skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
While I, too, think Thiel's ideologies are rather nuts, I don't see any virtue in writing a hit piece about him, which is what this article basically is.

There must be something more worthwhile for journalists to write about than criticizing eccentric billionaires about how they choose to spend their money. Especially if all he's doing is investing in startups and undermining the middle class "stay in school" prejudice--as if watching generations of college drop-out billionaires wasn't enough to do that by itself.

"Do you create anything, or just criticize others work and belittle their motivations?" --Steve Jobs
I never said the only motivation people have is personal greed.

Taxation is literally a mugging. And you are in error to assume that governments cannot exist without mugging. Businesses provide services and charge for them. A government could do this as well.

don't speak for libertarians if you aren't one. If you are one, you've failed to apply the zero aggression principle.

You also seem to fail to distinguish between using violence defensively against an agressor, which is moral, and using violence offensively to steal from someone (eg: taxation) which is immoral.
Regardless of how anyone feels about Thiel or his political ideas, this piece is nothing better than an amateurish attempt at character assassination.

"A basic feature of the venture capitalist's worldview is its narcissism"

WTF? I always thought Slate set the bar higher than this... guess I was wrong.
Judging from this FaceTime app and the new iLife apps, it looks like there will be all sorts of new iOS-like UI goodies for Cocoa 10.7 developers to use.
Project Citadel: a Stanford user study to determine how people learn to program
You can tether the iPhone in the USA as well. You just have to pay AT&T for the privilege.

We'll see how expensive the tethering is after we have carrier-vs-carrier competition for the iPhone in the USA.
Buy our shirts so we can have other people make shirts for less money. But only 10%.
Censorship is censorship even if it's possible to get a thing through some other means. For example, if a library banned books by Mark Twain, yet you could get it from another library or from Amazon, or in another country, most reasonable people would still call that censorship. If all the governments on Earth got together and outlawed Mark Twain, that would be censorship even if in theory you could fly to Mars, and buy/possess/read Mark Twain there.

The danger comes partly in the so-called tyranny of the majority. Just because the majority prefers something over the minority doesn't necessarily mean it's right. Also, just because the iOS App Store has a heavy-handed approach to adult content and yet it's doing well financially, it doesn't mean (1) that it couldn't do even better if it didn't have the heavy-handed approach, and (2) that all markets/channels should adopt the same approach. Those conclusions just do not follow, in my judgment.

Also, while Apple does many smart things, they are not perfect. I would not rule out them doing something you or I might consider as monumentally stupid. They are human. They make mistakes, and they have a different perspective, and their interests are not always aligned with ours.
Ok, you caught me - I was exaggerating for effect. Nonetheless, this is a real problem for OSX security - I'm happy looking at the md5 to double-check etc etc but my granny? She thinks the internet has gone down when she gets a popup because "I can't get on to Yoohoo" (which means in granny-speak: this window is obscuring my web-based mail client).

Remember, OSX is mainstream now. And mainstream is not sourceforge/github/aptitude/macports
I guess next will be iAds availability for desktop Apps? I am not seeing anything about Free apps in the description of the Mac App Store, but free with iAds makes sense.
I'm having a hard time imagining how this whole thing works with a multi-user Mac. Right now, every user account has one iTunes account associated with it, such that different users own different iOS App Store apps. Does that mean that the Mac App Store will only install apps per-user? It didn't seem to suggest that (they said that the app licenses are "per computer", though they also called them "personal.")
They'd better streamline the DRM then - XCode/submitting drives me crazy!
Ah, good point. HD TVs are often (usually?) 1366x768. I guess they just picked that to provide room for chrome as you suggest? Seems an odd reason to go with 1366 and not 1360, and for video you'd think they'd promote using fullscreen anyway...
Dozens killed by incorrectly placed acupuncture needles
MMF? Minimum is smaller than you think
Or compared to an Intel Atom, which is the typical processor for netbooks.
That's "Don't Be Evil," actually. I think that's a pretty important distinction in tone.
I especially don't upvote humor that is nothing more than social signal flashing. If your "humor" boils down to "Hurr hurr, them folks sure are teh dumb where we are teh smartz!", expect a downvote. That's toxic stuff, regardless of the target.
My favorite feature of FaceTime for the Mac: it stays full screen even when you tab away to do work on another monitor.

