skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Will it fly? How to Evaluate a New Product Idea [2007]
I actually didn't take "right place and time" to be the sole theme of Outliers although I did think the confusing way in which the book was written suggested that.

I read from it a combination of the two. In a rambling way it said that in order to even be eligible for an "outlier" outcome you needed to have done the 10k+ hours but that doing the 10k+ hours was not enough.

i.e. Skill & work is necessary but not sufficient to end up building an outlier result like Google/Apple/Facebook/Goldman Sachs etc.
Sorry, I'm not being cranky because I think that WebApps shouldn't exist at all. I'm being cranky at the notion that running things locally at all is 'old fashioned' and that at some point in the near future all of humanity will toss out locally run apps in favor of doing everything 100% in the cloud.

It really annoys me when people seem to assume that 24/7 Internet connectivity is a given, and something that every single American has right now ('has' as in 'really has' not as in 'has access to if they want it').
stcredzero compared the iPad to cars. dmlorenzetti said " the analogy seems flawed". kaiuhl said "I entirely disagree," intimating that the analogy was not flawed. My retort further demonstrates how unlike a car an iPad is, in the hope that the reader would also agree that the analogy is in fact flawed.

In your reply, you say "you don't need technical expertise in any possible way to run and maintain your Hyundai" - given that I take my car to a garage for maintenance and oil changes, that's not at all true.

A bad analogy is like a fish.
Maybe I'm not your market, but this really has no appeal to me. Were you expecting to have high interest among us at HN?

Still, site looks good for 5 weeks.
I would guess that it was more likely due to the pick-and-choose nature of most courses. When I take a class, the material that is actively tested is usually only the general concepts and only the ones the professor deems important. Wikipedia is designed for you to be able to get a general idea about specific topics, where a text book is designed to include in-depth and comprehensive knowledge.
Came here to point that out.
Your comment is not understandable to someone who isn't already quite familiar with the topic. I don't even know if you were agreeing or disagreeing.
He's absolutely right. The problem is that people buy their listeners some temporary comfort with their false modesty, but at the same time disempower them in the long term by saying that success is a function of luck.

Few people say their success was all luck, but many give it a bigger role than it deservers. It you are successful on a 10% play, it's easy to pass that off as luck. But if you made 10 plays like that, it's not really luck, now, is it?

Of course, sometimes the magnitude of the success is mostly luck.
A touch-interface autopsy table [TEDxGöteborg]
On the other hand, no LAN games does suck.
I think that luck can be manufactured. Being in the right place gets easier if you can be in more places and get a sense for when to not be in the wrong place.

Also, a LOT of entrepreneurs do stuff that minimizes their chances - not doing that allows any luck you might actually get to shine through.
The problem with the whole thing is that computers are not cars. Cars do one thing: get from a to b. Whether "getting from a to b" is an experience to be enjoyed or endured is a matter of preference, but ultimately the car still serves a single purpose.

The single purpose served by a computer is so abstract that it's not even worth mentioning here. Practically, computers serve hundreds of different purposes, and that is why the analogy fails.
opportunity = preparation - luck ?
Well, it's going to charge your account in that currency. It's up to your bank (or maybe Google payments) to do the conversion. One thing is certain: you aren't going to be getting the market price on the exchange.

(If they did it the other way around, charging you in your native currency, then it's the developer that would pay the currency exchange fee.)
500MB download? Why didn't Wired Magazine use HTML5 for their iPad app?
My wife still sings "Flash, ah-ah" to me every time we talk about it

I am hereby up-voting your wife's sense of humour.
I totally disagree. Your very comment is the proof that even on Hacker news you can have unfounded inflammatory comments that have no substance and no purpose.

Also even if the comment style is much more harsher on reddit, and hence reduces the possibility of civil discussion, I find the number of comments that stand out by themselves as being particularly interesting to be approximately the same on both sites.

And finally the hacker news style of discussion, while much more tame, and often bringing more interesting discussions, can be just as consensual, or even more on certain topics, the person standing out as being the more 'reasonnable' being often the most upvoted, with little regard to the soundness of arguments.
I maintain a lot of Perl. It's a joy.

Now this legacy C++ and Java... hoo boy...
Apple fanboys queue up, bodyguard in tow
Some of it is common sense. Some of it is psychological that I don't feel like sharing. Most of it is not wanting to be criticized by people with no relevant experience.
Extreme video gamers play 48 hours per week
Thats alright, theres still a lot of good thoughts and opinions that people here propose that could really apply to any startup. We appreciate those too.
It's good to get the word out to highly-technical audiences like one you find here, so that we can test it and report any bugs before the final release.
I thought that sequence showed me an interactive listing of processes.
Ditto for the recent Toyota brouhaha.
Have you never used Visual Studio or Eclipse? They easily let you navigate and search your own code, plus any other libraries you might be using and that you have the source code to.
I love how the screenshot has all the UI buttons in awkward, weird locations.
> Every decision has costs and benefits.

