skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sorry if this sounds mean, but using this article as evidence is a poor decision. The article contained one mans opinion with no support to any of his arguments. Yelp and FourSquare finally look as good as iPhone? Dad wants a tablet so he should get a $200 Android tab? Where is this $200 iPad competitor? It's not the Galaxy Tab that was just made available in Russia for $1200. There's no ne else.

By all means teach your class Android if they want it, but don't use _this_ article as proof that they should.
A few thoughts:

1. While I haven't read every claim, they explain all the ones I have, giving their reasons for 'barely true' and the other gray areas. It usually makes sense, and is a refreshing change from binary, accusatory nature of most political discourse these days.

2. I haven't picked up any clear bias, otherwise I would have ditched them a long time ago like I do most other politically biased publications. But an experiment on their data would certainly be interesting.

3. I was going to suggest the site might be a little harder on the current president, but actually Obama is doing alright on the promises scale, so I don't know.
1. I have a white plastic netbook too that cost almost half. I don't see any cracks in it. You are arguing that a $1000+ machine can have cracks in it after a month because it's not a "premium" product. That just sounds like the bleating of an Apple apologist. Furthermore, you don't address the dead HDD, the fraying power cable, the dead earphones and the non-functional 3G on the phone.

2.
http://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/SquareTrade_laptop_reliab...
Quote and write properly please, learn to capitalise. Apple are mediocre with good product aesthetics (I'll give them that, although see below) and excellent PR and an ok-ish window and application manager (which has nothing on apt-get) they whacked on top of existing open source. They may be big now but it took an emergency investment from Microsoft to save them, and even then it took masses of open source software (and a few iterations of OS X) before they had anything passable to run on their doddering hardware. Also, as you sound like an Apple fanatic who notoriously get these things wrong, I'd point out that the mouse was taken from Englebart window manager concept was taken from Xerox (in addition to the OS from BSD and Webkit from KDE). There are also posts showing Johnathan Ive plundered product designs from the past. So the innovation is paper thin, the engineering is massively taken from elsewhere, some of the product design is taken too and the reliability is mediocre as proven by the stats.
We insist that software should, for any input, either accept and work normally (if the input is valid) or reject and fail gracefully and safely (if the input is invalid). I'm not yet convinced that applying this standard to engineering projects will find a much better success rate than applying it to software has found.
What di you make of the DeBeers 10 year diamond monopoly? If all the supposed monopolies out there, this seems the hardest to debunk. I read one economist say they were really a cartel with government protection, but he didn't cite any evidence. DeBeers seem to have controlled the trade through their own shrewdness. Only point I can think against it is there's nothing to stop people reselling diamond rings so it's wrong to say they control the market.
Brendan responds on his blog to set the story straight: http://brendaneich.com/2010/10/should-js-have-bignums/
> Is our memory so shallow as to forget the anti-trust methods that brought Windows to dominance? It wasn't because the market wanted it, it was because that's what was crammed down the throat of the market.

Yes, that came along eventually, but might I suggest a read of "20 years of high tech marketing disasters"? The author suggests that Microsoft came to dominate only thanks to other players in the market screwing up more than they did. IBM and Apple being amongst those who make the biggest mistakes.

And I do not say that as a Microsoft fan. Once they did get an advantage, they used it for all it was worth, to try and expand their monopoly into market sectors. That is what they were convicted of.
Ask HN:  Anyone know anyone on the Google Adsense for Games team?
I'm trying to get Adsense for Games set up for some friends of mine and their google group message board is a horrible way to get support!

I'd love it if someone could get me in touch with someone who could help.
True. And private gardens are superior to public parks.

Android at least has garbage collection .. native C interface, and it's open to you as your mother's arms.

If Android lacks anything, it's only a matter of time before it's fixed. The cat is out of the bag, and the OS of the mobile future is Google's as much as it's yours and mine. For every polished iPhone handset sold, there are three crappy but wide-open android devices sold to hungry minds. iPhone is the best mobile OS today, in terms of polish and usability, but Android powers devices that haven't been conceived yet!

Poor grad students in EE and CS are all over the mailing-lists, asking for help with Android ports to their cheap boards. They're ambitious, confused, tired and hungry. They don't know what they're doing .. yet. They're just making use of what they have, a Free OS that does the basics. However, said students, amateurs, wannabes and beginners number in the millions .. the little busy bees are hard at work, reading, writing, and hacking, and in five years time, when they know better, when they're more capable, when they graduate and funded, you can bet your last dime they will make this a Free Android world. Neither Apple nor Microsoft have enough money to buy people's free will and self-interest.