FaceTime is now my preferred video conferencing software.
Most of the hacks in that guide assume that you don't care about readability or even portability to a certain extent. It certainly isn't everyday that you need to optimize your code at that level, but in some instances it could be useful (for example trying to reduce delay in a real-time program.)
I love how you just made up a term and then claimed that using the word wrong is justified because you made up a different term for the correct definiton.

Of course, you've never opened an economic texbook in your life.

I also love how you claim that my references to history are ideological assertions, then you make a broad and profoundly ignorant ideological assertion as a counter argument, except that, of course, you don't make an actual argument, you just say "many people believe".

Many people believe there is a good, that's not proof that its true.

You are a fucking ignorant socialist, and it is consequently no wonder that you are so dishonest as well.

It is fucktards like you that make hacker news (and any "social" news site) not worth participating on,..... because there are just too many ignorant, low intelligence people downvoting those who bothered to learn something and who bother to think.

Just in case there's any question of our relative positions here.
Good spot! In the deep dark recesses of my memory I'm fairly sure Apple applied for a patent on desktop iAd integration...
Please tell me you have a signed contract.

If you do, stick to that and tell him if he has any problems with it, he can speak to your attorney.

If not, suck it up and give him his money back. Maybe it's not "fair" to you, but he's being an ass and it's worth $150 to not have to deal with that, and you can consider it lesson learned about why you should always have a contract.
How the New 11-inch MacBook Air is Not the New 12-inch PowerBook
3 Reasons Why Silicon Valley Won't Become the Detroit of Green Cars
IT Can't Ever Go Back; What Will It Look Like Going Forward?
Well I guess there's two issues at play here:

1) Is it due to cultural reasons that Britain isn't producing young tech entrepreneurs

2) Are British young tech entrepreneurs going abroad to start companies.

I think my argument refutes the first but supports the second point. While there are young tech entrepreneurs in the UK (Mashable for example was started by a 19 year old, numerous indy gaming studios are led by 20-somethings) a lot of the more talented ones who are aiming at global consumer markets are clearly head abroad.
Google Chrome 9 Build Starts From November
Looking at it another way, most companies would sell one of their vice presidents to figure out a way to get 50% more business. This could be an easy route to increasing revenue.
I don't see any virtue in writing a hit piece about him

Or indeed submitting it to hacker news and fellow hackers up voting it the front page.
Looking at it, am I wrong in thinking that I should remove all the apps I can from my dock? It seems like launch pad takes over the app selection part and the dock will then have only the running apps.
all used.
Why we don’t have comments enabled; The TechCrunch comment crisis
"It's also portable to when there is a version of FaceTime for Android/etc. They had originally claimed it to be an open standard."

Android 3.0 (Gingerbread) is rumored to gain support for the same protocol used in the desktop version of Google Talk: Jingle. Jingle sounds a lot like FaceTime, I wouldn't be surprised if the two are compatible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingle_%28protocol%29

No word from Apple so far, but I recall them saying that they would share the code with whoever wants to implement it, which isn't quite the same as open sourcing it.
startupsatwork.com ?
Yes, you could go on — to include Apple.

Apple brands itself as "different" and progressive, using '60s counterculture icons, then turns into the most prudish schoolmarm imaginable and bans any app that could offend anyone — including a Pulitzer-winning political satirist, and any book-reading app that doesn't explicitly block you from reading the Kama Sutra. I swear I am not making that second example up.

