notebook. Literally, a device that is useful for taking notes and general writing.

This thing is beautiful, but it's twice as powerful as my Droid, and I really don't need that extra power - I'd rather have the same battery and run it an extra 5 hours.
It wasn't a privacy concern for me. It was boredom. FB slowly became boring. I joined around the time when the poke was invented and FB was something new. Every time i logged in, i'd find something interesting to do. Doesn't feel like that anymore. It feels stale. There's no app for that.
As a long-time PHP developer (12+ years, yuck it up PHP haters) I look at this with a combination of awe and disappointment. Awe that someone would be willing to take on implementing a version of PHP that can run on the JVM much like Quercus. Disappointment because what they are doing is not PHP.

If the goal is to recreate the "let's build a better runtime" situation that exists in Ruby but in the PHP world, that is admirable. But if you really want the project to get any sort of traction, creating almost-PHP isn't the way to go.

If you can't run your existing PHP code in this thing, then what's the point?
Pushing the envelope...
"InfoQ: This is probably provable (one way or another), but do you suspect that the JVM's use has decreased over all, or that Java proper has decreased while Ruby/Scala /Jython /Groovy have taken up the slack?

Actually none of these languages make Tiobe's top 20. That doesn't mean they aren't important or valuable; they are. But they aren't mainstream, yet. That said, I'm absolutely thrilled by the amount of language research and design going on these days. There are plenty of good ideas out there, and it's marvelous that people are exploring them."

Josh is a bright guy and Java isn't the terrible language everyone may think it to be (though it isn't my preferred language). Ruby is in the Tiobe top 20 though... good to see that he at least recognizes the good that's coming out of other languages.
Actually, if you follow Apple terms, there it's really hard to be rejected. Yeah yeah I know, Google Voice, but it's one application over tens of thousands, and the fact that they are a major competitor didn't help. It's not even a matter of developing cutting edge, because great technologies like Siri or Remail made it to the store just fine. They have terms of services, developers should just read them and stick to them.

Yeah, my car can do 150mph but if a cop stop me cause i'm speeding over 65mph i'm not going to cry cause the USA aren't an "open" country where I can't decide how fast I can drive the hardware I own.
Why Steve Jobs loves Flash
Good strategy, but there's a catch:

when you expect that taking off will boost your productivity afterwards, it won't work.

This is general rule in life: if you stick to expectations you loose.
Don't Click It
You ever try supporting Lotus Notes? GMail is a comparative walk in the park.

Testing on lotusapp.com only gets you so far.
It's a free live 24/7 broadcast, with out commercials, of world class journalism, so what if the video quality sucks.
Steve Jobs and The Fountainhead
Wow. Shitty. Didn't those of us who used lala join specifically because we hated itunes?
Never underestimate the power of the illusion of getting more done by working longer hours. Many employers find people who work shorter hours to be snide or arrogant even if they're accomplishing more. Many employers still think that they need an army of complacent slave horses working at top speed to be an effective way to eliminate contempt and organic corruption in their employee pool.

It's the wrong way of thinking of course, but it's rampent.

And think about it this way... if a company was full of amazingly productive people who got 40 hours worth of work done in 20 hours, do you think they'd let them leave at 20 hours into the week but still pay them for 40 hours worth of work? No, they'll just find a way to double the workload to make even more maximization of their production capability.
They might if Google was starting to do business with them. I wonder how this affects their integrated search with lala for streaming results: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=MGMT&aq=f&a...
There's always someone better, stronger, faster!
Maybe from a hardware perspective, but not from a usability perspective. No right control key. No page up or page down. No home or end. No delete key. No number keypad. I was in love with the ergonomics of it...for about a day.
I wonder if google will ever include PHP into Google App Engine ..
Fun with Secret Questions
It just ruffles my feathers a bit that Facebook says "come on in, connect with your friends, keep in touch" and then after everyone is comfortable and gets used to it, 5 years later says "and now all of you and your friends private relationship and correspondence is public to anyone who wants it. And you have no control over it."

I want an application that allows me to keep in touch with my long distance friends easily, as I've moved around the country. Is it so much to ask that I'm not manipulated and exploited in the process?
From the Lala email to customers:

> In appreciation of your support over the last five years, you will receive a credit in the amount of your Lala web song purchases for use on Apple's iTunes Store. If you purchased and downloaded mp3 songs from Lala, those song will continue to play as part of your local music library.

> Remaining wallet balances and unredeemed gift cards will be converted to iTunes Store credit (or can be refunded upon request). Gift cards can be redeemed on Lala until May 31st.

Upon first read, I though maybe the web song credit could be refunded on request. On second read, I'm guessing no. But it's probably worth a shot.
That's not actually true. It's [arguably] a single market, but it's not a single currency - large parts of the EU do not use the Euro (Britain, Sweden, Denmark and all of the newer entrants to name a few - it's only I use by 16 of the 27 member states).
The 2010's: Own the mobile (Apple, Android)

- similar to the 80's: In the beginning of the 80's we had a large number of computer types (IBM PC, Apple II, Commodore, Acorn, Sinclair, BBC Micro, CP/M, etc). In the end of the 80's, only the IBM PC (and Mac) were left standing.

Today we have a large number of mobile companies. In 10 years time only Apple and Android will remain.

(Android is like IBM PC compatibles today: several companies, but they don't control anything as they have to follow MS rules, and they can easily be replaced with another company: see history of Dell).
if he was watching the BBC solely to affirm his own beliefs he would hardly be watching Al Jazeera as well

Al Jazeera was founded by ex-BBC staff. They've a lot in common.