skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So you mean if OS X won instead of Windows, there would be more competitors, right? Nope, there would be even less, because Apple makes it's own hardware, it would have killed off a lot of hardware companies, AMD, ATI being big examples.

And Apple is going to kill off so many hardware companies because if it wins like Windows, it's going to be the sole arbitrator of who gets to build hardware for it.

All MS wanted was for you to pay the Windows tax. Apple wants to control the hardware as well. Eg. Windows Phone 7 is a OS that various OEMs can run on different devices. iOS is basically just firmware for Apple's devices.
Luckily the base thinking skills transfer over, so learning how to program in Java/C means that the student now knows how to program irregardless of the language. Picking up a new language is less like learning a new dialect and more like learning the local slang and customs.

Except for MUMPS. Fuck that shit.
This isn't just a programming issue; it reminded me of my younger days as a freelance designer, where I would meet with many prospective entrepreneurs who would tell me something like 'I'm very good at design, I just need somebody to work the software.'

Invariably, there is more to both programming and design than meets the eye. While learning can help obviate this problem it's not a cure-all; it is also important to learn how to a.) prioritize and simplify when your reach exceeds your grasp and b.) have realistic expectations for outcomes vs. budget.

It's a good idea to learn both, but again, the execution is more problematic.
Were you forced to buy one because your school had one? Was the school forced to buy them so they could interoperate with some other system?
I didn't need to imagine a porn site sniffing anything thank you.
Just this weekend I helped remove a trojan from a friend's Win7 PC which Antivir did not detect. It put itself in the registry and autostarted. From there it set a system proxy to 127.0.0.1:40521

What it did with my friend's data, I can only suspect. But it was one of those days that I'm glad that I use different flavours of Unix since ten years. Using Windows (for anything) just seems so naive to me.
You definitely sound like someone who's afraid to quit their first job and is doing everything in their power to convince themselves that they should. Honestly the things you're complaining about you'll find in varying degrees at jobs big and small, companies established and new, whatever. Your company is probably not as bad as you think, and you probably haven't become as unemployable as you think.

But that's fine. You want to move on, by all means move on! Don't be afraid, and don't spend so much time trying to rationalize it... it's already rational. :)

It's all about reframing yourself for the next opportunity. If the next place you want to work at is a Java shop, play up your Java experience, and spend some time at night making sure you're mostly airtight Java-wise.

Not-invented-here is not a big deal. If you actually helped develop FrobbcoDHT versus simply using memcached, you can just say "Built proprietary DHT for x y z reason." It looks good on your resume. If anyone questions why something off the shelf was not used, you can either explain why something proprietary was necessary or that the company culture was not-invented-here and your manager/lead disallowed it. If you merely used FrobbcoDHT internally, just say that you have experience with DHTs in general. This isn't a big problem.

Maybe it's also been a while since you interviewed anywhere? Apply for some random jobs as practice/reexposure. You'll probably get some offers and can reboost your confidence.

I would just strongly advise you to stop focusing on your current employer so much. You have to play this mental game of "I hate it here it's ruining me my career is over" to give yourself the push to quit... but that's lowering your confidence, warping your sense of reality, and might make you come off as bitter/whining while interviewing. Just accept that you're going to leave, stop feeling the need to justify it, working on marketing yourself, work on honing a couple things depending on who you're going to talk to next, and try to work some confidence back up!
Yep. This is another feature I've been looking at implementing. Other paths:

/news
/newest
/best
/active
/classic
/bestcomments
/noobstories
/noobcomments

Any others? Email me your UDID and I'll send you a build to test.
Outsourcing our manufacturing/Technology to other countries this trend will happen time after time.
as another small-l libertarian I fully agree with you
Right, and there used to be, perhaps still are fair-sized US payments for the air bases.
Global pool of IPv4 addresses set to run dry in weeks
Modem maker accuses Comcast of squelching competition
That does sound like it could result in an improvement, but the tree would grow quite large I imagine! :) Each writer would have to read each horizontal version to decide where to continue, and I'm betting there would be multiple continuation points, too, so it would start to look like the exponential story, especially with a virtually endless supply of writers. Crowd-sourced writing is a fun idea, but I think at best it might be an activity writers do to stay creatively loose.
That post was much better than I expected.

