skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
No Facebook, MySpace etc. and never have. I can not really find time for any more activities at the moment, online or offline, and Facebook is very low on priorities list so it does not make it. I guess I just see no benefits from having an account.

I have a LinkedIn account though - created when I was last looking for a job. I almost never login though, but sometimes people that know me in real life send invitations to join their network, and I accept. That pretty much sums my activities.
This parody did more to convince me of Jobs' point of view than anything I've read so far. If my car were as impressive an improvement over the status quo car as the iPhone is over the phone, I'd gladly give up the ability to drive on rural roads.
http://i.imgur.com/TzY1W.jpg

£28 worktop and legs. £12 glass marker board/whiteboard. Both from Ikea. The silver thing is just a mini stereo, not a computer. Fruit, because I'm always hungry.

It's night time in London, apologies for the terrible grainy photo. There is a nice door to the garden just to the left (so I get lots of light and fresh air.)
Oh wolfram|alpha, have a little fun.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Happy+Birthday
I don't own an iPad so I can't test but Opera Mini for iPhone does keep the other tabs as I left them, no need for refreshing or to show some blank pages. It really improved my browsing experience on the iPhone.
That's interesting that Kurzweil predicted deflation would be recognized as a good thing.

I was an economics major and never understood the main stream view of economists on that (that it's bad).
These have worked well on planes and in offices for me for 2-3 years. I bought them for $125 at Amazon after comparing a lot of reviews.

http://www.amazon.com/Audio-Technica-ATH-ANC7-ATHANC7-Noise-...

It seems like this model is superseded by a newer one now.
45 Mind Blowing Colorful Logo Designs
I grew up in rural Nebraska, where most of the country roads are fairly well maintained. Despite this, there are cars on the market that are horribly suited to driving on many of these roads, especially during the rainy season when deep ruts form, and thereafter when the ruts harden.

Far away from this setting, in the more urban environments, there is a phenomenon where consumers take vehicles - even those that might otherwise be suitable for these roads - and they modify them to make them exceedingly unfit by lowering the suspension. It has been going on for so long that the song "Low Rider" by the band War is used as a cliched reference to the 70s.

I know of someone, in the 2000s, who had a terrible time finding an apartment because his Jetta, modified at great expense, couldn't survive an apartment with speed-bumps in the parking lot. Not long afterward, he totaled his car - going over a speed bump he did not see.

At the other end of the suspension-spectrum we have millions of SUVs on the road, many of them capable of taking all manner of abuse, only to be driven exclusively on concrete to tame destinations like grocery stores and shopping malls. These vehicles are a suburban male peacock display: the suspension serves no function other than to signal virility.

I'm not trying to extend the analogy by mentioning any of this. But I do think that if we're looking to the automobile industry for guidance we should probably take note of the diversity and realize that there's probably room in the mobile computer space for devices without Flash.
London-based filmmaker attempts to disappear from Britain's surveillance grid
People who rip off your idea in such a way can be shamelessly destroyed business-wise. If one enjoys doing that, then sharing has no downside, it's like dealing crack: once they take your idea and run with it, you own them.
There were more useful alternatives to the GIF at the time, though, and the GIF didn't have such a lock on related patents. GIF was one patented format; h.264 is a fuck-ton of patents related to the development and implementation of codec formats.
I think this is a viable idea.

I would focus on niche areas, perhaps where you would waive all fees (and the shipper would also) to get some users. What comes to mind are parents visiting college kids may be willing to bring care packages for other parents at the same college, and the same for packages going to military bases.

There may be other niches: fanciers of a particular dog or parrot breed may be willing to help others transport those animals, and those animals may be impossible to ship; among the heirloom plant type people, fruit tree sapplings might be good; people who are into a certain type of old car or motorcycle are also often community oriented enough to help haul something if they are going the same direction.

