skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Neither. It’s just rhetorical.
Microsoft Flashlight?
An interesting move from an analytics perspective. They'd get Omniture and valuable data about the biggest advertising budgets spent online.
I know it is; South Park popularised it.
Microsoft wants to bundle flash into their web browser and phones just like google?!
I'm reading The Design of Everyday Things right now. It is an amazingly good book. The examples are awesome. It really is changing the way I look at everything.
In most re-branding efforts I've seen at companies of Gap's size, they absolutely do go through this process - some to discover new things, but also as risk mitigation. Right now I suspect the firm that did this new logo is on conference calls with Gap people to say wait, we did the studies and they said xyz, we know that any change to your iconic brand was going to be received negatively, etc.

But more importantly, it's not just logo that changes when you re-brand, it's product labels, business cards, web sites, stationary, building signage, color palette, EVERYTHING. So actually, you could spend a few k on a new brand with a quality designer, or spec out a logo for a few hundred on crowdspring, and frankly that's all most smaller companies need, but for a larger company like Gap, a re-branding ends up being a huge investment, so the research makes them feel more comfortable in making the decisions on how to move forward.
Well, obviously I can afford it because it's a small marginal cost; waiting for him to cough up the required sum is quite bearable.

And you lose because contracts under duress are unenforceable.

It's not so simple. Duress is where someone forces another into a bad position, eg by setting the house on fire first. A contract made under necessity (where the house is already on fire) will probably stand, unless it's for some wildly disproportional amount.

But in any case, a contract is not always required. In cases where one party knowingly accepts the beneficial services of another, they can be billed for it as if a contract existed.
Good point. The more believable explanation is this transcription misrepresents the situation -- the fact that it was shocking should have made me question it.
Fair point - but of course your client is not making any progress, and so the unavailability ripples up. It's unlikely that there is user facing case where this is a useful way to work, though I can see it's use in loosely coupled connections between backends.
Twitter users with high follower to low following ratios are commonly viewed as being popular and interesting. Users with high following/low follower ratios are generally viewed as trying to game follow backs.
Think of what great patent lawsuits would they make!
The best way to invent the future is to predict it - PARC blog
"I also stole some ideas from here: http://developer.fellowshipone.com/patterns/

I discovered that a couple of weeks ago. It's really, really well done.
There is something to that - Microsoft has been spending a lot of money and resources trying to encourage Silverlight adoption. One way to do that might be to buy the rights to Flash.
They haven't even included Visio in the Office bundle yet, so I doubt they'd put Photoshop in there.
Look on the bright side- it doesn't yet melt your CPU. Under MS's guiding hand, I'm sure it would figure out how.
gte910h - Its super easy. Trust me. 10 mins. and you should be all set.
I'm not sure I understand: how would a merger between these two companies get past the regulators? I doubt they'd let Apple jump into bed with Adobe, let alone Microsoft...
Well, I think it's too bad that HTML5 can't be treated like a milestone. Worrying about what will be officially recommended, what is or isn't part of HTML5 (geolocation API apparently) really puts me off thinking about developing for it.
Anyone using this? It'd be pretty awesome to get a first-hand account of it.
Nope. There are people with two X chromosomes who are not considered women (even medically), and there are people without two X chromosomes who live as women (whether you agree to call them that or not).
I found it possible to absorb more knowledge (wisdom?) about UX by performing user tests than by any other method of studying the subject.

Grab a copy of "Rocket Surgery made Easy" by Steve Krug, a copy of Silverback for Mac, and start doing some user tests.

In time, you will start to see the same patterns coming up over and over again, and this information will begin to unwittingly inform your thinking during the design phase.

This isn't going to help you with visual design so much, but it certainly will help you with the communication aspects of the software/website, and will help you to avoid design/UX pitfalls.
http://www.gap.com/ is using it.
From the original NYT report [1], the discussions seem to be less about acquisition, and more about “Apple and its control of the mobile phone market and how the two companies could partner in the battle against Apple.”

