skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Uh, you just need to be able to sell.
I realize it is silly to dispute somebody else's experience. If the iPad worked for that grandfather, and the mouse didn't, what can I say. It just seems to me the "revolutionariness" of the iPad tends to be blown out of proportions. I'd guess that a lot of older people could have a problem with the tiny screen, for example.

Supporting a granny on Windows and a mother on Linux, I have certainly seen a fair amount of unintuitive and confusing user interfaces. I don't want to defend all the design decisions in desktop computers (fwiw, I think Ubuntu provides by far the best experience for older people who need support from their younger relatives, but that is for another subject).

Of course just cropping away functionality until only "unconfusing" stuff is left is one way to approach the problem. I don't think it is the best solution for everybody, though.
Digital Diplomacy
He started taking it it because of his depression, not because he wanted to boost his productivity - he was devastated after his mother died.
Unfortunately the type of people willing to believe the whole thing was done in a studio will immediately think this whole picture was done in photoshop. I don't think any amount of evidence will convince the true conspiratory believer.
Files are useful if you want to share data between applications. I thought about it just today - maybe they could just be seen as the most general interface (a blob of bytes, basically). I suppose Apple & Co want to replace that by handlers and plugins - want to send a photo by email? Either you need an email plugin for iPhoto, or an iPhoto plugin for your email program (and how does it work if you use a web based email program?).

I don't think this approach will scale well in the long run (there are a lot of file types...). The iPhone is a bad example - I suspect in the long run apps just don't interact enough, which is why they will be superseded by web apps again. They are just good for isolated use cases.
My Linux Chrome (6.0.453.1 dev) fails, too.
I don't want a planet where most of its natural resources are dedicated to maintaining a massive population. I'd much rather have a world where human influence is strong within its own sphere but leaves most ecosystems as pristine as possible.

Greater human population is antithetical to biodiversity and low pollution. That should probably be a greater ethical imperative than maximizing population numbers.
Ok so add to the question that repeat business is something that I want to strive for.
context switching after reading HN and returning to code
Perhaps they've realized that a mistake was made (Manning). Infrastructure is probably being rebuilt to correct certain flaws in the structure of the site.
What is better than the mouse, though? Touchscreens probably only work in your lap, which is not the most ergonomic position for the majority of work. Touchscreens on a monitor are probably too straining since you would have to hold your hand upright all the time.

Not saying the mouse is forever, but I don't yet see the better alternative available for the mass market (maybe those brain wave scanners?).
Joby Energy is another company in the area working on this problem. http://www.jobyenergy.com/
I don't think I could ever sleep well at night, knowing that I built a business based upon on the death of others. In other words, I'll never work as a coffin maker or at a funeral home.

No offense or judgement towards the 1000Memories people, I think it's a good goal. That's just my own choice.
In Germany we also had this game called "Moorhuhnjagd".
I have to say that I have watched many people play minesweeper without the right click.

In fact it was a while before I realised that you could leave little flags by right clicking and I still rarely do it today if I'm playing.
2) Upvoted.

I started three years after my first full-time gig (I was 25 at the time). I got into more trouble because I didn't say no and then had to manage the client management.
Legacy Locker, while solving a different problem (how do you transfer your online presence to your inheritors?), has a process to deal with this involving death certificates and trusted verifiers: http://legacylocker.com/features/verifiers
Interesting discussion. My answer would have been the classic one: work on a tiny sw project of your own choosing, totally not related to work and on something that you find really cool. Then, start a bigger one.

That being said, I think his attitude of "If I can get hooked on programming like I am on gaming, I'll be in heaven" is totally wrong. You should know that there are other things in life. Read the classics. Fall in/make love. Learn how to make something with simple tools. Volunteer. Repeat.
Or maybe they are just not motivated enough and like a good excuse for not having to do stuff? "Strategic Incompetence" is an amazing concept :-)
If productivity is measured by Erdos number, they moved math forward immensely.
That really depends on what it's used for.

