skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There's no gospel. Get what you think sounds nice.(1)

Go to a real hifi shop, where they actually demo the stuff for you in living room-like conditions (carpet, not warehouse ceiling etc., and no 25 TVs blaring MTV across the aisle), and listen to the difference between, say, $80 speakers and $500 ones, then try to figure out where your ability to hear the difference levels off, and get something in that range.

Bring a CD of the kind of music you enjoy. "Thunderstruck" is wonderful for demoing bass, but if you're into indie-fragile-weeping-dude, it's not what you want to base your purchase decision on.

If a place won't let your switch between different speaker/amp combinations on your time using your own music, you're not buying from them.

(1: Except one thing: cables. Don't get the biodynamic green tea infused ripoff stuff, but the ones that come with your stereo (even good ones) are most likely absolutely hideous. If you already have a setup, and use bad cables, spending a bit of money on decent cables is the best investment you can do.)
I'm already too tall for ordinary height clothes, too thin and often too short for ordinary big&tall shops. If you start 'skinny and tall' shops please don't make me too fat for those by catering for only 32" waists!

I've thought many a time of starting a clothing company for 'me'. 6 billion people in the world, there must be a market of me-shaped people somewhere?
I would respectfully disagree.

You can buy a phone outright and go on a pay monthly plan without a contract. That is what I am currently doing with my iPhone - I paid ¬£440 for the phone outright and pay £20/month on O2 for 300 minutes, unlimited text and unlimited data.

No reason why you can't do that on n an Android
Techcrunch is a troll site. Do not feed the trolls. Do not post their links.
Review needed for this simple but cool concept
The huge distracting icon makes it look like a scammy shareware site.
Ask HN: How many of you have used BuildItWithMe? Any good?
I just came across this networking site for developers/designers ( builditwithme.com ) and it seems interesting and fairly populated. I was wondering how many of you ever used it and if you could share any experience with it.

Did you find any good project partner, maybe even a co-founder?
You could probably use one of the hacky solutions like IETester (http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage) for older versions.

I'd much rather run IE locally in a VM though.
Totally agree, after all Android is just an OS, there's no guaranteed quality or user experience across different carriers and manufacturers are the same just because they are all "Android phones". This could totally ruin the Android brand since there is too much uncertainty about what people will get.
Saying back into the days of strong carrier control assumes that you ever left those days behind in the U.S. Since the great white hope for this happening was the iPhone, which is still only available on one single carrier, this seems somewhat naive.

Either Apple couldn't get any concessions from the other carriers or they accepted a big bag of cash to give one carrier an advantage over the others. Either way carriers are in control. All you get is a slightly different set of consumer hostile activities that affect different demographics.

At best you could argue that Apple is demonstrating a better way to do things on the AT&T network and customer pressure will force other carriers to emulate (if/when allowed by whatever contract binds Apple and AT&T), but exactly the same could be said about Android. And similar could be argued across mobile OSes too e.g. with Android pressuring Apple into relaxing its arbitrary developer tool restrictions and iPhones showing a market for unbranded (by carriers at least) phones.
Debunking the 1% Myth
I procrastinate because I care
+1 for the noise-cancelling headphones. The killer-feauture for me, however, is on airplanes. They will filter out most of the ambient noise, but more interestingly, they allow you to listen to music/movies/whatever without cranking the volume to 11, which in itself is excruciating.

If you fly just somewhat frequently, get a set of PXC-350s. (or something similar, but I haven't found anything else in the same or lower price range with decent reviews).
Up at 345am, daily habits until 530am, start programming with remote client team at 530 and work until early afternoon, then switch gears to work on my own projects. Tired all the time :)
That does suck - but I still argue that the Mayan where less important for us than the Greek and Roman writers.

So I would claim that the Library of Alexandria is a greater loss than the Mayans.
Thanks for the advice. But on cables..

If it's a digital signal going over the cables, won't it either work or not work? Or are we talking analogue here?
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I haven't seen anything like that but I'd like to!
This sounds like a strange non sequitur to me; you needed 37 Signals to tell you that you need to charge for stuff to make money, and could not possibly have arrived at this conclusion without their particular received insight on this very matter?

It seems to me one could have concluded that just by looking at the nature and history of commerce.

