skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Strictly as a music player, I'd agree that the Zune UI is at least as good quality as the music player in an iPod Touch.

But there are so many more valuable things the iPod Touch can do vs. a Zune, that I can't see how there is any comparison of the two platforms where the iPod Touch doesn't dominate.

Games? Maps? Web? Email? SMS? Photos? Wikipedia? The list goes on and on ... Flight tracking? Unit converter? PDF reader? Word processing? Spreadsheets? Skype?

In a field of music players without the iPod Touch, the Zune is, hands down, the best. But the only devices that come remotely close to the capability of an iPod Touch are iPhones and Android handsets.
Here is an actual example.

Last week, I visited the Cincinnati Museum Center (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati_Museum_Center_at_Uni...) and saw the traveling exhibit, "America I Am", presented by Tavis Smiley.

As I entered the exhibition, a museum attendant informed me I was not allowed to take any videos or pictures of anything within the exhibit (with or without flash).

As I walked through the exhibit, I noticed a copy of the Declaration of Independence. For those of you unaware, this document was created in approximately 1776. The copy on exhibit is one of 25 remaining copies of approx. 200.

If I were to take a picture of the Declaration of Independece, would that be theft? Would it be copyright infringement?

Ironically, at the end of the exhibit, visitors have an opportunity to record a video of themselves, which is then uploaded and distributed to the "America I Am" website (http://www.americaiam.org).
That's good for BING, only 52% to go. (well, actually more like 26% to achieve parity).

I don't see how google can go up 1% / month and go up 1% / year at the same time.

Bing growing 30% per year and two percent per month means that they're already flattening out though.

In the article they note that since BING now powers Yahoo! search since August that BING actually has a marketshare that is roughly 26% instead of the 14% it has on its own domain.
> or 4Chan users going by "/X/"

When will the nightmare of capitalization end? I've never even seen that second form before.
Why can't it be a combination of factors?
"But if you agreed to the conditions, violating them is immoral."

You do know about the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the US Constitution, right?
Yes, that's what I just said...

>I don't think the shield of LLC liability or open source license disclaimer will necessarily help the guy there (as people can still personally sue him), but I can't see it hurting.
Ask HN: What sites for content do you love as much as HN?
What sites for content do you love as much as HN?
No-one ought to be allowed to murder, rape, molest, torture, etc...
Live From Twitter’s Hatching Event
Has anyone tried out Sproutcore on a semi-serious/serious project? I've browsed their source and it looks well-written. I'd love to hear people's experiences.
Ben Mezrich asked me if I would co-operate with him for "The Accidental Billionaires" and I declined after considering his history of twisting characters in "Bringing Down The House," which got made into 21. I didn't hear from anyone after that, and my name was mis-spelled in his book.
I was not part of ConnectU so I didn't settle for $65 million, actually. I settled separately.
The author argues that "measures should be put in place to help start-ups learn how to avoid correctable problems."

Does anybody else think that already exists? What is one of the purposes of HN, anyways? :)
can you provide more context such as the value prop of your product?
"... I mostly just want to point out that we adapted to a system setup by Gen-Xers, who are largely in charge at this point ..."

An assertion at best. My standard reply ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/227128232/

I hardly think GenX is in charge of mainstream opportunity as you make out. There simply isn't enough of us and we as a generation got squeezed between Boomers & GenY. This generational warfare talk is somewhat a generalisation though. The GenY friends I seem to know and observe ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/collections/7215762254... are pretty grounded and are facing challenges unique to their generation. Having to do their own thing which might appear - narcissistic/entitled is one of the coping strategies.
Today we’re launching a new Twitter.com
I'm super excited by this -- I have been reluctant to use SproutCore, but I have a strong feeling that Yehuda's contributions will change that. I love JQuery, but what I really want is something that can do a bit more, like SproutCore or Cappuccino. Yehuda, when can we expect your contributions to become a public part of SproutCore?
Wikis are not documentation
After googling around throughout the day, and bugging caseyf of ravelry, I came across some decent info.

