skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Symbian is dead [0]. It has been for a while. And Nokia will be too
unless it adopts a new strategy very quickly. The figures from the
article make this crystal clear: "Symbian's global market share has gone
from 51 percent in the second quarter of 2009 to 41 percent in the same
period of 2010". It's equally clear that it is Android that has hastened
its demise.

It am still astonished when I remember Nokia buying (the rest of)
Symbian in June 2008. This seemed a bizarre waste of money. And so it
proved. (The purchase of Trolltech was earlier, but surprising
nonetheless.) Perhaps if they had done so years earlier, and open
sourced it, then things might have been different.

My opinion on the failure of Symbian was the failure to enagage
developers. That, and the most tortuous development environment and
deployemnt process that I have ever witnessed. Perhaps this could have
been fixed, given time, starting earlier, but corporate institutions
historically don't behave in ways to allow this. Regardless, it was much
to late by the spending sprees of 2008.

Nokia should shunt Symbina into the siding now and adopt Android
immediately. It should get back to making great phones.

[0] It has its place in some phones, arguably, but how long would you choose to
continue to develop and support it when there is no long term need.
Sure, but when the Motorola engineers left to built the 6502 there was no Personal Computer market. The 6502 (its low price) created it. At 25$ it was a bargain against the the Intel 8080 which costs about US$150: http://www.commodore.ca/history/company/mos/mos_technology.h...).

What about smartphones? they're already here and they're evolving.

Is this new chip something new and revolutionary? NO
Is it an innovation? YES

"In a decade, low-end smartphones will have this kind of capability. Not because they need it, but because nobody makes a simpler part anymore."

I'll not put my money on this. In electronics price is king, and for large volumes every dime is important. For example I'll not be surprised to find in my kid's toys some sort of 6502.

Phones are now an ARM territory, and the low cost ones will probably stay on ARM7TDMI for a long long time (may be in some speedy versions, around 300-500MHz).

BTW thanks for the nice "saturday" conversation. I love HN
You need to first educate yourself on the subject at hand. Then when you know enough about the subject join one of the open source projects.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cmiss/
http://www.physiome.org/

there are countless others just use Google. This will help you establish a network of individuals in the industry. Software skills along will not get you that far. You need domain knowledge as well as contacts in the industry.
The whole point of memcached is that it is right next to your web server, accessible through loop-back devices and such.

To stick it on the other side of a wire is defeating the purpose, that will in a great many cases increase the time of the request beyond what it would have taken to re-create the original request.

Not to rain on your parade, but I think this is less than useful for production.
It's a damning indictment of Symbian's failure that the HN crowd can't summon the energy to debate it.

RIP Symbian. You served a purpose, but now it's time to die.
It's just a matter of cultural fit.

For some people being at work is more enjoyable than being with their family, and 12 hours at the office for five hours of productive time is seen as a benefit.

Keep in mind that adherence to the puritan work ethic is not always a great way to measure productivity. For an enterprise like an ad agency, one really good idea can be worth an employee's entire salary.

And high holy creative time is what pays the bills. If that's at four in the afternoon then dinner will be late.
Most of these challenges test how good you are with regex hacking, rather than general code or php.

To reach within a few points of the best score, for most challenges you need regex
What kind of alcohol was spilled onto the computer?
I'd be very interested too... I've been looking for a while..
So true. Not so long ago, we thought that using natural-language-like text can enable non-programmers to work with code... (and then did it again with rules engines (and we'll do it again at some point in the future)).

Re. 2: didn't we go through this when SOA and SOAP were all the best thing since sliced bread? The problem with APIs is not with versioning per se (if want to use URIs, just stick version number in the first position, webservices do that) - it's about what happens to dependencies. You have to call v5, you've got v1..v8 available, but another library you use talks to v3. Can you share objects? How is the v8-compatible state affected when v5 and v3 are doing the work? Which api is called when in your v5 area you call a method on a v3 object?

Re. 3: Yeah... I was considering tackling that for my degree at some point. The source file is just a placeholder that can contain some string generating new placeholders - why don't we simply start working on it that way?
Be careful what you wish for, Zach. One of the defining features of real-time is that it's very spur-of-the-moment. Unfortunately, that often leads to poorly thought out posts. In the current scheme of things that weakness is mitigated by the fact that sufficiently old posts are effectively inaccessible.

Can you imagine the implications of an account's entire tweet archives being open to the public? A prospective employer could look up every mention you ever made about them or their industry. Venting tweets would be forever inscribed in history. That's not good. It's bad.
Would "Looking for a technical cofounder" be a better description?
Wow, what a great article compared to more 'angelgate' stuff.