I don't see it as a replacement, but as an improvement.
Thanks for asking! We're developing our first app now, a shopping app for smartphones. We'll post about it on our blog and HackerNews when it comes out.
Most people, at most times, have no need to type at such a high rate.

The computer-as-leisure device is mostly used for small pieces of communication - comments on sites like this.

I would be even bolder - the 'average' leisure user could mostly get by with three buttons:

':-)', ':-(' and 'LOL'.
That's awesome. I like your point about how they are flexible in mind (dealing with directors/choreographers).

Part of me is jealous of their life - and in a way I get so much more satisfaction out of building an
IPhone app for a non-profit (for free, pro-bono) than some paid work.

In general, I think my freelancer friends (some artists) are better off in a changing economy because they're not scared of being fired, quitting their job, or being rejected... because they've been through so many gigs they are immune to those very common fears.

I hope that you get opportunities to see your friends perform. Showing up is important.
Wow, is this tall poppy syndrome or are the media just trying to push this non-story as far as it can go?
Two very creepy typos on the main page:

Everyone holds a slither of someone’s life...

I think you meant "sliver", not "slither".
Unless, of course, you can send them to the moon and show the remains. Hmm, but then they could probably argue the whole thing was an implanted memory.
Same here - it is really just one rule to remember, instant PC expert. That is also why I don't understand everybody raving about Macs. Macs are not consistent with the second mouse button rule (they used to have only one button), therefore there is no way to become an instant expert on a Mac. I always hate using a Mac because it makes me feel so helpless.

My mother learned the second mouse button rule after a while, btw. Don't give up :-)
Start with a facebook clon for hackers, then, like reddit, expand to all possible interests. Let people create their groups of interest and then grow, grow like weed.

People like (and find it convenient) to split into tribes they identify with. Look at Usenet, Reddit, Facebook, IRC, etc. What if you took this niche-based grouping and applied it to a social network?

Imagine, for example, that I sign up with your site and join the "Lisp Hackers" group. I can private message other Lispers, I can pop open a chat window and talk live without having to open an IRC client, post code on our public discussion forum, view the profiles of the people in my group, look at their pictures, etc. The important thing would be to emphasize community-based subsites with a full suite of features for the members.

Facebook now works (to my understanding; I don't have an account) on the principle of "friending" everyone, and discovering some new people in "Groups" or "Fan Pages", which provide primitive utilities for talking with one another; at the end of the day, to get the full list of features, you have to add everyone to your giant "list o' friends." What would happen if you started with the idea of strict grouping instead?
IIRC, the following article by Pamela Jones of Groklaw discusses the issue: http://lwn.net/Articles/61292/
Could you build a business on helping to assuage others' grief?
Why not chat with the dead via chatbots that capture their personality, interests, knowledge, etc.?

Wouldn't this be a great way to remember people you care about?
Try to program a game maybe?
This is a thoughtful comment, and I modded it up, but I can't resist saying this: your proposals basically suggest that we accept a lowest-common-denominator CRUD-app style login model and then bake it into the browser. We'd do that, freezing out any innovation or flexibility in login design, in order to... catch up to where we already are with forms.

There are definitely crappy login forms. So what? If an app can't clear the usability hurdle of getting people logged in, it's certainly not going to clear the (even harder) hurdles of "doing something useful for the user". In the end, many hundreds of millions of logins happen by all sorts of users every day. Lack of login-page standards doesn't seem like a real problem.
Yeah, but on something like Facebook, people don't necessarily think of (or prioritize, given the other pressing issues in their lives) informing the site that someone has passed away.
So have I, actually. Many people also don't know about clicking with both left and right buttons simultaneously. If you do it on a square that has all of it's flags set, it clicks all other unclicked squares around it.
Certainly cropping away needed functionality is not a very decent approach. But let me start with your comment.

