skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I clicked on the link expecting a smartphone retrospective, but instead got "iPad will rule"... At least it was short.

--

It needs to be pointed out that the Treo/Blackberry form factor was not the only one - or even the dominant one, globally - before 2007.

The all-touchscreen phone was pioneered by Ericsson starting in 2000...

Ericsson R380:
http://www.geek.com/hwswrev/pda/ericr380/index.htm

Sony Ericsson P900: http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_p900-544.php

Nokia has been making "micro-laptop" style smartphones since 1996:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Communicator

The standard phone keypad is still the world's best-selling smartphone form factor since 2002:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_7650

A company called MyOrigo introduced a buttonless touchscreen smartphone with accelerometer controls in 2003:
http://www.mobileburn.com/review.jsp?Id=547

IMHO, these devices ought to have a place in any smartphone retrospective.
To build on that a little: the main point he makes is that a lot of the decision making can be made during the design process of the software, if you think about not just building a few features, but building THE few features.

I agree with almost all of what he says, the one place he loses me is with the SUPER concise python and C++ code he shows (while (c++ = s++) to copy an array). It makes no sense - that's not elegant, that's just concise - it's very unreadable (at least to someone who has little C++ experience). Elegance and efficiency are correlated, but they aren't the same thing.
Next cool thing > Hacker News > Reddit > Digg > Youtube comments > /b/

These sites are all slowly turning into their right-hand side neighbor. I suppose /b/ will always be /b/.
MHealth: Jailbreaking Healthcare
Yup. And the GRiDPad pre-dates the MessagePad, but was also not a smartphone.

And, as the article's author point out, none anyone else had built previously sans keyboard achieved the mass market appeal that the iTouch, iPhone or iPad has.
This is a big deal! It's not something that is reflected well on the market, IMO. Important resource that isn't priced effectively, doesn't consider the future... definitely not the only thing that fits that bill, but this one is a little more cut and dry.

However, it's a bit hard to bet on the price of helium. Most of the main producers are reasonably diversified among other gas-products etc.
Mac Steam prompts OSX graphics update
TinyEye: Reverse Image Search
Indeed. Here's the phone I had in 2006. It even had an onscreen keyboard that I often used for knocking out quick replies to emails or SMS messages. Heck, it even did copy & paste and MMS :)

http://www.mobiletechreview.com/cingular-8125.htm

Aside from a few extra buttons it looks pretty similar to today's iPhone, and very similar to Android and WP7 phones. Apple certainly did a great job of refining all the elements and introducing capacitive touch screens, but to suggest they invented the form factor is just bullshit.
Really good. But I need an "open jaws" option, i.e. fly from A to B and then C to A. Usually (at least on the routes I use) this gets priced at 1/2 the price of a round trip A-B plus 1/2 the price of a round trip A-C. Buying two one-way tickets is no substitute because it usually costs far more.
Facebook (55) | Tom Aikins
Do you maintain websites for your apps? (I looked in your profile, no links there). I may want to try your stuff.
ISP's top data hog gobbles 2.7TB of data in a month
Contest of the century
Engineering Contractors Deerfield Beach
Wilson & Buist Florida Construction contractors & engineers experienced in all kinds of construction work, such as land development, marinas, warehouses, retail and office space, restaurants and many more.
Apple iPad, Microsoft Exchange and Email
The introduction of the iPad, one of many pioneer products from Apple, announces to business and private individuals alike that the future has arrived. The device is a light-weight, slender, mini-computer; an entire Apple operating system thinner than a notebook. While enjoying the crisp quality of the Apple iPad screen and its easy navigation, the iPad business user can still have his important data be synced through Microsoft Exchange Server to other commonly used devices such as a mobile phone, desktop computer or web browser.
Apple iPad Exchange Connectivity
Apple iPad fully supports both iPad-Exchange Server 2003 and iPad-Exchange 2007 synchronization, which allows businesses to access their corporate Microsoft Exchange server for email, contacts and calendar. The enriched email experience provided by Apple also allows email to be seen in landscape view, so the entire email can be seen, or in portrait, for easy email browsing. The Apple iPad email feature can be turned into a touch-screen keyboard for new email creation or replies, contains a spell check / correction, automatically inserts punctuation and offers word suggestions.
With ActiveSync, the Apple iPad Exchange synchronization is enabled, but iPad also supports Google, Yahoo's Zimbra and other servers that use Exchange ActiveSync. In addition, the Contacts app has the ability to use ActiveSync and search a Global Address List provided on an Exchange server.
Apple iPad and Business
Though a computer, the Apple iPad is not a laptop. For example, the viewing screen is also the keyboard and mouse, integrated into the screen through multi-touch capabilities. Thanks to applications built into Apple iPad and available through the Apple App Store, many people use the Apple iPad for relaxation purposes, such as book reading. However, due to the built-in and extension applications, it is also uniquely suited for business purposes.
Apple iPad for Web Browsing and Research
Apple iPad is based on the Apple Mac OS, and integrates many of the features of the full-blown system. With the Safari browser, it can be turned into a powerful on-the-go research tool. Information retrieval is quite easy, with full access to the Internet and all its resources through Wi-Fi. For areas where Wi-Fi is not available, AT&T offers no-contract, month-to-month 3G and 3GS service for continuous connectivity.
Apple iPad as a Presentation tool
What many people use as entertainment, businesses can use as a presentation tool. The battery allows up to ten hours of watching videos in high-resolution, as well as full-color, tidy photo albums for beautiful presentation creation.
Apple iPad completely revolutionizes the idea of a user-friendly interface and mobile office. With full, encrypted support for Exchange, iPad makes it easy to keep your entire network updated, from office to home to on the road.