I respect people's right to make decisions. My issue is with the idea that 100% of computing will be done 'in the cloud' in the future. In this case, my decision isn't, "Do I want to use cloud-services and always-connect-Internet?" The decision becomes, "Do I want to compute at all?"
Mini Seedcamp London applications now open - last chance to go to Seedcamp
NetFlix: The Future is Streaming.
Does anyone have a solution other than Skype for peer-to-peer video? How can I reliably get video peer-to-peer?
SizeUp is extremely awesome. Absolutely required.

http://irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/

Cinch, by the same author, is also good. You don't need both.

http://irradiatedsoftware.com/cinch/
Ha, as if attitude resides in something other than the brain. http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/power

I don't think programmers are alone in this problem, however. People by nature tend to get into their own factions and bash anyone else, even if they have more in common than not. (Also note that programmers do tend to be more harsh toward non-programmers than other programmers.) Though I think programmers haven't yet (to my knowledge) resorted to actual violence, which indicates at least a little more maturity than others...

"Maturing" doesn't make a better programmer, either, I don't think, and I'd rather have Linus Torvalds' programming abilities than anyone else I can think of right now. Plus, a lack of cleverness isn't going to save you, for no matter how much work and effort you put into digging a hole for that gold, a little cleverness would have told you you're digging in the wrong place.

Lastly, I really didn't like this bit:

"It is about realizing that the complexity of software dwarfs even the most brilliant human; that cleverness cannot win. The only weapons we have are simplicity and convention."

When you've met the most brilliant human, see which software dwarfs his brain and which doesn't. I bet a lot of brilliant people can handle a lot of different complexities. Finally, while I'm a fan of simplicity (in the Einstein sense), convention should hardly be a rule. Progress can only be made by breaking convention.
a LOT of entrepreneurs do stuff that minimizes their chances

Could you please give some examples of what you're referring to?
I think the last part might be why some big winners are modest about it. They don't think of the question as, "was it luck that I was successful?", but as "was it luck that I made $2 billion?". The answer's probably a lot closer to yes on the 2nd question, which can make it tempting to say that you succeeded due to luck.
I still and use a 24" Dell that I had before I sold delicious.

But if I were to get a 30", I would also get a 22" display - rotated vertically, they are the same size.
Data is just as bad as voice in these regions. I don't now why people think it'd be much better.
Don't fight it, embrace it. :) My strategy has been to try to spend my time in places on the internet that promote deep engagement with the subject matter. To that end, I started this: http://www.reddit.com/r/learnit
Most people already have. Look at what most people run on their computers - browser, email first and foremost.

24/7 internet connectivity will be a certainty in the future. We'll have complete global coverage. You'll be diving and able to tweet. You'll be checking facebook on that space shuttle.

The idea that everyone needs a large computer with a lot of horse power is outdated. And the hassle that comes with is not something people want - lost data, viruses, maintainence, etc.

People want small 'appliances' that connect them to their data and applications in the cloud. They have spoken. That's what they want.
Hackers take over BP Twitter feed
Apple's secret weapon: consumer education
Typical internet comment there. Did you think about it ... at all?

Television the only specific example in the post he was replying to, so that's probably what he was talking about. (Did you... nah, never mind.) Calling the ability to snuggle together on the couch while watching TV a "revelation" does indeed invite a challenge. Why? How? It isn't much of a discussion if I have to go buy an iPad myself to understand what people are talking about. (Why is it such a high-rated comment? Are people with iPads just endorsing the implication that its virtues can't be analyzed or described in any way?)
And I would much rather read an interview with him than watch an interview with him (not just because of him; generally I prefer written interviews to having to pause my music, load some video player, watch/transcribe/etc.).
Nope. The energy cost is trivial. The cost of joules for a vacation to Europa is within upper middle class aspirations. It only costs so much because our lifters are hideously inefficient.

The reason rockets are so inefficient is that we don't know how to keep cracks from spreading through our structural materials, so we have to derate their strength by huge factors to get reliability. Nano- and micro-composite materials look like they will be able to vastly improve this situation (and indeed already are in the latest jetliners), and the rocket equation gives big big cost savings for weight savings. High strength materials are also good for rotovators and other semi-passive lifters.

Another big opportunity is to shift some of the propulsion to the ground. It should be straightforward to shine launch lasers up the tail of a standard rocket and reduce its propellant requirement by many percent, which the rocket equation then multiplies into a large cost savings. Exclusively laser launched vehicles are also possible but speculative at this point (they need visible light lasers to get range but those are still too inefficient). Most of the necessary technology exists or can easily be built. All we lack is the optimism to make the investment.

