skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The volunteers were self-selected so probably already did this sort of thing online, the exposure extremely short and the testees from a broad age range who are not the intended audience for these type of games.

All outlined in the article, but I restate it as it's a travesty that attention grabbing 'research' like this still gets published and worse still reported on.
For users, Macs are great. But Apple has always had a contentious at best relationship with developers. Their tone has always struck me as small developers are a pain, and they would rather have fewer developers ergo less software.

That said, I think developers should be very concerned for a couple of reasons:

1. People will automatically associated this with the iOS App Store experience, which will drive prices way down for richer desktop applications. That was my very first thought.

2. Apple will justify a review and approval process for desktop applications on the basis of something like "application security" and "keeping viruses off your Mac". They went that direction with the argument of eliminating porn, which was silly.

In the end, this closes the software ecosystem. It may work for Apple, but I'm not sure I would want to be a part of it.
Why McDonald's Happy Meal hamburgers won't decompose
My big question, will non-App Store apps be able to use Home Screen?

edit: I mean Launchpad, not "home screen"...
I believe a distinction was made between lighter-than-air craft like balloons, and heavier-than-air craft like planes and helicopters and gliders.
Apparently the Xerox Star had basic desktop publishing with a variety of typefaces in 1981, so Jobs's calligraphy course may not have been the history-changing event he makes it out to be. "Beautiful" is, of course, subjective.

http://www.digibarn.com/collections/screenshots/xerox-star-8...
The idea that language limits what you can think has been obsoleted for quite some time, see http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html for example.

'Languages differ not in what you can say, but in what you must say" -- Roman Jakobson
Or you can spread that $520 it over 20 months without interest, pay that on your monthly bill, and still get the no-contract price.

A G2 is $199 with the 2 year contract and $499 with no contract. My understanding from their website is that your first installment is due when you take home the phone, so your down payment on a new G2 would be $25.

So using nice round numbers on the prices,

24 months @ $80/month + $200 = $2120

versus

24 months @ $60/month + 20 months @ $25/month to pay off the phone = $1940

So you save $180 over 2 years, and your up-front payment is only $25 instead of $200.
I'm not going to defend the south broadly, but there are little pockets of sanity here.
It's amazing how far desktop machines have been from dragging and dropping icons to install/uninstall software. OSX was the closest to this I think, and hopefully they'll get closer? I tend to just assume now that the longer I have a desktop machine, the more miscellaneous bits of old programs will be scattered throughout the system.
So that pretty much only covers their hosting costs...
I’ve Made $216,688 From Products This Year
Would be good to see how longer training for a way more extended period of time works out.

Still, I wasn't expecting an IQ bump from playing a lot of Brain Age on the DS, but I bet many people did.
I've read it is much more like 10%
Happens when any community gets big enough.
Cracking the Facebook Code: How FB decides who is in your newsfeed.
I agree about this correlation in general -- although personally I'm a counterexample: a degree in applied math, and a strong belief that it's not particularly important to programming.

True, in programming you need to think rigorously and abstractly, and the same's true in math. However to be a great programmer you also need systems thinking, the engineering skills to use components that don't always work as advertised, understanding of social dynamics [both how software is constructed and how it gets used], etc. etc. Math doesn't give you any of these.

So it seems to me that there are other ways to learn rigor and abstraction that are at least as good a preparation for programming as math: different branches of science, law, operations research, user experience, etc. etc.
I like this philosophy of working hard on what you know even if people can't recognize you right away, and not relying on anyone to live like that.

It means that living and working with a strong will, only depending on what you know in the world, will be able to result in better results (even through hardship) than those who have to rely on others.

Thanks for sharing.
Helping Our Kids Be More Creative
I'm seriously underwhelmed here. There's four new features on that page:

The Mac App Store

Maybe this is a naive point of view, but I can't see the value proposition for third-party devs to have their software in this store. Maybe I'm wrong and it'll be huge.