I would disregard the skepticism in the comments. I have found start-up types to be sort of passively hostile to co-operative type setups that are not crassly commercial enough for them -- there's nothing wrong with that.

I would not make the "safe, secure and reliable" guarantee, because you can't really do it, unless you offer package insurance (which might be a good add on). I would just say "select shippers with a reliability rating that suits you" or something like that.

You should also take the 1 - 2 - 3 steps on the left hand side, for people with packages, and replicate them on the right hand side, as in "1: you are traveling to a distant city 2: you find someone who needs a package sent there . . . . "

Also, I would suggest that for an unrated people the package must be inspected and sealed in the presence of the hauler, it will keep out some of the drug shipper types.

In your about page or further explanations, you might make reference to the way old settlers used to pass mail and packages to whomever was traveling in the right direction (in thinly settled places that is still sometimes done).
nice. I have the same mouse/keyboard combination :)
There's a cheaper way to get a tiling window manager on Windows: bug.n

http://www.autohotkey.net./~joten/
I wish this method were more applicable outside of CS. Applied computer fields (meaning mostly programming, IT, DBA, networking, and the like) have more of an "it's what you know, not the letters after your name that matters" culture than just about any other field requiring any sort of specialized education that I know of. Unless it's for your own personal knowledge, going this route in a field like chemistry or biology will get you nowhere professionally (and may not even be possible in fields like experimental physics).
The list is good, but it is too long to apply to every feature without devolving into a checklist without meaningful discussion . For example 12, 22, and 23 are just variants on, "Is this just a passing fad?"

The list should be split in two: Should we ad this new feature? And should we remove this old feature? Usage tracking helps in the latter. If few people click on it and even fewer people use it, that's a sign that it is just in the way.

A futures poll asking, "which of these features should we add?", might be useful.
Laptop: dualboot Ubuntu/XP, Netbook: Windows 7 (with synergy)
This is my normal setup (1): http://www.der-ketzer.com/Imagenes/Full.jpg
This is the setup from the desk at the room where I sleep (2): http://www.der-ketzer.com/Imagenes/Clean.jpg

I prefer the setup (1), I find everything is in harmony =)
I use the netbook for school, mail, im, tweetdeck, and the laptop for coding, etc.
If there's any lock-in at all it doesn't matter if you call it open
I used to have a MBP. After a few months of testing it out I gave it to my wife and gladly got her $200 netbook instead, on which I immediately installed Arch and felt like I could do something again.

I don't understand this.

Ah, the freedom of customizing my OS!

This, I understand.
Anyone running a desk at standing level (or adjustable height for part time standing)? I've been curious about this lately after reading all the articles about sitting being bad for you.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6411024/desktop.jpg
I've always found ssh's port forwarding to be unreliable; it freezes up randomly and seems to do synchronous connect(). It also doesn't do its buffer management correctly, so you get huge lag on other connections when you're using a lot of bandwidth on one port.

Plus, socks requires you to reconfigure every single bit of client software to use it. sshuttle just magically works because it uses the kernel-level transproxying.

You would also need to decide, in each client application, which IP addresses should use socks and which shouldn't; otherwise you'd end up forwarding everything, which is no good either. You can configure sshuttle on a per-ip-subnet or even per-ip-address basis and it affects all your client software.
I work from my boat, currently at anchor off the coast of Copenhagen right here: http://maps.google.com/maps?t=k&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll...

An old IBM R40, some Philips monitor I got for free and a great view.

Pic of workspace: http://maximise.dk/workspace.JPG
I saw this desk at a pottery barn and had a local guy in san diego build one for me in the green color - the one at pottery barn was brown. It turned about to be a lot cheaper too :)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10711/hn-workspace.jpg
How do you like the Embody?
That's funny. When you said: "built-in modems", I turned my Macbook up to the side, and sure enough... no modem.
Who says it was easy?
Show HN: Bolt, my (somewhat dynamic) static website generator
Killing Turing equivalence is a bigger deal than killing RS-232 ports and floppy drives.
To the left is my actual machine (running Emacs, of course). On the right is my dumb-client for reading my work email.

