skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's just ridiculous. Is this theonion.com ?

Step outside the bubble for a second. Most people don't have tablets, and don't want tablets.
Really? I really try to avoid FUD, this was my honest views, anything specific you thought was FUD?
Just wait until that startup starts feeling like a real job. Then come back and comment on how different it is. Personally I have found working for myself to be quite different then doing the same thing for someone else. I have to find the work, I collect 100% of the revenue and as a result the preverbal buck stops at my desk. I sleep well.
I'm sure it's not "dead", but it doesn't have any "e-buzz" right now. It was designed to be a tabletOS - how come all the upcoming tablets are all going to be based on Android? Are Android and ChromeOS going to interact with each other? It seems silly to have two free products that compete with each other doing very similar things - especially when both of them are supposed to offer the same thing experience-wise.

Android has all the buzz, Android has the market share, Android has all the apps - if I were a tablet maker, would you put Android (a proven platform right now) or ChromeOS on your new tablet? ChromeOS will need some serious help from Google if it's going to be viable (i.e a Google specific device that shows it off). This is a prognostication on my part (a big one), but if Google relies on it's manufacturing partners (without strong direction), ChromeOS will fail.
Damn, when did my office get this dusty?
6502 Assembler/Emulator in Javascript
The Battle For Facebook
My first language that wasn't. I taught myself 6502 asm before I have even seen it run. The local British Council library (UK sponsored library going back to colonial times) had 3-5 books on computer programming, all of which I memorized. Among those books was one on the BBC Micro assembly programming.

It had a few worked examples. I used to cover the examples with a sheet, read the problem, then try to solve them before looking at the answer (since I didn't have a physical machine to test things.) -- I quickly came to appreciate that there was no canonical single "answer" in algorithms, and the only way to compare the "equality" of two solutions is see they leave the machine in the same state, given identical initial configurations .. very disturbing thoughts for a self-taught newbie programmer.

I did that for a few weeks and was bored. Then got Robert Lafore's book "Assembly Language Programming for the IBM PC and XT", and I killed it. Hard to explain this, but my first working assembly programs were quite advanced, because I have been "paper hacking" for quite some time by then. I wrote my first apps off of a floppy disk that I used to insert into internet cafe or library computers, when no one was looking (I didn't do any of the PC speaker tricks until much later, when I got my own computer.)
Yeah, that was nice: "Oh, this is the guy!" Reddit lets their userbase drive much of the time, and it creates warm feelings all around.
That is ridiculous why wouldn't Chrome OS run perfectly on a Tablet? e.g. HTC: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/203564/htc_pla...

Also why not try Chrome OS first before you say it is dead: http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/

Combined with office.live.com I have everything I need for 95% of my needs.
The main point that could be a real changer for me (being a web developper) is : Make sure everybody has the latest version of your free softwares (and I'm really thinking about internet explorer here). It's a real pain to have to support IE6 still because our clients use it and now that IE9 is coming out, we know how it will take years for everyone to switch. Their release cycle is completely broken and they will be left in the dust by competitors if they keep doing this.
Ask HN: How did you move from 'real' work to working for startups?
Hey all.
I am a 23 year old with a degree in mechanical engineering working in mining. In the 2 years within my company i have moved up from graduate mechanical engineer to project engineer. (unprescedented in my career/work). I have managed projects from start to finish worth millions of dollars. Only problem is, as good as I am at this, I really don't want this to be my life.

So my question to all you, is how did you jump from the 'real' world to working for a startup or finding your own business, and how do you recommend I carry my skills to this new career I so desperatley want.
yeah it read a lot like a pitch page...buy this diet plan: "omg omg this is an awesome diet, I lost 258 pounds in 1 week on it...you gotta buy it!"
How Haystack endangered the Iranian dissidents it was supposed to protect
I can't tell you the number of times I've gone to purchase a product online and bailed when asked to create an account. This is basically the story's point. KISS in action. Maybe more: get out of my way.

I was working with a travel sales' company recently and noticed that they had a dropdown in their product search that had two entries, neither of which was clear what they did, although each produced different results.

There was much wringing of hands when I proposed removing it, and simply providing the consolidated search results. They agreed to give it a try "for a few days", and the techs predicted a "collapse of the system" (which it was easy to check wouldn't be the case).

Sales doubled in one week.

This change was nothing to do with why I working with the client.
well she did say the original rate was 100%...might have went like this: "well I can lower that to 50% if you agree to run unlimited coupons"
The curiosity is killing me. And besides this might help better answer your questions.

So a few questions:
1) Can you vaguely tell us the nature of the app you are building?
2) Is it transaction heavy? How much data do you expect?
3) How many users are we talking about?