I said this before and I will say it again; Android is on par with LAMP and GCC in terms of impact. It's not a piece of infrastructure software, it's a fundamental right for the mobile future, and will power far more dreams than any niche or specialty mobile platform, which iOS and the others are destined to be.
I think you're greatly underestimating the impact of proper nutrition, clean water and dental hygiene. There are probably more objectively beautiful women at most state colleges than were in all of France in the time of kings.
Yeah, what a bogus argument. "What if I could give you an iPad-equivalent for just 99 cents? And if you act now, I'll throw in a free pony."
I'm a believer that in order to learn programming you first need to find a problem you want to solve. Then solve it. It really, really helps if there is someone who you can ask questions of. But it's not absolutely necessary.

Which language you pick is less relevant than finding the right problem to give you the motivation to want to learn.
Blame Your Interview Process First

Maybe it's the dogmatic zealotry, but it seems like 9 out of 10 programmers just repeat what they hear to be common wisdom so that they don't stick out like a sore thumb. Who would want to be one of these mythical programmers that cannot program? Who wants to be called "dead weight" and cast out of the group? Who would ever admit to being one of these fabled creatures?

We programmers need to stop being so nasty and elitist. Programming is hard and I'd be impressed if you could write down a working solution to a toy computer science problem you probably slaved over for months in university on a napkin in 10 minutes. You should go on Jeopardy. You'd make a killing. I can't do that; I don't have a mind for trivia. We need to stop entertaining our egos and thinking of everyone as "dead weight." We can all stand to improve the code we write. We should be encouraging one another and learning together.

We don't "interview" people anymore. We "screen" them. I suspect it has something to do with the elitism in the industry as well as the inherent anxiousness and dread of interviewing people you don't know. It's become a terribly broken process, yet it seems precious few people such as the OP realize this.

We could do something about this. Here are some tips I have from my experiences:

1. Know the person's name before they walk into the room. Don't shake their hand as you look down at their resume to figure out their name. At least make it look like you put thought and care into who you invite into your office for an interview.

2. Don't use a white board or a pad of paper. A select few eccentric programmers have ever actually sat down and wrote out a program on paper. The tools of the trade are debuggers, compilers/interpreters, and text editors. If you want to see how they approach problems, tell them to come prepared with code samples to share or something. Make sure they're aware that they'll be talking about their solution, the tools they used, etc.

One last thing (and a bit of a shameless plug), I think software can be used to ease some of the pain of the hiring process. I'm working on a project to amalgamate meta-data from repository analysis tools and social networks into a single candidate profile that should give you a pretty clear indication of their skills and abilities. The idea is that you should only invite people you are interested in hiring into the interview. To be able to do that you need to know as much about this person as you can and be comfortable that you have an accurate picture of their abilities and work history. The volume of resumes can make this hard... why not automate it?

Just sayin'
I believe they will 1-up the iPhone keyboard with this:

http://blindtype.com/
The actual model for book prices is a reverse-auction: prices start high, then drop over time.

However, thanks to the evolution of printing technology, the auction only hits a few (typically 2-3) price points, and they're geared against physical format -- hardcover, A format paperback, C format, and so on. So consumers confuse the reverse auction process with the cost of a physical product.

To make matters worse, between 45% and 75% of the cover price of a physical book in a bookstore goes to the distribution chain -- bookshops and wholesalers (not the publisher or author). The chains do deep discounting for commercial reasons of their own, e.g. price wars with each other, special promotions, need to get rid of old stock to make room for new, and so on.

Thus, the actual price the publisher and author get for a book may bear little or no relationship to the price the consumers are charged for it in the shops or from Amazon.

(EDIT) People in this thread are making the common mistake of assuming the publishing industry is structured this way for some reason. It isn't. Things just happen this way because they're the sum intersecting set of business practices that didn't result in someone going bust at some point in the past 200 years. And they're locked in by contracts, established processes, and custom. This isn't a modern industry like software development: it's an ancient set of practices that have evolved over time, and many of its patterns reflect obsolete constraints that no longer exist.
This is fairly impressive, I'm eager to try it out. Now, I'm surely nitpicking, but isn't the name a bit misleading?

You know, jQuery (not mobile) is not a UI framework, maybe 'jQuery UI Mobile' would be a better name.

Just saying.
"If you're developing from a local file system (i.e. not a web server) you'll need to edit your Flash security settings. Select "Edit locations" > "Add location" > "Browse for folder" and select the the folder that contains your HTML files."

'nuff said...
Relative status has its benefits when seeking a mate.
This is a couple months old, and part of a long line of stories of "low-cost laptops" coming out of India that haven't been exactly as advertised.

Previous versions have been rumored to sell for $10 or $20, though the price could only realistically be reached through government subsidies. There have been prototypes supposedly developed, though details on specs have been sketchy at best.