Adrian Gates (adrian@apps4rent.com) is a Business Manager with Apps4Rent; which offers Microsoft Exchange Hosting, Windows SharePoint Services, SharePoint Foundation 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, and virtual dedicated servers.
Skulpt parsing revisited
Get driving theory test software
Ericsson Pxxx phones were pretty popular in their time. Sure, technically they had keyboard, but after detaching it were the same form factor as iPhone.
Also, before touch there were stylus devices (ie Palm Pilots).
Time to hoard helium.
I've been waiting a couple of years for a netbook with an ARM processor and a non-Windows OS. I don't think it's a coincidence that those features apply to the iPad and people think it's a big jump forward.

Just as with the iPod and iPhone the story is just as much about what others were actively fighting against (mp3 support, freedom from carrier interference) as what Apple positively stands for. That doesn't take anything away from Apple becuase they bucked those trends, it just makes me sad that we had to wait for someone with their clout to enter the Market and shake things up. What about the many markets they don't bother with?
If you suspect certain resources will be more expensive in the future, you can buy futures and make a killing. You can also look at the going rates for futures contracts and compare them to the current price of the commodity to get an idea of future scarcity.
MSFT's first 6 years vs. AAPL and GOOG
German Newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung Features Augmented Reality Enhancements
While you're learning, remember that most tutorials are going to be slightly out of date (statistically speaking). Use the following guide to help find good resources (or to replace outdated sections).

MySQL functions = bad, PDO = good

die() = bad, throw new exception = good

$_GLOBALS = bad, bad and more bad

quoted SQL = bad, prepared statements = good (do not trust mysql_escape_string or any variant of it)

striptags() = bad, HTMLPurifier = good

And finally, for the confidence you need to start a project that's a little scary:

every other programmer = bad, you = damn good

Good luck! :)

[edited for spacing]
There are many many ways of being "smart" and I've found most people are smart in at least one way or another. Either they are socially smart, or they are very fast to learn something or they are very good at thinking deeply to work out a complex issue. Maybe they just have a great memory.

It sounds like you are admitting to being socially dumb which is a good thing, admitting it is the first step to improvement.

