skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"I'm not going to give them a free pass on a necessary feature in an ultra-portable laptop."

Everyone's use case is different. 3G is not even close to being what I would consider a "necessary" feature. I'm way more disappointed that there's no built-in gigabit ethernet, as I'm generally required to plug in when on-site at a client. The dongle helps, but dongles suck.
This is framed as a letter sent back through time to an earlier self.

I don't know what kind of programming the author does, but I was sending such a letter to myself, I would absolutely not say 'Its ok to suck at math'.

I'd be much more likely to tell myself:
"Don't worry so much about learning about hardware specifics - spend lots of time on abstract math, it'll come in handy all sorts of places later".
"But looks like the penny pinchers who later kicked him out of Apple probably made Steve use these black and white business card instead?"

Um, I'd get a little more Apple history under your belt before writing the commentary next time.

"I wonder who will answer that phone number?"

Since it's still the same number 30 years later, I'd guess Apple would. It's Apple's switchboard.
My first iphone game
That's shit. No-one says homepage, and hotness is not something I associate with a webpage.
Which have been available for years I would add. I had a white plastic one (without the hole in the back) in 2006. Just saying, as with most things Apple, it's not a massive innovation.
The Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2010. This is just temporary until the new adiministration can pass their tax legislation which will probably include something similar to this.
I wish they had-

It loses several major features of iChat sharing- Screensharing, replaceable backgrounds, Multi-person chat...
Mark Suster, GRP Partners, on Venture Typology
Plugging in a USB 3G Dongle all the time or carrying around a MiFi kind of defeats the purpose of having a laptop as small and portable as the Macbook Air, doesn't it?

For me, anything that is constantly plugged into the USB is an inconvenience. That's why Bluetooth was invented. USB and Firewire are good for the occasional connection.
The i3/5/7 laptop chips these days come with on-chip integrated graphics that is way below Apple's standards, and doesn't support OpenCL. Apple really wants all of their machines to support OpenCL on the graphics chip. In order to get this, they need to use an NVidia graphics chip.

For the Core 2 generation CPUs, NVidia produces a chipset with one of their GPUs integrated. For the i3/5/7 generation, Intel refused to let NVidia make chipsets. In order for Apple to get NVidia graphics in a laptop with an i3/5/7, they have to have the i3/5/7 CPU, an Intel chipset, and an NVidia graphics chip. The necessity of using 3 big, hot chips instead of two increases the parts costs, slightly increases the power consumption, makes cooling and motherboard design more complicated, and, in the case of the MacBook Air, they pretty much don't fit unless you make the machine thicker or use a smaller battery.

Until Intel can produce a decent graphics core or they decide to play nice with NVidia, ultraportables have to decide whether to have good graphics or the latest CPUs. (If, however, AMD's upcoming mobile Fusion parts end up being as fast or faster than the Core 2, this will change significantly.)
Great insights from on startups from TechStars.
So basically it looks like it's going to be a package manager on a unix-like system with a pretty front end and review from people I don't care about.
My parents until recently still sent me emails with links to "real jobs" I should apply to. :-/
How do you both prevent people from installing non-appstore apps and allow developers to develop apps? When Xcode comes with every Mac and a registered developer account is free?
I'm not suggesting it would be an evil master plan. I could easily see Steve Jobs deciding that the Mac experience would be much simpler and better if Apple reviewed all software that went on the Mac, exactly the same way he's decided that for the iPhone and iPad.
Advertising – Advertising Careers and Jobs
Isn't about time this NDA got tested in court? It seems so ridiculous that anyone can get in and read it, but no one can talk about it due to the NDA.
You could use a freemium model where registration and tracking the first two candidates is free, then you have to sign up.

You should also try to contact other HNers who were active in this space, there may be an industry related catch you don't know about. I did this regarding a freelancer site idea, and learned interesting facts. And use a service like pickfu.com to test as much of your idea against real people as possible before writing a single LOC =) I tried this with my project idea, and it was interesting.
That's a little too much FUD.

With the phone, it was a new device, and in many ways, it makes sense to lock it down.

The Mac has a 25 year legacy, and if they were to take away that choice, so many people would leave the platform. Apple might be jerks a lot of the time, but they're hardly stupid.
Ask HN: Found security vulnerability at work. rebuked. was I wrong?
Obviously this is a throwaway account.

OK, so I have a question about security testing and whether or not I crossed a line...

I work at a very small company and we have a test environment running on virtual machines firewalled off from the rest of the network running under another devs desk. I have to jump into another server first to get into this environment and the only sensitive data is our source code (all customer data has been wiped from this replicated environment).

When I read about the following vulnerability I decided to test it out on our environment:

http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2010/Oct/257

I know I'm acting like a script-kiddie because I only understand some but not all of the vulnerability but I decided to try it anyways and lo-and-behold it worked.