Ideas are important (although the usually mutate in the process of implementation.) The ability to implement is important (although the tendency to go after low hanging fruit rather than what is actually needed is strong.)

The last ingredient, though, is the ability to communicate the idea and the implementation to customers/investors/users/etc. Marketing, UI/Human Factors, and Sales are often as important.
I was not saying those were ok.

I adblock wherever I can as I value my privacy. Ads also are an distraction. My desktop browser is blocking ads. I rooted my phone to be able to block ads. I switch channels or take a break when ads come up on TV.
In canvas's defense, canvas and SVG/VML are different tools for different jobs.

For a charting library, you should absolutely use SVG/VML instead of canvas. You don't need the bitmap properties of canvas, canvas doesn't scale well and you can't transform paths like you can with SVG/VML (without redrawing the whole thing).

To do face recognition, bitmap image gymnastics or build an online Photoshop tool, SVG/VML isn't going to cut it though --- you need canvas. Try making a spray paint tool with SVG/VML. Ouch! Using a canvas that's almost trivial.

Good tutorial on using Raphael though. It's a great library.
"It's funny how often we hear patent system supporters tell us that if you haven't actually gotten a patent for your invention, it's perfectly reasonable for someone else to go and patent it instead."

I'm not sure I've heard anyone say this, ever.
Appointment Reminder launches "for real" on Monday. (A cold cost me a few days from the planned schedule.)
I'm really wondering how this is such a problem for them. I've seen my share of tech resumes at this point, and I can't remember a single one focusing on being a "motivated self-starter with a passion for solving problems" or any such similar gobbledygook. One of the big benefits of a career in the tech field is that you don't have to resort to that sort of nebulous MBA-speak to get across what you know and what you can do - and most developers out there seem to be smart enough to take full advantage of this.

I'm wondering why they get so many bad resumes?
Learning to play the business game has big payoff
I think the majority of developers/startup founders have no problems sharing their idea or plan before launch date. They talk about it to attract new prospective clients, collaborators, create interest and so on. Very few operates in stealth mode nowadays.

So when you freely share your idea before launching the product you already consider the value of the idea alone basically zero, while you think the value resides all in your execution.

That's why I believe that if you have an idea you'd better be an exacutor or a sales person, otherwise there no or little value in your contribution. There's no shortage of ideas.
The combination of these two has got me thinking. Not in the Wired-style "Clearly everything will be on the cloud and we will have no need for harddrives!" techno-optimist style, but just that you pretty much can do this if you want.

LastPass and XMarks or Firefox Sync (and I think Chrome has similar) takes care of keeping your browser the same, independent of location. Dropbox can keep your important files where ever you want (up to some size). Netflicks and various music streaming services can take care of media being ubiquitous. Email and other communications are more often than not tied to an online provider.

So, what parts of your computer can't you get from cloud services if you want? Gaming still seems to be a large one, although OnLive supposedly fixes that. Large applications like Photoshop aren't necessarily replaceable by WebApps. What else?
Is that really uncommon? Where was your average "young powerful elite" a whole twelve years ago? I think that on average they were lowly grad students or undergrads a decade ago. The bounds for movement over 12 years is huge. It's a long time.
I really liked this post.
Jumping into execution/implementation, especially when we're naive about all of complexities is a valuable learning experience. It seems we're also likely to meet folks and make new friends who do understand the complexities ..and from that group we'll find our project partners.

He also makes a good point about discouraging people ...it seems we need to do more of pointing people down the path of learning, implementation and discovery.