Keep your eye out for other people around you who are socially smart and try and learn from them. Imitation is the our most basic learning strategy and can work well as a starting point.
Other than the subtitle suggests, the newspaper in question is actually one of the most renowned newspapers in Germany. However, pictured is not not the newspaper, but a more colloquial weekend magazine that comes with the magazine every friday.
What is Clojure-in-Clojure?
Solaris, OpenSolaris and Oracle: The Tap Is Turned Off
Skipping breakfast now linked to childhood obesity
I'm working on it right now.
So use a framework. Php's problem is that it doesn't come with an structure. The plus is that you can use any framework that works for you. I use http://www.yiiframework.com and it has shaved 70% off my dev time.
It's not clear to me yet if this is a "programming-pusher-for-non-programmers" or "helps-you-learn-ruby" app? Should I try it if I am interested in Ruby but am OK writing simple code?

Some background info: I am into finance and am comfortable with basic PHP, write lots of VBA macros and also code for a propriety software used by my employer (its very basic, something like C).
pg's written entire essays on the subject. But the bottom line is: if you're into startups, Silicon Valley is the best place. It'll take more than a conference or two to make Chicago a startup hub.

If you want a different opinion, read 37signals' blog and books. They're right there in Chicago.

"Why does Silicon Valley ignore the Midwest" strikes me as missing the point entirely. Regions don't become entrepreneurial by the careful attention of people from other, more entrepreneurial regions. They do it themselves. That is the point of entrepreneurship!
You know how you're feeling right now? A bit wounded, because somebody was (perhaps) a bit harsher in their reply then they needed to be, even though they were absolutely correct?

That's how others (may) experience it when you're "a little rude".

Remember this feeling.
No, the math-geeks I know have some of the best senses of humor I've encountered...but humor has a time and place, and this probably wasn't it.
Alternatively, with the latest version of FuzzyFinder add this line to your .vimrc:

nmap <silent> <C-t> :call fuf#givenfile#launch('', 0, '> ', split(glob('./**/*'), "\n"))<CR>
It is pretty ridiculous in the form presented. It certainly doesn't scale. Having said that, there are sometimes sensible options around changing what most people search for.

Marriage is an obvious example. But even if you are just applying for a job, if you use a different version if your name, the search results can be very different. Compare the results for "will critchlow" and "william critchlow".
As a friend puts it: "given that you install a package that has a postinst script, you are letting google run stuff as root on your machine".

Don't trust google? Don't install their software.
And on a related note, You May Be Getting Old if you increasingly hear statements like, "I don't know how anybody ever did X without having Y!" and you have direct memories of having did X quite successfully for 10-20+ years without, as you may have guessed, having Y. Because Y didn't exist for most of that time!
But now add in a few more pieces of information. Like the city, state, country. And the type of job they are applying for. Also roughly age, previous jobs, any information listed on their resume.

By itself I agree its meaningless, but when combined with the other pieces of information the potential employer has access to it is very revealing.
Thanks for making me sorry I bothered.
I noted everyone saying it was crashing their browser / etc.., but it worked perfectly on my computer (dual core, cheap video card, Chrome).
In French: "la nostalgie n'est plus ce qu'elle était", sthg like "Nostalgia is not anymore what it used to be"
Video chat via Google credentials has already been working for some time using the Empathy messaging client, without the need for a dedicated one.
Jamis Buck himself:

http://twitter.com/jamis/status/13735390978
Getting things done suggests keeping lists per person you interact with frequently to solve this problem. I keep a "discuss" list in remember the milk and tag entries with the person's name. It's not a perfect process and I need to get better at sticking to it, but it's similar to this...

Unrelated: it's only when working with others who don't have a consulting background that I realise how much I learnt from that phase of my life. I love learning tips from other random industries...
dotBen,

I will contact the devs I used to work with and ask them about that and let you know.
Well, I was a kid, and didn't know that latex was bio-degradable
"int $0x80" still works for backwards compatibility, but it's not been used for making syscalls from modern code for many many years.
It's likely* a play on the phrase, "(put the) pedal to the metal", i.e. going all out (based on the notion of pushing a car's gas pedal as far as possible, for maximum speed):

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/put_the_pedal_to_the_metal

Mettle == courage, spirit, etc.

http://www.google.com/dictionary?q=mettle

* Can't be fully certain it's intentional, given the many examples Google has for the phrase where the use of "mettle" (or "medal") is clearly a mistake.
That doesn't seem ridiculous - one full hard drive backup over the Internet.
I wonder if this Richardson made an investment before issuing this statement ;)
House call: WeTab - iPad alternative from Germany
Chrsitian Louboutin Black Canvas High-Top Casual Shoes
Since any discussion of the merits of iOS tends to involve a lot of biases, I'll state mine up front: I don't like the closed, controlled ecosystem. For that reason, I will likely prefer Android for the foreseeable future.