Looks like using keepalived between two physical machines that are identically configured as a load balancer/proxy is the way to go on linux. A brief outline can be found here: http://www.hackadmin.com/2010/02/22/ip-failover-for-web-clus...
Also, before someone mentions the x billion lost per year

It's bizarre. Imagine a job where my customer complains about how ineffective my product is yet continues to shovel money at me. Wait, even worse, my product makes their customers miserable and yet they still shovel money at me. It sort of sounds like the business model of a crack dealer.
I guess Yank Sing is quite good. Just so expensive...
It would be 1c/min for the duration of the call, and 2c/min for the duration of each dial.
Let me describe an app that doesn't exist, would do well in the app store, but will never be allowed.

What the app does does, is turn the iPhone into a normal usb drive when connected to a computer. On top of that, your music is available in normal folders, that you can drag to your computer. Additionally, you can drag music onto that drive, and the music will be playable on the iPhone after you disconnect.

(Yes, iPhoneBrowser and DiskAid kind of allow you to do this, but I'm talking about having the iPhone handle it natively.)

And y'know what?

I blame Apple for this app not existing.

$100 doesn't allow me to run whatever I want if it doesn't exist.
E.g.

Systems programmer deals with deep structures, narrow APIs and lots of persistent state.

Applications programmers deal with wide APIs and state machines.
There are countless stories of well-known and incredibly wealthy software CEOs such as Bill Gates and Larry Ellison crushing their competition, sometimes in ways that went beyond what was necessary to merely succeed. Outside of software, you only need to look at the financial sector to see rich people who got to their present position at the expense of others.

I don't think my comment was small-minded at all!
Complexity can Kill your Startup, and how it cost me more than $35,000 dollars
We just launched a new gallery full of applications built with Twilio: http://www.twilio.com/gallery We also write about how people are using it one or more times a week on the blog: http://blog.twilio.com. We go to great lengths to promote our customers. We spend as much, if not more, effort on promoting our customer's projects and businesses as we do promoting ourselves.
'Crazy as me' by SlayerS_`BoxeR`, Starcraft progamer's autobiography
Also, what is your vision of SproutCore in the next three years?
http://mindhacks.com/
Vinge on Singularity (1993). What had changed since?
Snoop's story is tragically sad, but also inspirational as she did get out of the cycle of violence.

http://www.amazon.com/Grace-After-Midnight-Felicia-Pearson/d...
Roy Bauermseister’s work on ego depletion is a good place to start.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/584/baumeis...
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/pubs.html

The gist is that self-regulation appears to be a limited resource in the brain. This has many important implications, but the most relevant one is that treating it as a psychological phenomenon (resulting from certain ways of thinking or the presence or absence of certain personality traits) will only get you so far towards better utilizing it, if it gets you anywhere at all. As with time, thinking of willpower as a scarce resource that ought to be guarded carefully and spent wisely yields benefits that brooding about lack of it does not.

This will hopefully steer you away from the trap that the submission author fell into, wherein we paint over all matters of behavior or habit with layer upon layer of cognition and meta-cognition. We all love rationality and making conscious willful decisions, but as far as our brain is concerned, it’s more of a hobby than a full-time job. Whatever good goal-setting systems and positive self-image do, they evidently are not at the heart of the problem of self-control.
At one panel, some anthropology academic/author was talking about the influence of "I Dream of Jeanie" and "Bewitched." Since we destroyed a lot of Japanese infrastructure, the cheapest way to broadcast television in Japan for many years was to dub shows from the United States. Supposedly, an entire generation was imprinted with dubbed US TV. The magical girl genre traces its lineage to those two shows.

Combine the Tezuka/Disney influence with this, and the human instinct to regard large eyes as signals of childhood and cuteness, and the result simply makes sense.

In any case, "Asian" features aren't always as pronounced as westerners imagine them to be. There's not that much genetic distance between the so-called races. "Black" in the US is actually a hugely diverse group all by itself. (There was a Newsweek cover that demonstrated this nicely a few years back.)