Indeed, acquisition is a real and fascinating possibility, but surely there are many other ways they could work together to fight Apple, if that is what they want to do.

[1] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/microsoft-and-adobe...
" I’ll go on a limb and say that design is more important than engineering or ops today"

So, a designer thinks design is most important. Oddly enough as an engineer, I think engineering is most important. Anyone know an ops person who thinks that ops is most important?

Seriously though, this article has a good point. It's a shame the author ruined it with the above. Is it really a good idea to start these kinds of arguments? Trying to convince people your department is better than theirs is not only childish, it's bad for the whole company.
Unless I'm mistaken, none of his suggestions use OS passwords. All of his suggestions protect against plugging the hard drive into another machine (except hidden folders, which only work against non-tech-savvy thieves, anyway).
Strong work.
But once you have truecrypt, it doesn't matter if they plug your HDD into a new computer. That was my main concern I was trying to solve here.
Is anyone interested in working in this space? If so please shoot me an email. I have implemented a prototype of a service for sharing physical stuff.

- it's a Facebook app to utilize the existing trust network

- game elements (gaining karma for sharing)

- built in Python on Google App Engine
I own a pretty awesome .ly domain which I was holding onto for a future business, but I'm definitely reconsidering as well
I don't see why a person with a C# background would have any of these (2) "bad habbits". On the contrary, someone with some C# experience would do his best to avoid global variables, and one of the first things he would search for would probably be how to do namespacing with javascript. The new keyword may be an issue at the beginning but as soon as you do some JSON, you automatically get the correct way of declaring arrays and objects.
From the original NYT report [1]:

Randal C. Picker, a professor of law of the University of Chicago law school, said in a telephone interview that the technology space is drastically different than it was when Microsoft was originally charged with antitrust violations and an acquisition or partnership of this nature would likely not be halted.

Mr. Picker said that the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are focused on other large technology companies and consumer related issues.

[1] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/microsoft-and-adobe...
If this happens, I wonder how long it will take to fold the Adobe contacts and products into BizSpark.
And the updates! The glorious, unending stream of modal software-update dialogs!
99designs Take on the GAP Logo Re-Design
Firefox 4 Beta for Android and Maemo is Now Available
Life Story of Joe Girard - the World's Greatest Salesman
Very interesting story... he's ranked by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most successful salesman: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Girard
jcl - Passwords are great, the more complicated, the better. However when your laptop is stolen, why would they put their time in it cracking your OS password. If plugging the HDD in another computer bypasses it completely.
The former creates an array with 3 empty elements, the latter an array with a single element initialised to 3.

Ugh. I can see that catching lots of people. Is new part of the language, or part of jQuery?
If you're not a C programmer, this is pretty close to "abcdef".index("cd") not returing 2 in Python or Ruby (strstr is a heavily optimized function, which is how this happened).
I can't believe a quick Ctrl-F didn't find him already mentioned, but look up Jakob Nielsen and his ten usability heuristics. If there's one thing doing some postgrad work in HCI taught me, it's to remember those absolutely. Always, always evaluate what you're making against them.
Such a deal could be worth $15 billion or more based on Adobe's current market value.

Adobe is worth less than half of Facebook? Rolls eyes
This talk of Ryan's from Windy City Rails 2009 is excellent: http://2009.windycityrails.org/videos#4

He's really an excellent speaker.
I was just about to post that. I actually made a few patches (pulled by olivier) to make the prompt work better on Mac OSX.
There are very few things you could not do without for a short time or quickly get a substitute. For those few things, make sure you have a spare. For everything else, the spare is probably a waste.
I love that vcs_info works with more than just git. Having my prompt tell me what VCS I'm under (even knowing the difference between git and git-svn) and what branch I've got checked out helps me mentally switch gears as soon as I cd into a directory.
Less is More - Appsumo's Ultimate Lean Startup Bundle
Thanks, very interesting. I'm genuinely surprised though, as we're talking about some huge spaces being gobbled up: Photoshop, ColdFusion, Director, Flash, FrameMaker, Illustrator etc. And those are just some of their bigger names! :)
This would be quite interesting. If Microsoft bought Adobe, what would happen to PDF on Mac? What would happen to Silverlight? Would the next Office use PDF as a standard format?

