skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"When we talk about “usable” or “intuitive” interfaces, Apple devotees and the web app crowd (myself included) tend to bias toward the first-time user."

The sort of thing that pains me, in so much as I will not always be a first-time user; my time as a first-timer is nothing compared to time being an experienced user.

I'd rather have to spend a bit of time getting going it if pays off in being able to do things fast and reliably down the line.

Ideally there should be ways to switch from the Newbie UI to the Old Hand UI, but most of what I see seems to forget that second part.
It would be news if it was (a) news or (b) really true.

Regarding (a), there was more collaboration and a bigger fire drill on the OULU.FI SNMP findings from 2003. That was a series of memory corruption and code execution findings in multiple different implementations.

----------------------------------------------------------

EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE WAS WRONG

Also, Microsoft patches on a schedule ("Patch Tuesday"), so if you have an activist security researcher trying to keep details from getting out, the major coordination problem is already solved: you're releasing on Patch Tuesday. What I'm saying is, if you find ANYTHING, and you want to talk about a mass vendor reaction, get Microsoft on board and you're done. Dan has a professional relationship with Microsoft.

Regarding (b), most of the implementations that are patching fall into two categories:

(1) --- Derivatives of ISC BIND

(2) --- Fantastically weak embedded or proprietary DNS implementations that were totally screwed prior to any new research result, and are now catching up on 13-15 years of DNS best practices for fear of being found out.
Sure, that file hasn't been changed in years.

I wonder if the problem is that just saying people can do whatever they want with code seems to him too unrestrictive.
From the article: "There are lots of great open-source projects out there, especially in the development world." I think that covers Emacs, gcc, gdb, and git at least...

He's not ignoring the great free software, he's pointing out that only using free software means that you give up using proprietary software in the cases where it is better.
The reason .doc is ubiquitous is because, at one point, MS had the best product and it was adopted by the market. There was no coercion--it was a choice between MS Word or a vastly inferior product.

Today, things are different. There are many wonderful office suites. But it's no good saying that we should restructure the pie as if office suites were new instead of old--Office is ahead because OO and iWork and whoever else were years late to the game. If they continue to be superior, they'll gain market share in spite of MS's best efforts.
Really? I've carried a Moleskine notebook with me every day for the past 9 years (I go through 3 or 4 a year). I've found that it's advantageous to see any mistakes I've made when reviewing my notebooks. Sometimes it's good to know I've gone down 3 other paths before I found the one that worked.

Tangent: If you're going to get into the habit of keeping handwritten notes, start devising a shorthand scheme or a set of symbols that you can use to let yourself know if something is important, or needs to be followed up, or needs review. I have a set of about 25 different sigils I use regularly in my notebooks that not only cuts down the amount of writing I do by quite a bit, it also makes it easy for me to scan a page quickly and get the important facts out fast.
If you have a link, I'd like to read it. I can't think of any Nash equilibrium where bluffing all bad hands works.
It has nothing to do with him being a linux coder. It doesn't really matter who you are, you should be given a fair trial. And, this was simply a piece of bad reporting - regardless of who the suspect was.
I don't think he did anything wrong - at least not that I'm aware of. Granted I didn't work with him or anything so there's no real way for me to "know." I was just trying to spell out what's most likely going to happen and why it (i.e. massive loses) happen so frequently. These stories, as a whole, exemplify why I'll always have the majority of my money in a low cost, no load, diversified fund.
simple: girl to guy ratio
Buy and read that book, it's a great investment.
Forget the post.
the problem is not the idea - pets are a huge market.

Through out the story (fake or not), her freinds kept encourage her to do wrong things, she should have started smaller, not quite her job until she got a solid amoutn of order, this is a web/ecomerce business and getting a store front would be the second this I would do after the web and whole sale business was rolling.