I have yet to try Flash on Android 2.2, but from everything I've heard, it isn't quite "software that works", and closed betas for iOS weren't either. The mismatch between touchscreens and a lot of existing flash content using hover for input is well known. There was a post to HN yesterday reporting that some video content had unusably bad performance, and Flash having a greater impact on battery life than video playback by other means is pretty well established.

As a user, I'd rather have a buggy flash implementation providing a poor user experience than be unable to access Flash content at all, but over the long term, I won't be sad to see Flash go. It's buggy and slow, especially on anything that isn't x86 or Windows. Even on the desktop, Flash just isn't "software that works"
Oh. Don't get me wrong, you can still dig in and find stuff, but as a simple separation of work and non-work (especially if some stuff about me did rank for both versions), it can be easier than other options.
The basics are less simple than you indicate. What does it mean to have permission? Who has the right to give that permission? What happens if you include something because someone told you it was OK, and that person was mistaken? When is borrowing fair use?

To take an important example, are you allowed to copy the user interface to someone else's program? What about copying someone's data structures if that is necessary to interact with their file format? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_v._Borland and http://www.fenwick.com/docstore/Publications/IP/IP_Articles/... for the answers.

It isn't just in music and movies that the weird stuff starts cropping up. (And that is before you get into the license debates. Or such subtle questions like whether it is better to treat the GPL as a copyright license, or to take steps to get a contract instead.)

No, there is nothing simple about this invented notion we call copyright.
"Nostalgia isn't what it used to be" in English, usually attributed to writer Peter De Vries.
From recent personal experience, the 2-3 hour stints are increasingly a thing of the past.
Like it matters? Helium is helium, it's fungible, the private distributors have every incentive (like the consumers) to use or waste helium. An annual discount rate of 5% or more means that value 20 or 50 years from now is very small indeed.
The OpenDNS Stunt Show -- or how the NYT makes money in the new economy.
Lying is endemic in corporate culture; success in corporations is not the same as being good at your job. Watch out for Snakes in suits.

I suggest creating or finding a work situation where the group isn't big enough for bosses, and thus corporate culture.
That would only work for rather unique names though.
Exit strategy required at YC?
Hi Guy's,

After reading a lot about the startups at YC, I was a bit baffled to see that most people only talk about the exit strategy.. Doesn't anyone care about building a sustaining business anymore, or is this just part of the YC agreement ?
The Urbi Robotic Software Platform Goes Open Source
sure, but who's going to cash in on those contracts if my horizon is 500 years?
> Maybe in Europe there has been a conversation, but not in the US - and the US supplies nearly 80 per cent of the helium used in the world. The problem is that these supplies will run out in a mere 25 years, and the US government has a policy of selling helium at a ridiculously low price.

This sounds like a prediction! 'US helium production will crash to near-zero in 25 years.' http://predictionbook.com/predictions/1686
Hmmmm... "Agony sort" doesn't seem to take into account whether one airline is better or worse than another, which definitely influences the amount of agony I experience while traveling. Sometimes people are willing to pay a little extra or be flexible on price in order to fly their preferred airline, or at least avoid one they dislike.
From the brilliant idea in your head towards a business idea on paper
I stand corrected, but my impression is still that it is going to take a while for them to get over their resentment for all things Japanese.
The most objective justification is that Git uses the present tense when it generates its own commit messages ("Merge branch...", "Revert..."), so using the same tense for your commit messages makes everything consistent.
Are you saying that an it's impossible technically to have an open source DRM format? I'm not sure that follows, does it?
Benchmarks we did at my last company (trading app in C++). But like I say, try it for yourself. There's a reason people still pay $$$ for compilers when GCC is free!
One of the comments in the article.