Apple proceeds to promise developers that adult-oriented apps will be accepted once parental controls are in, accepts a bunch of them at that time, then retroactively removes all of them from the store with no recourse for the developers. Apple also arbitrarily rejects apps (much more viciously than Google rejects Web pages — Google around and you'll read horror stories), and kept Google Voice in approval limbo for more than a year.
You know what this garbage reminds me of? A book entitled "Bright-Sided" by Barbara Ehrenreich in which she talks about the dangers of obsessing with positive thinking and the American positive-thinking movement.

Can you really advise anyone in this economy to quit his or her job just because there's something not to like? Will you find your loved one, or "soul mate," simply by doing the things you love?

It's dangerous thinking like this that leaves one ill-prepared for the realities of life -- it's hard. Life is hard. Life isn't fair.

Lear to take the bad with the good. After all, we can't appreciate good health if it wasn't for the occasional cold or cough here and there.

Go ahead and live your dream and wear your passion, whatever the hell that means, but don't forget that things don't always work out as planned. Be prepared for that.
Now they need to just un-taper it, and fill the resulting space completely with battery. 40hr battery life MacBook.
You know, if you asked me this 2-3 years ago, I would have said definitely no. But they have been mostly (they were few incidents) off-hand. I honestly don't see most other company doing it.

If it weren't for the link at the bottom of the page, outsiders wouldn't even know that reddit is owned by Conde. I say, they definitely deserve some kudos.
They make billions for some time, then all their profits are wiped out by some "black swan". Fortunately, our governments are here to save the day...
I wrote a post about this a while back:
http://dangrover.com/2010/05/29/indie-developers-and-crossin...

When I speak of the triumph of the app, I don't mean it as a synonym for
"program." That definition has become archaic.

I'm talking about "the app" as the unit of software in popular perception.
It is the monad. It is the atom. It is the cell. It is the brick.

Software is abstract. An app is concrete.

Apps obey basic laws. You can install or uninstall their functionality
completely. Apps are indivisible. Apps do not come with other apps, they
stand alone. Apps do not touch other apps' data without being allowed.

In short, the term "app" could best be defined, more broadly, as the
finest, most granular level of control over the computing experience that
most users can consistently and comfortably exercise.
No, the core of a stock exchange resides entirely in RAM. Everything is reset once a day (overnight for stocks, immediately after regular hours for futures), and brokerages are responsible for resubmitting long-lived "good 'til cancelled" orders each day before the session begins.

Despite being RAM bound it's easy to parallelize because each stock is its own isolated exchange, so they can be distributed across hardware in proportion to the average volume in each stock. In other words, it's localized but embarrassingly parallel.

The only traditional databases are for reporting purposes e.g. who traded with whom and are append-only as far as the core exchange code is concerned. The reporting database is coupled through the same firehose feed that you can get as an exchange member, albeit with more redundancy. There are also access control systems that only come into play when you first open a session, and lots of other moving parts each with their own task. For example, if you lose your connection to the exchange you can ask a certain (non-core) server to replay all the events that happened from a given point in time in order to catch up. These, too, would be listening to the main event stream and spooling to disk, but the central exchange processes are RAM-only.

How do they handle machine failures? That's harder to speculate on from the outside, but if I were them I'd be running the same exchange in parallel on 2-3 machines. I don't know how it could be done without serializing the incoming order flow to make sure that each machine sees the same order of events, but it's not impossible.
Calling me a moron, out of the blue, because we disagreed in another, unrelated thread? Classy.
Y6AEH9WPTFNM. Grab it quickly before someone takes it. :)
:O

Cohabitation: it could be fatal! Best to be avoided.
I would bet it still installs stuff in /Applications and just has a per user preference for showing the arrangement of the apps in launch pad.
Negative -1? Really? Voting system is broken. I recommend for the Nth time that only trusted admins be allowed to take any piece of content down below 1 point. Right now, if any particular user simply disagrees with a given comment, they have the power to penalize and reduce another user's karma. Not because the user said something rude, trollish, juvenile or "evil", but merely because they might disagree. That to me is a broken mechanism. Please let's change this. Think HN will be the better for it.
Adding LOL next to a pretentious statement like, "the Valley is an order of magnitude closer to being self-aware" adds to the conversation that I think it's a silly statement. I didn't think more words needed to be written to get that point across.