I e-mailed my manager and let him know of the issue and told him about the mitigation strategies mentioned in the bulletin. I was hoping to get some credit and maybe a pat on the back (even though this is a relatively low concern - requires ssh access). Instead I was told that I risked termination and I should tell someone first.

My manager did not realize that I told him it was our dev box that I tried it. Once I pointed that out again he said it didn't matter. This is on a box we are told we can test anything on because we can just roll back to an old snapshot of the machine.

Was I being too brash? Am I a total idiot for trying this? I should point out that I have sudo on every server in our environment... I was not breaking into something I am not authorized to be logged into. Security is supposed to be important at our company. I thought I was doing the right thing by finding a threat we are theoretically exposed to, reporting it, and finding a mitigation strategy.
any one else notice that the standby time on the Macbooks is substantially better than the pro's? I actually wish I had my old macbook just due to this reason. I could leave it on standby for a day or two and come back with a minimal drain on battery life.
It comes down to graphics performance. If they used an i3, they would need to use intel's integrated graphics, which are much slower than the geforce 320m. Going with the Core2 allows them to use Nvidia's chipset, which has a much faster integrated graphics chip.
Yeah, I think it's mostly the perception of people who haven't dealt with it in practice.
He offers a clue: "[...] I was surprised to discover how little math is involved in day-to-day programming, especially for a web developer."
That's true right now, but who's to say that won't change in the future. You can't run apps on iOS devices without paying $100 to get developer certificates to sign your app first.
Just chiming in to say that the website for knockoutjs is extremely well done, congrats!

Example right on the homepage, clear communication what it does, great list of examples on the other pages - way to go! :)
The least they could do is treat the MacBook Air the same way they treat the iPad. They should offer two versions: one with 3G and one without.
> One question, though: isn't instant start-up trivial for a laptop?

Only when it's sleeping, not when it's hibernating. This would be "shut my Mac for two days, come back to instant-on."
Mac OS X 10.7 Lion announced, coming summer 2011
But iChat has already done video conferencing on macs for some time, right? (Not to mention skype.) So this is different because it can also connect to iPhones, provided the iPhone user is on WiFi. Doesn't seem too useful to me.

Now, if they announced that Facetime would work over the cell network, at least that would be something new.
too bad, sounds like you deserve it
The Core 2 Duo is disappointing.

I've been holding off on replacing my Dell, hoping Apple would announce a more powerful 13" model of some sort. My Dell has been technically excellent (LED backlit display, SSD, etc), but the build quality is distractingly bad. So, I've been seriously considering biting the bullet and getting a Macbook.

As impressive as the rest of the new Air seems, it's tough to justify buying ~2008 technology two months from 2011. It's hard to believe there's not a single 13" Macbook available with a Core i5 or Core i7 yet.
angry birds shows the importance of branding.

essentially it's a crash the castle type of game which are a dime a dozen...but by branding themselves they managed to get the success they've got
It's based on whole new video standards. It's not compatible with the existing setup and would have been hard to integrate for a beta.
Finding a Place For Computer Science Education
Last time this got posted there was some interesting discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1053753
The big players have their own licensing systems, and have their own licensing deals with big customers. I don't see why they'd go through Apple. They don't need help with collecting payments, or file distribution, or bandwidth.
Are there competitioners in your field? They'd be the obvious buyers for your startup. If your software is really superior they might even consider it as a replacement for their existing software.
Nah. Outside the US, you can tether a laptop to an iPhone. You might want an iPad to be the only device you have to carry, but with a laptop, it's not unreasonable to also carry a phone. Why duplicate the hardware and the dataplan? Even inside the US, there are other ways to connect to a cellular network. Sim card support might actually be a useful feature, but it's far from a no-brainer.
FWIW, you do not need to go the Chrome extension website to install an extension. It can be hosted by a 3rd party via a simple link on any website.
Sounds like Jobs was dead-on when he accused other manufacturers of using 7" screens to stay competitive with the iPad on price.
This will be very useful, great work.
Or, your fault for being an American! You can tether your iPhone in other countries.

Well, at least you can get a MyFi.
I, for one, would like to thank Steve for saving my desktop from Mac porn apps.
Because you don't have to accept credit cards or enforce licenses? It is the least resistant path from someone's bank account to your bank account. The customer doesn't even take their credit card out of their wallet. Multiply that by the chance that they will accept your app (high), and you have good expected returns.

As much as I want to sell offline web apps to any platform, that store doesn't yet exist.
Summary: Android marketplace has more free downloads, fewer paying downloads, and requires more support.

Also, yuck:

"Another hypothesis is that I might still be disadvantaged by being Canadian. For example yesterday I received a support e-mail for someone who is usually able to purchase apps with his credit card but wasn't able to pay for my apps. The Google Checkout support site states: "The types of cards accepted through Google Checkout are based on the seller's location."