Then there's the creative suite. What would happen to photoshop? Dreamweaver (or MS Frontpage 2012 as it'd be renamed)? InDesign (or Microsoft Publisher 2012 as it'd be called)?

Also think about the other side of it. The Acrobat team would be forced to actually secure their reader instead of relying on researchers to do it for them.

I think this can only be a good thing(tm). As Dan Kaminsky once said, "What could possibly go wrong?"
What is Microsoft's track record for spinning off companies?

The Photoshop/CS part of Adobe is somewhat profitable, correct? Would MS let it go (even for a bucket of cash)?
IE6 effect in HTML5
We are not mycologists. Any help out there?
i'm curious when you submitted to wpplugins.com. i wrote them off as dead after my plugin sat pending for a week last month. they didn't respond to my emails, either.
"I’ll go on a limb and say that design is more important than
engineering"

No it isn't. Let me explain.

Design is incredibly important. No doubt about it. But I hire designers
by the week, perhaps by the month. I hire them by the design. I have
longterm relationships with them. They are a core part of the project
but they are interchangeable, if push comes to shove. And I don't need
them engaged every day. I really don't.

Most companies are not Apple. Apple has design at its core because it
creates tangible products. I loath Jobs and all he stands for -- I
detest bullies -- but I saw an Air for the first time (years ago) and
had to touch it. Shiny. Hardware design is not software design.

Personally, I don't like the metaphor of "experience" that is currently
en vogue. I have never had an "experience" with a site or application,
but I have used them. They are functional things, designed for purpose,
to fulfil an objective. They are not an orgasm. I wish. They are do not
evoke a tangible emotional response. I have never been moved to tears,
even close, by viewing a webapp. I do not weep at Google's minimalism
YMMV. Graphical designs, as applied to computer application, are not an
experience. They really aren't.

I can buy that interface design. And I love to. I love the process, the
passion of the artist, and the attention to detail. But that's all it
is. And I can get it in many places.

But the skill required to build the infrastructure and networks of
complexity that satiates all the requirements of my business plan, and
things I have not thought of yet, and things I don't even know I need
yet, now that takes skill and experience that cannot be defined, let
alone hired by the week. That takes immersion and involvement. That
takes a large degree of dedication, foresight, and yet more dedication.
It almost take faith in the belief that unforeseen obstacle can be
overcome. All of them.

Rewinding, design is incredibly important, a central part of any
initiative that's outward facing. But top of the pile it ain't. And it
never will be. I can buy it by the hour. I can buy it off the shelf. I
hope I never have to.
Much like programming, design is never finished. I can imagine a designer working full time on improving the experience of an application like Basecamp. Even more if the designer works on stuff like SEO, analytics, A/B tests, etc.
It sounds like we need a nice, harmless, amorphous name like "Web 2.0" that the press can use to describe the new wave of next-generation websites.

How about: "Web 3.0"
Yes, a system is available if one node doesn't respond and you can contact another. But that node will be unable to guarantee consistency.

If a node you can contact is required to guarantee consistency, there will be some times that it will have to refuse your request because other nodes are not contactable.

The author's point was that in any distributed system there is a non-zero probability of a network failure. While both clients and server nodes can retry connections, there is a non-zero probability that the problem will persist longer than your "availability agreement" allows. In that case, you have a choice - return potentially inconstent data or refuse the request.

What you seem to be arguing is that the probabilities of failure - in particular of repeated failure - while non-zero, are effectively zero. The author would disagree (as they point out, the probabilities combine exponentially as the number of nodes increase.) I think he's right and that you are wrong.
Ask HN: How do you increase your laptop battery life
I have recently bought a new laptop, but it has a very low battery life when unplugged: about 2hours.