Since it is my grandfather this article is about, I can assure you that he had a pretty nice LCD screen on his old PC. It was only a 17", but it was a Samsung SyncMaster providing good quality. Besides, my grandfathers eyes are probably better than my own. And I'm not kidding here - I don't need glasses, but with his glasses on he kills my eyesight whereever we go.

So it wasn't the monitor, it definitively was the mouse. But not only that. It was a desktop PC. There's no way comparing the clumsy process of reading a mail on a desktop PC to that on an iPad.

PC:
Step 1. You don't know you got a mail, you poll them. In this case we're not talking about tech guys who have an always running computer.
Step 2. Go to your computer.
Step 3. Start monitor, start PC, (start modem)
Step 4. Wait.
Step 5. Login
Step 6. Connect to the internet.
Step 7. Start your favourite mail application.
Step 8. Wait.
Step 9. Probably you got mail last week. Go ahead and read it.

iPad
Step 1. Your iPad is laying on the couch table. It beeps.
Step 2. You take the iPad into your hands and unlock it with one click and one sweep.
Step 3. Mail.app tells you there is one message. You click on it.
Step 4. Read the message.

There was a lot less walking and using potential keyboards and mice involved with the iPad. I personally like that experience a lot better for "non tech folk". Plus I like it on my phone. A lot.

I hear you when you talk about Ubuntu. I personally look after several installations of friends (sometimes girls). All of them are very happy with their computers. No viral problems, no bluescreens, no constant reboots. If they need something new I can install it remotely or talk them through on the phone.

Yet, all these users are "powerusers". They need Office. They need a printer.

Many people don't. That enables them to a lesser complex toolset. The iPad provides that. It could have been a good Android tablet. I'm a big fan of Linux and have been a SUN employee back in the day. But honestly, there is no good Android tablet out there to compete with the iPad right now.
Do you have any personal systems/software/client management philosophies you recommend? Basecamp works wonders for me, even though it is simple.
You're right; if you go out of your way, you can instead store an extraordinarily viciously crackable derivative of the password. I'd stick with basic auth and use BCrypt on the server; you're far more likely to lose your whole password database than you are to lose a significant number of basic auth logins to interception.
I wonder if metal mesh clothing, a wearable Faraday Cage, would defeat this device similar to the screen used on microwave ovens.

From what I have read it's been fine-tuned to a specific frequency that penetrates the skin so far and is prefect for causing the nerves to react. If so it should be easy to create a suit that would nullify the effect using a metal mesh suit and helmet.
The end to end argument suggests that stuffing things down into lower layers of the stack usually isn't cleaner.
I live in a luxury building in Manhattan. 35 floors.
We have 5 doormen; they know every single person who lives in the building by name. Not only that, but they also know regular visitors by name.

When one walks in, they don't glance at a monitor to figure out who you are. They know you, they remember previous conversations (oh hi, Joubert, didn't you recently see Momix at The Joyce?)

I cant stand it when a "customer service representative" has to "fake" knowing me.
Implications of exponential growth of global whole genome sequencing capacity
I think we'll always read news - but the places we go to for news will continue to change.

Maybe the danger is, that the sources we can choose from won't be subject to the kind of journalistic scrutiny we've all been able to grow used to.
> A good developer will be orders of magnitude more productive than an average developer.

In the real world, average developers tend to more successfully sell themselves into roles developing new systems using the latest programming technologies, while good developers are most useful in roles maintaining existing systems, i.e. cleaning up the crap left by the "average" developers who've moved on to another job.

So the measured order of magnitude tends to be low in practice.
The fact that you read HN probably means you're more capable than most freelancers out there. We, as people, tend to overestimate the abilities of others and underestimate our own, it's just the way the brain works.

I once did a job where me and a friend had to design a new intranet and website for a client. I claimed that I was quite an expert on usability and intranet design despite the fact that I had never done either before. Basically I winged it. The intranet raised the companys productivity by 60% and the redesigned site ended up in a Jakob Nielsen report on well-done redesigns.