Interesting how something from 1988 can still be applicable today, even if pascal is 'mostly dead' the principles are valid.

It would be neat if someone took this as a base and used it to implement - and document - a language that people are more familiar with today.

If not for Borland Pascal would have died out long ago, but even today a fairly large number of people still hold on to the modern incarnation of it.
"there is only one wikipedia, and it is supposed to be about anything that's important. So there's no fragmentation ..."

There is fragmentation. See Wookiepedia, for one, where Star Wars fans have a different idea of what "important" means.
There was one reason about range of the wireless that he mentioned indirectly.
Finding Dups - Comparing Unix, Ruby and R
Pretty sure a real entrepreneur will not view that as embarrassment. This is the only way to start. Build something, put it out, review lessons learnt, improve it, build the next thing...

Bill Gates' first idea for a company was one that made devices that were supposed to be installed at traffic junctions, IIRC. (ref: business at the speed of thought)

Way to go Vasudeva.
Starting a company: Yes, I tried that during my freelancing time. The plan was to freelance on the side to keep myself afloat until the company could carry itself. Except things didn't work out: not only did the company not find any clients, as a freelancer I didn't get enough contracts to actually keep myself afloat. The timing of me trying that was incredibly stupid in retrospect; 2002/3 would have to be the worst years in the past decade to try something like that.

The main thing I did learn from that entire episode is that I suck at marketing/selling. While trying again is not completely off the table, I would definitely only try it again with a co-founder who is a good sales person.
Ask HN: Where would you work and why?
I am in school and will soon be looking for a job. I have a couple of questions in this regard:

(I consider a job anything you do to make money.)

1. What is your "dream" job? Why?
2. Share why you love your current (even if it is the dream) job. Share why you don't.

I'm looking forward to it.

Thanks HN!
I think by the time we reach 40 we should move to manufacturing or agriculture sector.
Actually the "standard" JRE (as far as most java apps are concerned) is the official one from java.sun.com (bundled as "sun-java" in ubuntu IIRC).

I have encountered numerous instances of OpenJDK not being able to run java apps that run fine on sun-java & quite often when an app/applet I support doesn't work on a user's machine it's due to that user having OpenJDK installed. Replacing it normally solves the problem.

I don't really know why linux distros so often insist on installing OpenJDK as the default when it has so many incompatibility issues.
Does it matter? Wherever there is a link, (IE persons A and B both slept with person C) there was an exposure. Unless they were simultaneous, in which case I went to the wrong high school.
Hi jacques,
Regarding the request time, if you stay in the datacenter, the response time is very very low. (to the ms).

Regarding the production, right now it's not intented to replace a real dedicated memcached server.
I think that it is a cache overflow(maybe dns or arp) that is causing the problems in cheaper routers. I upgraded my linksys to dd-wrt and all the problems went away. I haven't had to reboot it in probably a year or so now. Before I did that I was rebooting every Sunday or so.
Here's a related idea: Someone should start a very large Redis instance, say 8GB of RAM on an EC2 node, with shared reads (i.e., all clients can read all keys), but protected updates. Each app would use a prefix on its keys. This could be used as an open message passing bus between apps that need to communicate.
I was also planning on using twilio for a project and when looking at their faq for the initial research, it wasn't very clear that it was something completely unsupported that could be disabled at any moments...
That was not the point of the study. The point of the study was to examine the relational map within the high school. It was not to examine sexual hygiene of students in the school.

> "It would be of far more educational value to the group that was studied and all their peers."

How is that so?
Ah - I see where you were going and totally agree with your sentiments. In my opinion, tribalism is simultaneously Africa's (nay, the World's) greatest potential catalyst to overcome its tremendous problems, and also its most devastating weakness. That said, the extent language plays in such tribalism is that part of the world is debatable, as English is Nigeria's national language and the natives communicate extensively in pidgin dialects.

But you provoke interesting questions; Is it possible to mitigate or eliminate tribalism on any level, anywhere in the world? And if so, can software be integral to the process, or in any way accelerate it?

My reading of history tells me that favorable outcomes are possible in regards to both questions, however the form of such software is at the moment beyond my conception.
You mentioned an interesting point. Is the time spent on reading crap books really wasted? I wouldn't say so. It helps telling good books apart from bad ones. Reading wide variety of books makes one's taste more sophisticated. Also, mere familiarity with some books can be helpful in some social settings, when we want or need to make friends with people who read those books too.
A lot of the coffee shops near me use it for the wireless offering. It can get slow but I think it has more to do with the dsl that they are using.
GV Mobile Free 8:30 PM - Midnight EST tonight
Gas pipelines have little machines crawling inside them for inspection and maintenance purposes. These machines are called pigs.