Launchpad

A touch interface for a screen that isn't touchable. Anyone I know that doesn't use Quicksilver or Spotlight uses an application stack in the dock. Nifty eye-candy feature, but I'm not seeing the usability gains.

Full Screen Apps

Not bad, but there are very few applications I want to run fullscreen at all, and even fewer I want to run fullscreen all the time.

Mission Control

Exposé, except there's a spaces overview at the top. A minor feature bump. Oh, and you can access the dashboard with it.

I understand this is a preview intended to excite people who aren't geeks, but still, it just seems so anticlimactic.
Why did you change the title from "could drop" to "to drop"?
My Questions about Escapia
The current version of Flash 10.1 supports hardware accelerated video with the graphics card in the new MacBook Airs.
One drunken night and you're stuck with them for 18 years?
> BTW the Usenet still exists, even if it's not that active anymore.

GGroups has been the cause of most spam on Usenet for years. It's also sad because some of the people who aren't regular spammers think that when they post to a newsgroup via GGroups, they're only posting to that one server, and not on hundreds (if not thousands) of servers. Others think that GGroups and Usenet are the same, but not as many as the "un-spammers".

It's too bad that this is going to happen, but... I guess that's Google for you. I wish that Google would instead try to prevent some of the spam on the Usenet, and not mess about with GGroups. :(
Travel tips to European Countries: Norway
Back up http://twitter.com/notch/statuses/27965813137
Isn't this keeping-up-with-the-Joneses a second nature of all social media, not just Facebook places?
> I've never used stuff I did in my PhD, but time and time again, continuously (and I use the work correctly, I don't mean continually) I've used the stuff I learned on the way that enabled me to do my PhD.

One of the best software engineers I know has a law degree and says exactly the same thing. So I suspect that the same is likely to be true for anybody else who's gotten a PhD or other advanced degree.
I do that anyway. Apple+spacebar is how I open an application that's not already open.
Steve gave a talk at the MidVentures LAUNCH event in Chicago a couple of weeks ago. My take-aways: (i) This guy is just a kid :-) (goes to show how quickly one can build things, note to self: if reborn, don't waste time on a PhD); (ii) He is very modest and unpretentious, as far as I can see no cocky Zuck thing going on here; (iii) He also looks like Brian Johnson in The Breakfast Club :-)

He talked about his experiences in founding Reddit, when their original idea was turned down by YC.
Optimizing Data Center Energy Usage
Just makes me smile how "Full-screen apps." is a marketing 'feature' in this day and age of supposedly mature OS's.
I've used Apple as a dev platform for the past twelve years, doing mostly UNIX application development. I do not have a blog. Thank you for making baseless assumptions and throwing around childish insulting terms. It really goes a long way towards stimulating good conversation.

As a multi-platform developer that doesn't use objective-c, but still finding OS X to be a great development platform, I am very much distrustful of Apple. Why? Because of how they've conducted themselves with iOS.

Is such fear reasonable? I feel it is. Mostly because I don't see users such as myself to be in Apples current or future target market. Few to no new features target users like myself, and the iOS platform is almost hostile towards anything that doesn't fit with Apple technologies and apis.

Not only that, but iOS has been extremely successful for them in terms of income. It makes a lot of business sense that they would want to push OS X towards the same highly profitable model. I do hope that they keep OS X as open as it is now, but I'd say the mistrust is very reasonable.
John Scalzi really nailed it a few months back: "So the new hotness is a screen on which icons are used to access the programs they represent? Just like the Macintosh in 1984?" http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/07/23/todays-cane-shaking-on...

I am also reminded of Homer Simpson's "they have the Internet on computers now?"
That's a very difficult task. Can you point to those studies?
Ask HN: What do you think of my idea: choreroulette
Hey HN,
I had this idea earlier today while running. I often have an hour or so spare during a day in which I could be you know.. doing work. I usually end up trolling facebook or some other time-wasting site. I also have a lot of chores (washing my car, doing the laundry, cleaning my bathroom, etc) that go undone and could be done during these spare hours I have. I also have a bit of an issue when it comes to motivating myself to pick out and complete a chore. My soltuion to this? choreroulette. The idea behind it is that you would go to the site (maybe choreroulette.com?) If you've already signed up and filled out some chores it would display a chore at random. You could skip it and get another or complete it. That's it... That's all it does. Really really simple. What do y'all think?
All volunteers are self-selected.