The moral? You're much more capable than you think.
There's definitely some variability based on location. I've used my phone in various places around the Midwest. Usually, it's pretty good.

Last time I was on I-65 between Chicago and Indianapolis, it went haywire. Regularly claimed I was out in west Illinois near Decatur. (A friend of mine reported similar behavior.)

Other than that, it's pretty solid. I haven't really paid too much attention to how off it is, usually it seems to manage at least 30 meters without a problem.
Did they convert a fire engine into a mobile ground station?

http://www.makanipower.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/IMG_70...

EDIT: yup

http://www.makanipower.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/201006...
Nice example! And cheers for including the code.

I think the "low res" comes from there being a pre-defined number of segments making up the curves. Smaller curves just look smoother. To get them all looking smooth would require more complex subdivisions, and maybe bog it down?

Great proof of concept though!
I use ant to build my Clojure stuff. Why should I prefer Leiningen (did I spell that correctly?)
I think about this every once in awhile, and as a husband and father of two, I'd rather my family has a huge party and is happy for how lucky I've been and how much fun I've had. I don't want people I like to have to weep.
At first that appears to not store the plaintext of the password, but looking closer, isn't it really using the hash as a password? That is, if the bad guys got a copy of the hashes stored on the server, they could use a modified client to log in.

The protocol is requiring the client to prove that the client knows that hash, not that the client knows the password, if I'm reading it right (I might not be).
Yes, the intermediate hash is password-equivalent, but at least you haven't (directly) handed over your Google Mail password at the same time.

SRP was designed, in part, to make the serverside storage of passwords crypto-hard to break. It's an elegant protocol, but it's a little more complex than digest auth.

None of this stuff is anywhere nearly as safe as bcrypt and TLS with form auth. Digest HTTP auth can, in fact, make you even less safe than unencrypted form auth.
Yup. I think it explains a lot.
I wouldn't say that, Tichy. If people buy a computer for their homes, they are motivated to learn new things. If it doesn't work out for them, they certainly could manage with more motivation.

But so could anyone achieve a BSc. Everyone with a BSc could have an MSc. All having a MSc should be working on their PHD. You get the idea. If you can go one step, you _could_ always take two.

Sometimes you don't want to go that extra step, because there's not enough ROI. And sometimes you don't need to, because it was a design flaw.
In other words, upload their conscious to the internet? If you can figure out how, I'm game.
If you like this article, you'll love the book "Javascript: The Good Parts":

http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Good-Parts-Douglas-Crockfor...
I see where you are coming from. I just don't want me loves ones constrained by some phony dignity or decorum.
I'm a little late to the party, but thought I would comment.

I will admit that at first I really disliked this idea. There is something distasteful about profiting from death. After giving it some thought, and looking over some of the memorials, I really think you have something. Of course the key will be to treat people fairly and with respect and kindness. I have seen the poor implementations currently used by funeral homes. Even those seem to be a true source of comfort for the family. Good luck, I hope you're successful.
Thinking about it a bit further, if I was not involved in the funeral proceedings that might help stem the self-loathing, so maybe.

I think essentially I'm just really against the high costs of death proceedings. It should cost less money, not more, and the more services that get tacked on the higher the cost gets.
Worse, it wasn't the same drug' it wasn't even in the same class of drugs. For an interesting overview of modafinil see http://www.modafinil.com/
Hasn't that technology been around for a while? I remember seeing a driver less car that could detect people. Perhaps someone on HN has a link to the article.
I disagree for two reasons:

1. Until they provide button-like tactile feedback, typing will simply not be close to typing on a keyboard.

2. Having your fingers/hands obscure the screen is.. less than ideal. This is one reason why I like the touch-surface + screen combo idea from the 10gui concept.

As an aside, the touchscreen on the ipad, while decent, is IMHO still not responsive and accurate enough for me to be comfortable doing any serious amounts of typing on it.
"Hey, I got an idea: let's all sing this song: it goes..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKIcaejkpD4
You need to know more than the person you're freelancing to...

