skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So the best decision would be to give up on the OS and focus on applications such as MS Office and XBOX game centre for iOS and Android devices. Alternatively buy RIM...

This is not a viable "growth strategy." MS has worked on these boring enterprise products for 15 years already, and buying RIM and developing Office is more of the same. I can't foresee any new tech coming from these boring strategies.

MS's ceiling for mobile market share is 2nd place. This isn't a bad outcome, but to accomplish this MS needs to keep WP7 locked down (so it can compete with the carrier-garbage versions of Android we see now). Who knows? I don't think they're out to "win" consumer mobile; they want to participate in it, pick up good market share, and try to develop brand synergy.

Anyway, MS is an enterprise company at their core, so their performance in consumer mobile isn't a big deal. They know enterprise, so they should stick to what they know. Why not develop custom tablet software for enterprises? Or even new computing (or augmented humanity) devices for businesses/gov't?

The tech space is changing rapidly, and MS could be there to support that change with light and nimble tech. But, given what we know about MS and Danger, they're very far away from developing light and nimble tech. Culture must change at MS.
Everything can be overpaid. It seems like he is denying that.

I think what he really means to say is to don't negotiate too much where you can have a great profit. In fewer words, not to be penny-wise and pound-foolish.
I like tumblr - I like that I can point a domain there and essentially get free hosting. Problem is, the system is frequently down. And the way posts are queued to be published is just goofy.
Some points:

- It's annoying in this day and age to be forced into using the entire MS Stack when I need to work with one specific technology. For example: if I want to test a web app on various versions of IE, I have to run Windows. OK fine, even though IE is the only browser that is tied to one OS, I'll let that go. However, if I want to use the Microsoft-provided free MS Virtual Machine images, I have to run them on Virtual PC despite the fact that I have a perfectly good VMWare installation. On my Mac, this means running windows on VMWare, and then Virtual PC inside that virtual machine. This is insanity. I'm trying to support your product, you should be making it as easy as possible for me. Even Apple ported Safari to Windows. As a developer, this just makes me feel hostile to MS. Another case: MS SQL Server. It's a real bear to connect to it from unix since (last I checked) there are no official drivers. You have to use some unix ODBC open source stuff and it's just not suitable for production work. My organization has a huge SQLServer instance I can't use because the Linux support is brittle. Contrast that with Oracle who has official drivers for practically every OS under the sun. The Windows for everything attitude has got to change. MS is a software company, not a Windows company. I know MS doesn't have a strong history of "playing nice with others", but it's sorely needed.

- Figure out a way to get corporate IT departments into regular upgrade cycles. The fact that lots of stubborn companies refuse to upgrade because the costs (perceived or real) are high is madness. It's a drag on the whole Microsoft ecosystem and heavily rate-limits the cycle time for new products.

- The segmentation of different Windows versions is just silly. There should be one version of Windows and that's it. It's simple for people to understand and it makes licensing a breeze. Artificially creating different versions doesn't really help anyone. Having a server and a desktop version is plenty (since they are genuninely different).

- MS needs to really decide how much longer they want to push an OS that is based on Windows/DOS heritage and not unix. I know this is tantamount to heresy inside MS. But if you look objectively at how Apple has used open source and unix, you see they are able to get incredible leverage for their size. Not having do to everything in-house and relying on the broader community is pretty good business for them. It lets them focus on the places where they can add value. At some point, it's not efficient for MS to maintain a parallel universe of "invented here" stuff. A proprietary Windows GUI/userspace on top of a unix core (like Mac OS) could really revitalize the whole Windows brand if done properly. It might even draw some geeks back from Mac OS. I became a Mac user because I was tired of dual booting Linux and Windows. I like having first-class email, word processing, photo sharing, etc... but I also want the unix underpinnings for my software development and scientific computing needs. Geeks aren't a big market by themselves, but they really make an impact on the decisions of others.
Don't most of the groupons have a policy that if you don't use it by the expiration date, you can still redeem it at the price you originally paid for it?
Yesterday, Ars ran a front page story titled: "Open source Facebook replacement Diaspora drops first alpha"