The LHC is basically a big pipe, so maybe it does have pigs inside it already.
tl;dr Jeff discovers router mods and open source firmware
Intercontinental autonomous challenge (Italy to China)
You should do a benchmark of some simple page that uses no caching, memcached locally and memcached remote but in the same datacenter, that would be interesting information.

We don't use Linode, but we do use memcached to store 'partials', and for now I'm skeptical about running that memcached on the other side of a wire, latency tends to fluctuate quite a bit in a busy DC, so you may have to run your test over an extended period of time to get good data.

It helps if your machine is equipped with two ethernet interfaces, one for 'local' traffic and one that is facing the outside world.
I think that if it seems that "there is nothing new under the sun", you're probably looking at things from too far away. Try looking into more concrete matters (best: a specific problem, easiest: specific technology). In my experience I know that at times I have been engrossed in what would now appear to be awfully boring things, just because I dug deep enough.

[Corollary: if you think that revolutions in your field are happening every month, you may want to have a look at the state of things from afar.]
My experience with Netgears has been that once you reach a certain level of bandwidth usage, the router is unable to cope with it, freezes up, and requires a hard reboot. I've hit this point with a WRT54G running dd-wrt as well, but I've never hit it with my Airport Extreme.
aggree with most of what you said.

As a matter of finesse, I think that the correctness vs productivity argument is a specious one when it comes to language design. If correctness is a business requirement then providing language support is a productivity booster for the team (when you consider the timelines of the verification process as part of the development time.) you alluded to different problem domains perhaps requiring formal proof, I just want to suggest that it may decrease the iteration time for the team as a whole.
On my keyboard, the command keys are right next to the space bar, one at each end. Initially, they were quite hard to press, but I've since learnt to use my thumbs to hold them down, and it's working out fine. (I also have Control mapped to Command, and CapsLock mapped to Control, but I rarely press the Control key.)
Predicting the outcome of the election when only 1% of the votes have been counted is sometimes known as polling.
Answer - possibly not. Maybe not for reasons you are thinking of. The non-conductivity of the distilled water will be eliminate as soon as the water comes into contact with any contaminates, as its contaminates in the water the provide conductivity. However, as long as the board is completely dried there is no reason for a problem to exist, aside from corrosion.
You're exactly right. As a sole proprietor, I can save WAY more in my own 401k than I could at any previous employer. I think about 3x more. It's known as a "Solo 401k", adapted to suit the needs of one person's (or a married couple's) needs. It mostly means less administrative hassle. But the contribution limits are much higher.
Walmart has similar power to destroy your business if they refuse to sell your product. Google has no obligation to help keep your business afloat in the same way Walmart doesn't owe your product a spot on its shelves.
There are things you can buy at a hardware store that contain extremely hydrophilic chemicals (ISTR calcium carbonate, someone correct me) -- you could put a container of the hydrophilic medium and the laptop inside a sealed container.
As Joel points out, it's tautological. How many companies would buy up Google for it's current market valuation? Apple? Since no buyers have tried to do that, are they ipso facto no actually worth that market cap?
Even if you use distilled water, make sure to also remove the on-board battery. (I'm not sure if the current MB still have one).
I'm so excited to see these 3D printers becoming more and more advanced. The disruption caused by the Internet so far will be mild compared to what these things will do in the long run.

Seemingly this is a long way off, but when consumers can create many or most of the objects they need using some raw materials and data from an open source hardware design, the whole economy will have to adjust dramatically.

Great work guys!
Excellent set of articles for someone trying to figure out bare basics of compilers without taking it in college.
For a long time (before going to college) I was fascinated with the idea of how languages are implemented. I found this tutorial and followed along. About 3 articles in, the light bulb went on over my head and I finally 'got' recursive descent parsing and how simple and elegant it was. I didn't learn much else from the articles but it was worth it for that.
> That was not the point of the study.

I realize that.

> The point of the study was to examine the relational map within the high school. It was not to examine sexual hygiene of students in the school.

No disagreement there.

>> "It would be of far more educational value to the group that was studied and all their peers."
> How is that so?

Because it would show them in a fairly easy to understand graph how STDs spread through such a network.

Having the 'outside world' connected wouldn't hurt either.
Should science journalists take sides? Not Exactly Rocket Science
I'm having a hard time finding examples of things it prints. You'd think they'd have a few impressive pictures of stuff they've printed with it...
I wouldn't do that yet. The stickiness could be on the keyboard only. I would disassemble (get instructions for your model from http://www.ifixit.com/) and visually inspect for damage. Make sure everything is completely dry, reassemble and retest.