EDIT: Curiosity is due to the software stack being used.
For convenience, here's the Windy Citizen link: http://www.windycitizen.com/

Edit: Fixed site name.
and don't copy only superficial aspects of things. Flip 3D outdone Expose on fancy window-flying, but didn't copy any of its usability.
Luke Johnson talks about buying and selling businesses
I feel agreely with you.
(I'm also from Russia)

The doctors here are much better and don't need "motivation" in a Russian sense of this word.. They will give you their best treatment, if you have insurance. For this reason, insurance here is very expensive. There's a lot of poor people here that don't have any kind of insurance.

The cheapest insurance in NY, for example is ~ $300/m, but you also pay up a large amount if you require serious treatment($5-10,000), and every time you come to see a doctor ($25-50). There are many other options for insurance - the larger the monthly payment amount (premium), the less you pay out of pocket for visits and other things.

A best situation you can have here is a company paying for you. To buy the same insurance that I used to have when worked for a financial company here would be $500-600/month.

So it's a big issue for freelancers and everybody who doesn't work for companies that provide it.

It's going to change in 2013 though after new legislation that Obama just passed this year, but there are different opinions here what the effects will be exactly (that's a different topic entirely though)
When I was in one of the vSphere training classes the instructor informed us that the hypervisor is completely homegrown and that only the Management Console (which is a VM that provides CLI access) runs on top of a Linux kernel.
Neither is it a litany of misery.
OS X: can't deal with the Finder. I frequently don't know how to navigate to an upper directory, for example. I have troubles with the task bar, too (sometimes somehow I can't drag stuff into applications). I miss the show desktop button. I don't like that Apps stay open when I press "X" and I have to close them all with CMD+Q instead. Cut+Paste does not exist. It's all little things, but they add up.

Windows 7: now the same problems with the finder. Impossible to find anything without utilising desktop search. No show desktop button anymore. Failed to copy the task bar appropriately: now to start a second command shell, from the task bar, I have to right click the icon. Noobs simply can't remember to use the right mouse button.

Windows XP: flawed security model (everybody ends up running it as Administrator).

Must admit that it has been a while since I worked with XP, but I remember that they had some touches that were actually useful. Apple does not go for useful touches, just pretty ones.
Vanity Fair Profile on Sean Parker
Yeah, this. I'm a web developer and a heavy Chromium user and I caught myself pondering a memory upgrade for my 8Gb desktop the other day, just for Chromium.
* you still have time to do the right thing with IE9 to introduce chrome like auto-update, and shorten your 2 year release cycle to at least half a year

* don't drop support for xbox 360 as soon as the next one comes out, that really hurt with the first one

* windows is a great development platform if you work with Microsoft tools. Make it more friendly for other technologies to. For instance: make a unix/linux compatible shell, so I can use all the tools, that I now have to ssh to some server, locally (cygwin is a pain in the ass).

* for the love of all that is holy do something about IE6&7
Yes, it means that you have to allow your users to access any modifications you did and freely use and redistribute them further under AGPL.

The only problem I see here is site design - companies certainly won't like that their corporate style will be used freely. Hope this'll be worked around somehow (trademarking?)

About the code itself - Diaspora is a distributed system, so IMHO it's quite absurd to attract users with some proprietary installation-unique features. Diaspora is more of a network, not a product. Imagine some ISP creating their own proprietary extensions to the TCP procotol - sounds weird, right?
Please twist everyone's arms as hard as you can to get them upgraded to IE9 ASAP.

Please get modern browser in Windows Phone 7.

IE7 makes my job miserable.
I'll tell you. How much will you pay?
You want strategy? Ok, here is strategy:

Do something bold for a change, really bold. Open source windows or office, do whatever scares you most and then make a go of it. With the talent pool you've got there you should easily be able to out-compete the market when you've done something like that, it will go a long way towards getting forgiveness for deeds done in the past and it will align your goals with the world much better than where you are today.

If this scares you realize that in the longer term this is where software is going to be. Developers have wised up to lock-in and other tricks and corporations are more and more moving to solutions that they control. The writing has been on the wall for years.

Oh, and stop funding stooges to attack third parties.
Cameron Moll - Self Employment 12 Months Later
/**
* Today I'm getting discharged from the Army
* Don't have time to properly comment the code
* Call me if you have any questions: Name,054-XXXXXXX
*/
I built:ListAndPlay.com Need feedback,will you use it? What should be changed?
You gave up too soon. It take much longer to solve any marketplace (chicken-egg) problem
What I love about reddit with subreddits is that if you want lisp tutorials you only have to unsubscribe from the high-traffic reddits (e.g. pics, technology) and subscribe to the lower-traffic but more topical reddits.
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2010-2011 (Top 200)
Celebrating Tourism - 100 Greatest Places in USA
Are you a vacationist? Do have interest to know the greatest places of USA!One of the most attractive and informative Web Sites has just been launched to provide you the same. The Great American Web Pages, a theme-based Web Site, provides you loads of information about hundreds of most inspiring, thought-provoking locations of USA. Just a single click on the theme -"Celebrating Tourism – 100 Greatest Places in USA"- can take you to hundreds of tourist places of America. You can not only have a glance of beautiful panorama of these places, but also find lots of information to read and know about the places by visiting the eBooks.