Also the name of the product is horrible:
"Grandma Sabin's Low-Fat Biscuits For Particularly Finicky Dogs,"

way too long, and "Particularly Finicky" - how about: Grandma Sabin's Gourmet Big Biscuits.
All Natural, Low Fat Delicious Dog Biscuits.
I'm not saying someone should step in and 'restructure' anything, just that there's cause for users to be a bit grumpy with the world because some markets are 'winner takes all'.

> If they continue to be superior, they'll gain market share in spite of MS's best efforts.

The point of big network externalities is that that doesn't necessarily happen. Qwerty and Betamax being cited (albeit disputed) examples - I'm sure there are other good ones.
I dont know why this keeps coming up on HN, but the answer is pretty simple. If you want to go viral get your readers/users to send as many messages as possible. Incentivized invites, email contact scraping, IM contact scraping, embeds, sharing options, FB and myspace viral channels and so on.
They're ... selling ... shirts.

Limited edition t-shirts, numbered 1 to 100, each costing that many dollars.
It helps that Mark Shuttleworth has F-U money. He's coy about Canonical's revenue/profitability, but last I heard, they're not profitable yet -- but their planning is long-term and very ambitious. Blurb:

"That means that we can fundamentally change the business model of the OS industry. Of course, it till take time to prove that we can achieve this, but we have a superb team and now that Ubuntu is well established we see increasing demand for services from Canonical, which is positive."

-- http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/148
Right. But they think everyone else likes it.

I have a customer with 2 call centers, one on GUI and one on green screen. The green screen center consistently beats the the GUI center by 2 minutes per call every month. Drives him nuts. He can't move people from the green screen center to the GUI center or they quit in a week (too much clicking to get anything done). He asks me why it has to be that way. I say it doesn't, but whoever wrote it probably didn't know any better.
That is, in fact, not what you told him to do. Your advice is a risky proposition, and for people who aren't used to it, it is fair to point out how crazy it seems.

I was not trying to criticize what you said, but I still think it sounds insane. It might truly be the core of innovation, just as how some artists create groundbreaking work when they go nuts. But if I repeated this to some people around me I'd expect loud disagreement.
Stanford Chooses Zimbra Over Gmail, Outlook
Awww, I like 3! 3 makes the tab levels very distinct, without wasting space. Of course it's just a matter of personal preference. But, is 4 really a widespread standard in the Python world?
I don't think RMS is opposed to all non-free books, but believes that books meant as reference or instruction ought to be free.

And as pg mentioned, the fact that the code is free for (implicitly) any use whatsoever means that the code could be used in proprietary software without issue, and thus the code isn't free.

Was RMS opposed to the book, the code, or both? I suspect both, and since it appears that he quickly recognized the book, he had probably already contemplated his opposition to it at some prior time.

His behavior in this situation surely would strike most as odd, but he seems to just be living by his ideals as much as possible. You may not see non-free reference books or non-free software as unethical, but he does, and wants no positive connection with it.
Explain how the grammar is sound? And I mean that seriously because I want to be well written.

It seems like it should be:

"Or would you?" - so that what follows 'or' is the converse of what was said.

Or

"Wouldn't you?" - without the 'or' to denote skepticism.

And while we're on it, nix the first 'a' in "wearing a jeans and a t-shirt..."

Please understand that this isn't said out of pedantry, but out of love for this essay. We should all be taught to understand the implications of what a place says to us, on us. It should be part of any formal education.

Quibbling over grammar in our casual posts is lame, but this essay deserves to be in a book one day, printed and in wide circulation, so please understand my intention.
I agree. I never throw away my notes either, however silly they may be. But since Moleskines are expensive, I get a sort of sub-conscious resistance to being wasteful. May be it is just me.

Yup I have an elaborate embarrassingly geeky scheme myself.
Thanks for explaining your argument.

Let's suppose you're right - that playing by the numbers is sufficient. In this case you would not have to keep track of player histories, as you consider every hand without context. But this can only result in one thing: your play style will be constant. You will always take the best action with probability P and (semi)bluff with probability 1 - P. The human notices this and starts playing very aggressively. As a result the PC will fold winning hands and lose many blinds. What the PC should do is change tactics. Get aggressive or start laying traps (e.g. slowplay a great hand so it looks weak, to lure the aggressive human player into bluffing a lot of money).