For me, I'll believe this when I see it.

[EDIT] criticism: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/hardware/Why-In...
>>>E-books are more useful to me than paper books

Thing is, most people just read them. They don't need to search through them or even highlight. It's entertainment. It's only when we enter the realm of non-fiction -- and specialized non-fiction, at that -- can you make some sort of case for that argument. But even then, try arguing with someone that a pop star biography should be priced higher than other pop fiction books because they can "search" in it and be met with blank stares. Which I would agree with!
That seems like an unfairly contrived example.

Even so, you should be using a real debugger anyway at this point, not printf debugging. Stepping through tight code like that and observing some watches is very easy in a client-side debugger.
I am actually surprised Apple would charge developer fees for academic purposes. Wont they be much better of creating future developers for their ecosystems, as compared to getting their wallet fatter by $120/student?
Does it bother anyone else that piracy would force an arbitrary low price point for books?

Books are actually a great example of this problem.

Authorship is much less of a lifestyle decision than musicianship (commercial musicians have to practice and gig, for instance). That means authors don't have to commit themselves to a career of writing; they have more of an option to write or not write.

Meanwhile, books are a notoriously bad deal for authors, most of whom apparently earn sustenance wages for their efforts. So there's already little incentive to create them.

Search back through the archives of HN for the comments asking 'patio11 to write up his marketing-engineering insights, and pay close attention to his "are you nuts why would I waste my time doing that" responses for a vivid example of this.

Piracy is preventing the market from establishing a real clearing price for books; it's creating whole categories of books that simply can't be sold effectively, because once priced correctly, the incentive to steal the book is too high.

(Meanwhile, Neko Case is going to keep putting albums out whether they're pirated or not, because she's pot-committed to being a musician.)
things I am most excited about

- data attribute support- now I can ditch my third party plugin. but i am curious- does this mean all current .data usage will now be tied to attributes? there were scenarios I was explicitly using data instead of dataset (for attributes)

- just started getting on board event based response systems (global listeners, overriding events, etc) as a way to help extensibility and minimize dependencies ... and I think the namespaces will help me organize a bit better. i suppose I will see at the time.
Just saw that on TCE. Downloading now to check-it out.
The SBU also features front, rear and side energy absorbing zones, these are commonly referred to as your knees, elbows, face and butt. – http://focusdesigns.com/design/

That design page is a nice read. (Though I feel a smacking is in order for their conflation of voltage and power.)

Initially the square tube frame made me think "garage welder", but after 5 looks it says "I have one wheel, but I am not what you think of as a unicycle."
> I don't get why humans mourn the death of people who die at >80

Because we wanted a little more time with him? Because we don't have enough geniuses?
Have you tried Swype?
No, they don't need Opera. It is basically a webserver (with js) in a browser - you enable unite, enable file sharing and copy a operaunite.com url to a friend and that's it. Why don't you try it :)
The Business of The Social Network
Chess and checkers. I find it to be quite engaging and extremely satisfying to beat an opponent over the Internet on my GNU/Linux computational device.
You can set Tasker to trigger silent mode based on specific calendar events if you go to State -> Calendar Entry.

There are a number of ways you can trigger it:

1. You can have it be silent if your calendar indicates you're busy.
2. You can create another calendar called "silent" and have it be silent for all events in that calendar.
3. You can set the location of the calendar entry to "Silent" or have it trigger for specific locations.
4. You can have it trigger for entries with the title "Meeting" or "Movies"

Then, you can add an exit task that sets it back to your default settings when the event is over.

A slightly more advanced/complicated approach, but closer to what I think you want, is to write a script using the Android Scripting Environment that shows a dialog where you can enter how many minutes you want silent mode to be enabled. Then have it wait until x minutes have passed and then disable silent mode. You can then set Tasker to run that script for a specific condition, such as long pressing the search button.
The limiting factor is the size of the room it takes place in. I think they hold it in the largest room they can obtain for minimal cost.
"Women managers make 81 cents to a man's buck, according to a report released Tuesday from the Government Accountability Office... Many studies, including the GAO report, control for such factors as job experience and gender preference for different jobs to make a fair comparison of wages." - http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-women-managers-2010092...

"Once you control for factors like education and experience, notes Francine Blau — who, along with fellow Cornell economist Lawrence Kahn, published a study on the 1998 wage gap — women's earnings rise to 81% of men's" - http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1983185,00.ht...

"You can control for all you want to control for, and the gaps remain," - http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/women-intensely-dissatisfie...
Dear sir,

Would it possible to get CNAME nan.ww.com -> nan.bitfreezer.com ?