Yoh ho ho.
Bitly News
To be fair, in the article he qualifies his title by saying that, "I think that complexity theory is on the verge of major breakthroughs of all kinds...potentially major advances across the entire spectrum of theory.(emphasis mine throughout)"

Clearly you have a rather unique idea of what "on the brink" might mean, namely that the field is on the verge of providing breakthroughs that have concrete applications. That might be a rather limiting point of view that somewhat cheapens the value of the article.
1. Forget PHP
Kinect optical camouflage hack makes you invisible
There's another option, without having to learn how to program.

Be good and make money at what you do so you can afford to pay good programmers what their time is worth, so they can make your idea happen without too much hassle.

(Disclaimer - I run a company that does just that)
I don't understand why people point to Webkit as a big Apple contribution. Basically Apple took KHTML, which is under the GPL and built Webkit out of it. It is basically forced by the license to release the source. Your point would have more validity if KHTML was BSD licensed and Apple released the source out of the good of their heart or if they built Webkit from scratch and then open sourced it. Apple basically saved a lot of effort by using KHTML and would have been sued if they didn't release the source.
I ask because initially I tended to look at the universe as a really large bitmap - what is the smallest observable particle - thats our bit, everything else is a bitmap.

As I looked at the original post however I keep thinking that the purpose of physics is to determine standard rules and definitions that work across the entire scale.

That uniformity, comforting as it is, would make the entire thing vector-like (I think).
Are they really using PlaysForSure? I thought that died after the Zune fiasco.
> people collaboratively write an outline then let a good writer write the whole story?

MSPaint Adventures[1] is like this. Generated off a SomethingAwful thread suggesting story ideas/outline, and then written/illustrated by another party.

[1] http://www.mspaintadventures.com/
I'm also going to argue against the word "technical" here; taking time out to interview isn't affecting your code, it's affecting all the uses of your time and just happening to catch the code as a particular subset. It's not a technical debt or anything fancy, it's just a plain old-fashioned unproductive use of time, one of those things startups can't afford because their biggest disadvantage against larger entities almost by definition is a surfeit of (wo)manhours.
The mechanically inclined can use said materials to make extremely good engines, as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9cK_TMLvjI
How was Eliot Spitzer more a threat to Wall Street as governor than he had been as prosecutor?
Naaa.

If you have an idea and you learn how to implement it you might find yourself a single founder/creator.

You know what they say about those, right?

"What's wrong with having one founder? To start with, it's a vote of no confidence. It probably means the founder couldn't talk any of his friends into starting the company with him. That's pretty alarming, because his friends are the ones who know him best." -- Paul Graham, 18 mistakes, 2006.
As someone who is looking for a job, I'd be more than willing to shell out a couple of bucks if I knew it would put me in contact with people I'd want to work with.

Right now on the candidate side of things it's pretty much the same situation. Go through job listings, send resumes to any that sound interesting, do about 4 phone interviews a week, pass on roughly 3 of them because they either aren't working on something I find interesting, the position itself isn't something I'd enjoy, or my gut tells me to walk away due to the impression I got from the person I talked to. I will pay you to not have to deal with this.
The last remaining Windows box I had suffered the same fate, and when I had finally finished removing the worm, I made a decision never to use Windows again.

It's not that it can't be secured, but it's the most targeted platform, thus making it a part-time job to keep it secure.

Remember the day when Anti-Virus worked?
what kind of java stuff can i learn in a year for stable employment?
...or what we used to call DHTML.
Ask HN: I want to build a robot that cleans my bathroom. 
I recently bought a robot vacuum and I've never had cleaner floors. Now all I can think about is building a robot that cleans my bathrooms. So I'm going to build one.

I'm a programmer but I don't have a background in robotics. My question is on a scale of 1-10 how impossible is this? Please know I don't really care if it's impossible. The worst case scenario I end up with a pile of AI and robotics knowledge, and who doesn't want that?

Here is the scale:

1 -- I just need to buy a kit and throw it together with some Python

10 -- I need a PhD in robotics so I can secure a research grant to develop robotic vision hardware and software.