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/0DaO9w41sNJw8FVMbzVPWL9...

The speaker stands are Kleenex boxes. I keep thinking I'm going to get new speakers, but this works well enough.
more details please. how do you destroy them?
Of course. I wouldn't touch OS X with a ten-foot pole.
In reality this tends to not be a very big issue. Typically for online production serving you want 5 ZK servers (in case you take one out for maintenance you could still suffer a failure and the quorum would be maintained). Once you setup the ensemble (cluster) it typically doesn't change much. There are some cases where this is useful, but they are pretty rare. Furthermore, you usually don't want just any process attaching to the ensemble, specifying the host/port explicitly is a security feature of sorts (granted not perfect though).
I have to confess some strong jealously. Maybe I have romanticized sailing too much, but if I had the money I believe I would live on a boat and code.
As you may know, they send all of your contacts who aren't members messages saying '<person name> invited you to join their network on (linkedin|facebook|twitter)'. Sometimes they even mail to 'remind' you again a month or two later.

I don't think users necessarily realize these messages are being sent ostensibly on their behalf. In my view these large, successful companies are growing their user bases through spam.
These pictures are a little old from right after I first moved into my new office back in January. It's much more moved into and setup now.

My office is in an old brewery in Ann Arbor that was built in the 1960s, shut down during prohibition and then turned into an iron foundry, then shut down for pollution in the 1960s, then renovated into an office building in the 1970s.

http://twitpic.com/1kfsu0/full

And these are my homemade whiteboards (less than $40 total with a few materials from Home Depot) and my office-guitar.

http://twitpic.com/1kft4u/full

And this is the atrium right outside of my office.

http://twitpic.com/1kft6r/full
Nice. Where are you moving?
The download is really slow right now, does anyone have an alternate download location?
We wouldn't accept that in a car for any reason.

Really? I see these on the road all the time and I would have no trouble whatsoever finding a road they couldn't handle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_(automobile)

Consumers do, in fact, willingly buy cars that limit their travels. Heck, a lot of people willingly buy cars that don't have enough oomph to take an entirely paved route over the rocky mountains.
I've used WMs. It's not the same. Moving the mouse cursor is pain-free and fast. And the ability to compare the layout in different browsers visually is a big plus. I save the html/css, hit refresh and see the web-page in 4 different browsers. Now I can instantly see if any of them have weird CSS issues.
I found this highly useful in practice. Thought I'd share the linkie.
The best thing that's ever happened to me with sharing ideas is that someone was inspired by them who could execute on them better than I could. They built it, saving me the trouble.

If you share your good ideas, you'll build a network that informs you and feeds your brain to synthesize more good ideas. Build the ones that really fit you and yours, the ones you can't stop yourself from building, and do it now. Then you don't have this problem, you have the sharing a demo problem, which is better.
This is the kind of static site generator I've always wanted.

I'm keen to check it out now.
> But even so, the comment was vague (a single word) and not enough to draw a conclusion

What was the single word?

Payday? Money? "Stolen?!"?, Nevermore?
nice. how are you getting the vertical split with screen?
Great. The country's best airline (Continental) is merging with one of the worst (United), and in these situations the combination always sinks to the lowest common denominator.
XMonad is actually managing the split there with emacs on the left and screen the right. There are Screen patches[1] for vertical split floating about but I don't use them.