If the computer always plays optimally from hand to hand it cannot deduce changes in playing style and will therefore always lose. From this I can only conclude that psychological aspects can never be ignored in poker.
I do not think he is talking specifically about the code. From http://www.gnu.org/doc/gnupresspub.html:

"GNU Press publishes ...books on computer science using freely distributable licenses... We believe the reader should be free to copy and redistribute it, just like our software".

I do not know what right readers have to distribute ACL, but if it is in anyway restricted then I would guess that is what he means.
Google's YouTube ad revenue short of expectations
Incentivized invites? Can you elaborate more on this? How can you send out as many invites as possible without looking like a spammer?
That's a great step toward a better user experience. Good job.
These really aren't startups. Just features.
Made my day too - this will save me scores of hours. Anyone who's had problems with SEO should definitely look in to this. Thanks utnick.
Please remove up-vote buttons from the main page for unvisited links. An absence of these buttons could enforce a vote-after-read policy.

Titles are easily abused therefore It is not a good idea to vote based only on title without reading comments and/or a linked page.

It could diminish a number of bait-like sensational titles too.
ruby, c, scheme, and ocaml
Ask HN: What's in a name?  Serious or fun?
My startup is working on a name for a new product we're launching. We've got two "working titles" so far. We haven't registered the domains yet, so here are the descriptions:

A) This one is fun, in a sort of edgy way, and lends itself well for a metaphor for the product (which might help cut down on explanation complexity). It's seven characters, two syllables, easy to remember, interesting, and describes what we do well. It verbs well. However, we are concerned about its negative connotations: specifically, one of the words describes a felony (think along the lines of MacHeist).

B) I find this one slightly more boring, but it's fairly descriptive and is more focused on the community/userbase does with our product than on what the product actually is. A ten character, three-word three-syllable sentence. One of those del.icio.us -like names, but we can get the .com name too. Doesn't verb, not quite as interesting/edgy, but certainly won't scare anyone off. Feels good, in a sunshine-and-puppies sort of way.

I can't tell you much about our target market, primarily because we haven't launched yet and don't have any users :-)

So--would a name like MacHeist scare you off or intrigue you? Or would you prefer a name that's more friendly/neighborly?

Also: know any good (cheap) logo artists?
Care to write up said sigils, scan them, and post them somewhere? I'd love to see your system.
I'm curious if he even read the article. I was pretty explicit that I use many free products, because they're often better, and many proprietary ones because they too are often better.

I do have one blog on MT and one on Wordpress, and to be honest I'm not sure which I prefer. It's a close call either way. Given what I've heard of Wordpress's scalability issues, I think I'd use MT if I were running a blog with the expectation of large traffic numbers.
Incentivized invite = Find your friends photos on the web! give us your gmail log in and we will tell you where your contacts upload photos! Something along those lines...

Your spam question sounds like something you need to answer for yourself.
Interesting, it reminds me "The Zurich Axioms"
I downloaded my first copy of slackware onto floppies over a 14.4 modem, and it took something like a week. Now get off my lawn, you damn kids!
Wow. I am blown away at the formalness of this habit!

I thought my girlfriend was the only person that took this process to such an extreme.

I was also just thinking today my spiral notebooks are horribly difficult to navigate, maybe I might start a system.
The real question is - how do you entice more girls to sign up? Girls not only attract guys in to joining (obviously) but more girls as well.
Not eating: bad - organs deteriorate. Overeating: bad - organs die too quickly.

Your liver grows stronger when you drink lots of alcohol, but that doesn't mean you're not killing it in the long term.

Same for muscles and joints. Consider somebody who works at a farm his entire life. Healthy when young. All joints break down at 45 because of the hard labor.
I never really meant that the calculations should be without context. One could keep a "running distribution" to update P (probably a bunch of Ps, actually) as you play.