But, you're clearly in the majority, so point made. No more LOLs from me. I'll explain myself fully from now on.
Maybe, they didn't realize that it was a hit piece, like me? ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1812956 )
Ask HN: Scenic, Remote, wired locations?
I'd like to spend some time working from a beautiful place. The only problem is, most beautiful places don't tend to have very good Internet connections. Any suggestions for remote, beautiful affordable places to spend a month or two?
Humans will be able to back up their brain
The first update with some of the most requested features is here. Have fun!

http://webdesktoplife.com/post/1360939954/first-update-for-j...
Well, I flagged it. I probably should have mentioned that in my initial comment.
It doesn't sound like your manager understands what you did.
I'm wondering if that just implies a lower resolution camera than what is found in the Macbooks/Pros
The new version has email sharing. Thank you!
I may be remembering incorrectly, but I thought booting worked from USB, then Apple removed that option for some reason, probably technical, and now it looks like it came back.
Not to mention Google Docs...
So that's what the edition is all about? Order software icons and you get a new major version of an operating system?

Comparing XP to Windows 7, there are really awesome reasons why I should make the switch. Improved performance, graphics, the pin bar, windows search, easy network management and a plethora of other useless/useful features.
Here is Patri Friedman's response:

http://seasteading.org/blogs/main/2010/10/19/seasteading-an-...

The article is largely ridiculous. Keep in mind that Slate is getting upset about twenty more dropouts. And that's assuming that the second-order effect isn't positive. If more independent people know that starting college doesn't preclude them from getting funded, that could increase college attendance.

The rest is largely not worth addressing. Weisberg's definition of maturity seems to be agreeing with him; donating to Libertarian causes is thus immature, while spending money on public schools--a bold experiment!--is mature.
I hope you are correct.
Interesting idea. They certainly could stick a lot more battery in there if they un-tapered it.
There is also a method at the end of the mail (in the Notes section) that details a method of using a SUID binary that you don't have read access to.

TL;DR

1. cause STDERR to block

2. run the SUID binary in the background in a way that triggers ld to try to write to STDERR causing it to block.

3. Replace /tmp/exploit with your binary

4. eliminate the blocking condition on STDERR.

5. ld will continue on using the $ORIGIN value.
Looks very nice, but two things keep it from being a contender for my next portable purchase:

1. Glossy screen. That's a show-stopper. The whole point of a portable for me is that it is usable wherever I am, not that I can take it to where it might be usable.

2. Price. $999 is not that bad for what you get, but it pales in absolute terms to current netbook prices. And said netbooks are available with matte screens. They also usually have 3 USB ports (though I seldom use more than 2).

Still and all, very nice.
I wonder how this simple interface -- which looks awesome! -- integrates with the complexity of Mac OS X, both the good (unixy bottom layers) and bad (long start-up time, error-prone interactions between drivers, network services, etc.). In other words, is it an iPad with the start-up time of a Mac, that sometimes pegs my CPU collecting file-system metadata? Or a Mac with less BSD and more iOS? Hopefully neither.

Another question -- is there a "low end" in Apple's world? Are they building an ecosystem that cheap PCs won't be able to participate in? What about old Macs? It would be ironic if my parents had to buy a fancy new 64-bit Mac in order to have a more iPad-like experience when they share photos with me.
Is Slate always this biased?

Calling Glen Beck a libertarian, and saying things like "ugly side of Silicon Valley's politics," make it so obvious, this can't be taken seriously as objective reporting.
"Quit your job" is not the crux here. The crux here is "Live your life" and one way of achieving it could be quitting your job. And I think the cut-out is trying to convey the same. It actually says "IF YOU DON'T LIKE YOUR JOB, QUIT" rather than "QUIT YOUR JOB". Quitting the job or sticking to it will hardly matter as long as priorities are set straight.