Thanks!
At the same time that person could search a digital textbook to avoid wasteful hours of page flipping. I think there are cases where it makes more sense to charge more. I could take a larger course load if the difficulty of finding the information in my textbooks were removed.
This serves no useful purpose other than to pump up his ego. As much as some may dislike it there are valid reasons for having secrets and protecting them. WikiLeaks' last document dump endangered lives, what will this one do? I find the involvement of mainstream media like the NYT to be disgusting and bordering on treason.

I am not opposed to exposing abuses, but a massive dump like this isn't about exposing any specific issue. I hope it ends up being a flop like their so called 'collateral murder' video ended up being. But given the size of this leak I can't help but think there could very well be real collateral damage from it.
Microsoft's Vision of the Future (Parody)
Why do you think that?

Personally I write all my makefiles from scratch. I'm always baffled by other makefiles though. They always look so huge and for some unknown reason just overly complex.
I'm afraid that I would be riding it, the battery would die, and then I'd fall flat on my face.
So, Charlie, let's stipulate that the current market for books does a lot of stupid things based on the historical entry costs for new publishers.

Putting that aside, in the brave new future where StrossCorp publishes all Stross-approved titles: do you envision pricing according to a small industrywide set of price points, and, in particular, adhering to a fixed "ebooks cost $9.99" price?
EDIT: Since a number of people asked, the ad was "Database startup looking for C++ programmers".

Btw., our pre-screening per-email test is to write the in-place remove_char() function which was posted here on HN a couple of months ago [10 LOC], and to write an instrusive stack [50 LOC]. People usually get them wrong but get it right the second time, when I explain what the point is.
You might want to put that code in a site such as http://pastebin.com/ and link to it instead.
Egads, this is a problem that is still being solved?

I think the only reason for this is no one expected us to still be using FUCKING UNIX at this point in history.

(Seriously... Open does not mean Good, will the OSS community ever 'start fresh'?)
They weigh virtually nothing.

They automatically remember your place.

You can get a new one by clicking a button.

Those are bigger advantages than the CD had over casette tapes.

In a lot of ways, many of them relevant to my mom, paper books suck compared to e-books.
The author complains about the cost of an ebook out now when compared to a paperback that isn't being released until March of next year. Ignores shipping costs that make the book more expensive then the Kindle version.

Nothing to see here.
You can probably hack something out from tutorials, books, etc... but it won't be good. It'll work and seem impressive, but you might be surprised by security holes or server outages. Dealing with those issues will teach you other things... but it takes a certain amount of thick skin to learn in such a "trial by fire."

If it's your own time/money -- go for it.

However, mastery of anything demands sacrifice and dedication. If you want to go beyond practical application and become really good at something where you can create and contribute new ideas; it will take you years of work and study. You will have to crack open text books, take notes, read source code to old operating systems, review the important academic papers, constantly hack on new projects, and spend a lot of time developing poor vision, lower back pain, and RSI. Learn to fear the outdoors and make sure you find a partner who'll remind you to take care of yourself and stop sitting in front of the computer so much.
In all fairness you are lumping a whole bunch of devices together. I have no doubt that Android will find its way into all sorts of products, much like other flavors of Linux already have. Most people have no idea that Linux is powering their network gear, web cams, etc., but they don't need to. No one thinks to themselves "wow, my microwave is using embedded Linux, I'm going to get a Linux notebook."

Apple is making the best phone and tablet os that they can. That is their goal. If it means it's also the best in the market, then they will be rewarded by people buying their products. They haven't lost because iOS isn't being installed on a printer.
Unfortunately "mst.ww.com" appears taken.

In that case, I'd like:

chocolatefactory.ww.com IN A 174.143.45.139
That's a pretty poor price-to-sales ratio, based on stock valuation theory. I guess people (again) believe that traditional metrics don't apply to dot-com companies.
It seems obvious to me that if we can be a lot more productive with a lot less human work we will have to change the way our economy works. That’s a challenge and we might very well fail but I don’t think it’s impossible. Should we succeed the elimination of the need for humans to work would obviously be very positive [+].

You seem to me a bit to quick at brushing that possibility aside. I think that it is already not true that attempts at economic redistribution have never succeeded. I know that Germany and many other European nations already redistribute money on a relatively massive scale (unemployment benefits, child benefits, and so on). My knowledge about the US is somewhat limited but I would bet that there are at least some redistributive policies in place.

[+] Barring other possible problems with AI like it killing all humans.
I was responding to this:

>I don't understand the assumption that ebooks should cost less than print books.

Typically, if I want to buy the contents of a book, due to what I said in my above comment, it seems to me that the one with less costs to the seller should be cheaper.
It's ALPHA software. They're a few months in. They're releasing early and often. I think it's great that they're releasing it now and that people have the opportunity to work on it with them, rather than waiting for them to get everything up to production (or even beta) quality.