skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
His readership, from the frequency with which his posts make it to the front page here, seems to include the hacker news community. Do you consider yourself, or the rest of us, “essentially the Apple faithful”?

As far as I can tell the subject of his blog could be summarized as something like “high signal-to-noise and semi-technical discussion of Apple, the web, and graphic design, with occasional sports and politics related tidbits.

“The Apple faithful” as a group is quite different from “technical and semi-technical readers interested in Apple and the web”.
Company - a good company - can easily outlive its founder and all his family.
I saw a Tesla roadster in Toronto today.

That's my Tesla IPO Day 1 story.
I thought this was a valid point brought up by Anil Dash on Twitter (http://twitter.com/anildash/status/17380509761):

"Of course Twitpic should allow export, but Posterous calling others "dying platforms" is an unnecessary dick move. Hence, pettiness."

Here's where they used the term "dying platforms": http://blog.posterous.com/make-the-switch-to-posterous
I'm partial to keeping a "bind" function handy. (Function#bind will be in ECMAScript 5, but it's not quite here yet). It's crucial for keeping your sanity when trying to use "this" with callbacks, Ajax, or async.

var bind = function(func, context) {
var slice = Array.prototype.slice;
var args = slice.call(args, 2);
return function() {
return func.apply(context || {}, args.concat(slice.call(arguments)));
};
};
The Article makes so many mistaks!
Here is the scenario:
You have an intelligent who just passed out of his undergrad degree.
He has following options:
1. Work in his country for a Max 10k$ Per Year Job (Extremely rare, most pay just 6k$ P.A)

2. Come to USA for PhD, get Paid Double the amount + save around 4k$ per year atleast. Get Prestigious degree after 5 years and then get a job that pays at least 70k$ or Join Academia which pays 40k$ +

3. Go to USA for Masters, Pay fees out of pocket or via loan, so total cost will be ~50k$b- 80k$ Get a job which pays 60k$ P.A. post graduation. And repay the loan in next 3-4 years, after which one can go for an MBA

Now Choice 1 is pointless, Choice 3 requires your parents to be waelthy enough to afford the loan. Hence an overwhelming number of them choose 2. Also there is nothing wrong with it, plus the whole make money instead argument is bullshit.

Unless you have god gifted green card, no one will give you a job in USA, and regarding working in China/India the Minimum Wage here 10404*12 ~ 19k is more than best starting salary in their country
If you read something with the sure belief that someone is biased you are liable to read all sorts of stuff into what someone is writing. I think that’s exactly what’s happening here.

Maybe I’m naive but I really do think that way too many people read way too many things into what Gruber is writing – things he never actually said.
Looks like they are blocking more than just Posterous.

@jazzychad: "ARGH. @twitpic is blocking the whole slicehost/rackspace cloud IP block again. /cc @cloudsupport @posterous"

http://twitter.com/jazzychad/status/17381172407
this kind of thing is the reason you can't base a business off Twitter (and expect to sleep soundly at night).

make Twitter apps for fun. not for profit.
That's nice.

I use

emacs -Q -f list-colors-display

to find out the color codes
I can't really see Apple doing this, if for no other reason than Objective-C is something they can control, and Ruby isn't. If the core Ruby developers decide they want to add more features, change the language's underpinnings, etc. Apple's left to play catch-up. If Apple wants to add features, then they basically have to fork the language and hope their changes get merged in.

Apple's shown (and been shown) how much of a benefit it is to control your own destiny; even with Ruby being open-source, it's still an outside influence they have to work with or against. Objective-C, for all intents and purposes, is their language, one they can take in any direction they want.
>For YouTube Rentals, video owners require us to use secure streaming technology, such as the Flash Platform's RTMPE protocol, to ensure their videos are not redistributed. Without content protection, we would not be able to offer videos like this.

[clicks link]

>This rental is currently unavailable in your country.