(The protagonist of Golgo 13 is said to be indeterminately Spanish or Japanese.)
Ruminations on acquisitions by people who have never been on either side of one?
"it's hard to imagine getting a > 200% productivity increase"

It depends on how you measure productivity. If it's measured in LOC/hour or something, then pair programming will definitely seem like a huge productivity hit.

If you measure productivity more like "features delivered per month" (and negatively adjust for bugs that make it to production) I contend that pair programming will probably yield more favorable numbers.
Relatedly, are there any examples of real world applications, beyond the demos?
I tried to explain the various use cases and call legs in our blog post:
http://blog.twilio.com/2010/09/announcing-new-pricing-for-th...

let me know if this helps, if not I'll work on a better explanation
Actually, I would say that my "biggest" work is my best work. It might not be as pretty, but there's little more satisfying than coming up with a good solution to a complex problem.

Generally speaking, my approach to programming is more trial and error than organized and methodical. But then again, my work style doesn't work in all situations nor does it work for everyone else. I'm generally better at starting a project than finishing one. However, just like some projects take longer to finish than others, some projects take longer to start than others. So I I don't think that time is terribly pertinent.

With that in mind, a certain amount of distractibility is a blessing for me. If something distracts me, that means it will distract whoever is finishing a project. Therefore, it's important to address those distractions ahead of time.
Let's not forget; way back in 2007, Apple went to Verizon first, and Verizon passed on the iPhone. Verizon just wasn't willing to give up any control to Apple. Way back when, Verizon deliberately disabled the Bluetooth stack on their phones, so you had to use their fee-based service to do something like copy photos off your phone.
Funny. But for the record, HN is the distraction. Therefore, I would be distracted if I did respond. :-)
Small correction : Great Britain refers to the group of islands also referred to as the British Isles. Great Britain is a geographical reference. The full name of the UK is 'The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. Hence 'British' is a generic term for anyone from the British Isles, although it tends to be used to describe English people, though technically Welsh and Scottish people are also British. This is similar how 'American' refers to citizens of the United States, even though technically anyone from Alaska to Argentina is American.

So you can't be a former part of Great Britain unless there is some major tectonic activity!

The correct term would be 'former British Colonies', or perhaps, beter still, 'former members of the British Empire' or even 'Commonwealth nations'. Even these have problems because most of the Northeast USA was once part of the British Empire. And, curiously, Canadians never really went for Cricket despite still being in the commonwealth. I guess it's difficult when the fields are under snow for half the year.

Your point stands - cultural traditions can take root in any place, and don't necessarily imply a worship of the parent culture. It probably has more to do with a filling a cultural need with a pre-created product than anything else. You could reverse the trend and ask why so many young people are into the 'import' car scene : which generally means Japanese cars. Is this a worship of Japanese culture or just young people finding that Japanese performance cars are cheaper and more accessible?
awesome, I'd love to feature this on our blog. Please email me at danielle@twilio.com if you're interested, and we can brainstorm the story
I suppose you could say that. I guess maybe the two things are related. :-)
I started playing blitz chess online recently instead of normal chess (I play 2 mins with 7 second increment, rather than 15 mins with 30 sec increment). I'm not sure playing chess makes you better at anything else but I think it let's you learn a few things about yourself. For instance, I don't think it's made that much difference to my game, suggesting most of my thinking time had been going to waste previously. Also tells you how much failure is down to stupid mistakes vs. the other player being smarter.
I'm excited to see what their value proposition is with this one, but I for one won't really be affected - desktop and mobile Twitter clients are where it's at.
Are you objecting on the grounds that you think you know how they should interview better than they do, or that you think they actually are hiring the wrong people? I've always heard that Google is chalk full of amazing programmers doing really good work, so I'd say evidence is on the side that whatever they're doing is working.
Seriously! I could adjust for some spelling errors, but sometimes the entire sentence lost it's meaning.
A moderator (PG and some YC alumni) probably saw this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1010590 then deleted it and blacklisted your domain for blogspam.
There are also countless stories of rich people who are very nice and got where they are through hard work and creating a lot of value for their customers, investors, and employees. But you didn't choose to focus on them. Why not?
All that aggressive advertising looks like it has paid off. And competition is always good for any market.
Same here, I was hoping to see a cut in SMS pricing or at least the opportunity for volume pricing.
What does cleverness have to do with drugs? Many of the most brilliant people who have ever lived were drug users. Since this is HN, a good example is Steve Jobs. He credits LSD as one of the most important things he ever did.
This is a comment I made on a previous submission:

"Trading" is not the answer. "Investing" is.
Read The Intelligent Investor and Security Analysis, both by Benjamin Graham; and F Wall Street by Joe Ponzio (His website fwallstreet.com also has a number of gems. Particularly, his post about how to value a business http://www.fwallstreet.com/article/26-calculating-the-value-...)

If you read those materials, you will learn how to invest. They will teach you how to value stocks and more importantly, teach you how to think about the markets - be emotionally detached.
I tried it out on http://truedat.net. It's very cool, but the minimalness of documentation made it a bit of a slog, and certain incompatibilities with IE made it a deal-breaker for the time being.

I intend to revisit it once the Quilmes release (v1.5) is out the door.
According to their stats most usage is on their normal site, not apps. I remember this being different when they were smaller (and less mainstream?)
I was trying to make a point that two problems that look the same actually lead to different results based on what information you are given. For example, being told someone has 2 kids and at least one is a girl then the space for this is S = {(M,F), (F,M), (F,F)}. However if I were to run into someone with two kids and saw a daughter then the information I have doesn't allow me to construct the space S above if I wanted to find the chance of say, 2 girls while accounting for age.

Instead I must consider S X {1,2} because instead of knowing that there is at least one daughter I just know that I have met one daughter whose age (whether older) is unknown to me. I know nothing of her sibling. So I am calculating the possible ways I could have met her and then the chance of 2 daughters conditioned on that space. This is a very tricky differentiation. Distinctions like this and thinking about what to condition on is what makes probability so tricky.
I've definitely joked around just like that. This means nothing about Zuck's character.
evl.fi - very suspicious domain name for a church.
Does anyone know about interview process at Apple(for Eng/Design positions)? It will always be debatable which of the two(Apple and Google) are more innovative - I consider Apple to be a better mix of innovation and engineering, whereas Google comes out as primarily an engineering focused company.
Sure. I'm 4 months in of fulltime work on a Sproutcore-based app that is the basis of our startup - we haven't yet launched so I can't point you to it yet unfortunately but I can give you my experiences. In a nutshell:

pros: friendly and helpful community, a number of things that 'just work' and a vocally espoused observers paradigm for wiring up your app that, when it works, is very nice and tidy. Very readable and well documented code base (I've read well over 50% of the codebase now, keep it open in a window all day). Can look very impressive in demos. Deals pretty well with most browsers and platforms (particularly iOS friendly).

cons: Compared to Rails, jQuery, etc... a relatively small community and not a lot of examples to learn from. The wiki is really hit-or-miss and the codebase is pretty much the only reliable source of documentation. Some of the features feel half-baked and like 'some person's pet project'. Some things don't 'just work' and can require a lot of hacking (not in the good way). The build tools are a little slow, which adds 15 seconds or so to every reload (which I do many many times every day, it adds up). Refactoring is a real pain (especially compared to our backend, written in java using eclipse), there just aren't that many tools. That's true of most javascript, but the sproutcore build tools add some 'macros' to javascript (like sc_require();) that really confuse the javascript refactoring tools that do exist.
Fired Google SRE allegedly accessed GMail, GTalk data to spy on people he knew
Meet the new Twitter
I hardly call the IMs "Damning" considering how he's continued to grow into one of the most powerful people in the tech industry.
One component of the discussion is getting rid of copyrights altogether, so I fail to understand your point.
Does this matter? An immature kid collected everyone's personal information that they willingly volunteered. He said he was going to fuck them in the ear, but didn't.