Nature is the right venue. It will spur much more research which is the only way to evaluate the science.
A trained up tree planter can do between 1500 and 3000 trees a day, day in day out depending on the terrain. My friend did this for her summer and filled me with stories that I was too drunk to remember properly. Here's an reddit iama on the topic.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/d8a0t/iama_former_tree...
I'm desperately trying to think of any human activity that would substantially improve after ten minutes of practice, three times a week, for six weeks. My general inclination is to agree with their hypothesis, but testing it like this is just embarrassing.
I am in Hot Springs, AR. The farther west you go, the more remote it gets, quickly. Lots of lakes around. Some DSL, lots of Wireless 3G.

And cheap. Very cheap. Let me know if you breeze through.
Gosh, that must have been a really offensive post. Sorry.

I'd be happy to analyze how awesome this site is http://www.apple.com/downloads/ if anyone wants to have an actual discussion rather than just anonymously show vague disapproval.
I've got fond memories of Linode, as it was the first VPS I tried out. Having an always-on Linux box turned out to be a lot handier than I had anticipated, and these days I can't imagine being without a shell _somewhere_.

That said, I ran into a curious problem when attempting to run servers for a doom source port, where performance would be quite choppy at times. I never really figured out what was going on either, as their support just told me that the box my VPS was on was fine and they couldn't see anything wrong with it. I finally moved to a cheap Atom dedicated server which seemed to fix things, and now I'm evaluating a VPS hosted by interserver.net (prognosis is troubling, it uses OpenVZ and I seem to keep getting dgramrcvbuf failures under heavy server usage), but I'll always suggest Linode to people looking for a good VPS host.
Healthcare? Without debating the merits of the bill, there's no doubt that it represents a huge increase in government bureaucracy.
Color matching for web, iPhone and iPad development
I wouldn't worry too much. In order for the Mac to continue to serve as a development platform, it can't be completely locked down. They're making it clear these days that they care a lot about the app ecosystem, so there will have to be a replacement before they take away the ability to install your own apps and get at the shell.

More likely is that more of Apple's product line, and more of everyone's computing, will shift to iOs.
My Ubuntu has python2.
So they have:

1.A control in the lower left corner on the screen that let's you access your apps.

2.A screen full of shortcuts.

3.A maximize button that works as expected.

It's Windows 95!

-- wait a minute! where's my task bar?
I expect this is a precursor to touch-screen iMacs and MacBooks.
Very useful -- excellent post and looking forward to the followup!
And the Mac AppStore is not even a Lion's exclusive feature.
If that's the lock screen, it leaks a lot of real information. Yikes.
Ask HN: How to get simple gadget prototype built?
There are tons of sites where you can list a software problem and people build to write code for you, similar ones for logo and graphic design, etc. Is there a similar site where you can specify the main idea of a simple electronic gadget and have a prototype built (cheaply)?

What I need is a stand-alone, self powered Bluetooth module that will continuously transmit a simple code (to be installed in large numbers in a store). I am a software person so don't have the slightest idea how to build a prototype.
Try doing sit-ups or push-ups that much and that often. I'm pretty sure you'll improve over six weeks.

That said, more works needs to be done.
can't be serious all the time =^_^=
The "full screen apps" thing is a minor enhancement imo. Everything that was interested in full-screen already has it baked in; I never full-screened Firefox and thought "This isn't full-screeny enough; I wish OS X had native support for full-screening so that my fullscreen mode was more full-screeny."
Aitutaki, Cook Islands, South Pacific. Expensive ASDL but beautiful location, pop. 1500, all English-speaking.
As you said, when it comes to the Government, Bush turned up the heat from 120F to 212 in a matter of months. And no one is stopping it.