Geographically segregated, non-redistributable content: just what the web needs!
Just remember that we're talking about a company that managed to migrate its entire product line to an entirely new processor with few people (inside and outside the company) really knowing until they unveiled the first demo machines.

Compared to that, adding a new programming language (that doesn't even affect their existing 3rd party applications) to a platform they own completely is child's play.
I think there are two big reasons that Ruby isn't on the iPhone. For one, MacRuby is still in development and isn't stable yet. For another, the Objective-C GC isn't running on the iPhone, which is what MacRuby uses. As the project matures and the iPhone gets better hardware, I think Ruby will start to show up on it.
Posterous - Beacon of Data Portability
SAT essay topic - get your critical thinking cap on
To excel at writing SAT essays requires you to practice on SAT essay topics. As a topic is not easily written in one word, you need to be thorough with the two parts which make up a topic. Once you understand the two parts and understand the techniques of analytical thinking, writing the essay will be an easy task.
This article seems very very speculative. For instance, I don't think the blocks implementation in ObjC is adequate as a full closure implementation. It certainly looks like Apple is trying to improve the language while continuing to remain "close to the metal" using C without the need for bridges.
I devised a proof for the very limited case where n=1 but there is not enough space left in this margin to write it out.
I think that's a place where Wikipedia presents a better model in a lot of ways. People love to complain about its cliquey admin groups, but the fact is they're extremely effective at getting quality content out there.

Bottom line, I think, is that forcing people to discuss (not just summarily up or downvote) is really important to getting meaningful content. It's fairly easy to see when someone is talking out of their ass, but it's much harder to get a read on how intelligent an anonymous (or even attributed) vote is.
Wait, you didn't finish.

3. Person with onshore job answers the question instead of doing work.

4. That person is deemed useless, and his job is offshored.

The cycle repeats.
So you think that Wikipedia content gets worse or stagnant over time? Definitely, I think it's more effective than the SO model.
How MIT could help with a different approach to the bp gulf crisis
I don't understand what the title of this post is supposed to mean. If this some tortured reference to the analogy portion of the SATs? If so, that's not the correct form. If not, please elaborate what that is supposed to mean.
The ban is on using language implementations that don't ship either as compilers with the dev tools (C, Obj-C, C++) or as runtimes on the device (JS) without prior approval (plenty of people embed Lua, and Unity3D apps still get approved).

Apple is obviously planning to ship MacRuby with a future release of Mac OS X as a fully supported language implementation, possibly with 10.7 in 6-12 months. Perhaps they will do the same with iOS, but they've had other priorities.
Not true. If you had been following Nate Silver's site http://fivethirtyeight.com/ in the lead up to the presidential election, you'd have gotten VERY accurate poll results.
Do people who visit cities/counties for vacation/business trips not require services (indirectly)? Roads, beaches, parks, public restrooms, parking lots, etc. They all have to be maintained.

Come to Pismo Beach (where I'm at) on any Summer weekend. 75%+ of the people on the beach are from out of town. Should I pay higher property taxes to pick up their beer bottles and pay for the extra police officers that need to be on duty?
Ruby is an impractical language so, no.
It's always been written in PHP, and they released a compiler for the language that they developed in house:

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2010/02/02/facebook-open-sourc...
It's brilliant marketing. Everyone knows their tool is going to get blocked anyway but like clockwork even small companies send in the lawyers which inevitably leads to great coverage.

By writing the tool they either get users or coverage. Win-win situation.
Really?!

They developed Hip Hop to transform PHP into C++, so I'd bet they are firmly dedicated to PHP, and I really doubt that Facebook has any problems finding developers.

PHP/C++, Cassandra, JavaScript, Flash, and whatever third party developers choose to use as long as they use the Facebook API.

I don't actually know, maybe someone else will give you some more insight, but I'm pretty confident about the PHP part.
Essentially what he has created is a vocational school for programming.

I love programming. I'm self-taught. But when I started studying the mathematical aspects of it - actual computer science - a whole new world opened up to me (and I've barely scratched the surface).