Now his company has a privacy policy that they are legally obligated to follow. If Zuck decided to fuck someone in the ear right now, that would be a problem. But he seems to be under control.

So what now? Is everyone going to stop using Facebook? Are people going to take his company away from him? I just don't see any recourse that anyone can take other than not clicking ads on Facebook. In the end, that's all Facebook a website with ads and your friend's phone numbers.

(I don't have a Facebook account. I also use OTR for my instant messages.)

Dunno... nice scandal, but I don't think it matters at all. Zuck is human. He is trusts his friends and maybe talks him self up a bit. That's all I get from this "scandal", and I'm the biggest Facebook hater around.
Firstoff, thats a very well-done video. Inspired employee with a 5dmk2 or professional? The UI looks pretty nice, but of course Ill need to actually use it before I make that. And props to them for keeping it under wraps successfully for so long.
That't too bad yeah :-/

I stalked Ezra at everything he wrote about deployment back in the day, and I really dug Yehuda for his awesome skill and hyper-productivity.

I hope Engine Yard manages without them, and I still wish for Rubinius to become THE Ruby interpreter. They did so much to actually standardize Ruby.
I thought apple's mobileme product was based on sproutcore or a derivative.
I come from an embedded systems background, so http://hackaday.com/ holds a special place in my bookmarks bar.
Looks like the iPad version of the site. I thought it worked for the iPad, but I'm not sure about the web.
What is the typical dosage for marijuana? Like, how much would a casual user be using for one smoking session?

This seems like an incredibly expensive hobby.

It also appears that somebody is kindof spamming the site. The top three entires that came up when I loaded the page were $999 - 5 Grams - Scottsdale
Ask HN: So what happened to Vox?
So vox.com is closing, what happened? Is it mainly used by spammers? Is it too costly to run? Is usage shrinking? If it's still popular with a certain amount of users, I don't immediately understand why it would be closed?
Most of it is Apple: Mobile Me is all based on Sproutcore.

Otherwise, Mozilla Skywriter (http://mozillalabs.com/skywriter/ , previously Bespin) is also sproutcore based.
You're simply wrong. It's a valid strategy in the right context. Almost all strategies are.

Don't get me wrong, you're generally correct, it's generally better not to slowplay, but it's still a valuable tool in your arsenal.
This whole thread reeks of nonsensical, "things-we-cannot-say", Politically Correct, bullshit.

Let us call a spade a spade shall we? Asians have a considerable and measurable white bias when it comes to aesthetics.

http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/05/13/asia.wh...

http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jul/26/local/me-whitening26

Couple the skin-whitening phenomenon with the double-eyelid surgery explosion with the open-air admission of the Asians' who elect to do these procedures that the so-called "Hellenic" features are more desirable than their own - and you have more than circumstantial evidence for the proposition "The Japanese draw themselves as white."

...And that isn't even mentioning the fact that the characters they draw, by any reasonable appraisal look about as white as Christmas in Nebraska.

If the truth offends your sensibilities, then it is your sensibilities that need adjusting.
YouTube Sloth
> I don't see how google can go up 1% / month and go up 1% / year at the same time.

That would work if they hadn't grown in the previous 11 months. Unless I'm reading it wrong, which is always a possibility.
New Twitter UI Revealed (FF to 1:11 to see it)
Here are my results (Win7 64b, Core2 Duo 2.4 GHz):

Minefield 4 b6 9737.7ms
Opera 10.62 14490.8ms
Chrome 7.0.517.5 dev 18375.4ms
Firefox 4 Beta 5 21721.1ms
Safari 5.0 22168.6ms
Firefox 3.6.9 30053.3ms
Explorer 9 PP4 64817.2ms

Though, usual caveat, it's kind of expected that the creator of the benchmark will perform the best (see my older comments on browser benchmarks [1][2]).

What's probably more interesting is the order of other browsers (for which this benchmark should be less tuned) - again Opera performed very well (and better than Chrome).

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1676456

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1458529