I have tried to increase it by closing some background applications, removing Windows Aero, but I have to do it manually every time I unplug the laptop.

Closing the background processes one by one takes time, is there no application for doing it in once click (by preselecting which processes I want to stop)?
The last thing I need is a Microsoft FlashLight.
> Error saving checkmark: 404 (dismiss)

Happens every time I check a checkmark. (Not that Google ever has a way to report bugs, except for tracking down and posting in a neglected Google Group)
Apples and Oranges. Adobe is publicly traded. When (if) Facebook IPOs, they will not be worth $33 billion.

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2585-facebook-is-not-worth-33...
I'm really scared of a future where microsoft forces itself into my life by acquiring everything I use on a regular basis.
PDF has an open spec and third party developers could make as many PDF readers as they want. Like on Linux, where there are plenty of PDF readers, mostly based on Poppler.
I guess there must be non-Adobe PDF readers for mac.
What would this mean for Flash and Silverlight?
Would MS also can the Expression Studio as well? Why would the same company put out Illustrator and Expression Design?
Have you been able to grow beyond the "inside contact" deals? And by "look for companies in fields outside of internet tech" can you give some examples?
only moderately related, but the best thing Gap ever did was when they bought ads at a bunch of baseball stadiums on the outfield walls, so when ever someone hit a double to the gap thats what you'd see.
Microsoft should start thinking about acquiring a web company instead. One day, they will look back and realize that, in retrospective, they shouldn't have held on to the desktop. An analogy could be made with newspapers who held on to the paper. Time might prove me wrong, but I doubt it.
Jokes aside, it makes perfect sense for both of them. Adobe's CS and Microsoft Office are naturally self-complementing desktop giants. Both companies make a ton of money selling desktop software to the enterprise, yet outside of Flash/Sliverlight battle they don't cross each other paths.

I, for one, welcome this development. It brings some hopes for better performing Flash, which I hate with a passion but its a fact of life. Flash is in need of some engineering muscle. There are many things Microsoft can possibly do to it and most of them are good, see: kill it -> good, open source it -> good, merge with silverlight -> good.

Same thing with other Adobe products: they used to be best in class some time ago, but I'm convinced that company cannot code anymore, but Microsoft still can.

No way this is bad news. The worse that can happen is nothing changes.

Edit: also, lets stop this nonsense with applying "still somewhat profitable" and "dying" to these companies. Both are doing great financially. Adobe's profits from CS keep breaking records - look at http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/2010...
Expedia is a Microsoft spin off. I guess that one worked ok.
It might be harder than you think to replace highly refined creative tools such as Illustrator or Photoshop.

Although they have become rather bloated and the last few versions have failed to innovate in significant ways, there is a lot of graphics professionals who would be very reluctant to waste all that hard-won muscle-memory.

Plus there's a lot of work-flow knowledge in them there apps.
Despite being a software developer who spends a lot of time in form of the computer screen, I think the world today is pushing the internet and computers onto kids that are too young. It would be increasingly disappointing if kids keep becoming more socially awkward in person by living on the internet. The internet has done marvels in destroying my focus and I have not been using only since the end of high school, not from 4 or 5 years of age.

Although this digital social movement is convenient it also scares me. I'll finish of with a quote from Russian a kids cartoon, "Instant messaging, allows you to communicate with others while at the same time be completely alone."
I always thought something like that ought to be better integrated with development. Threat modeling should, ultimately, dictate not only input validation, but also application deployment and architecture.

However, I am not sure how best to do this without falling into the rabbit-hole of type systems, and semantic consistency of programming languages. Not to mention the arduous task of compiling "semantic signatures" of system libraries, OS facilities, known 3rd party application limitations/bugs, protocols, in addition to "business rules" that dictate how the application is used.