Regarding the readability of the message, I think it depends on your reading frequency. I did not struggle at all. And just for the records, my native tongue is not English.
But the apple version is not your netbook. I've owned Acer Aspire's and they are cheap and shoddy plastic units that start falling apart after only a few months of use. And the keyboard is all wrong. I picked up a 13" Macbook when I started wearing through the keys on Acer, and I don't think that was wasted money.
I'm not sure he's said anything terrible. Thiel claimed that women and minorities are more liberal, and thus that when they started voting, we got more liberal politicians. That's not controversial at all. In fact, voter registration drives often target minorities because it's an easier way to get Democratic votes.
As long as Apple wants people not employed by Apple to make software for their platforms, the Mac will probably remain a system developers find friendly.
I have no idea if I like this or not. I am guessing it will be a "feel" thing when it comes out.
Zed Shaw: Announcing The Oxymoron CSS Framework
Yes. The quality of answers is very high and it has strong adoption among the startup community. You frequently get people who are the experts in their field answering questions.
Portland Ten and its drive to incubate 10 $1 mil Portland startups by 10/2010
Someone that doesn't cover london/uk :(
Some of the comments on TechCrunch are really nasty. I wonder why they aren't more proactive in cleaning that up.
Facetime could become a strong competitor to Skype once a Windows client is available as the UI seems very polished and well "integrated". Now only if my parents had a Mac so I can test it out. They always seem to have issues getting video chat working on Skype/Windows.
I say this (semi-)jokingly: http://bedposted.com
Yes, I imagine so.

If you want to keep getting updates to Safari, etc., you better have the Mac App Store installed which will (coincidentally) try to get you to spend cash money while you're in there.
I'm ashamed to say I've never been anything but annoyed at that feature until now
After throwing away the computer.
Character assasination aside the key point of the article is questioning whether it's a good idea to pay 1st year college kids so they can dropout and do a start-up.

Maybe you can overlook your anger and focus on an important issue (and very relevant to this community)?
I thought all the font snobs saw Helvetica as pedestrian, and wanted us to use Frutiger or something instead....
I have three suggestions, all of which are pretty lame and very predictable, but affordable, practical and accessible:

Caymen Islands - slower pace of life, fairly wired for tax fraud purposes, easy to blend in due to British heritage

Miami Beach is pretty remote from the "real world" parts of the business-oriented United States - very little serious business going on here. Trust me, I live here! ;)

Another nearby option would be the Florida keys, which are pretty slow paced with lots of water sports. You can stay in a shitty hotel room and eat fish all the time, watching fearsome sea creatures out the window while working on your million dollar idea.
With tethering you don't get "instant on" internet.

You have to make sure your laptop is connected to the phone and that the phone is connected to the internet. The ideal solution is one where the laptop can connect to the internet as soon as you open the lid.
A little innovation never hurt anybody!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av1JPq0Qmy4
In the iphone world, publishers are mainly there to do the marketing spend and efforts. Sometimes they pay for development before release.
Oxymoron CSS Framework
I don't know. The first thing that occurred to me on viewing the warning is that Firefox is working as expected -- it is warning me about a malicious site. So why is it asking me to download updates when it appears to be working correctly? It's a contradiction. But maybe that's just me.
I wonder if this is just a more common phenomenon in the US than the rest of the World. I've met a few people with Android phones in the UK and none of them have had anything like this.

There was a case earlier this year where Vodafone issued an update which added some crap like this to peoples phones, but enough people complained that they removed it in their next update which upgraded people to Froyo:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/12/desire_android/

Maybe people in the US just don't complain enough ;)
this is interesting. I had a similar idea. How much is your pricing point for this send message site.
Seconded.

It helps to that the example is super-simple and easy to understand.