So I'm not surprised users ran out to try it.
There isn't a lot of products capable of capturing 1080p from DVI/HDMI, even without HDCP.
Your second point: Isn't Google AdWords an example of a good third party service that replaces an expensive in-house specialist (or hired outside specialist)?
I expect alarm to be the natural reaction, but at this point I don't think it's an overstatement to say that Microsoft needs to do something fairly radical if it wishes to remain relevant in its traditional markets. In technology you can only rely upon inertia for a limited time. Most users don't care whether they're using a Unix clone or not.
Personally I think that 40 is a little low. Especially considering you aren't working at 100% all the time. For me the sweet spot between a creative brain and enough churning-out-code is 60 to 70 productive hours a week. These include things that aren't strictly work work, but help with serendipity and ideas.
Why CIOs Should Know the Way
The server and tools revenue doesn't say anything about .NET. I didn't say get rid of SQL server or their server OS.

Compare the popularity of C# + VB.net to other languages to see .NET has less than 1/20th of the market. And that for a company that not so long ago dominated the software market.

.NET is useless for

* desktop applications, since the forward and backward compatibility is not guaranteed.

* Downloadable applications, because a 250mb library pack download is just too much.

* Web Startups and/or social applications, because of the (sql) server costs.

So the only use .NET has is for small corporate applications.

The only thing Silverlight is good for is playing DRM protected media.
I think a better metric would be total number of Tumblr and Posterous and Wordpress blogs in existence.. Anyone has that information?
I suspect one of the problems with WPF/Silverlight adoption is the requirement to learn another layout language. I'm working on a rather large Silverlight 4 app, and am generally happy I don't have to work on many UI layouts. I can't muster up the desire to learn another markup language.
Absolutely! The more difficult the code, the more jive in the dance. I've also been known to "woohoo" and "aww yeah" as well.

I like it, like Shaun says above, it makes the tedium worthwhile.
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Working to fix it. Thanks. (Works in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera.)
It read a little bit like a story I would have written in a fiction writing class in university. Just a little too smooth of a story for someone recounting what really happened. Even if it is a hoax, though- it's a great story, and I applaud the author either way.
Tumblr is easy to love as it seems less obliging from the start. It's dashboard is a prime example of KISS, and it's easy to use most of the features as well as not use them at all. I came to Posterous for it's 'autopost' feature which works really fine and I've used it for some time.

Both apps are great, Posterous webservices integration beats Tumblr, but the latter wins in terms of 'hanging around' browsing stuff from the community and that's probably the key point of their success in stats.
That sounds like a ROM driven bus master to me, how did you manage to get the 6809 to disenage? Using DMA/BREQ ?
I'd like to see Microsoft reach out and genuinely contribute to more open source projects, Microsoft has great technologies, lots of smart people, a few pockets of progressive change, but overall, I feel like everything Microsoft gives away or open sources is still part of a grand strategy geared towards locking us all into Microsoft Windows OS and expensive products.

As an open source developer, this was a major factor in shifting my focus from .NET to Java and Python. Even though I still miss real generics :)

Lock-in is a major turn off, and we can smell it. In the long run, I know from experience that open platforms will eventually win, and my expertise there can be more valuable than some certification in a captive technology. Because otherwise in order to sell my services as a developer, I'd have to sell your stuff. I see what you did there... but this may not be best for my customer. No thanks...

Instead why not sell products that we want to use and pay for, that is so customizable and modular that it is simply a better technical choice? Stop trying to trap us!