"I get a few e-mails per day about failed credit card transactions. It's possible that this happens with Apple also and that they simply hide it from us but it's worrisome nonetheless. All of this also amounts to an annoying level of e-mails and considerable amount of time spent answering support mail for stuck installations."
That is only true of the application binary interface has changed. Usually this means the developer will update the number associated with the library.

Botan is a cryptographic library, it is on version 1.8.10, however its library is at 1.8.2, which means if the application was compiled against version 1.8.3 it will work just as well with 1.8.10 as it would with 1.8.2 as none of the binary interface has changed.
So, it's actually running. You just can't see it.
I'm tempted to buy one but this is the one thing stopping me (existing MBA owner).
> For that matter, I can't really see Adobe (for example) wanting to give 30% of the cost of Photoshop to Apple.

Makes me wonder if big companies like Adobe will be able to negotiate a better price with Apple behind closed doors, in exchange for helping to legitimize the new store to both users and developers.

OTOH, if they don't jump on board, they might lose a large number of potential "prosumer" customers to upstarts like Acorn and Pixelmator.
Excellent point. Is it too much to hope that Apple will base its app system software distribution on apt?
Lots of people drive trucks, even who only really need a truck once a year.
Two things I disliked about the earlier Air was display resolution and memory. Both have been improved quite a bit. Now someone needs to check heat dissipation.
The Air comes in at $1800 with 4GB ram and 2.13GHz cpu. Apple are charging $750 just for the 256 GB SSD upgrade on the 13 inch MacBook Pro, that's a crazy price for an SSD.
My laptop isn't my main computer, so there are quite a few times where I would leave it in standby/sleep mode for even a week at a time before I notice it blinking it's orange LED to remind me to plug it back in...
Ask HN: Rate my Startup
Cooleaf-Live Healthy, Be Rewarded

Please watch our video demo at this link and provide me with your feedback via our survey questions:

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/390709/Cooleaf-survey

thanks!
My understanding is that that may be the end result, but this is a beta, so it's on its own for now.
A Cell-Phone Network without a License
Offer it for $36/year, as a customer I'd go nuts about receiving a monthly bill about a lump sum.
And offer a premium version with a little extra and quicker support for $36/MONTH :)
called the wife from the mac to her iphone... she didn't know the difference. later she called me back on facetime to the pc and it just popped up - overall not bad!
I keep thinking Apple (2000- present) is like The Beatles of my time. A streak of brilliance that will never be duplicated.
I am a poor student myself : )

To me it's actually cheaper this way. As absolute price never matters as long as you can pay it upfront. Then the long term cost per usage-time will pays off (plus better usage experience).

The same philosophy applies to shoes, furniture and other daily items.
Reminds me of Quicktime 7 vs. Quicktime X: I end up having to use both, since X is a better player, but 7 is a better casual editor.
While you are correct that almost everyone believes themselves to be "above average", the HN demographic likely is mostly above average individuals.

Also, not everyone claiming high intelligence is just arrogant or deluded. I'd estimate myself at high intelligence for fairly simple reasons - scoring in the 99th percentile on standardized tests, graduating summa cum laude, etc. I suspect a good number of HN posters have the same (or better) educational achievements I have to base our self-assessments on.
My reading is that one needs only to purchase the stock before Jan 1, 2011 and then hold it for at least five years. Gains from sale of the stock after that would then be taxed according to this new bill.
And by creating an incredibly polished, good-looking, easy to use, accessible game. Every part of Angry Birds was clearly tested and iterated on until it was perfect.

Half Life 2 is just another first person shooter, they're a dime a dozen. Doesn't mean it was easy to make.
Yes. (They already have rolled their own, why would they switch to apt?)
Have any other Canadians had trouble selling apps on Android?
I think for a large quantity of apps, that's an unnecessary choice. If your codebase isn't likely to be too large, maintaining a separate port won't be too much effort, even if you don't use some cross-platform technology. And for most "lifestyle" apps that mostly consist of a few screens, that's certainly the case. And I think for those kind of programs, the increasing popularity of Android – and especially for lower price devices – is a big boon.

If you're developing a medium- to large-size productivity app, things look quite different, and I would guess that right now the iOS "platform" would be a better choice.
I'm sure the ambiguity isn't accidental.

Linkbaiting is kinda tedious.
I think your manager is wrong. If you get pushback about it and are not getting anywhere with your logical argument, you could always counterattack by asking why there isn't a clearly defined security policy in place already (I assume there isn't, but of course you should check that before doing anything else).
Edward Tufte's impression of Windows Phone 7
Hm, will it support has_many relationships? ;-)
I think that comparison flatters The Beatles.
Revolutionary: no. Magical: yes.
Behold: The New MacBook Air [Pictures]
The future of install disks by Apple
Ah, I got the impression you were saying "why FaceTime if there is Skype".
Apt is, at it's core, a dependency engine. These apps have no dependencies- It's the whole app package.