Maybe we're now just looking at the same thing from different angles. You say "use psychology" and I say "use numbers", but in the end, maybe it's the same thing and it's harder than I'm giving it credit for.

Thanks for the poker lesson, by the way. Next time I see a game I'll be more interested.
When All Else Fails, Buy More Tech Stock | My Philly Network
I think the fundamental problem is that the reason people are on most of these dating sites is because they can't find a date elsewhere. Building a good dating site means solving that problem: making dating online more intuitive than flirting in real life. This is hard, because you've got however many billion/million years of evolution working against you.

On the other hand, there are some groups for whom physical flirting is already cumbersome. Busy professionals/entrepreneurs (arguably above-average dating material) don't necessarily have time to chat up people at coffee shops. People of a particular faith or with a particular medical condition may be genuinely afraid of simply meeting random people. There has been some success with this sort of 'longtail/niche' dating site.
This is an interesting bill to me. On one hand, I hate the idea of these wiretaps, and think they're one of a number of reasons for which Bush should be impeached.

On the other hand, I think the phone companies need to be exonerated. Corporations can't be expected to pick and choose when they cooperate with the government, and they should never be penalized for doing so. We don't want to create a system in which companies can be held liable for that. It will hinder legitimate law enforcement, and create insurmountable legal bills for small businesses asked to cooperate with government investigations.
Well thats good to hear (I only know people in Sydney and Mountain View offices, and they tell me they didn't know anyone that worked like that).

Of course its nice to have good offices to go to when you so choose. Its just I know that when I go to an office I normally get nothing done (its almost too social).
A new niche play might be to figure out how to adapt the dating genre to the iPhone. Maybe a GPS-based play.

But I think the key continues to be -- find a good niche. But not so nichey that only 8 people are interested.
If you're really ok with that 1-1.5 hour commute, then you should be able to find a studio in a suburban neighborhood for around $700-$800 in cities like Petaluma, Santa Rosa, Novato (North Bay) or Vacaville, Fairfield ("Far East" Bay).

Anything in the inner Bay Area closer to SF//SJ//etc is going to run you $1000+ for a studio in a good neighborhood. If you're less picky about the neighborhood, then there are more options for less.
Ah - it was "the Metaverse" phrasing that confused me. Presumably there wouldn't be just one.
Take a look on Nokia's smart-phones based on Symbian, their GUI is just horrible, it's proprietary and yet it is most popular smart-phone platform in the world. One must be very talanted to design usable GUI nowadays, especially for mobile devices, and it does not matter open sourced it or not.
Water Found on the Moon
I took some notes for a hypothetical personal system, although it isn't great:

* Learn what common and abbreviable (I'm not sure that this is a real word) words are, and abbreviate them.

* Create a system of declensions similar to German or Latin -- you could probably drop a lot of prepositions this way.

* Use symbols if they're easier/faster to write.

* Leave space to create a legend, explaining abbreviations or symbols made up or allocated on the spot.

* Leave lots of margin and whitespace.

Nothing very comprehensive, I'm afraid. I'd be interested in seeing a more-developed system too.
Spolsky mentioned jdate on his podcast - dating for Jews as a successful online-only product.
Ah-hah. But that's the problem. So you need some kind of distribution for each of the different tactics the player plays. And then you need some heuristics to predict which tactic is going to follow which tactic. It's a slippery slope, I guess.

I don't know where to draw the line myself. It can be argued that as soon as something is modeled by a computer it ceases to be psychology and becomes mundane math. But I do still believe that most tactics people use to trick others with need to show up in the code in some way.

I won't use the "Clearly you've never done x" line again. It was cheap and uncalled for. Thanks for calling me out on that.
I don't see any conflict. You suggest that that eval is used to "manipulate search results". It could just as easily be used to score results and flag up problems in the ranking mechanisms.