Now, it may be that you did not realise this, and that when you did, it was at 37 Signals' encouragement to do so. But from this it does not follow that the single thing that could've happened that would have been better for you would have been to be introduced to entrepreneurial thought by 37 Signals.
John Stossel: Entrepreneurs under attack
Would you care to engage with the actual points made in this article?
wow, i really appreciate your suggestions. i definitely agree with showing some 'hot seller' products on the home page and will get right on it.

thanks
Silicon oxide circuits break barrier
The default MyISAM engine does. The behavior of InnoDB is similar to that of SQL Server: a row lock is a data structure held in memory, seperate from the row data. It's computationally expensive to lock this way. However SQL Server escalates row locks into page locks if it thinks it will help (e.g. "lock this row, and the next one, and the next one..." is translated on the fly to "lock this entire page" where a page is an on-disk allocation containing many rows) so now we have a few page locks to manage rather than many row locks. MySQL can't so it struggles when you need to lock many rows at once. Oracle manages this by keeping a row's lock status in-line (e.g. in the block buffer cache) so there is no additional overhead per-lock.

I see this all the time; developers who have "grown up" in an environment where locks and cursors are expensive pick up some odd habits that don't translate well when they code in an environment (such as Oracle) where locks are cheap and cursors are free.
Try this.

Design your program from high-level and iterate through phases into low-level. So for instance, I want you to make a program that, lets say, is a customer database.

High level 0: I need a customer database

Level 1a: I have these storage requirements.

Level 1b: I need these inputs

Level 1c: I need data to exit the system in these ways.

Level 2: Diagram of work-flow processes (how it interacts with real people).

Level 3: Diagrams of how the database will look, identify what types of objects you will need to work with (of course, this specific action gears you into OOP design and not functional).

Level 4: Problems. Spend some time bad-mouthing everything and how it works, go back to level 2 and when you're tired of crying about the thing go onto the next level.

Level 5: Document how it works. This is your Manual.

Low Level 6: Write the code, and when you need guidance, RTFM.

Level 7: Throw the thing into the trash and start over, they wanted an inventory management system, another tribute to the synergistic perspicacity of business people and software engineering's verbal constipation.
You're probably right. I've never understood why Postgres has such a small mindshare. Between Postgres and SQLite, there ought to be no ecological niche for MySQL to exist...
SuperOS 10.04 Screenshots
Silverlight is the next decade's IE6
There's recursive storytelling and poetry (the kind of stories/poems where, at the end, you find yourself looking at the beginning again). It's also possible to describe certain processes which occur as part of some mental disorders as recursive (e.g. the fear of fear; depression because of depression).
I worked in investment banking for 5 years and I never saw anyone wearing a EUR 30k hat!

Hell, Brioni or Kiton suits only come in at EUR 20k...
>Heavy caffeine usage and liberal alcohol usage on occasion.

>Avoid both of those.

I'll keep it short and sweet. Family, religion, friendship ... these are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business.
Apple Relaxes iOS Restrictions On Development Tools, Publishes Review Guidelines
More details:

http://developer.apple.com/appstore/guidelines.html
Iteration is just a special case.
How do you feel about funding the missile defense shield? (and starwars?)
Mathematics is full of recursion. Everywhere. The part of CS that deals with recursion is just a tiny corner of mathematics.
Researchers analyse what dance moves are more attractive to women
it's not a magic white list. it's actually an explicit list on the iphone. you can apply to have your app exempted.
Just tried it. I like it that the tumblr bookmarklet opens in its own window. However, Posterous improves by finding an abstract automatically.
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Will be interesting to see if Adobe's program to port flash-to-iOS 5, which was to be included in CS5, is a go again.
> with my wife as co-founder, living in the country-side of france in a cheap place, with our son

That alone sounds like a dream. Where in France are you living?
in re: 1

My wife is a doctor who needs to buy a fair amount of clothes and, I assure you, does not find shopping to be a recreational activity.

Also, may not online shopping be recreational activity?

I add these points merely to suggest that there may be enough market in 1) women who don't like shopping and 2) women who recreationally shop online.
Are we posting comics here now?

Shall we start posting every xkcd too? They're pretty awesome and very much on-topic.

What about Penny Arcade. They're pretty cool too, and very geeky.
No, spot instances can be shut down anytime you are outbid.
I don't know if I have typical days.

Yesterday, woke up at 7 AM. Answered personal email, talked to sister for an hour, morning routine. Started work at 9:00 sharp, gave myself 50 EpicWin points.

Spent three hours reimplementing OKCupid's sharing bar for a client. Showed client. Client ecstatic. Used opportunity to remind client to pay me for last month. Received money, transferred to bank account. Separately, did a wire to Japan for my monthly "salary."

Broke for lunch at 1230. Returned to apartment at 2:00. Felt woozy, so slept. Woke at six, resumed work for second client. Bragging elided due to confidentiality, but I think after this engagement my rates get a new digit.

10:00, realized it was late. Went to dinner, gym. Home at 11:30. Wanted to play Starcraft but had an email from a BCC customer. Spent an hour doing a one-off feature to knock her socks off. (She works for somebody I like. It is not usually worthwhile to do customizations for an audience of one.)