I'm not worried too much about Apple, but no one can contest that Apple leans towards being very controlling over their platforms.
Most people never upgrade their own laptop hard drive. I'm assuming you'll be able to take it in to have the apple store swap in a bigger storage circuit.
Nature News certainly seems to do a better job of summarizing the research and important caveats. I'm looking over the website, but I'm having trouble telling what they focus on. Do they mostly just give a layman's version of Nature articles?
Announcing The Oxymoron CSS Framework
How To: Brew beer in a coffee maker
Homepage redesign of timetracking.im
That was my point. As a developer, you lose that tier of licensing revenue.

* edit : Example, 1password is normally 39.95, 5 user family pack is 69.95. How would it be priced on the App store?
A store is not a public library. Apple is not the government.
Well, what's nice about the way OS X does it is that dragging the icon isn't a proxy for a bunch of magical installing/uninstalling. You're literally dragging the app from one location in the filesystem to another.

But I think the iOS model is good too because the abstraction is not leaky (in the same way that package managers and and installer/uninstallers on windows are)
50% seems like an obscene amount to give someone just to promote an IPhone app. Especially when having the app featured on iTunes is the best promo you can get and that's Apple's call.
How else do you expect to select volunteers? Usually, they're undergraduate students who are compensated with credit towards courses. I participated in a few experiments myself as an undergrad.

I presume that they administered a questionnaire where they asked, among other things, whether the volunteers have done this sort of thing before. From that you can divide people into an "experienced" and an "inexperienced" group, and compare their results.
No, because they want it to be one of those dedicated search products like Sphinx.

At the moment, there are two main open source products people look at when they implement full text search: Sphinx and Lucene/Solr.

I'm not a Sphinx expert, but I know Lucene/Solr quite well. One feature Solr is currently working on is called Solr Cloud (http://wiki.apache.org/solr/SolrCloud), which is a Zookeeper co-ordinated clustered Solr implementation, which should make it a lot easier to automatically resize your Solr cluster depending on usage. (At the moment you can do this, but it requires rsync scripts etc etc, and is kind of messy).

It looks to me like Riak Search is aiming for this market, which I think is a good strategy. (Note that Solr is often used as a NoSQL database, so in that way Riak & Solr are direct competitors)
Hackney Podcast - relevant, high quality local broadcasting
Good points. This far outside my field, but the largest thing that stuck out at me was how limited the amount of training was.

If I did less than 4 hours worth of free weight training over a period of 6 weeks, I would not expect to see noticeable results at the end of it.
Just wanted to share this podcast I found with HN users. Really enjoyed the pace of editing and the interesting content.

I have no affiliation, just enjoyed the most recent show!
Fire Reggie Jackson And Hire Cal Ripkin At Your Startup
It's not such a huge issue either. Most vendors figured it out a long time ago. Why should they give money to Apple for it?
> "It happens."

Absolutely. It's happened (and happening) to Android. Carriers block rooting. Carriers block sideloading. Carriers add apps that can't be removed. They swap search engines and remove the settings. Each time a change flies in the marketplace, they get emboldened.

Today, experiencing the "choice" Android promised is contingent on flawless and thorough research, with tomorrow looking increasingly worse.

But where's the earnest geek concern about the slippery slope when we talk about Android fragmentation? That ball is busily picking up speed, but we don't talk about it.

We talk about how fragmentation isn't real or isn't a big deal. Even while every tom, dick and harry lets loose their plans of an Android future that doesn't include Google's marketplace, likely won't include side-loading, rooting or half the "choice" we like to pretend separates Android from iOS.

Yet in the context of Apple --where this change would require Apple reversing momentum, against developer wishes, after having quite publicly reversed the scope-creep of 3.3.1 after developer backlash-- we seem to be unable to talk about anything else.