1. http://fungi.yuggoth.org/vsp4s/
I've been meaning to try the Kinesis Advantage, how is it?
I disagree with this approach for angels. I'll approach it from two angles, an investor willing to think through and modify terms, and an investor that wants a boilerplate set of terms for every deal. In the first case, it's important to think through the shape of the entire return curve. If a company is 100% common stock with no liquidation preference, and you own 20%, your return is linear, $0.20 for every dollar of sale value. As soon as you add preferences, participation, caps, etc, that line is no longer straight. A 2x preference, for example, strongly weights the low value exits (the curve is steeper from O to the 2x amount, then reduces in slope). In the negotiation between the investor and the management team, each side has views of what the ultimate value may be (or what a probability weighted view of potential exits might be), and each side can manipulate the shape of that curve to match his expectations. For example, if the investor is worried about a low priced exit, and the management thinks the company is worth a lot more, a 2x liquidation preference and a higher valuation works for both parties. Investors get more of the exit value at a low price, and management gets more on the upside (because of the higher valuation results in more percentage ownership for them). If both sides understand how these terms work, creative use of preferences, participation, and caps can help everyone get to a deal that works.
If, however, one wants a standard set of terms for every deal, I would recommend sticking with straight up 1x non-participating preferred and reducing the number of variables to one: valuation. 2x is usually perceived as not founder friendly and raises unnecessary concerns (whether real or perceived). It also sets a bad precedent for subsequent institutional investors, who will likely ask for 2x as well in order to be on the same ground. If the institutional financing is substantially larger than the angel round (as is usually the case), the angels end up losing by the precedent they set. With the institutional financing in place, the return for the angels is (almost always) better when both institutional and angel investors have 1x, than if both have 2x. Whether or not it is justified, institutional investors are often going to seek "fairness" by having terms on par with (or better) than angels. Setting a precedent with 2x for the angels will lead them to go for 2x as well, which doesnt help the founders and doesn't help the angels.
It's just like any other dream - it has upsides and downsides. I wouldn't trade it for anything else though, and I can't imagine moving back into a small box in the middle of a crammed city. If you're a bit of a handyman and know what to look for it doesn't have to be that expensive. I've written half an e-book on how to find, buy and live on a boat. Hopefully I'll get the rest done this summer.
Sounds like an interesting challenge, if you're up to it please start a discussion on the dev mailing list http://bit.ly/cpVqnb It would be interesting to see the results. Java is currently used because that's an environment that ops feels pretty comfortable with, erlang would be a great option esp if it's faster, more reliable, etc... I've heard some interest in .NET for the server as well.
What Taco Johns Can Teach Us About Customer Service
Isn't item 1 a good thing, because after about 100 iterations your idea will probably improve?
Great! Let me know, how you find it, or if there's anything you want that is missing. It's in very early stages at the moment. :-)
>I don't understand this.

It's just that I really disliked OSX windows manager and the finder; also I never liked the shared menubar location. Working with multiple applications has always been a pain in the neck for me. I loved the size and feeling of the multitouch pad but found it frustrating that it was hardly customizable (you even need third party app to do things as basic as third click emulation)

I never was a Mac person and I bought a MBP to give it/me a try. After a few months I was convinced I'll never be one.
Dumb question time: what's the difference between PG's BST and any other BST?
Just switched back to Linux after 6 years with a Mac. Running on an MBP for now though.
Here's my advice: share your ideas, but generally refrain from releasing the seed of it to anyone but investors, most of the time. It's your passion that you should protect. This can can be difficult.

For example, here's a couple of mission statements that remind me of what would have been once the core of ideas: "we turn unstructured information into structured information" (Dapper) or "organize the world's information" (Google).

Sometimes one needs to talk about ideas to drill down into it and release a core value proposition like the ones just mentioned. But, once you have it, if you mention it, you dissipate its energy in yourself and risk transferring it to someone else who can manifest it better than yourself: basically rip you off. At the same time, by sharing the core energy, people may remember you, help you, or work for you. But they also might trash it or steal it.

So once you've refined the gold, just stick it in your pocket until you absolutely need to bring it out, like to customers and beneficiaries of the idea. And when someone talks to you about their ideas, you should likewise respect it.