After that, I would have gone to sleep, but there was a very interesting live video from CapitalFactory. Watched their Demo Day pitches. One, for Smackages, is the best I have ever seen and should be taught in rhetoric for how to deliver a persuasive speech. Seriously not joking. Get a video copy, watch it, if three lines don't blow your mind you are not watching the same video.

Then Dave McClure had a presentation. He is always funny and insightful, so I watched that, too. Went to bed at 5 Am, slept through morning, no EpicWin points for me today.
> "You can probably configure your machine to emulate this request, and get free WiFi that is intended for iPhones."

Gentlemen, start your engines!
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That's a SIM unlocked phone rather than a "true" PAYG, and yes you can do that with Android. Actually I'm about to :)
Of course, the same exact argument could be made about Flash.
Welcome, but long overdue.
A culture of bad service and not paying attention to code details will be corrected later? My gut tells me that just isn't going to happen. Twitter had issues but I never got the feeling they weren't trying or listening.
How fickle are they?
Just the fact that XML is used opens this up to a lot of attacks. Programmers tend to use XML poorly. Depending on how they've configured the XML library, it may be possible to do something like run JavaScript within the context of the response message. Or, fuzzing responses might find a buffer overflow on the iPhone.

Eh? I've so far not seen an XML parser (or any library) that runs JavaScript. And while buffer overflows are always a possibility in C based software, using a well tested XML parser is probably a better safeguard than hacking your own parsing code, and comparable to using any other parsing library.

Not that there aren't any problems with XML default parser configurations (system entities, the billion laughs), but this is just bogus.
this really isn't secret. the only thing that is "secret" is the wispr specs, because the god damn thing floats in and out of IETF. almost everybody who does hotspots deals with it, but that's it.

couple of things:
- "wispr" is a configurable keyword. thats not how wispr works or is detected.
- the probeurl (i.e. the url that a captive network checks for) changes with a wide variety of hotspots. when I last looked, ATT provisioning had 5.
- there is no security issues here as far as xml or wispr is concerned. the cached credentials on ATT, for example, are global to all ATT users. not to mention, there's a whole whackload of certificates and whitelists in there to keep you from sending a wispr request to fake access point
So you raised $15k or so from YC. What happened next?
How did you get to Series A ? What significant milestones did you hit ? What did the timeline from YC to Series A look like ?
Eh, thing is, if you've ever had a nice motorcycle, there is just not a single car in the world whose acceleration will impress you, it doesn't matter the horsepower or the price tag. It's just a physics thing. :)
Make Use of Samples of References to Accurately Quote Your Own Sources
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Sure, you can apply.

That doesn't make it easier to explain to customers why they can't even test the app properly on their test devices.

This fact was also basically undocumented which made things... interesting.
Now I seriously hope it means we'll be able to use MacRuby on iPhone/iPad in the next few weeks/months.
Discipline to not check Hacker News while I'm coding....
Key/value tables and how to use them in PHP and MySQL
If it's of interest to the readership then it's allowed.

Whether it's in the form of words, pictures, video, audio, or direct-brain-transmission shouldn't matter.
That last point is big, you dont have to fix everything. Its ok to make small steps as long as they are in the right direction.

From http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html

Fire and Motion, for small companies like mine, means two things. You have to have time on your side, and you have to move forward every day. Sooner or later you will win. All I managed to do yesterday is improve the color scheme in FogBUGZ just a little bit. That's OK. It's getting better all the time. Every day our software is better and better and we have more and more customers and that's all that matters. Until we're a company the size of Oracle, we don't have to think about grand strategies. We just have to come in every morning and somehow, launch the editor.
Aside: How far off are we from renting our PCs in the cloud, and just having a local terminal? I know it's an old Failed Dream (mainframe-terminal, client-server, settop box etc), but maybe we're getting closer...

It seems a bit ridiculous, because you still need a bit of local power for display and fast reactions, and current iPhones/netbooks could do with more power. But desktop PC's have been fast enough in that respect for a while. An advantage of the cloud is that as RAM, cycle prices etc drop, you get it (more of them or cheaper) without the hassle of physically upgrading. And bursty usage is available too, eg. when compiling.

There's solid economics here: it's a sort of timesharing idea, instead of cycles being wasted while you type, someone else uses them to compile. Even more compelling globally - someone else uses them while you sleep. The same argument works for sharing your desktop's own cycles, p2p, but a centralized cloud has admin advantages and other economies of scale.
Badam bam pshsh!
I battle with this every day. I've done e-commerce in the past, and would say I did pretty well (over £70,000 turnover in the first year). I've also built dozens of e-commerce sites for other people and advised them on how to achieve success. With my existing code, I could probably build an e-commerce site by this time tomorrow, then spend a few hours populating the site and bang... with PPC advertising I could have orders coming in by the end of the week.