And please start using the same OSS licenses everyone else is using. Even if it's not the intention, your special MS OSS licenses make us suspicious of your motives. First think that comes to mind when I see a special MS license is "uh-oh, is this another 'shared source'?".
"Celebrities and big media sites" listed as key to tumblr's recent explosion? No, the secret is the service allowing a HUGE forest of porn compilation sites such as http://art-or-porn.tumblr.com/ and many like it.
Mastering the lost art of communicating with investors | VentureBeat
And it doesn't give its hackers white fedoras.
I suggest you do the following:

- Make sure that you at least quadruple the amount of incompetent middle managers at Microsoft.

- Ensure that all important decisions are made by douchey sales guys.

- Maintain bass-ackwards-compatibility as long as you possibly can.

- Make IE 9 not conform to any standards, especially now that you've said it would. This will allow you to force everyone to make web-apps on your terms, and help you maintain your death grip on the entire industry, and there will be much rejoicing.

- Start more projects that don't go anywhere. I really liked the Kin. Kin One. Kin Two. "vahn-tah-iihm, tooh tah-iihm". It was possibly the most magnificent product you've ever had.

- This reminds me, I think the world is just itching to get their hands on another Zune. Name it something like "Zune For Portable Music PlayersForSure". If you build it, they will come!

- Spend even more exorbitant amounts of money on inane ads. The butt-wiggle was a nice touch, but not enough. Something even more eccentric will help you connect with today's youth. Imagine Lady Gaga in her flesh-attire, licking a Kin 3 prototype while staring intently at the camera. No words, no background music. It will be perfect, and vast quantities of units will be shifted once Kin 3 comes out five years later.

- Whatever you do, please don't write a new OS from scratch. Just keep on keepin' on.

There. That should work. Do it for, you know, the greater good.

Actually I wanted to write something somewhat different, but that would have been downvoted into oblivion.
That is absolutely amazing. You should post that one separately, it's definitely worth it.
Yes, my intention was not to imply HN isn't successful. It's incredibly successful imo; it's the best example that a good, quality community can be built and not lose focus. However, it is currently not economically successful. It could be monetized, maybe. However, subscriptions would drastically lower the number of commenters (better? Worse? Not sure.). Ads might be a good solution, because they could be very targetted, since this is a niche community.
You are right - but I could also do everything on Android! I'm not saying that there's a market for a "web-based" experience - I just think Android already fills that gap.

There are very few cases in where having ChromeOS would be superior to a device with Android. Flash? Flash seems to be a processor issue. Android has Flash, and it should get better as mobile chips get more powerful. The whole flash thing may be moot if HTML 5 really takes off.

Printing? This seems marginal to me. "Buy this device so you can print from it" - that does not seem to be a very appealing sell.

Those were both of the features mentioned above. In contrast, if I have Android, I have access to all those Apps. Will Android apps be compatible with ChromeOS. I don't think so - this seemed to be a "feature" of Chrome.

It just seems that Chrome's functionality is a subset of Android functionality. With Android, I don't have the browser open all the time, but I can click a button and get there. Web pages should display the same on both devices - what's the advantage? The keyboard? Android works with a keyboard as well.

I guess what I'm saying is that the market for an Android netbook (vs. tablet - this whole issue is moot to me, they're both "mobile" devices) seems to be larger - it would do so much more than a device that's just limited to the browser.
I find the printable format to be easier to read, even on screen:

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-cla...
For a much more thorough look at elite dominance in america, I strongly recommend "The Irony of Democracy":

http://www.amazon.com/Irony-Democracy-Uncommon-Introduction-...
Google: Chrome will be 60 times faster
Ask HN: How to find a ruby hacker in london for my side project?
I've been working on a SAAS project which I'm intending to launch over the next couple of months. I'm intending to make some money out of on the side of my day job, given enough revenue I'd like to go full time on it. Problem is I'm a one man team and I'm just not getting it done fast enough. How can I find another ruby hacker to collaborate with in London?
Don't let hackers to cajole you into turning Windows to an open-source unix-clone, world already has way too many of those.
Death of RIM/Blackberry massively overstated as it has its best ever quarter
I would say that Microsoft-focused web developers' attitudes have changed a lot in the last few years.