There's a great quote on the back cover of Elements of Programming:

"Yet so-called software engineers often practice their art with little or no idea of the mathematical underpinnings of what they are doing. And then we wonder why software is notorious for being delivered late and full of bugs, while other engineers routinely deliver finished bridges, automobiles, electrical appliances, etc., on time and with only minor defects." ~ Martin Newell (Adobe)

I believe one can be successful without a mathematical understanding of programming or computer science but I don't believe one can do anything truly innovative without it.

Also if anyone has any experience with the Virginia Tech CS program I'd be interested to talk with you.
I don't know about everyone here, but I have nothing but trouble with HTML 5 video (on chrome or firefox). Either it won't play (codec issues I assume), or I can't seek while I watch. I hope it improves.
They should block the entire Internet so that nobody can steal their trade secrets.
The justice's name is Stevens, not Stephens.
I also agree....almost a year ago this problem was actually discussed on the SO podcast (people doing the instantaneous one liner reply in order to get upvotes asap, the problem somewhat originated from a blog post someone did one specific ways to game the SO rep system).

I have a similar problem in that I ask questions that are generally "harder" and don't often have a perfectly black and white answer, but I'll get a few "little effort" answers and then they go dead, and I am left with a poor answer acceptance ratio. If I ever eventually figure out a question, I always go back and answer it myself, so really I'm trying to do the right thing as I am a big believer in the site, but I think it misses subtleties like this. It's not particularly easy, but I think they could improve things to stop gaming of the system.
I love this designand the ability to use my logo on the free account.
ha! and:

5. CEO: profit! (on paper)
this one dies at the mention that stoch screening for print is new. yeah, in the eighties boys. ooh, he didn't call it that. or mention any relevant color model

all the rest is similar shick horror of anyone who never paid any atenntion to anything.
I think we're talking past each other. All of your comments seem to be arguing that Apple could do this if it wanted to, while all of my posts are arguing that Apple hasn't shown any desire to do this.
Not that I think this is even remotely likely, but they could be storing an MD5 hash of all but the last four characters of your password, and an MD5 hash of your full password. Since MD5 works by processing data through the algorithm bit by bit, with each operation producing a valid MD5 hash up until that point, they could take the first hash and 'continue' hashing with the rest of your password, and then compare it to the full hash.

TL;DR: You can take an MD5 hash of any data and generate a valid MD5 hash of that data plus some data of your own, without knowing what the original data was.
As far as I'm aware, Posterous has done nothing to actively discourage migration of information away from their service, and they certainly haven't threatened legal action on anyone for moving their online information around.
They are threatening legal action at this point. This is more like a C&D than a case. No case, no court costs.
Apple's party line on iPhone 4 reception problems leaked
This tool is worth a try, you can see the results right away.
I was explaining Foursquare to my non-techie but multiple-restaurant-owning brother last week. The location based check in and social aspects made him think it was neat, maybe something he'd try.

When I explained mayorships and how 4SQ is really a universal customer loyalty rewards system, he got excited.
"Are the cool kids really only doing web apps these days? What about all the army of Objective-C programmers that Apple has been assembling?"

Something of a tangent, but a lot of cool kids don't work in the USA and have no intention of moving. I know a dozen or so people here in Bangalore who'd breeze through these questions. The flip side is of course that I can think of only a dozen or so people and this in a city (Bangalore) with tens of hundreds of thousands of "programmers" in it.
sorry, credit must be given to an actual pdf of >4k words trying to look serious with awful, really unreadable. typography.

yup, that's how i learned to con, mod me down etc, but believe it.
If someone is capable of expressing this somewhat adversarial opinion in an interview, then they are also capable of expressing valuable opinions in "real life" that might go against the status quo. This could be a very good thing.
People go to his site for the words, not for the site. A flashy design would be distracting, and for someone who (IMHO) writes as well as he does, anything that takes away from that is impractical.