I figure I will place it in a bathroom and it will:

-- Identify loose objects and move them out of the bathroom

-- Identify all of the surfaces that can be cleaned, e.g. clean the bathtub, not the walls.

-- Manipulate the toilet lids to clean under the lids, etc.

-- Be tall enough or have a long enough arm to clean the entire shower.

-- It needs to be mobile enough to move around the bathroom, into the tub, etc.

-- Put everything back in the room where it was when it's done.
amen to that. Makes me wonder if I should finally invest in online backup of some sort.
Verizon vs. Sprint 4G - Sheer speed vs. unlimited data?
I am looking forward to hearing about the DNA/RNA mechanism of this organism. If it is totally different from everything else we know as life on this planet, then this story indeed blows my mind.
Steam solves a portion of the gaming problem.
Also disturbing is the fact that Apple is sitting on a pile of $50 billion in cash while the actual Foxconn workers in China who make iPhones have very bad working conditions and pay. Cmon Apple, a few dollars go a long way in China.
Grabbed this update this morning and have sat with my iPad on my desk all day watching the activity on my sites. Its a beautiful thing (the app, not my stats sadly!).

In terms of missing features, a dashboard view of all my clicky sites would be ace, save flicking between them. Perhaps some alert features too, for example if traffic reaches a certain threshold?

Thanks.
EBay Buying Milo.com
I much prefer Gowalla to Foursquare, even though I personally don't find either of them all that useful...more of a fun distraction.

It's also interesting to watch the Facebook ripple effect. It seems that every web service is almost obligated to integrate with Facebook in order to be successful or viewed as legit.
Well, Apple could be a counterpoint if we're just talking about current CEOs. Steve Jobs has never been revered for his electronics skills, and it seems he kind of snuck in the back door in early jobs at Atari and HP. His specialty was always sales, whether selling Apple computers or selling himself.

That said, if we're talking "founders," Steve Wozniak was built right in, and he's the computer guru we're looking for. Just giving the computational credit where it's due, on this one.
maybe wufoo?
I wish everyone knew. I also thought FTP was a 20th century relic, until I started doing freelance web development full-time. It turns out FTP is still the preferred (and often only) way to manage web sites with the cheap shared hosting plans that small businesses gravitate to.

I started a group on Facebook called "7 Billion Strong Against FTP" to cope. 6,999,999,993 more to go.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=130658460303379
"Lynn has worked a newspaper wire for an eight-hour turn, but he prefers the click of the railroad message to that of the newspaper story."

Very cool. I wish I could have found an internship/job like that when I was 11.
Corkboard app, all in HTML/CSS/Javascript
Inilah Alasan Kenapa Anda Harus Bergabung Dengan Oriflame
Inilah Alasan Kenapa Anda Harus Bergabung Dengan Oriflame
Well, now that Assange has demonstrated the effectiveness of using internet technologies in this way, yes, Assange is probably replaceable.

If (as I suspect) the technology to do what Assange did was available 10 years ago, that is evidence that if Assange had not acted then it might have take a lot longer for someone else to do what he did.
Thanks for the feedback!

Both your requests are on the to-do list but require some help from the Clicky team unfortunately. I could do multiple API calls for each site but it would be good to do one call and get back the data I need...

With regards to notifications, I could actually look at doing that now, assuming users were willing to part with their API key to a hop notification server. Something also the clicky guys may do anyway that we can tag along to.
The techcrunch piece is nothing more than some filler around the Google blog post. I don't think it's offering any extra insight.
Check out my 72 hour site launch: ToFind.Me, a location shortener
Spawned from a discussion with a friend about how we could compress lat/long into a format suitable for text messaging or casual sharing.

Some details on the thinking behind it are at tynan.com/tofindme

Would love to hear feedback on the concept / feature set. Haven't had a chance to clean up my code yet, so no need to tell me how bad it is.
Ask HN: Boost marketing and customer service efforts with a swag service + API?
Idea bounce:

A swag fulfillment operation for companies of any size (startups, Fortune 500's) that want to outsource the physical mailing of swag and promotional items. The cool part? Having an API or web service to help automate the process!