I was at a DevDays event a few years ago, when ATLAS beta (now ASP.NET AJAX) was demoed. There was much snickering when it failed to work perfectly in what the speaker derisively called "the other browser" (Firefox).

Today, I can't see that happening. If a Microsoft web framework failed to work on a non-IE browser, they wouldn't dare demo it, because most of the audience would blame Microsoft, and not the browser.
What exactly do you mean by "the secret is the service allowing a HUGE forest of porn compilation sites"? That is, does Tumblr actively do something to help porn compilation sites use their service, or do they simply not ban them?

Also, since I often see this mentioned as a difference, does Posterous do something to block porn (however strictly)?

I suppose my real question is "Sure, Tumblr has a lock on the porn market right now, but why?"
The problem with Posterous is that the changes they have made over the past 8 months (since I started using it) have been small and irrelevant things (like code highlighting or such stuff).

When I write, I want to be appreciated and I want my writing to reach a big audience. Tumblr achieves that, posterous never made any change in that direction.

Posterous started off cool and fresh, but that initial slew of innovation has not been followed up on. Things like the backtype widget, view count, etc all were there from the start, and later not much new stuff came after that.

Posterous have focused too much on these technical stuff (like CSS buttons), and too little on the social stuff. I write for people to read, not for my page to look good.

Don't get me wrong, I like posterous a lot. But I just think posterous is simple by being limiting.
I'm not so sure, who needs a powerful laptop when you can get a desktop machine much more cheaply and a phone/tablet for mobile?
The thing is, the errors they've made are so basic as to raise questions to their competence. I don't want to give too much away, but think "absolutely no permissions checks anywhere." Think "base64 is not encryption."

They did say in their blog post that there were known bugs and holes. At the bottom. As the last sentence or two. But that's not stopping anyone...
Another of those things in life that just blindside you with their complete unexpectedness.
From the comments:

"I don’t find any companies interesting. They’re just companies. They make things, move things, process things, sell things–bleh, no thank you."

Pretty obvious that he's lacking passion for the jobs he's applying for. Not really that suprising that he had such a hard time obtaining one in the end.
Entrepreneurs Can Learn To Enjoy Solving Problems
Thanks. If you bookmark with the booklet (or plugin, or extension) you don't have that many buttons; actually, if you use "remindMeLater", you don't even get to see the Licorize interface. Or I didn't understand you?

For the project management... yes, we think that in some cases bookmarking is a relevant part of work ,and hence also for management.
You actually said:
>>Why do you really need more than a XBOX / PS3 and a tablet & phone now?

A laptop (particularly one of the "desktop replacement" variety) is certainly not in that class. Why would a minor change in form factor force a wholesale change in OS strategy?
I wouldn't say it was unexpected, reddit has been pushing hard for this for about a month now.
To buy the same insurance that I used to have when worked for a financial company here would be $500-600/month.

To put that in perspective, I pay a comparable amount of National Insurance every month in the UK, deducted from salary.

No such thing as "free healthcare".
Thank you for BizSpark and the Express editions of everything.

Also please buy Adobe, un-fuck Flash, and make Express editions of their expensive-assed tools too.
Good point. I guess that means it's a wash for the business.
I signed up for it and started playing around, I still have no idea what it is. I just want to echo the sentiments as I have a feeling this might be a common issue.

The site is gorgeous though.
No the opposite of holding back. Without MS we wouldn't have AJAX or Rich Text editors at the moment.

I am fully supportive of open standards, but it's rare that companies together can develop one. The year 2019 I mentioned was wrong, the final specification of HTML 5 is planned for 2022. Even after half the spec has thrown out already.