This Web Page presents loads of information about National Parks of USA to Waterfalls, museums, mountains, memorials and much more. This page provides you to enjoy the beauty of Carlsbad Caverns of New Mexico, Niagara Falls of Canada, Mount Washington, Moody Gardens, Alcatraz Island, and a lot more.

If you feel that some more places to be included in the list, this Site provides lots of space for sponsorship. The sponsors can sponsor some blocks on the web page, where they can place their Logo\image, a 1750 character long write-up that gets published in eBooks, and a URL to tie with the image\Logo for the visitors to reach them when clicked. Then, the information will be a part of the American Internet History. This site provides the sponsors to reach their audience and present themselves to the world in a better way. By sponsoring a place in this site, the write-up and web page will be there forever.

This is a perfect site for the vacationists to brush up their knowledge about the greatest places of America. Visiting this site will surely leave a long lasting memorable impression on the mind.
And about how throwing more people at a problem is not the right solution in most cases.
Wow - that was made by extracting the gates & nets from de-packaged die photographs! It is actually a transistor & wiring simulator (in javascript) that has a 6502 description loaded (and a simulated memory device tied to the pads)
I think he is probably drawing on sources like this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1698213

That has best buy saying tablets are cannibalizing their netbook revenue. This does not mean that netbooks or laptops are dead - personally for the current price I find something like an ACER1215N a lot better value for my usecases than an ipad. This is primarily due to the the HDMI out, USB input for storage, rich client gaming and the fact that I can run any VM for any OS I want. For running MS office / Openoffice also the tactile keyboard is handy without paying for additional accessories.

If there are others like my netbooks/laptops may decline but not die completely, I would suggest a 60/40 split in 3 years tablets/laptops respectively.
Do something courageous with web browsers - deprecate the IE line of browsers and create a completely new browser based on WebKit. Offer both to users for a few years with a view to phasing IE out completely within X years (say 5).

Maybe offer a way of providing hints (maybe through AD GPOs) of which sites should be opened using which browser - that would probably make short term adoption within enterprises less painful.
It's not the email notification you need to demonstrate-- it's the value the email notification provides.

Give me some situations where getting notified that someone has backlinked to my site would be useful to me. Show me ways that I can use this information to my advantage.
OP has a big problem and it's not freelancing. Just look at what he has written...

He talks about his office, his coffee, his pants, his computer, his commute, even his tax deductions. He talks about what he can do, what he wants to do, how he can structure his day, what he feels like, how he'd like to feel.

He talks about everything except his customers.

I don't care if you're a freelancer, a consultant, an employee, a founder, or a volunteer, it's not about you. It's about your work and the people you're doing it for. That's it. Everything else is just a detail.

Once you start thinking about what you give instead of what you receive, your begin to focus on the task at hand instead of the whine of the day. OP oughta try it sometime.
> "For someone to use this information to unlock anything, they would have to implement it in silicon -- make a computer chip," Waldrop told Fox News, and that chip would have to live on a dedicated piece of hardware -- something Intel doesn't think is likely to happen in any substantial way.

"A fundamental rule in technology says that whatever can be done will be done."

Andy Grove, former Chairman and CEO, Intel Corporation
Tumblr Leaves Posterous in the Dust
True FastCGI for PHP 5.3 - benchmarks and two-fold productivity increase
Starting with PHP 5.3, the language is finally ready for work in FastCGI mode. I decided to test it in order to estimate its potential. The article contains a description of usage of this technology, difficulties I had to get over and a few benchmarks that demonstrate the possible effects of changing over to FastCGI.
A Boy and a Bicycle(s)
Don't let Windows Live Mail lose out to GMail. Google is constantly adding and playing with new features for GMail and Microsoft should be doing the same. Eventually Google is going to come up with a real killer idea for mail and you'll be scrambling to keep your users and paying customers unless you stay nimble in this category.
I agree with you, ChromeOS certainly doesn't look bad. I just have a hard time figuring out - what's the difference between the two? What use case does ChromeOS solve that Android doesn't solve?

I consider myself web-savvy and fairly technical. If I have trouble answering this question, what is the average user going to think?