As for getting metal back, the asteroid belt is energetically close despite the distance. A small nuclear reactor and patience will do the job.
I wrote this comment:
I completely agree with the spirit of what DHH is saying. However, I think the most important message as he states is that people shouldn’t blame lack of success due to not being lucky. That’s where the emphasis on this topic should be placed. Those that say “I just go lucky” or “I was in the right place at the right time” might just be trying to be humble. At least that’s what I take from Jim Collins book “From Good to Great”

To recap: let’s emphasize the message that luck is bullshit and that it’s not necessary for success.
I agree, but that everyone should be equally happy is not what the book argues at all.

Frank's argument boils down to the fact that a lot of categories of consumption are zero-sum games, and that if played with lower stakes people could afford more important things with the money they save.

For instance, if every SUV owner has to have 20-inch wheels to appear wealthy, SUV owners aren't as a whole are worse off than if 18-inch wheels were considered a sign of wealth and they all had health insurance.

So the argument is that there are a lot of consumption arms races in the economy where some sort of coordinated de-escalation would benefit all of the players.

The coordination he proposes is a progressive consumption tax imposed by the government, which I would agree is probably superior to the current progressive income tax.
Check out local meetup.com groups. I'm a "member" of the DC python group and there is always someone mentioning they are looking for work during the intro session of the meetups. I don't know if it pans out for any of them but good place to network.
Equality and remote teams
Yup... I agree: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1385086
On the same note, why is Hacker News so much better than reddit (which it is)? Anyone have explanations?
did you played for three long hours ? BTW, did you read the topic's post ? well, come back after one week using the iPad
It is a "corner case," or close to it, but that's not why it wasn't caught here. I don't think this code is ever called, as explained above. It's default code in case there isn't a platform specific version, but there pretty much always is a platform specific version.

Link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1379639
Ask HN: Advice on how to tackle a summer research project
I'm about to start a three month project for my masters, in the field of computer vision and machine learning.

Of course I have an advisor, but mostly this is going to be a period of fairly open ended independent work, and at the end I need to have something to show for my time.

It's a bit daunting, and I'd appreciate receiving some wisdom from you on how to get good research done in such a short time. Some specific points that come to mind are:

> Ideas for testing techniques in a simplified form, to avoid wasting weeks reaching dead ends.

> Avoiding feature creep - I get distracted by every new paper I read and want to apply it to my problem.

> How to keep track of my work, so that the final write-up is as painless as possible.

Any other thoughts most welcome. Thanks in advance
Slash vs Backslash
I think it might have something to do with translating. These "confusing" sets of words are translated as completely different things in portuguese. On the other hand, my high school teacher usually used "why" and "because" to explain the difference between "porque" and "por que" in portuguese (and she could, although she didn't, also use "the reason" as an analogy for "o porquê").
Can you not math? Opportunity is luck minus preparation.
heh, that equation doesn't hold up commutatively, apparently :)

I take it luck is more than the sum of its parts
> I'm pretty sure he was going to speak.

Why?
Stimulus Surprise: Companies Retrench When Government Spends
I was going to get one the other week. But then got a Nexus One and saw how open and usable Android is. The iPad is just so 'meh'. It's not got a holographic projection screen. It hasn't got flexible rollout OLED screen.

It's just a large iPod touch :/ There's nothing really new and 'wow' about it. If I did get one, the kids would use it to do painting on for a bit, then it'd get stuck up on a shelf gathering dust.
I'm not sure what his definition of intelligence is. Obviously not the same as mine. He states that the reason "triumphalists" annoy him so much is that he used to be one- and then goes on to explain himself programming something very unintelligent in form and function that took him 20 years to fix. I would paraphrase the post as "I used to be dumb and arrogant, but after 20 years I realize how dumb I was and why don't we all stop being arrogant?"

I would pass on someone with an attitude of hard-work and responsibility for someone with real programming intelligence (the whole package- product to interface to maintenance) in a heartbeat. The last thing I need is someone diligently corroding a code-base.
The courts have already ruled that creating alternate gaming servers is against the law.

http://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd
It seems a bit rough. Surely a product can be a perfectly good and profitable idea without users gnawing their arms off. I mean, I'd do it if Gmail disappeared, but only because they have my e-mail, not because their user-experience is gnaw-my-arm-off better than, say, Thunderbird. Same goes for my Basecamp account.
That's true. My mind doesn't normally jump to the tiny fraction of outlying billionaires when I think of successful people though.
You can CERTAINLY make smart guesses about depth of engagement. How many times a day do you touch your email client? Your browser? Your IDE?

You can't make guesses about how good your product is going to be, but you can make guesses about how engaged the market would be if it's successful.