So MS has to go back at what they did best. Embrace and extent. Make the existing specifications work, but add more (useful) functions. Such as 3D, printing documents or a real rich text editor. The other browser developers are already doing such, so if MS wants to stay significant, they will have to do something.
Kill piracy, stop giving free software to universities and most importantly let the enterprises breath. Trust me, follow this. This is the only way you can have a nice ending.
For what it's worth, paid writing projects are a non-trivial portion of my income. I've found time management and hard negotiation to be even more important in that area than in software development.
For now. ACTA appears to be aimed at cramming DMCA-style IP law reform down the throats of the rest of the world.
The other issue is that a lot of companies have extremely low estimates on what good developers cost. I've been to several smaller places where I knew my knowledge+skill could really help them out. The jobs sounded interesting so I bid the lowest number I could afford to. My number blew them out of the water. So I continue to do less interesting stuff in finance.
Those negotiating ACTA are looking to change that...
Dog food their own software and systems more, and where it's unpleasant to use - improve them

The bits of MS that do do this (e.g. the Visual Studio team) produce extremely high quality.

Tho' I can't imagine that the Word or Excel teams use any other word processor or spreadsheet...
Nice work, enjoy. I think if I mention a trip to DC to my SO she would be excited. When I get to Stephen Colbert she might look very annoyed, or throw something at me.
Cartoonist Molly Norris is hiding like cowards | United States Post
Future of Twitter
I don't think roadnottaken meant towers specifically when he said "desktop." The market data for years has been showing that physical "desktops" are all but dead with laptops taking over, but I believe roadnottaken and the grandparent were debating the future of traditional mouse/keyboard operation systems on desktop/laptop PCs.
> That's exactly the point of the article: Google acts this way but claims otherwise.

What are you talking about?

Both the compatibility definition (CDD) and the compatibility test-suite (CTS) are public ... http://source.android.com/compatibility/index.html

Devices that are Android-compatible (by the definition above) have to license the Android Market client software separately, complying with the terms available here: http://www.android.com/market/terms.html

The Android branding is subject to these rules: http://www.android.com/branding.html

Here is were they can twist your arm so to speak.

Nothing prevents you from taking their OS, modify it and selling it with your own devices ... surely certain Google properties like the Marketplace will be out of reach, but that was known from version 1.0.

So where does Google claim otherwise?
Keep on doing what you're doing: Microsoft has been a good corporate partner in the technology space over the past few years, perhaps humbled a little, and it has served the company well.

On the product front there isn't much to say - Windows 2008 R2 is excellent. SQL Server 2008 R2 is excellent. Visual Studio 2010 / .NET 4 is excellent. These are top of the game products, so....maybe lower the price? The only thing keeping these products from absolutely dominating is the price of entry, especially given that the competitors largely cost $0.
This is a neat service, but it will be much more useful to me if I can exclude ones from my own domain AND ones from my support forums (not on my domain) AND ones that I create by commenting on blogs. While they may or may not be relevant from an SEO ranking standpoint, they are not really of interest to me since I already know about them. I'd much rather be notified about someone mentioning Code Anthem in a blog or forum that I wouldn't have found otherwise. Basically a Google Alerts, but since Google alerts often gives me unrelated results, this would be more accurate.
MS needs to really decide how much longer they want to push an OS that is based on Windows/DOS heritage and not unix

You know the "Windows/DOS" stuff in NT is an emulation layer, right? It's known as WoW, Windows on Windows. The NT kernel is the work of Dave Cutler, of DEC VMS fame, and it is actually very, very good (form your own opinion about what has been layered on top of it).
It's funny how current problems and developments in politics and society are always and without fail "unprecedented" and "radically different" from anything that has ever happened before, anywhere - at least in the minds of the people who write (and avidly read) this kind of prose.
Thanks. For people that have some resistance towards "just try it", we're recording a more feature-oriented video.

We believe this is a really "new thing", so we are trying to avoid forcing an already known interpretation in simplistic terms on the home page, though the standard texts in marketing all say so.
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