If it won't power on, then you have to start debugging to isolate the problem. If it is the logic board, then my sympathies ... they are expensive to replace.
I don't know what field you're in, but this is probably portable: work somewhere that's doing hard things. If you're an engineer, take a job somewhere that's got really significant technical challenges. Early in your career, it sets a bar. You'll develop so much faster if you're challenged and around really bright people. The harder the better.. That'd be close to my only priority for a first position.

[edit]
Forgot to answer the other question. I just accepted my dream job. It's a tiny startup with three humblingly bright and passionate people, and we're building something really amazing that we think will revolutionize our space.

And... We're hiring :)
Write your First Business Essay
The writing of a business essay is a common assignment when doing an economics class. By writing this essay, you are provided with knowledge on certain aspects and processes of business. Therefore, knowing how to write the business essay will make it easy to get a good grade.
Ok right. I wasnt really thinking of bulk mail. Gsm modems work fine though for less frequent usage like sending notifications when the motion alarm is triggered etc..
Twilio isn't really for bulk sending either, is it?
Maybe they buy from Hitachi, Seagate, and Western Digital; we don't know.
Ask HN: Where are the capitalist and conservative technology presentations?
I recently commented on the anti-capitalist bias that RSA Animate seems to tend to have, like "Crisis of Capitalism":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJGAs2KwoWk
and the "high-tech workers don't want raises" presentation at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGkrKfOCvho

But I've also thought that some of the TED talks I've seen tend to have more liberal speakers as well.

I know that political bias is inevitable, and that there are just a lot of liberal and anti-capitalists speaking up recently, but where are the best and brightest presentations of capitalists and conservatives located?
Building a SaaS service in France targeting american and european customers
Lifelong Exercising Yields Sensational Results
Is still Sony-Ericsson relevant on the smartphone market?

Android phones made by SE are still based on the 1.5, 1.6 version and even the top of the noch, the Xperia X10, will not receive 2.1 till end of october...

It's sad but SE will not be missed by Symbian.
I learned from this article the first time it was posted; I have learned nothing further from the following N reposts. If we allow "new to you" articles on the front page it will be filled with old stuff.
NASA Maps Global Air Pollution
I don't know what does it feel to be on facebook and never will.
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Assuming certification is not viable, adopt those policies you can implement, and create policies which address the issues behind the policies you cannot meet.

Then sit down with your client and sell them security.

Certification is CYA on paper. Security protects value.

The advantage you have is trust.

Edit: Is there a security certification that you can obtain more readily?

Edit:Is the client's request for certification based on a change in their business?
Sony Ericsson isn't that heavily into Symbian anyway. Most of their phones use a Java platform run on top of an OS - Symbian being one of the OSs, but they also use proprietary OSs for the cheaper phones. It was Java that was their focus.

They are just riding the Android and Win7 wave, while the competition isn't too high, and in the long term, I predict they will focus on their own platforms again. There's no other reason why Samasung would be developing Bada for example.
At my work we have 99% ipa that has much less water than the normal 70% rubbing alcohol that you would find at the store. The 99% stuff dries very quickly and seems to be a good homemade way to clean a circuit board.
The concluding question from the article is fundamentally flawed and completely invalid.

The market functions because people who want to buy are matched with people who want to sell. This fundamental concepts requires there be an asynchrony in market participant motivations. Leaning the market to one type of participant (let's say, long term value investors) will disincent others to participate. By doing this, the market will find it harder and harder to serve those it deems most important because no one will take the other side of their trades.

People seem to think that markets are there to serve them. In reality, markets are there to serve two people at once. The unique pairing of a buyer and seller is required for the market to function and by definition requires the market to cater to no one. It simply must provide a service that is deemed fair by all participants. Fair to the point that they are not disincented to participate.

From the article, if the mutual funds actually stand up and say, "You know what, I'm not trading Tape C securities anymore, especially not on BATS or Nasdaq. I will now only trade Tape A, NYSE listed, specialist controlled stocks" you can bet that the other exchangse will listen and do what's required to maintain their order flow. Of course, the mutual fund managers WON'T do this precisely because they know whatever disincentive they are faced with by participating in venues where automated trading is prevelant are far outweighed by the benefits they receive by trading there.

This is nothing more than a group of people wanting the good old days back. Times change, to keep up you must adapt. Those mutual funds need to invest in better execution. They need to learn to play in the new world and stop trying to introduce misleading rules into the system to fix the game like it's 1993. Markets change, if you want to keep playing you change too.
You can buy cans of aerosol circuit board cleaner at Radio Shack. They cost less than $10, and don't contain corrosive or conductive liquids.