It's the same reason he'll link to images or videos or sound clips, but he never posts them directly on his site.
A similar restriction is in place in Kauai, but the short-term rental industry is somehow still operating.
You're missing something - context. They relished in trash talk, as can be seen in the tireless and pointless arguments. Janos Blazi enjoyed playing the part of Smurfet and Eric was equally passionate about his role - Gargamel. Watch the rest of the cast @ http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/browse_thread/...;
Nate Silver isn't a pollster. He is a statistician that dissects the polls to find the inaccuracies.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/06/pollster-ratings-v40-...
I disagree also (re: I'd have taken it a step further: if you provide an answer to a question, you shouldn't be allowed to downvote other answers to the same question.)

There's definitely a problem here and something needs to be done, but that's not the solution.

I wonder if something like displaying answers on newly asked questions, but locking voting for <x> minutes (where x=???), and total_answers < <y> wouldn't stop the answer sniping in its tracks and give people willing to put the proper amount of work into writing an answer an equal footing.

SO has proven that the community for some reason is more than willing to spend vast amounts of energy helping others in exchange for "karma", but from what I'm reading lately, they are somewhat in danger of letting the golden goose die (or, a lot of the golden gooses). It'll still be a great site, but it could be a lot better if they tightened some of these problems up. I think they might be focusing on other things now though.
I am simply asking Posterous to take moral high ground. Give a feature where people can export their posts in standard data formats. then go ahead and target your competitors.
Actually, there are quite a few "underground supper clubs" in NYC. Typically, they're held in private apartments with a prix fixe menu. One article from March on this trend:

http://www.theatlantic.com/food/archive/2010/03/going-rogue-...
Flash was never a good way to write a Web app for iPhone, given that no Web browser on the iPhone can view it.
There are plenty of ethical/green/socially responsible mutual funds.
I could see this going both ways. On one hand, you are clearly knowledgeable about some of the right stuff on deep level. On the other hand, do you come across as more pedantic than pragmatic? At the end of the day the business is hiring to create value and make money, not to have good academic debates.
I'm curious why Google searches don't turn up higher ranking google group posts. This is where I get almost every question answered. There must be a wealth of info there and I almost always search for the google group, then reenter the question inside groups.

Smaller support communities (IRC, groups) seemed to be the best niche for getting questions answered, and it doesn't appear StackOverflow is seeing that.
Google auto corrects mispositioned touch typing
god of mercy, can someone link to the old ttf hinting pages on msft opentype stuff?

got author nailed there, promise you
To be clear, I'm pretty sure no one here will answer correctly with that much specificity. The people who know the answer are under NDA and will not talk here.
to clarify: if you position your fingers on the home keys incorrectly (ie, in my example, I started from the " key rather than ; on my right hand) it seems to realize this and correct it for you.

Could just be a result of their search history / auto correct engine rather than actually writing an algorithm for it, but still, pretty cool!
I was actually considering making such a tool, because I'm pretty sure that I'm moving away from Posterous in the near future.

I'm sure if I do, I'll put it up on GitHub. The biggest concern I have is not only getting the content of posts, but being able to make a .htaccess with redirects so that I don't lose my google juice.
Geographically separated content isn't unique to flash/rtmp, a user's ip address can still be matched with a region when retrieving content over http.
You can easily get all the data from XML feeds. Or you can use their API to get all the data out through XML or JSON. Both are standard formats. I am pretty sure no one offers a export my data function. Not even Tumblr.
Not only did he find and acknowledge a flaw, but he filed an issue on it.
But his writing is the same way -- he's gotten to the point where he spends more time sneeringly mocking Apple's detractors than fellating Apple.

He wrote a bunch a while back about how Apple needs an equivalent rival like Nikon/Canon. It would sure make his writing a lot more interesting -- they've now got a Dreamworks to their Pixar in Android, but that's just giving Gruber more insubstantiative shit to sling.
Why not metaweblog api? Posterous has api for only posting data. I have not seen one to fetch. If you are the best kid in town why do you need to be afraid of others?