Maybe one day, when systems software is generated by an Eclipse plugin, and the stubs, with unit tests and design-by-contract guards sent off to minion coders to fill in the blanks. In the mean time, anybody attempting to formalize this seriously risks becoming a theory-weenie, working in a "perfect formal system." For now, ad-hoc reigns.
Microsoft also removed the UAC prompts in some cases in Windows 7: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/02/the-curious-ta...
Toward the end the author says:

"Simplicity" is a relative term, and perhaps inapt; try "convenience", which has more useful connotations.

The lifestyle he describes and the programming style you describe are both, in the final analysis, maximally convenient (ceteris paribus). While not as catchy as "minimalism," I think convenience maximization (or time-debt minimization, as Patrick McKenzie might say) is a worthy objective. Perhaps call it "enlightened laziness" for that added sparkle.
Bad move for both Microsoft and Adobe => Please, yes.
You don't do graphic design, do you?
Tiny Core offers a complete Linux solution in 11MB
Apple doesn't license PDF from Adobe even though it is part of OS X's native graphics renderer.

“The Quartz renderer and the PDF interpreter that Apple ships with Mac OS X are built with Apple code, with no external licenses, by Apple employees. Adobe just publishes a specification for how it’s supposed to function. This gives Apple considerably more flexibility with regard to what Quartz and the PDF interpreter can be used for.”

http://www.prepressure.com/pdf/basics/osx_quartz
indicative reaction of the HFT algos -- ahem, I mean Waddell & Reed.
"Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, recently showed up with a small entourage of deputies at Adobe’s offices to hold a secret meeting..."

Ballmer's not that dumb, is he? Sounds like posturing for Apple / Google.
I assume that Microsoft is making some money on Office for Mac. They aren't developing that product for charity. I don't see any reason for them to kill off development for the Mac, especially if they acquire Adobe.

Microsoft could use some help in the mobile market, though, so I can believe the idea of those two companies joining forces to make some headway there.
> It plays on everything mobile, plays native in many browsers, and plays in Flash everywhere else.

H.264 seems to be the most widely supported format today, if you don't get screwed by the whole patent mess. A significant class of users do, though, if only because they use OSS browsers that are never likely to support a royalty-encumbered format. And of course, if you're distributing H.264 videos you probably need a lawyer one way or another.

As for customisation, Flash offers all kinds of possibilities that HTML5 video just doesn't, from custom controls to copy protection. Some people might not care, but they're probably the same ones who object to table-based layout and then expect you to write 20 lines of CSS and import three different IE-specific stylesheets just to get a trivial layout. Check out past comments from people who work at places like Google/YouTube.
Apple has been able to create pro level software for both audio and video editing industries. If Adobe/Microsoft scraped its mac line of products, I bet Apple would have a competing product out in 12 months that graphic designers would flock to.
I don't think Microsoft is too eager to have another run-in with the FTC.
Pretty much exactly what you'd expect from 99designs; rounded corners, gradients, stylized typefaces, and ~250 logos repurposed from regional IT consultancies. Not one genuinely new take on the identity; nothing evocative of the brand (except the ones that [urk!] used blue jeans for the 'A'); nothing that sets up a logo system they can use across all their brands. A lot of logos that could interchangeably be applied, today, to SAP.

But this has nothing to do with 99designs. You don't go to 99designs looking for a new identity system for a famous global brand. That's exactly the kind of work that should be done by a Wolff Olins or a Pentagram.

A lot of these are better executed than the logos for, say, Twilio or Heyzap.
I decided to support Greenpeace in the hope that they will keep up the good work of monitoring and evaluating consumer electronics companies. I am very interested in consumer electronics, and I have found noone else doing the work that Greenpeace does in this field.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/toxics/ele...
Great job. Who did the design for your page?
US offenders unmonitored as tagging system fails
US Sex Offender tracking system fails when it reaches 2 Billion records.
Faster Web Development With Virtual Machines at deviantART