As the man says, they are constantly refining the algorithm, - so presumablt they need constant feedback on how well the algorithm's working.

No?
Assuming some basic threshold of intelligence, it's much more important to most people how pleasant someone is to be around than how smart they are. If you do fit into this "antisocial genius" archetype (which you're tossing around every bit as loosely as the author of the article), chances are good that how people treat you has nothing to do with envy, and everything to do with how you treat them.

Just saying, is all.
adwords.google.com is down for me at 4.11 pm pacific time. no other site/google service is down
I noted the same thing on FireFox 3, but camino worked just fine.
This is a little off the wall, but why don't you register them both, and then as your first users what they think? Have a vote. Get's them involved in the site, and makes them feel special, like all early adopters want.

A little off the wall, but it solves your problem with little effort.
I'd recommend to register both domains for a few bucks and ask again with naming the actual working titles.

I think I personally would prefer the serious name.

For your logo: we got ours from http://www.designcontest.net/ - you pay $150 (or as much more as you like to) plus I think about $20 fee and describe what you want. You get several logo concepts from several artists and can comment on them. When you finally really like one of the logos, you close the contest and the logo is yours. Have a look at the forums (http://www.designcontest.net/forum/).
There's nothing wrong with the dating services. The people are broken.

People lie. Solve that one and you may have something. (True.com tried to do this.)

Also, most dating sites act as a sort of amplification for the user's dating filters and skill at attracting interest. However, I believe that most people are lonely because their dating filters are broken, and because they have trouble attracting interest. Dating sites only help these people
fail faster and at greater scale.

(Exception: tall women. They are not necessarily damaged, they really do have a sort of search problem that is more solveable at scale.)

I have started to think that a really successful dating site would start from the premise that the user is broken and cannot be relied on to find or choose a partner. Maybe use social networks so that their friends help them find someone? Or even anonymous strangers, for karma points? Straight women do this sort of thing anyway (straight guys tend to use these sites alone) and if a woman gets all her female friends to come on board, that helps solve the female-male ratio.
.doc a best product. Sorry no way. Word to this day cannot produce anything near as good as Tex. I daily watch long email threads of collaborators struggling to share .doc files written with different versions of Word on different platforms.
All the morally reprehensible stuff I've done took more balls than just being passive.
So… How Do I Manage It?
We Love To Hate Microsoft But What About Apple?
I guess that rich guys attract girls.
lol. No, you let it get in the way of extending your editor. You can write good code without abbreviation expansions. Vi hardliners would see it as unnecessary feature creep as it is rather complicated and doesn't fit in as well as other commands.
"Highly technical," says the Times.

"Popish!" raves the Globe.

Sorry, couldn't resist. Seriously though, I bet he's at the library checking it out right now. :)

But while we're recommending books he doesn't want, I would like to suggest W.P. Montague's, The Ways of Knowing.

Particularly, it's explanation of authoritarianism, when it's appropriate and when it's not, has been indispensable.

To whet your appetite, I'll say this much:

Montague asserts that if you want to fill your head with true beliefs (this stuff called knowledge) about reality, then you should be aware of five distinct types of evidence that a human can collect and five distinct logical theories with which to process (Rationalism, Empiricism, Authoritarianism, Pragmatism, Mysticism). The more mastery, the more knowledge.

The book is slow going but not for the usual reasons. Each page made me want to pause and sit and think until I had totally reprocessed all my life's experiences and questioned all my now seemingly ill-formed conclusions in the new light of my increased powers of reasoning.

If I found a genie in a lamp and he granted me one wish, I would wish that everyone in the world would read the first chapter of that book... or for a puppy.

You can get a nice ~1930's copy for like $6 at an antique book store.
Worst Idea Ever: SSHKeygen.com
It's easy for a programmer to cover higher living expenses in NYC because tech jobs pay well here. If you quit your job to make a go of it with a startup, you had better start making money quickly, or your reserves will be depleted before you know it. This has happened to me twice in two years.