The problem is, it's too easy - there's no challenge there for me and running an e-commerce site is a lot of hassle, especially if you ship products yourself, hold inventory etc etc.

That's why at the moment, I'm focusing on my stock photo startup, it's more of a challenge, and if it works how I hope it will, it should require less physical work on my part (no shipping products etc).
This is a story of caching
I have tried Django on AppEngine using AppEngine Patch, but at this point, I don't think it is worth it till Django has non-relational database support. If I were to build something on AE right now, I will try Flask or Kay.
Was this story broken here on HN? I can't find any other stories on Google News.

If so, well done jakewalker. Makes me wonder if HN can become a primary source for news in addition to an aggregator.
Christchurch Quake Map - Cool visualization run on App Engine
Google, Openness and Browser Sniffing
Wait, so does this mean Apple doesn't have a problem with a 3rd-party framework becoming the preferred API for iOS development? How does not allowing apps that download code prevent this?

Also, does this mean you can't download JavaScript from an external web page in your app?
> There are high school teams that do this too. Crazy, but when you're 16 it's actually kind of fun since the aches and pains aren't quite as bad. Two practices and a film meeting every day makes for rapid visible improvement.

I've never heard of a high school team that didn't have two-a-days and film every day in the pre-season. In fact, judging by this article, my high school's football team spent a lot more time practicing on the field than the pro's do. I'm sure those long practices helped with strength and conditioning, but I wonder if their technique and skills would have improved more quickly with more recovery time.
focus on the message, not the medium.

The comic reminded me of any number of articles about cognitive errors and distortions that regularly appear on HN.
Is this just a press release that changes are coming later today, or are the actual changes also published? If the latter, is anyone able to summarize what they are?
What happened ? Did Adobe poke some government officials and Apple was starting to get bothered by that ?

It just seems incredibly stupid to first ban all tools -- just to mess with Adobe basically -- and then do an 180 and remove said restriction.
It still doesn't really matter. They can revoke this stance whenever they want. It still remains risky to base your livelihood on a format completely controlled by someone else who ultimately couldn't care less about your needs.
It hurts the government, but the institutions that were dumb enough to lend Greece should be also accountable. Of course if Greece defaults, German taxpayers are likely to pick up the tab so it sucks for them.
I don't really understand what your second sentence means. what customers? what app? why can't you test it on the device?

I'm not defending apple on this, at all. but from the time I've spent working with these devices, there is just so much going on in so many levels, you can't possibly cover everything with public facing documentation. and you probably shouldn't anyway.
There's no way they could go back on this now. The outcry would be ten times larger than it was when they first restricted it.
Reminds me: on in-flight WiFi, you can set your computer's user agent to be that of an iPhone, and you get to purchase less expensive WiFi. ($5.95 versus $9.95 on my most recent flight)
Exactly. This is potentially hugely important news.
Since the bulk of Mayan writings were lost, you would never know anyway.
OnLive has gotten pretty close with their gaming platform. They've shown demos of Autocad software and I believe Photoshop running with it.
JS1k: Tetris (including music) in 1016 bytes
I just had a quick read of the new sections of the agreement. As far as I can see all restrictions on the languages and tools have been removed. No scripts or executable code can be downloaded by the app (ie it all has to be packaged) with the exception of javascript in a web component. Really I guess the press release says all that, but there is no equivocation in the terms of the actual agreement which is nice. Great move Apple!
If you're a registered developer, you can read the just-published App Store Guidelines here:

http://developer.apple.com/appstore/resources/approval/guide...

For those who aren't registered developers, it's basically a list of 189 rules, most in the form of "Apps that ... will be rejected"
Apple Opens App Store To “Other” Development Platforms
Motodirect.de - Professioneller Fahrzeugvertrieb Handel an Handel
Microsoft might embrace and extend HTML5
HN Poll: What is your personality type?
I just re-tested myself with the abridged version of the MBTI located at:
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm

Funny thing is, for the first time in quite some time, my scores have been consistent. I tested as an INFJ for the third time in the last couple years, and when I read the portrait description, it fit like a glove. I skew towards the detail oriented portrait in that I tend to get annoyed when people ignore details. I've been doing my best to mitigate that by educating myself on the different personality types.

Working together is hard, but when done correctly, can really boost productivity and keep your team together. I'm very curious as to what the distribution of the HN community is.
INFJ
ISTJ
ISFJ
ISFP
ESTP
ESTJ
ESFJ
ESFP
ENTP
ENTJ
ENFJ
ENFP
good points. if greeks started paying all the taxes, the private sector would cease to exist.