If Posterous is open about data portability, customers will be happy as well.
> And a community of domain experts will not last long if it explicitly forbids extended discussions.

Totally agree, but this kind of interaction is explicitly what the SO team seems to be against, and for just SO itself, I agree. A legitimate justification for this is that people get into discussions which takes time away from input into the Q&A aspect of the site.

However, as you said, some problems or topics require a discussion, not singular statements upvoted or downvoted. I think SO can do just fine without discussions, but the stackexchange platform will be sorely lacking if they don't support a discussion "mode", but from what Jeff Atwood has said, at least as I interpret it, he seems to see no need for this mode at all, and thinks the stackexchange engine should eventually replace all phpBB boards out there. To me, this is insane, but this is how I interpret what he says, unless I've missed something.
The grammar nerd in me is desperately wishing that you had written this as "The other person != me".
Isn't the chat subsystem in Erlang?
"... give me running commentary on what they were doing ..."

There's your problem! You are asking people to simultaneously (1) design a divide-and-conquer algorithm, (2) write syntactically-correct code on a whiteboard, an unfamiliar mode of writing for most people, and (3) give a comprehensible oral presentation, which creates a lot of social and emotional pressure for many people. Distraction is the death of reasoned thought.

Break the interview into single-purpose phases. (1) Help them write down a clear description with some examples. (2) Have them cook up pseudocode or diagrams of how to solve it, with review/debugging from you. (3) Have them write code. (4) Have them explain why it works.

As for being crabby, probably a few of them saw, but could not articulate, that the micromanagement set them up to fail. They should handle it better, but it's understandable. If you want to evaluate their willingness to graciously write code, start the interview with a dead simple FizzBuzz style challenge. E.g., write a function that takes an array of integers as input and copies them to an output array in reverse order. Specifically tell them they can ask questions or ask for help, but need not explain anything, that the code will speak for itself.
Anything that comes in gets scanned to PDF, filed, and backed up to multiple disks + the cloud.
If the physical copy is tax/business-related it's filed in the current year's tax folder.
Otherwise its shredded.
No more fillings? Gel regenerates teeth
I dont know about Tumblr. but wordpress & livejournal supports metaweblog i think. may be tumblr should support it as well.
So then would you say it is fair to use "cursor: pointer" on buttons that initiate navigation away from the current page? For instance: form submit buttons?
How Divvy got to #1 on reddit for just $14
I don't think he's questioning the "inevitable future design iteration", but rather the characterization of withholding such a screen from iPad 1.0 as a "dick move".
How is that a contradiction? Can't they be both better than others at attention to detail as a general rule while also not being perfect at it?
Posterous should spend a day creating an easy export from their own service to prove they aren't afraid of competition. Then they would come out of these 2 weeks not looking like jerks.

The blog post to Tumblr users still rankles me.
Yeah I'm not sure how TechDirt didn't mention Nate. He started the whole thing.
If Posterous wants to be a STAND UP company, they'll post information and a tool(not just XML or API) on how to migrate away FROM Posterous. Then they can go and write importers for other sites.

I'm sick of all these companies talking shit but not being able to back it up when they say they're looking out for the user!
True enough, but with the number of technologies a developer is "required" to know these days, I have a bit of trouble buying the RTFM argument (unless it is referring to freely available, easily searchable help docs on the vendor/author website). The the amount of technologies I use on a day to day basis, it's literally impossible for me to RTFM on all of them, especially if by RTFM you mean read a book on the technology (not to mention, which book should I read....figuring that out can take an hour. And is reading just one book sufficient?)
An odd comment perhaps, but I initially thought the drop-down selection box was broken and it took me a few seconds to realise that (unlike every other drop-down) the top element stayed selected.
Leaked: Apple’s internal iPhone 4 antenna troubleshooting procedures
and MySQL http://www.facebook.com/MySQLatFacebook

http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=7899307130

More interesting are how they use technologies rather than only which one, f.ex this:
http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/02/facebook-makes-their-web-...
Direct link to screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/rejpI.png