Since you've had a few years in a related field and built up some contacts you should be good to go (as long as you have a good rep with them). Let them know you are offering a new service, and get some info up. No matter what you're going to be learning new stuff the whole time, so you may as well just start now!
You comparison is unfair. Why can't you just leave the computer on, connected to the internet and logged in to your email? Then all that's left is walking over and taking a look. You might have to walk to fetch your iPad too...
Do you have an angle you could work? You might be able to get magazines to interview you.

Charge more? Apple charges 1.29 for songs. Your game is both more work to create and longer lasting than one song.
Isolated use cases is just what the average user needs. He doesn't want to be distracted by "byte blobs" and "program interaction".

Do one thing and do that well, I say.
that was creepy.
Rotors are tiny compared to conventional wind turbines. Even with six of them, just no comparison. Sure they harvest the wind much higher and it flys in circles quite fast, but I'm not quite sure how they'll be able to generate 1MW with on of those production things. It has the wingspan of B737!

It's a neat idea, but do benefits outweigh problems?
Unfortunately, I have noticed before that a lot of stuff on scienceblogs.com isn't very scientific, it's more than a bit of a grab-bag.
And even if they only have one button, they still have the command+click combo (which, IMHO, is much more complicated than simply having a second dedicated click button).
Because you have thousands of customers every day, and you're open 18 hours a day and staffed by rotating shifts of people? Or because you're a chain of stores? Or because you operate a series of related businesses? I'm all for keeping things human-scale, but the idea that I'm going to have a personal relationship with the guy who sells me a TV is a bit much.
Indeed. This is becoming a witch hunt.

I don't understand what the big problem is. So, my iPhone 4 has a small hardware flaw. I found this out weeks ago. It hasn't made a difference to my life and I am certainly not going to return it.

Does it drop calls? Yes. Does it drop less calls than my 3G? Yes. Does it have better reception in general than my 3G? Yes. Am I happy with 02, my network? No - but they have always been pretty bad where I live. (But also bare in mind the walls to my house here in Scotland are made of damp sandstone and are 3ft thick.)

I think that my iPhone 4 is not just the best phone I've ever owned its the single greatest consumer electronics device that I have ever owned. If it was recalled you'd have to prise it out of my cold dead hands (or replace it with an iPhone 5).

Nobody I know that owns an iPhone 4 cares about this issue - they all think it's funny. The only people that seem to care are either people I know who own android devices (who gloat) and tech journalists who seem to be very, very angry for some weird reason.
I don't understand how the iPad magically connects to the internet, while for the PC it is a complicated challenge. I suppose you have a WLAN router now, whereas at PC times, you didn't?

No question, the always on nature of the iPad makes it more convenient for some tasks. Although I have to say, I never switch off my MacBook either, it always only goes to sleep (before you ask, I bought a MacBook because I thought I would do iPhone dev... Still a Linux man at heart).

I understand that the iPad can be simpler for some taks, I just don't understand how the PC/mouse could have prevented computer use completely.

Eyesight: your grandfather seems to be lucky, I was talking more in general, as the iPad is hyped as "the computer even old people can use". Most old people are less lucky with their eyes.

Both my parents do mostly stuff with the PC the iPad can't even do, for example skyping with their granddaughters. My mother is also still big on scanning, although I wish she would stop :-)
I have this image in my mind about most freelancers being people who went to their 9-5 software development job for 10 years before they started to freelance.

I got my first freelance "project" on rentacoder.com in 9th grade. It earned me a whole $5.00. Few months later, I was winning bigger projects. I know lots of folks who have followed similar paths.
No, I don't mean that.
Absolutely - in this case, I don't think any amount of public shaming will convince Pearson to give up millions in ongoing revenue. The only way to test this legally is for someone to step up and take the risk of legal action, so a court can rule on it.