3 Quick Examples:

- Customers with open tickets that haven't been resolved in 7 days? Automatically send them an iTunes gift card with a note.

- Heading to a conference in Boston and don't have to time/energy to bring 3 dozen t-shirts with you? Log in, request, we'll ship them to your hotel room.

- Automatically send users thank-you cards after 1 year of having a paid account or send branded fly swatters to users who've submitted bug reports

Here's How:

You ship in your promotional items (or have that order of t-shirts shipped right to us) and we would inventory it, give it an ID, securely store it and warn you when things run low.

You don't have to worry about storage, boxes, scales, labels, inventory, stamps, running to the Post Office or fumbling with a label printer and CSV file just to mail 25 survey responders their thank-you card and reward. You're running a startup, time is precious, but you know it's important to "wow" the customer (and we all know that something as simple as a gift card or branded styrofoam football is enough to give users the warm fuzzies)

Pricing could be done a few ways, but there are many variables to consider with packaging and shipping costs.

I've been thinking about this idea for a few days. Unlike most of my ideas that I let stew and eventually convince myself it's a poor idea, I thought I would bounce it off the HN for some healthy perspective.

What do you think?
For California, you can often find out who's having layoffs by looking at the WARN notices: http://www.edd.ca.gov/jobs_and_training/layoff_services_warn...

I imagine other states have their own listings as well.
Spent an hour last night on the phone with my Grandpa dealing with a fake antivir called "ThinkPoint". Malware writers are scum.
Real Reason Groupon is Selling: They’re Nervous About Publishers
In battle of iPad vs. Android-based Galaxy Tab, 85% prefer Apple
What's the purpose of the analysis? The one thing I have learned through my years of helping start-ups and small businesses is that making detailed plans is a waste of time. Once you start selling a product and talking to the customer you end up changing course and most of the hard work goes out the window.

My advise, just get a general idea in this case just make a few assumptions. Get the number of total unique users across all sites for a given month, then divide that number by how many sites you think the average gamer frequents. That should give you a pretty damn good estimate. The most important thing is TALK TO THE CUSTOMER, research and stats hold nothing compared to understanding your customer.
Ask HN: Best language for Linux web service development
I need to port a .NET (C#) web service to Linux. We cannot use Mono, so the options are to use Java or some other language such as Python. Personally I'd prefer to use Python or some other dynamic language rather than Java. The service basically implements some REST APIs for managing launching and stoping/starting of processes. These other processes are any kind of process, but they also implement a REST API used for controlling (pausing/restarting) and retrieving status info from them. How the other processes are implemented does not matter at this point. The service will need some low-level system API access for managing external processes (launching them and killing them). Or, are their any OSS frameworks that do something similar? Sorry I cant be more specific at this point.
Calls to Boycott Amazon fron Wikileaks Supporters
Oof. The JPEG logo looks awful.
Last year Rich gave a great talk about Clojure's approach to persistent data structures (but really identity and state): http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Value-Identity-State-Rich...
Groupon: Is Google Making a $6 Billion Mistake?
I worry that the existance of arsenic in the bacterium may be incidental.
Well, we did not launch but had two major updates to Kaleidoscope and Versions: http://www.kaleidoscopeapp.com http://www.versionsapp.com

We're especially happy with our changeset feature for git/svn/bzr/hg: http://vimeo.com/17363481 and would love to hear feedback.
Still working on it. But I started late. It's also my first app push - I'm a "business guy" learning to code.
By the way, I made a video for someone and they loved it... their first reaction was that they wanted to make one too.
Unless I'm mistaken, the contest was limited to supported languages. F#, ... don't appear because they weren't supported

I'm not familiar with how the contest was implemented, but I would assume that if C# was supported, then any .Net language would work. It should be trivial to build a C# wrapper for your F# code, if the interface you must support can be implemented in all those other languages.