So while an Apple U-turn is a legitimate concern, it's still FUD to put this big a spotlight onto it for those two big reasons:

1. Recent evidence suggests, if anything, it's less-likely than ever.

2. The focus is completely out of proportion with what the issue receives in other contexts.
I'm surprised this is not getting more discussion. Are these apps going to be iOS-based or genuine OS X applications? (I think the latter.)

In the days when I used Windows, I naturally only downloaded "official" apps and avoided any sort of non-famous/non-open source shareware for years -- the spyware/toolbars/etc. are just too rampant. I have an Android phone that I use for development, and there, I too am incredibly cautious about what I download. The "open" Android platform actually prevents me from discovering potentially amazing indie software because, well, I just can't trust it.
Pending ping integration?
Help me give away 100,000 children’s books online to parents in the Military.
Bruce Schneier said recently that he's been "recognized" by TSA service members when flying in recent months, and that they have been complimentary and not confrontational. It certainly _is_ security theater, so it's nice to see someone on the inside call it like it is.

It will be interesting to see what action the TSA takes regarding this pilot. If they really force the issue, it may actually start a legitimate dialogue on actual security vs. what the TSA has been doing for the last many years.
Yeah, seems like a slow-news-day sort of article.
Apple releases new MacBook Air, OSX Lion, AppStore for Mac
sounds like nothing more than a todo list. You first have to figure out how to convince people to enter in tasks and things to do regularly, which is a problem with any todo list.
Climate change 'fraud' letter: a Martin Luther moment in science history
I would think that the point is that it's virtually losing no battery time while in sleep mode. So, if you have 5 hours of battery life fully charged when you leave the house, that really means 5 hours of the computer on, even if you use it 2 hours in the morning, let it sleep the whole day, and use it 3 hours at night.

I also never turn my MacBook off, and can use it during my commute both ways without having to charge it at work. But I'm pretty sure that tonight it will have visibly less capacity than when I finished this morning.

Sometimes, it also dies while sleeping. It sound that it wouldn't happen as much with the Air.

Overall, I already feel that my MacBook is instant-on; this is icing on the cake.
We've accidentally killed two MacBook batteries after going on vacation for a week. We now make sure to shut machines down before going, but it can be a bit of an expensive mistake if you just close the lid in the usual way.
Costa Rica or its neighbours.
I don't see how this will ever fly... your arm will get so tired!
I'd love any resources you could point to that were helpful to you when builder your recommendation engines (also, do you have links to the actual engines?). I've been going through a tutorial to understand how SVD works [1], but it would be nice to find something that will help me deal with implementation details. I thought I might just use Gensim [2] for now, but the authors of that tool themselves say that Gensim is more of a framework to learn about these things rather than a production-ready tool.

[1] http://www.miislita.com/information-retrieval-tutorial/svd-l...
[2] http://nlp.fi.muni.cz/projekty/gensim/index.html
I've always found color management both fascinating and impenetrable.

It's been predicted that there is a new wave of devices with enhanced saturation (there is a name for it - I forget), so this will only grow in importance!

I have two monitors from different brands. Even capturing a screenshot in them yields colors that are not quite the same (maybe due to one of them being slightly aging and being calibrated?).

Any good intro on this area?
> The Mac App Store

I think you're dead wrong on that one. Having a single, official, centralized place where users (and not only some of them, basically all OS X users) can find, rate and buy your product is a blessing for developers, especially smaller shops. I expect we'll see some of the "success stories" that happened on the iP* platform through the AppStore, because it gives considerable exposure to people that would otherwise probably struggle to get it. That part is probably worth the 30% cut — not so much for big brands like Adobe though.
If it also provides updates for all software, as the App Store does, it's an awesome feature. I'd say it's basically the equivalent of a Linux repo, with built-in sales.

> Launchpad

I'm not sure about that one either. We'll see.

> Full Screen Apps

I'd tend to agree. Most app I would want to run fullscreen already have the possibility to do so (Aperture, web browsers, and that's basically all I can think of right now).

> Mission Control

Agreed.
It embeds TinyLISP for the policy framework — check out the config files for the stock sandboxed daemons in /usr/share/sandbox/