People are turning towards experiences - which is a combination of hardware and software. What edge does ChromeOS have that is going to give it a better experience than Android?
Hacking Scammers: The Trophy Room
Ask HN: How do you deal with competition
I have an idea. I know that millions do.

I'm willing to execute. That makes me a little different from the millions. I already started working on it, already spent some time and already see some results. That makes me quite different from the rest with the ideas.

But my problem is the competition.

There is competition, which is selling pretty much the same idea. I knew about it, but I always thought it's not good enough. It's not good enough for me and that's why I think I can make something better.

My question is if I this is enough. There's nothing that makes the idea unique. No extra feature, no additional value. Not in the idea. So should I refine the idea? Or maybe pick a different one? Or should focus on executing better?
Get rid of Ballmer and put a techie in charge
I wouldn't want WebKit to become the dominant engine. I like the current competition - it keeps everyone honest. Remember, when IE was the only browser, look at all the trouble that happened!
This was hilarious. It is hard to believe it really happened though.
The Xbox (bar it's heating issues) is a damn good product. The advertising still has a little way to go, but over all it's a nice package and it is a good user experience start to finish.

Similarly, C# is a nice language, but I'm not (personally) overly keen on Visual Studio, I like smaller IDEs (personal preference here!).

The main issue that I see is the obsession with integrating everything with Windows. Notice how iTunes is cross platform(ish)? Python is cross platform? Apache is cross platform? Chrome & FireFox are cross platform? I don't think that it's an accident that those are fairly popular -- any one who uses them is not in inherently tied down to Windows, Mac or any other operating system.

I've said this about IE9, cross platform is generally better. Broaden your application's user base and correct the issues with advertising and you'll stand a real chance at turning things around, in my opinion.

Contrary to popular belief, throwing money at an issue does not correct an issue. With the creative markets, you'll need to get hold of genuinely creative people -- scout university campuses, advertising agencies (and anywhere else) and find those who are really passionate about creating something special.
I don't think it adjusts for inflation. Adjusting for inflation, we have total comp per FTE worker of $49.8k in 1998 and $57k in 2009. But you are right, benefits don't explain the entire increase. Wages went up as well, from $47k to $52k (inflation adjusted).

(Using this inflation calculator: http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi)

Also, since the article is about collusion between google and apple, we should really be comparing compensation for the best programmers. I admit, I have no idea whether that went up or not.
From http://github.com/simplegeo/polymaps

"Browser Support:

Tested in recent Webkit browsers (Safari 4+, Chrome 6, Webkit nightlies)
Tested in recent Firefox browsers (3.6+)
Optimistic about Opera, IE9, but not part of core testing yet.
SVG is required, even for image display...
in other words: if you can't require SVG, don't use Polymaps!"
I once wrote a haiku to a particularly nasty bug where the offending line had been. I got a call years later when someone found it, they appreciated the humor.
No show desktop button anymore.

It's there-- it just isn't labelled unless you mouse over it. All the way to the right, on the taskbar-- to the right of the clock. Lower-right-hand corner of the screen.
Ridiculous. You can't even type on a tablet properly or angle the display.

Again, I would say that in 99% of cases, people who buy a tablet are not buying it instead of a laptop, but as well as.
> Developers have wised up to lock-in and other tricks and corporations are more and more moving to solutions that they control

Yeah, you can see that with the iPhone, the Apple Store, and all the various clones that pop into existence like mushrooms (hello Kindle).

Sometimes I believe developers live in la-la land, totally disconnected from reality.
The biggest thing Microsoft should do is make the desktop king again. This is possible - users don't care whether they are using web applications or actual apps, but there are huge benefits (in terms of what you can do) to desktop applications. This is evident in the amazing rise of Apple's App Store.

But there's a problem. Web programming, while allowing generally crummier applications, has some benefits that far outweigh this. This is why startups tend to focus on web applications - they're just so much better for startups, for a few reasons. Find a way to give these benefits with desktop applications, and you'll have people rushing back to Windows programming, because you can give a much richer use experience.

The benefits of web apps are:

* Not having to worry about deployment.

* Not having to worry about versioning (because the deployment forces everyone to have the latest version).

* Being able to collect feedback almost automatically, ala Google Analytics. Preferably all kinds of different feedback about exactly how people are using your application.

* Making life easier for the end user - no install, no configuration of things like which folders files are saved in (all the data is saved online automatically), etc.

At the end of the day, all of this is achievable outside of the browser - it just requires a completely new framework for creating applications, which gives all these benefits for free. Not all desktop applications will be able to use it, but this will allow rich applications to be made without sacrificing the amazing benefits written above, which is why so many people turn to the web.

P.S. I don't know much about Silverlight, which might be Microsoft's attempt to do just what I've outlined above. If so, then good going, but it still isn't being pushed hard enough since developers like me don't really know enough about it.