The point is about knowing the difference between a Facebook app like "Where I've Been" (which is neat, but not engaging on a daily basis) and FarmVille (where daily engagement is part of the game). Or, outside of the facebook world, you've got more passion POTENTIAL if you solve problems in the world of email than if you solve problems in the world Twitter analytics.
Maybe. Automatic transmissions don't come with built-in political cartoon censorship or remote mass deletion of 1984. Maybe people, if given the choice, would choose convenience over freedom, but they prefer having both, which is why Android sales are zooming past iPhone sales.
Crazy Photos Of Zoo Animals
One of the most important parts in any zoo visit is photo shooting and a great shot mostly consists of being at the right place at the right time.
joshu wrote:

opportunity = preparation - luck ?

I think you missed a -1 on one side of the equation. :P

Opp = Luck - Prep actually makes a bit of sense... it's the fortunate event component without the taking-advantage-of-it component.
Ask HN: When to ask for credit card number?
We are putting the finishing touches on our first web application, and I am curious as to what everyone's opinions are on when we should capture our user's credit card data.

Our current plan is to offer a 15 day free trial of our product. We were not planning on getting the user's card information during initial sign up. Our rationale for this was that we wanted to make the initial sign up process as easy as possible. I also assumed that it would reduce the likelihood of chargebacks.

Once the user signed up for their account, they would be able to use the application and save their card information in the application at their convenience. If, after the 15 day trial, they still had not entered their card information, their installation of the application would become "locked" until they entered their card info.

Are there good reasons why this is an inadvisable strategy, and why we would want to get the card information before the trial period begins?

Thanks in advance for your input.
It seemed like Jessica's video was fine. It must have been Alexis' connection. Or network routing between the two of them.

Maybe he was just downloading stuff and forgot to turn that off...
some people like consistent ui controls between apps

Have you ever even bought an iPhone app? There's so much crap there with inconsistent UI.
He maybe overstepped a little, but the principle is sound:

For robust, maintainable software systems, convention and simplicity trump cleverness.
get over it. some people like consistent ui controls between apps (hello, HIG) for a less confusing user experience.

http://wellplacedpixels.com/ is a site that showcases the "UI consistency" among many iPhone apps.
It's probably not as effortless on her part as you might think, though.
I think that there's another important point, which wasn't directly addressed in your post, and doesn't seem to have cropped up at all in the follow-up: Relying on web-based services involves trust in a much more serious way than any desktop application. (This occurred to me when I read someone else's comments below about relying on web-based back-up for a photo collection.)

First, I have to trust companies not to be nefarious; second, I have to ‘trust’ them not to fold, or simply decide to stop providing their SaaS. I think it's clear that it's naïve to expect companies not to act nefariously, or, even if we impute to them endless goodwill, not to make mistakes that expose our personal information (cough Facebook cough); and, even if we trust both intention and ability, if everything is on someone else's servers, then there's not a lot you can do if you show up one day to find those servers are no longer serving.

This, more than problems with connectivity (which presumably will be resolved after some growth pains), is what really frightens me about the whole-sale rush to online applications. I want to have my resources on my computer—preferably only on my computer; and, while most current services offer some way to do this, it's clear that it's regarded as less and less important, and I fear that it won't be long before it goes away entirely.
It is unless you're willing to pay $700 for your replacement phone.
That's the point. Apple doesn't need WinMo developers porting their apps to iPhone because a) they are terrible, b) there are not many of them and c) the important/interesting ones are already ported
Well, for better or for worse, no lisper I know would ever try to fuse a database system in at the kernel level. That's one of the ugliest system designs I've ever heard of.

The whole point of lisp is that the language is extensible, so that once you solve one problem, you NEVER have to think about it again. In other languages, you might have to put some conditionals in, or free some dynamic memory somewhere every time you do a task. In Lisp, you think about that once, build a syntactic structure that does it for you, and then free yourself to actually consider how to solve your problem.

It's the opposite of rock-star-programming. It is assuming that you aren't a rock star, and therefore working to reduce the complexity that your puny mind has to deal with.
> Most of your complaints seem pretty benign if you ask me.

That's always the case with usability things, isn't it? The problem is that on the iPhone you can't fix them.
Seconded. When I was reading the web site, the one thing I really wanted was to see what one of these courses looked like, so I could see at a glance if this really worked or if it was just good intentions and slick anti-aliased graphics.

There's definitely a lot of room for improving how education works, and I applaud the HootCourse guys for taking on something so worthwhile. Good luck.
DevCentral Weekly Episode 133 Templates, Associations, and Instances Oh My
New Sydney Apple Store: Video tour (Bondi Junction)
Did I miss something? Did adobe buy wired? He keeps talking about adobe here, but I don't see the connection.
You guys are in a great position to take advantage of the opportunity when energy costs take off (again!) and everyone starts looking for solutions and costs savings. Should add plenty of demand for your solution...