"zt, zb and zz are commands that I use pretty frequently. They keep the cursor on the current line, but re-position the cursor at the top, bottom or middle of the screen."

Priceless! Was wondering how to do this a couple of days ago. Thanks David Frey.
What about anti-Apple zelotry? Google fanboyism (this one is worse than the other two combined)?
Modnique.com - All Sales Events - Odelia Jewelry
In 1885, this set of beliefs would have been normal across western countries. In 2010, it is an anomaly which is specific to the US and sets it apart from other first-world nations. In that sense, it is worth mentioning.
Yes, makes me wonder how much 'optimizing for exit' is too much. Small investments, small companies, small 'dipshit' exits?
Doesn't it work like 'click to flash' i.e. each element activates when clicked on? I haven't tried but I assumed it did.
A significant number of people consider the lack of Flash on the iPhone/iPad to be a feature, not a bug. But this is normal for Apple; I'm old enough to remember when people said the original iMac would fail because it had no floppy drive.
They were stylus driven, were they not?
Aye. And imagine how much damage false-positives can have on smaller software companies. A company like MS runs all of its binaries through the major virus scanners as a matter of course for any release build, not just to check for viruses but to make sure that they don't get tagged by a broken heuristic detector or some such. But not every company has that luxury (and even so, it didn't save XP from McAfee's blunder).

Besides which, all AV amounts to variations on turd polishing. You'll never achieve robust security through black-list methods.
I personally prefer `set scrolloff=999` which ensures the cursor is always in the vertical middle of the screen - this helps me always see the context of the current line.
Rebuilding BBC iphone/ipad app in HTML5
I know this view won't be popular but what I took from this article is it's hard for a well-off westerner to maintain slave labor and get high quality control products for pennies in labor in the east. I have no sympathy.

How was it surprising to realize you can't control patent/copyrights in non-democratic country ten thousand miles from you, where the factory owners have far fewer ethics than you and are willing to manipulate their slave labor even further to sell your product as theirs in other markets?
I don't think the author is claiming the article to be comprehensive. It's claim chowder. And I'm betting he's right too, let's check back in three years and see how it went.
Facebook Apologizes Over “Pull To Refresh” Code Lift. Attribution Added
USB Overdrive to correct mouse acceleration curve.

Divvy is amazing to quickly organize your desktop.

Cloudapp for screenshots (or Scrup).

http://Drop.io/ for files sharing

Evernote for saving info.

PTHPasteboard for clipboard manager.

CoRD for remote desktop to windows machines.

TextMate with the "Disable Refresh Refresh on Regaining Focus" plugin installed.

Sometimes I use MacVim as well. Got a bunch of plugins setup for it. But I still use Textmate 99% of the time.

Zen-Coding for both TextMate and VIM.

Photoshop

Balsamiq for screen mockup.

Virtualbox for IE testing stuff. I do have another Windows laptop so I rarely run this virtual machine.

No QuickSilver -- Spotlight is good enough as an app launcher.

iTunes with Volume Logic, Last.fm, TunesText to lookup lyrics. I have a little more than 25,000 songs and TunesText is pretty awesome.

Colloquy for IRC

SequelPro and MySQL Query Browser (which can do tabs while Sequel Pro can't)

Acorn for quick image editing/color dropping.

http://unfuddle.com for my SVN needs, and Github for public repos.

Of all of those above, USB Overdrive and Divvy are probably the most essential tools. Check out my other post on this topic here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1523763
That's a good one.
about:config FTW!
A Message From Earth
Hi Jeff, I'm also building a wedding application. I'd love to chat with you to see if we can help each other out.

Alex
Google's founders certainly weren't concerned with their collegiate life being permanent record.

http://digg.com/tech_news/First_Google_Site_ points at http://web.archive.org/web/20021030152640/www-db.stanford.ed... (Sergey Brin)
Good pitch to app developers: Top Ten Reasons to Use Recurly
Well, if you don't spot the reference (I didn't), it just looks like the developers have a somewhat distorted view of other humans, especially women.
Change your name. I say you better change your policies
yes! definitely! Go go Prof. Ngô Bảo Châu!