Good to know someone's background to determine what and how much of your ideas you wish to discuss. Also, when your ideas become real physical energy, then start working.
Nokia 8310 SIM FREE Mobile Phone
The "recipes" page has some good examples: http://bit.ly/938bnt dynamic configuration, leader election, distributed queues, distributed locks, group membership, etc...
Yeah, me too. If I feel like I'm on to something, I like to talk concepts and then share demos. If I describe what I want to do in detail, the demo won't get built. Describing it constitutes creative release.
From their (estimated) first year of traffic, it looks like Wolfram Alpha is in the "trough of sorrow" right now:

http://abstractnonsense.com/w_alpha.png
Yes, Nokia N900.
Ask HN: Has anyone tried using genetic algorithms to pass a turing test?
It looka like Ray Kurtzweil talked about this idea here:
http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0683.html?printable=1

To find the relevant section search for "The evaluation function works" on that page.
You're picking out silly details in the predictions. The predictions about desktops to laptops is about computers getting smaller in general, the detail about laptops was just an example, computers fitting inside jewelry is another example.

Do computers fit inside jewelry and get worn on clothes? Yes, RIFD chips and iPod shuffles are jewelry sized.

He didn't miss smaller than state movements having significant influence, he mentioned that ultimately anyone will have the capability to severely disrupt society. Computer viruses could be a serious problem when brain implants will be widespread. Science fiction writers thought of this in the 50's.

No one is claiming that those predictions will be exact to the last detail. We don't know how AIs will look, how brain implants will work in detail today. Maybe 140 char messages are a vital piece of such systems, we'd stumble on that anyway.

You don't need to know every detail. If Google didn't happen, some clever social networking portal system would have happened. If facebook didn't happen, some other way to ID users would. The larger trends are obvious, the details are not.

VCs saw The Matrix. They care how your startup fits into the market in this decade, they want to see something that works now, not hot air about how amazing the future will be.

(Intelligent assistants are GPS things that tell you where to turn and voice activated customer support menus. The prediction about new forms of government are social networks. The underlying idea is that as communication becomes more frequent, less of a hassle, governments and corporations will get reorganized, the startup mania is part of that)
Looks like an ad from Apple. Nice.
I wonder how many lies were told in order to get this scoop? "Hi, I'm a friend of Brian's, do you know...?"
Cars are evil. the less are produced the better.
Ride buses guys. And probably try to crowdsource new public transportation.
Nissan books 8,000 Leaf orders in nine days
I find Wolfram Alpha better than most desktop softwares for quick checks on formulas, equations or random mathematical curiosity.
That's ridiculous. The iPhone was a huge improvement over the status quo, but there are plenty of phones today that are comparable, if not better.

All of the goals Jobs mentioned in the article could be achieved just as easily by imposing those restrictions on the App Store, but still allowing users to install apps on their own. Apple's policies are harmful to its users compared to the alternatives.

With that said, a car that couldn't drive on rural roads would make sense if it drove itself, but required infrastructure that wasn't universal.
the problem here is once you put two fingers on the surface it starts expanding/contracting the page
Instapaper is nice and usable, but for this it is also a kludge.

It forces the user to pick ahead of time which things they will and won't want to read later, instead of the simpler possibility. That being, letting the user just stop at any point in the interaction, confident in the assumption that the machine will take care of whatever annoying details are necessary for the page to still be there when they come back to where they left it.

Having to pick ahead of time isn't all that onerous, so the work-around is a pretty good one. It also has the benefit that you can pull it up on another machine, so that is nice. However, that too could be done more simply by having all of the user's browsers sync the their histories.
But you don't need multiple monitors for that. Just switch to the desktop that has the 4 web browsers on it.

A 30" monitor is bigger than 4 1024x768 monitors, remember.

(Why don't I like multiple monitors? They take up too much space, and it's very hard to get one monitor adjusted to be comfortable... much less 5 of them. And, pressing a key to switch to a new display is not much slower than glancing in another direction, unless you aren't planning on interacting with what you are looking at.)