Also- Why wouldn't they base it on the already successful package distribution platform they have for iOS devices?

In short, yes.
After all the trouble of getting Steam on the Mac, I doubt Apple will do anything to offend them or their app.
Apple products tend to have a very opinionated design.

They were probably of the opinion that the current market for 3G enabled MBA's was too small to justify adding space to the device's internals and having another SKU.
I've been in situations like that before too. In some situations I really was 'negative', and got myself out of those situations.

In other situations, I would couple the observations like "we can't get this done on this deadline" with practical options... "but if we do ABC in the next 3 weeks we can deliver XYZ." I was trying to get real options to be discussed, rather than just deathmarching. In some cases, that was met with - well, not positivity - but an understanding that I (we, in some cases) was trying to be reasonable, and generally something was worked out.

In other cases, I got what you got back "you're being negative". In those situations, it really wasn't me - "negative" was just a code word for "not on board with a magical mindset of someone who's not in touch with reality". Anyone that didn't deliver or hit deadlines inevitably had a real reason, but giving the reason was just "making excuses" or "being negative". Once I realized, I got out of those situations (been in a few over the past 15 years).

A big issue in being in situations like that - you're given impossible deadlines - when you point them out, you're being 'negative'. Then suddenly, when you miss the deadline, you're accused of purposefully not hitting the deadline, trying to 'prove your point' or playing some 'power game'. I've bee in those situations too, and it sucks (advice to anyone in those situations - get the hell out yesterday).
Know Your Customer's Motivations
pretty sure multitouch requires hardware support. The last gen non-unibody MBP is the oldest model to support most multitouch gestures (more than just two finger scrolling, which has been around for at least 4 years)
At this point it sounds like he doesn't want the files and just wants a refund. My response would be:

"I'm sorry you feel that way. As per our initial agreement, the initial deposit is non refundable, and I will not be refunding any amount to you.

Best of luck with the project going forward.

Regards,

Yourname"

Ignore the clients bigoted rant, don't take it personally. He has shown a very unattractive side to himself.

Make sure to learn the lessons of the failed project and move on.
Absolute price matters when you're paying cash. Not so much when you're doing it on credit.
Are you speculating or do you know that for a fact?
I imagine they have to re-coup the fixed costs over not many units.

But the real target isn't restaurants saving money, it's some combination of the coolness factor (this won't be hidden in a back room, it'll a part of the dining room) and riding on the coattails of the local-food-is-always-better movements.
Am not totally sure but looks like you may be confusing Symbian^1 and S40. Symbian^1 and S40 are completely distinct. Symbian^1 is also called S60 5th edition and runs on many smartphones such as N97, X6 etc. S40 is their feature phone platform. Also, with Ovi Store the app distribution model is better than it used to be. Last I heard, 2.3 million downloads per day were being made from Ovi Store. Ovi Store has the advantage of offering paid apps in many many countries though it is certainly very behind in terms of features like app updates and even basic search sometimes.
Why don't they name it MAC OS XI?
For some odd reason, whenever you ask whether math is important to programming, there is a strong correlation between the depth of a programmer's mathematical training and his belief in its importance.

There can be many explanations for this, but the simplest is that when you have a tool in your tool chest, you tend to use it, and when you use a tool, you see opportunities to use it everywhere. Whereas if you don't have a tool, you don't see the opportunities it affords, so you don't know what you're missing.

Even if my conjecture is true, this doesn't mean that mathematics is more important than some other experience a programmer might bring to their career, so I am not suggesting that the author is wrong when suggesting it isn't important. Perhaps it's useful but less important than some other skills.

I'm not a mathematician, so I don't know, it's all blub to me.
I'm not quite dead yet! Catch the Best is still kicking, though I've stopped writing blog posts.
The number still goes to Apple. Put me through to an Apple operator. Seems like an internal number maybe?
I would frame it more positively: "EA has a knack for talent retention when it comes to front-desk receptionists."
Which are all features that would ruin FaceTime.
OS X has a sandbox facility (also known as Seatbelt) that could be used. Chrome uses it:
http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/sandbox/...
I hope they they DO add a Parental control, to limit apps to Appstore only purchases. That's be Perfect for my mother, for example- It nearly eliminates the chance of Viruses and Malware, while still giving her access to all the apps she needs.
it also provides iphone-style copy protection for these 3rd party apps (the last bulletpoint on the slide was "apps licensed for use on all your personal macs").

that could be a draw to some developers.
Stocktwits Raises Series C Round
You missed the part where he said wants a "Dr." prefix before his name. I didn't do any analysis, just took the man on his word.
Feedback please? :)

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It's a subnotebook.
Where's the site? I don't see a startup, I see an idea.